Every year, Cinema Sight’s contributors submit their selections for who they think will win this year’s Oscars. In addition, we handicap the race for you. Today is our inaugural post and we’re covering two categories for you today. After the jump, you’ll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Original Score and Best Original Song as well as general commentary about the races. Thursday, we’ll cover two categories alike in name, but divergent in results.

Best Original Score

Winner Predictions

• The Adventures of Tintin
• The Artist (O) (New)(R) (O)
• Hugo
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
• War Horse

Runner-Up Predictions

• Hugo (R) (R)
• War Horse (R)

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Wesley Lovell: The Academy loves the melodramatic and with The Artist, they have the perfect film to fit their tastes. The score had to be melodramatic to convey the emotions of the scenes over which it played. Add to this the nostalgia factor (the score sounds like something that might have accompanied silent films back in taht era) and you have a recipe for success. If anything else wins, a lot of people will be surprised.
Peter J. Patrick: The Artist’s twinkly score should win out over the competition with Hugo’s almost as twinkly score right behind.
Tripp Burton: The Artist is in the midst of making itself into an awards juggernaut, and this is one of the categories that it seems most assured to pick up. After all, very few movies this year relied so heavily on music to help tell its story. As usual, the Academy has also failed to nominate a lot of the most talked about scores of the year (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hanna, The Skin I Live In), clearing the path of victory for The Artist. There are two possible things standing in its way, though. The first is if Hugo can pick up some more momentum and steal away a win here. The other is if John Williams, who hasn’t won an Oscar in 18 years, feels like it is time to give him another award in a year where he has two nominations. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is probably lucky enough to have a nomination, and shouldn’t look for a win.

Best Original Song

Winner Predictions

• Man or Muppet – The Muppets (O) (O) (O)
• Real in Rio – Rio

Runner-Up Predictions

• Real in Rio – Rio (R) (R) (R)

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Wesley Lovell: One of the reasons the music branch changed the rules on the Original Song category was that a lot of Oscar watchers and critics were growsing about how bland or unmemorable the category had become. And certainly the art of creating catchy tunes for a film that would ignite public interest has diminished over the last several years. But after the first slate of 3 nominees came out featuring two songs from Slumdog Millionaire over widely praised candidates like “The Wrestler”, the complaints got louder. This year, however, the Academy has reached the nadir of the category and with the weak duo of nominees listed here, they’ve almost doomed their category to extinction. There were at least half a dozen better songs on the bench and they went with two uninspired choices. They had the opportunity to get the likes of Mary J. Blige, Elton John, Lady Gaga and others to perform at the Oscars and didn’t go for it. Something tells me that their decision to use a weighted ballot where a song has to reach a specific numeric value to become a nominee is being abused by voting members who don’t want certain songs to place. Having complained about all of that, I think there’s little doubt that “Man or Muppet” the more interesting nominee in this pair will end up with the big prize. If the song from “Rio” wins, the roar will be deafening and the music branch will have to do something.
Peter J. Patrick: What a joke! Only two nominees neither of which is worth a damn. The Academy needs to go back to the old rules of allowing the music branch to vote for anything as long as it is original and sung in an eligible film. Either that or do away with the category altogether.
Tripp Burton: This category seems like a joke this year, with two pretty surprising nominees being the only ones that made the cut. That kind of speaks to the need to reevaluate how this category is selected. As for the nominees, neither is an overly memorable tune, although Man or Muppet is used very effectively in the context of the film, so will probably win here on crowd-pleaser status.

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