With twelve nominations, Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Lincoln, leads the Oscar field and looks poised to give Spielberg yet another gold statue to add to his illustrious career. Lincoln stars Daniel Day-Lewis as President Abraham Lincoln and the film covers the point of Lincoln’s term where the Civil War is in full swing and he struggles with the people calling for an end to the war as well as pushing his cabinet and to agree with him on emancipating the slaves.
Led with a powerful cast that included Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, Joesph Gordon-Levitt, and James Spader Lincoln enters the Oscars as an early favorite to win Best Picture because of the amount of nominations it has as well as the crew behind it but in my opinion, many more factors go into why Spielberg’s latest will be taking home the prize as the year’s best film: here’s 10 of ‘em.
10. Well-Placed Nominations
As I mentioned before, Lincoln leads the field with most nominations. But what it is nominated in really effects the film’s ability to win Best Picture. Since 2006, every director who has won the Best Director award has gone on to win an Oscar for Best Picture as well. Spielberg has great command over the Oscar field this year because of the exclusion of Katheryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) and Ben Affleck (Argo) who were possibly his greatest competition and have already been awarded Best Directing honors in other awards (Affleck won at the Golden Globes).
While the rest of the field still includes directors who did a great job in their respected films, such as Ang Lee in Life of Pi or David O. Russell in Silver Linings Playbook, it puts more pressure on those directors to nab the award with Spielberg’s film having so many other nominations in important categories.
Look at last year’s winner, The Artist. It was nominated the most and did not win in many other small awards other than Best Score but when the important categories appeared, it was all over the place, nabbing wins for director Michael Hazanavicius, actor Jean Dujardin, and eventually nabbed the Best Picture.
Like Dujardin, Daniel Day-Lewis is right now the head over heels favorite in the Best Actor category. His performance in Lincoln was powerful and mesmorizing and he was clearly the leader of the film, even if his character’s name wasn’t the title. While the Best Actor field is good, no one commanded a screen like Day-Lewis did in Lincoln and he is almost a virtual lock in that category.
But this is much like two years ago when Colin Firth took home Oscar gold for The King’s Speech. He commanded that category and no one was able to touch him and it gave the film a huge stepping stone to taking home Best Picture. Getting awards in key categories like that has been a key for the past few Oscars (see The Artist and The King’s Speech) and Lincoln is set up to take over those categories with Daniel-Day Lewis and Steven Spielberg leading the charge for it.
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11 Comments
Argo has been winning almost every major award in sight. Example: It won Best Ensemble Cast last night at the SAG Awards.
You’re going to have egg on your face when Lincoln probably ends up losing.
That would be fine by me. I loved Argo. Was a fantastic film and if Lincoln doesn’t win, it would be fine to see that take home Best Picture.
I’m still upset that The Master didn’t get nominated, best film of 2012 in my opinion
No way Lincoln is that much of a favorite as it has lost ALL of these year´s important awards leading up to the oscars (golden globe, sag and pga). A loss in the DGA awards for spielberg will be the end for its aspirations. Just to be a contender at the oscars, he needs to win that award. In regards to the actor being so much of an important factor for best picture, I would have to disagree, probably been a coincidence the last few years as previous winners like slumdogs millionaire, no country for old en, the departed, crash, the hurt locker, etc., didnt won a leading actor awards or werent even nominated…probably the only reasonable reason (apart from all the speculation there is like being about politics, highliting american history, spielberg being one of the greatest all time, etc, etc) is that its the “talk” favorite, which means that it is the movie everyone (experts and critics im referring obviusly)is talking and expecting it to take home the award (which over the years has proven to be the best measure to predict it).
Spielberg adn this 11th? –12th Hollywood Lincoln?
—that brings NOTHING new to the table? –that –again
features Sally Field? –that, in, 2013, is featuring
a foreigner in the title role? –that completely –OMITS–
Lincolns’ quite possibly –FATAL– diss of Global USURY
over finance of the war?
WHAT CAN WE SAY?
Look around you, in ANY direction- –
WHAT CAN WE DO?
That is true. But remember that in 1995 Apollo 13 took home the Globes, DGa, PGA, and other big awards like that and ended up losing at the Oscars to Braveheart. So it never is certain that something will win just based off of the awards it racks up going into Oscar night.
Totally agree with you, it can happen. That is the reason I said Lincoln cant be “That much of a favorite”. I still consider it the talkie favorite (as I mentioned in my previous post). However, losing the awards that during the last 7-10 years have ultimately decided the oscar winners is a very negative point and bit setback for its campaign. f¿This is for the simple reason that the “judges” for the guild awards and the oscar are 90% the same (members of the guild). Considering that the best picture is decided not only by producers vote but also by directors, actors and writers, you will find that Lincoln has somehow become a longshot despite being favorite to win director as producers and actor have already preferred argo. That being said, I believe that my previous comment about being necessary for it to win the DGA, so that it can even aspire to best picture, can be better understood.
I agree. It is setting up this year’s Oscars to be real crazy. I’m excited to see how they turn out.
Affleck has just won dga, I believe Lincoln’s bid for best picture is over.
Seems that way. Good for Argo though.
I would be delighted if lincoln were to spring a surprise and snatch victory from Argo, despite the latter’s excellence. Day Lewis gives such integrity, passion and force to his performance and such angst, there is an incredible physicality to the character. Tommy Lee Jones adds force and dignity to his portrayal as a radical congressman and Sally Field is superb as Mary Todd Lincoln. Tony Kushner’s screenplay is superb. Though we know the result, tension builds marvellously well before the vote. Its well shot, Spielberg is on top form and there are only a few over-reverential scenes though of course it is a long film.
There is a problem in a political movie with little action outside the US but it has genuine stature and Hollywood does like a biopic, from Patton to Gandhi they’ve done well at the Oscars. Equally, since Tinseltown actually plays a pivotal role in Argo and Affleck directs with panache, I can see its appeal. Lincoln is a great film however, Argo merely an extremely good one.