Oscars 2013: Best Screenplays/Supporting Actor/Actress

Frank Capra called the Oscars “the most valuable, but least expensive, item of world-wide public relations ever invented by any industry”. They are, like it or not, the film awards against which all others are judged - even to the point that other countries’ film awards are scheduled in relation to the ceremony. Despite being the accepted mark of excellence, the Oscars are not a meritocracy.

The choice of one art work/film product over another is, necessarily, irrational and Oscars' critics often say AMPAS members are too old and out of touch to cast such important votes.

Whatever its flaws, Oscar leaves its mark on each nominee, winner or not. Once someone is chosen by AMPAS, they are defined forever by it. Careers are made and potentials magnified. And so - with just days to go until the 85th Academy Awards - we ask "Who will join the hallowed ranks in 2013?" and make our first round of predictions.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

 

This year contains few performances with which anyone would quibble. Tommy Lee Jones (pictured right) wearing a standout (and not anachronistic) wig make him an obvious choice as Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln. Robert De Niro played against sanity, opting for a more OCD approach as the obsessed father in Silver Linings Playbook. Christoph Waltz is Schultz King, the adorably talkative bounty hunter in Django Unchained. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a weirdlly perfect foil for Joaquin Phoenix’s oversexed instability in The Master. Most delightful was Alan Arkin's composite portrayal as Hollywood producer Lester Siegel, a tasty snack based on Jack Warner nestled in the entertaining frenzy of Argo. With Hoffman having won the Critics Choice award, Waltz winning the BAFTA and the Golden Globe and Tommy Lee Jones winning the SAG Award, it’s an exciting race.

Who will win: Tommy Lee Jones is a Lincoln standout and it’s been 18 years since he was a winner here.

Who should win: Alan Arkin because he’s incredible, no matter what role.

Who should have been nominated: Jean-Louis Trintignant has been tragically overlooked this awards season although, like Hoffman, his was really a leading role in Amour, which he made look easy.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Don't expect a tight race. Anne Hathaway is streets ahead with her portrayal of the desperate Fantine in director Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables. Having starved herself on oatmeal paste for the role, even people who don’t like the movie found her rendition of "I Dreamed A Dream" powerful stuff. Other contenders - Sally Field as Lincoln’s ambitious, unstable wife Mary Todd, Amy Adams as the steely Mary Sue Dodd in The Master, Helen Hunt as a complicated sex surrogate in The Sessions and Jackie Weaver as the cheery in-denial mum in Silver Linings Playbook - are all solid, notable performances. But Hathaway's is by far the most stellar. Also, her character is a single mother turned prostitute and there’s awful tragedy, which Oscar traditionally likes.

Who will win: Anne Hathaway because she worked really hard all her life for this role, cut her hair on camera, sang and cried, live.

Who should win: Anne Hathaway.

Who should have been nominated: Dame Judi Dench - a sentimental selection for her pivotal role in Skyfall (pictured above with Daniel Craig)

Overleaf: the screenplays

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

This year, newcomer Chris Terrio’s crisp, exciting script for Argo is burning up the track, so much so that even a previous Oscar nominee and Tony/Emmy/Pulitzer Prize winner like Tony Kushner (Lincoln) will have a hard run for it. Nominated previously for directing, David O Russell is in the running for his romantic, kooky Silver Linings Playbook along with Finding Neverland Oscar nominee David Magee’s elegiac Life of Pi (pictured) and newcomers Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar’s startling Beasts of the Southern Wild. All nominated scripts are incredible achievements but the Argo roadshow seems hard to beat.

Who will win: Argo.

Who should win: Life of Pi, deftly crafted from the unfilmable book.

Who should have been nominated: The hugely underrated Bernie, by Skip Hollandsworth and Richard Linklater.

 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

 

Oscar winner in 1995 for Pulp Fiction, Tarantino deservedly won the BAFTA this year for the enormously entertaining B-movie script that is Django Unchained, a script that is actually better than the film. This casts an Oscar shadow over Michael Haneke’s memorable, heartbreaking Amour and Mark Boal’s exacting Zero Dark Thirty (pictured), although Boal having won only a few years ago for The Hurt Locker doesn’t bode well for him this year. Other contenders are John Gatins’ marvellous Flight delivers excitement, novelty and a moral centre. Previous Oscar nominee Wes Anderson and maiden Roman Coppola’s Moonrise Kingdom seems more of an encouraging nod than a serious nomination, although the film is probably Anderson's best yet.

Who will win: Django Unchained.

Who should win: Zero Dark Thirty.

Who should have been nominated: Rian Johnson’s script for Looper wasn’t so shabby for a time-travel tale.

• More about the Academy Awards on theartsdesk