84th Academy Award Winner Predictions (Best Visual Effects)

Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it, this year could potentially be very boring. With The Artist sweeping everything and it being a period film, there's no telling how wide the wins could spread, which sucks because it leaves such amazing films like Hugo and Moneyball in the dust. Also, it makes the technical awards all the more unpredictable because, for example, last year's The King's Speech could have easily taken Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction (which, historically, Best Picture period pieces tend to do) and Slumdog Millionaire took damn near every award it was nominated for, one of it's nominations it lost out to itself (Best Song). With the nostalgic love that seems to be practically beaming all over for this film, how far will the love go? Well, let's take a look at the technical categories to see.

Best Visual Effects: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
                              Hugo
                              Real Steel
                              Rise of the Planet of the Apes
                              Transformers: Dark of the Moon

- Okay, the giant fighting robots will cancel each other out, leaving us with the real race. This will be the last opportunity to award Harry Potter in the category that it has never won before. In fact, of all eight movies, it was only nominated for visual effect three times, including this one. So it could pull off a career award or it could be ignored the way that the others were.

The pros consider the work in Rise of the Planet of the Apes to be the best, with it's motion capture work and digital hair processing (which is not very easy). So this one could win here, however, it's the movie's only nomination, which never seems to bode well (just ask Hereafter, Poseidon, Superman Returns, I Robot and Star Wars Episode II). Could it pull off a Golden Compass-esque victory? Well, it will have to overcome Harry Potter and Hugo.

Now, while Hugo's effects were not the typical kind of show-off visual effects work that the Academy loves, it does have one thing going for it: Best Picture pedigree. The winners of the last three visual effects awards were all nominated for Best Picture (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Avatar, Inception), so that could really factor in heavily as being the most liked film of the bunch.

So, honestly, I don't know which way the Academy's going to go this year for Visual Effects. I'll give the slight edge to Hugo here, but I think Apes could win out also. Or Harry Potter. I honestly don't know this year. Just as long as Transformers doesn't win. It's bad enough that I have to call it "the Academy Award nominated Transformers: Dark of the Moon". Repulsive.