Best Picture Race

Now that the Oscar Nominations have been announced, I will start to focus on some of the nominations. I want to start with Best Picture. And the Nominees are:

127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

The Fighter, The King's Speech, The Social Network and True Grit probably have the biggest support because of the multiple nominations in especially the major categories. The weakest of the four is probably True Grit. The Academy does love the Cohens but I just don't think they will put True Grit at the top of their list. The Fighter has its best chance to win in the supporting acting categories. That leaves The King's Speech and The Social Network.

The Social Network is the critic's darling and even looked unstoppable even through the Critic's Choice Awards and the Golden Globes. Not that the Globes ever have been a great indicator of what will win the Oscar for Best Picture. But the Critic's Choice Awards have picked the Best Picture ten out of their sixteen year history. Two of the years they did not pick the winner were 1999 when Saving Private Ryan lost to Shakespeare in Love and in 2006 when Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash.

Up until the PGA Award, everyone thought The Social Network to be unstoppable. It was then that The King's Speech took that honor. And then The King's Speech took the DGA and the SAG Ensemble Award. It is the PGA, DGA, and SAG that seems to be the combo that cements Oscar victory for a film. Five out of the six times a film has won PGA, DGA, and SAG it has gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar. The only year was 1995. That was the first year of the SAG Awards and the winner of the DGA, Ron Howard, was not nominated for a Best Director Oscar that year.

The King's Speech also has the most Oscar Nominations. The film with the most nominations has won 56 out of 81 times. This is not as good of an indicator as the PGA, DGA, SAG combo but it carries some weight.

So with all this in mind the odds on favorite of winning the Oscar for Best Picture is...THE KING'S SPEECH.