2. Steve McQueen Wins Best Director
We're closing in on the last two wins which would make this year's Oscars worthy of watching and the first of those is the improbable-but-not-impossible win for Steve McQueen's work in 12 Years A Slave. It's a good time to remind everyone how monumentally important this film is and the mark it will leave. Years from now, if universities still continue to exist in a future society, a professor will be teaching a class on film history, skip to the 2013 chapter and say "Steve McQueen was a great filmmaker and here's why." Or something to that effect. 12 Years A Slave is the first film to get under the skin of America's ugly past and provide a first-person psychological account of what it was like to be a black man during times of slavery. As previously mentioned; the acting is astonishing, the cinematography is rapturous and the editing shortens breaths. All of that has been artfully orchestrated by Steve McQueen, a man who keeps on dishing out masterpieces like they're going out of style. Truth be told 12 Years A Slave has a much bigger chance at winning Best Picture while Gravity's Alfonso Cuaron has been picking up every single directing award possible, including the recent BAFTA which was McQueen's turf. But I've chosen to highlight McQueen here because Director/Picture splits are uncommon with the Academy and depending on how effective 12 Years A Slave is with voters when it comes to Best Picture, McQueen does have a slight chance at a most welcome, and deserved, upset. Not to mention that he'd be making history himself by becoming the first black person to win an Oscar for directing.