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27 Days Till Oscar 75! Precursors and Predictions

© Jason O'Brien

27 DAYS AND COUNTING! So the countdown continues to the 75th Annual Academy Awards. Two weeks after the nominees are announced, and there haven't been very many shifts in the frontrunners. This week, we'll take a look at the latest precursors presented in the past week and see how they might be shifting the races in some categories.

Probably the biggest precursor awards presented in the past week were the British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs. And The Pianist ends up getting the biggest boost in the Oscar race with some big wins there. It won the Best Film prize at BAFTA, plus the Best Director award for Roman Polanski. Just like I think the Oscars will ultimately do, BAFTA spread the wealth over a variety of different films. Daniel Day-Lewis increased his likelihood of winning the Oscar by taking the Best Actor prize for Gangs of New York, and Nicole Kidman won Best Actress for The Hours. And then spreading the wealth even more, Christopher Walken surprisingly took the Best Supporting Actor prize, and Catherine Zeta-Jones won for Best Supporting Actress. I think Zeta-Jones still remains Oscar's frontrunner, but I'm not so sure on Walken ... the Supporting categories always tend to have one surprise on Oscar Night, and it could come from the Supporting Actor category, especially since so many of us are predicting that Chris Cooper has this one in the bag. Could it be Walken's turn at bat again? We'll have to see how the next few weeks pan out ...

Pedro Almodovar's Talk To Her won two awards, including Best Film Not In The English Language, and Best Original Screenplay (some are saying that Talk To Her could be the new frontrunner for the Original Screenplay Oscar). And not to be left out, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers won the awards for Special Effects, Costume Design, and the Orange Award, given by the cell phone company Orange, to the most popular movie in Britain during 2002. Adaptation took the Best Adapted Screenplay honor.

Other winners: Best Original Score went to Philip Glass for The Hours, while Road to Perdition took the Best Cinematography and Art Direction awards. Chicago took the best sound award, and Frida took the Makeup and Hairstyling Award.

Moving on to the smaller guild awards, the 7th Annual Art Directors Guild Awards were presented this past Saturday night, and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers won the award for Best Period/Fantasy Film Production Design, and Catch Me If You Can took the prize for Contemporary Feature production design.

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