Oscars 2014: Predicting The Winners

The nominations for the 86th Academy Awards have just been announced by Chris Hemsworth and Cheryl Boone Isaacs, with all the usual surprises, upsets and obvious choices. We're getting deeper into Awards season, that bizarre time in the film industry where it seems like nothing else matters. The field this year is of an unusually high quality, and frankly any of the nominees would be worthy of a win- which can't be said for every year. Chances are you won't be staying up until some ungodly hour to watch Ellen hosting the ceremony, and will find out the winners the next morning on the internet- perhaps on this very site! So it's WhatCulture's duty to give you an opinion on who seems a surefire winner in 19 of the 24 categories (the categories excluded are not ones where judgment can be passed- it takes an expert to properly judge who will win best Sound mixing, for example, and unlike the feature films nominated it's not as easy to catch all the nominees for best Documentary short.) Here is an almost-immediate reaction to the nominations which, at the time of writing, have been announced within the last few hours. It will be interesting to see how many of these predictions come true. For there's every chance that none will be correct and it's a totally surprising year. Well, it's not likely, but nothing's impossible...