For our seventeenth Rundown article, we look at the last two films whose precursors have come near the end. After the jump, you’ll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Editing and Best Costume Design as well as general commentary about the race. Tomorrow, we’ll cover the final category.

Best Editing

Winner Predictions

• The Artist (New)(R) (O)
• The Descendants
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Hugo (New)(R)
• Moneyball

Runner-Up Predictions

• The Artist (R)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (R)
• Hugo (R)

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Wesley Lovell: While this category may be an essential place for the eventual Best Picture winner to pick up a nomination, a win is hardly necessary. This year, The Artist might just be able to eke out a victory when its competition isn’t as obviously edited as past years’ selections. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the only one that features heavy cross-cutting, which makes it The Artist‘s only real competition. If The Descendants or Hugo win this prize, more importantly the former, look out for a possible upset in Best Picture, though I am still very doubtful even that will forecast something other than The Artist. Also worth noting is that the American Cinema Editors, one of the best precursors out there for predicting Best Editing has picked both The Descendants and The Artist, the former in the Drama category, the latter in Comedy/Musical. This benefits Descendants in only one way: all winners in the past five years have taken the Drama Editing award from the ACE, not Comedy/Musical. I don’t think it will matter in the end as the ACE will still have a good track record with The Artist winning.

Peter J. Patrick: Looks to me like a race betwene the Best Picture front-runners with The Artist out ahead of Hugo.

Tripp Burton: This is one of the big heads-on battles between the two most-nominated films, and is one that could come right down to the wire. Hugo looks to be in a position to take a lot of these technical awards, but The Artist is proving to be the more loved film. This is a category that could go either way (technical marvel or film we love the most), but I will guess that it will be picked up in the Hugo tide.

Best Costume Design

Winner Predictions

• Anonymous (O)
• The Artist (New)(R) (New)(R)
• Hugo
• Jane Eyre
• W.E.

Runner-Up Predictions

• Hugo (R) (R)
• W.E. (R)

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Wesley Lovell: The only thing that worries me about predicting Anonymous for this award as I’m doing now is that the Costume Designers Guild didn’t recognize yet. Yet, it’s the most striking set of designs in the category (or at least the fanciest), which is what the Academy tends to adore. Yet, something about the work in Jane Eyre also seems like it would pique Academy interests and Hugo could pair its win in Best Art Direction with this award as the categories are often unified. Yet, because of this torn thought process, I’m leaning towards Anonymous simply because it feels like something they would do: pick a movie of questionable overall quality to give an award to in spite of it not being nominated anywhere else. Orphans are most common in the Costume Design, Makeup and Visual Effects categories, so it could very easily happen.

Peter J. Patrick: They often throw a curveball in this category, but the other nominees were either commercial diasppointments (Jane Eyre) or critical duds (Anonymous; W.E.) so I don’t see anything other than The Artist or Hugo winning here.

Tripp Burton: When the Best Picture front-runner is a period piece, and especially one that has lots of glamorous costumes, it is usually poised to take this category pretty easily. However, many random films have picked up this award with no other attention, and this year there are three films where this is their only citation from the Academy. My guess is that one of those could sneak up and take this award, and I will go with the glamorous royalty of W.E.

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