Oscars 2014: Final Predictions For All Categories

Best Documentary

The Lady In Number 6CaveDigger Facing Fear Karma Has No Walls The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall This is the only category which I never see any of the nominated films. Thanks to on-demand, even the two short categories (animated and live-action) are relatively easy to catch up with (and I recommend checking them out, because there is usually at least one impressive film in the bunch). For Best Documentary then, I am not really much more qualified to prognosticate than the one-day-a-year Oscar watcher. However, instincts on the Academy's taste can prove valuable even when you haven't seen any of the nominees, and the first thing to do for any savvy Oscar player in this category is to research the subject matter of the five films and then predict based on that. Using the modern day magic of the world wide web, here are the focuses of the five nominees. CaveDigger: A portrait of artist Ra Paulette, who digs sculptural caves for a living. Facing Fear: A former Neo-Nazi and the homosexual victim of his hate crime meet 25 years after incident and form a new found friendship. Karma Has No Walls: A film detailing the 2011 Yemini revolution and some of the violent incidents perpetrated against the protesters. The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life: A study of a 109 year-old Holocaust survivor and the world's oldest pianist. Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall: A look at the final days of a terminally ill prisoner in the Iowa State Penitentiary and the fellow prisoners who take care of him. While forgoing the cynical view in the Best Documentary category, without having seen any of the nominees, I usually rely on it pretty heavily when it comes to predicting Best Documentary . Using this tactic then, I would safely say that the frontrunner should be Facing Fear, as the subject matter has the most political import when it comes to issues that are closest to the Academy's heart, however, recent events may have just shifted this landscape. The subject of The Lady in Number 6, Alice Hertz Sommer, recently passed this last week, which for any voters on the fence who hadn't submitted their ballots yet, may have been the deciding factor in picking which film to vote for. I suspect then the winner will be one of the two, but you never know in this category. Will Win: The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My LifeCould Win: Facing FearShould Win: N/A
Contributor
Contributor

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.