American Hustle The Grandmaster The Great Gatsby The Invisible Woman 12 Years a Slave Quite often, the formula to go to when picking Best Costume Design is the costumes with the most ornamentation, most gaudiness, and most difficulty to actually produce is the costumes that are likely to win the Oscar. If that is the case, then the probable winner is The Great Gatsby, a film whose whole theme has to do with the damages of excess and hedonism. Director Baz Luhrmann has built his career around flashy production and costume designs and his films have already won his wife, Catherine Martin, who does both the production and costume designs for his films, two Academy Awards, so it's definitely possible she may add to her collection for her work on The Great Gatsby. There are a number of other possibilities though. The Victorian Age is a favorite of this category, which certainly is a plus for Ralph Fiennes' Charles Dickens semi-biopic, The Invisible Woman. However, there is no royalty in The Invisible Woman and the costumes are rather drab, so I don't think it's likely to win. The film that is undoubtedly most highly regarded among the nominees is 12 Years a Slave, but even of the film wins Best Picture, it's not going to be a Best Picture Winner that sweeps everything, and the costumes are a little commonplace to take this award. The one film that could play spoiler to The Great Gatsby though is American Hustle. Now the Academy hardly ever recognizes contemporary threading in this category, no matter how impressive, but fashion plays such a major role in the thematic elements of American Hustle that I wonder if they just might make an exception in this case. The film is also clearly liked by many Academy members (with 10 total nominations, tying it for the most this year), but it looks more and more likely that the film may go home empty handed, which makes me wonder if some Academy members might view Best Costume Design as a consolation prize of sorts, so the film doesn't have to go home totally blanked. The safer bet in my estimation is still The Great Gatsby, but if you feel like rolling the dice a bit, this may be the category to do it and American Hustle's win in this category could just be the break you need to put you over the top in your pool. Will Win: The Great GatsbyCould Win: American HustleShould Win: American Hustle
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
