Ahh… Oscar Season

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Six short months from now, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hold the 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony. It’s fitting then that this official end of summer is also the official start of Oscar season. Yes, now that the summer is over, the grown-ups can enjoy the cinemas again.

We’re already getting a taste of things to come with the Venice and Telluride film festivals underway. Toronto starts in just three days. The buzz is certainly building. So before we go into buzz overdrive, I though I’d post my first Academy Awards predictions of the 2009-2010 Oscar season.

Of course, the yea-round Oscar watching that goes on these days means some pictures are already on there way to Oscar. What struck me as I put together my predictions is that this year there’s a chance that we could see more than one woman nominated for the directing Oscar for the first time. Better yet, a woman has a shot at taking home the prize.

No other film this year has been as celebrated as Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. In addition to Bigelow, Lone Scherfig has An Education, which premiered at Sundance and has carried good buzz through it’s most recent screenings at Telluride. (Can another British picture win the Oscar? Never underestimate those Brits when it comes to Oscar.) And while I’m holding off on predicting director Jane Campion and her film Bright Star, that could certainly change once the critics chime in.

This may be best chance for a woman to win the directing Oscar since the 2003-2004 season, when Niko Caro, Sophia Coppola, and even Nancy Meyer all had a shot going into the nominations. (Only Coppola was nominated, becoming the first American female to get an Oscar nod for directing.) Will the story of a woman winning the directing Oscar be what we’re talking about when we’re all basking in the afterglow of the Oscar ceremony? At this early in the game, who knows.

TFC Journal’s 2009-2010 Oscar predictions, first edition.