While it may be little over 24 hours since Argo was announced as 2012's Best Picture, filmmakers are already well into their preparations for 2013's year-end slate of so-called "prestige" pictures, ones that will surely rack up a string of Academy Award nominations and, fingers crossed, rank among the very best films we'll see all year. It's a packed line-up already, meaning that from dozens of films we whittled them down to the 10 we think fit what the Academy tends to go for. Yes, there are countless other prospects - Nicole Kidman's Grace of Monaco was just picked up by the Weinstein Company, Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave could show up here if it's less formalist than his other efforts, and fare like August: Osage County, Foxcatcher and David O'Russell's next project would surprise just about nobody - but I've selected the 10 that, on the balance of probabilities, I think have the best chance of making the cut. Check back here in a year's time and see how right I was! Here are 10 predictions for the Best Picture slate at 2014's Oscars...
10. Rush
Ron Howard has a tendency of being quite hit and miss as a director, but with the right material, he's certainly not averse to Oscar glory, and with The Queen and Frost/Nixon scribe Peter Morgan at the pen, his prospects are certainly good for this film about the 1976 Formula One season and the rivalry between drivers James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl). The film is mostly concerned with Lauda's near-fatal crash at the Nürburgring and the re-ignition of their feud leading up to the Fuji's World Championship. If Howard can find a way to make the sport of racing accessible in the same way that Asif Kapadia's documentary Senna did, then he could be onto a winner here. The only real question mark is Chris Hemsworth; are people prepared to take him seriously as an actor yet, and more importantly, does he have much to offer beyond what we've seen from him in The Avengers, Thor and The Cabin in the Woods so far?