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Maybe it’s an illustration of that old saw, ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ or maybe it’s just human nature to pay most attention to what’s right in front of us. Either way, the biggest number of Academy Award nominees have usually come from the raft of prestigious films that Holly- wood typically saves for the end of the year. In fact, last year, more than half of 2009’s nominees for Best Picture were released in the final few months of the year. As the 83rd Academy Awards approach, it’ll be interesting to see if that pattern persists. So far, it looks very likely, with such late and year-end re- leases as 127 Hours,The King’s Speech,True Grit, Another Year, Black Swan, Hereafter,The Fighter, Blue Valentine, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Social Network all looking like strong contenders in various categories. But can Oscar turn a blind eye to such acclaimed earlier releases as Shutter Island,Toy Story 3, Inception, Get Low, Alice In Wonderland,Win- ter’s Bone and even Iron Man 2? Impossible to tell, but with all that in mind, we now look into our crystal ball and present our annual top-picks list of likely nominees. BEST PICTURE/BEST DIRECTOR These high-profile awards usually go hand-in-hand (over 80 percent of the time in the past four decades), and often go to the underdog rather than the biggest gorilla in the room, as evidenced by last year’s wins for The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, which shut out James Cameron and Avatar, the biggest-grossing movie in history. This year may see a scaled-down version of that sce- nario, even though two possible contenders — Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland — each made over a billion dollars worldwide, closely followed by Inception ($815 million) and Shrek Forever After ($734 million). Of course, the Academy has always followed its own drummer, placing art above commerce, and this year it looks like some longtime Oscar favorites with proven track records will be amongst the potential nominees, along with some fresh faces. Chris Nolan’s Inception, starring Leonardo Di- Caprio, Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is his first sci-fi film, a mind-bending tale of dream thieves that he scripted.That, with its $160 million budget and locations ranging from Britain and Japan to France and Morocco, combines the huge scale of his Batman films with the visual and cerebral tricki- ness of Memento and 2002’s Insomnia. (See our interview with director Nolan in the August issue). It was shot by his go-to DP Wally Pfister, who has scored three Oscar noms for his work with Nolan — for Batman Begins,The Prestige and The Dark Knight. Maybe the fourth time’s the charm. There’s also great buzz around David Fincher’s thriller for the brain, The Social Network.With a razor-sharp script by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) and starring a great ensemble cast that includes Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, it was shot on Red One by Jeff Cronenweth, who also shot Fight Club, much of it in the real Harvard and Boston locations of the story’s setting. “It was my first HD movie,” says the DP. “I’d shot music videos and com- mercials with the Red, and I loved doing a feature with it. It allowed Fincher and me to really push the envelope, and we used Arri master primes shooting wide open most of the time to give it more depth of field.”The team did their DI at Red Stu- The Social Network: editors Kirk Baxter (big) and Angus Wall (top), along with director of photography Jeff Cronenweth, are all in the running for Academy gold. dios in Hollywood.“They have a Sony projector and [Quantel] Pablo color correc- tor on Stage 4, and LightIron did all the DI corrections for us, and it was an eye- opening way of doing it for me.” With a tight budget of just $20 million, 127 Hours, Danny Boyle’s follow-up to his multi-Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire (it won eight, including Best Picture and Best Director), is another thriller — of a very different sort.There’s nothing social here — just a lone hiker (James Franco) trapped by a boulder in a tight, lonely canyon in Utah, who is forced to cut off his own arm in order to survive. Based on the real-life story of Aron Ralston, 127 Hours is a riveting suspense story shot by frequent Boyle DPs, Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog) and Enrique Chediak (28 Weeks Later). Clint Eastwood shot his new film, Hereafter, starring Matt Damon, on location in Hawaii (which doubles for Indonesia), London, Paris and the Alps.This Babel-esque tale about near-death experiences was shot by DP Tom Stern, who teamed with Eastwood on Invictus, Gran Torino and Changeling, among others.The director has never let the grass grow under his feet, and what’s striking about his latest film is his embrace of the latest in visual effects artistry to help tell his story (see the Visual Effects section below). Oscar-winner Roman Polanski shot much of The Ghost Writer, his latest stylish, menacing and pulpy film, in Germany even though it’s set largely in Martha’s Vineyard. His DP, Pawel Edelman, was Oscar-nominated for his work on Polanski’s The Pianist, and also shot Oscar-winner Ray. There are several other much smaller-scale contenders that are being talked up by critics and fans, including British director Mike Leigh’s latest and aptly ti- tled Another Year (see our interview with him on page 14 of this issue), which features a truly heartbreaking, devastating performance by Leigh regular Lesley Manville as a lonely alcoholic that deserves to be nominated.Then there’s Aaron Schneider’s Get Low,Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and several releases that, at press time, had yet to be screened — festival dar- ling Blue Valentine, starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling; How Do You Know directed by James L. Brooks; Black Swan directed by Darren Aronofsky; the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit, starring Matt Damon and last year’s Best Actor winner Jeff Bridges; and The King’s Speech, directed by TV miniseries vet Tom Hooper (Elizabeth 1), which is getting big Oscar buzz for star Colin Firth and Hooper. Ben Affleck is also getting Oscar traction for directing The Town, as is Lisa Cholodenko for The Kids Are Alright.And don’t count out Peter Weir for The Way Back or David O. Russell for The Fighter, which is also getting great reviews and major buzz. www.postmagazine.com January 2011 • Post 23