This is it! Tonight is the night! Seth McFarlane will host this years Academy Awards and while many are still talking about the Katheryn Bigelow, Ben Affleck, and Quentin Tarantino snubs for Best Director, it still seems as if the race is still wide open thanks to Spirit Award wins for Silver Linings Playbook, Golden Globe, BAFTA wins for Les Mis, and Golden Globe, DGA, BAFTA, and SAG wins for Argo. We shall have to wait and see.
It was an interesting year in cinema as no single narrative film really seemed to capture and inspire audiences like in recent years with films like The Artist, The Kings Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, The Departed. While the narrative films left this years race to be anyone's guess, it was a particular documentary coming out of South Africa that had audiences around the globe, not only in tears, but jumping for joy. Searching For Sugar Man, the story of obscure 1960's/70's singer/songwriter Rodriguez had crowds at their feet. For years documentaries have really become one cinema's greatest art forms and alternative voices, but it has been the last few years where docs like Cocaine Cowboys, Exit Through the Gift Shop, The Two Escobars, Senna, Beats, Rhymes, and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, have really turned heads, hearts, and minds the way a powerful narrative film would thanks to their brilliant storylines.
As we do every year, here is our list of the 10 Best Films of the Year as well as some Oscar® picks in the major categories, however, this year is different, we are now including documentaries in our list and it should come as no surprise which doc topped our 10 Best list. Tune in to ABC tonight at 7 to see how we did and who won.
10 Best Films of 2012
1 - Searching For Sugar Man
2- Les Miserables
3- Argo
4- Django Unchained
5 - Zero Dark Thirty
6 - Prometheus
7- The Sessions
8 - Skyfall
9 - To Rome With Love
10 - The Dark Knight Rises
Oscar® Picks in 10 Categories:
Best Motion Picture of the Year:
Argo
Best Director:
Steven Speilberg, Lincoln
Best Actor:
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Best Actress:
Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Best Supporting Actor:
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
Best Supporting Actress:
Anne Hathaway, Les Mis
Achievement in Cinematography:
Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi
Original Screenplay:
Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Argo, Chris Terrio
Best Original Score:
Anna Karenina, Dario Marianelli
