The Best In Film, 2013 - And The Oscars

Oscars this Sunday night. We’ll talk who should win, and why.

Academy Awards this weekend. The Oscars. Red carpet. Lots of glam and eye rolls. Yes, it’s over the top. Yes, the Academy can be capricious, confounding with its statuettes. With who gets the gold. But the fact is, this has been a good year for film. For movies. Her. American Hustle. Gravity. Twelve Years a Slave. Dallas Buyers Club. The Wolf of Wall Street. Nebraska. More. And for performances. McCo naughey. Nyong’o. Blanchett. Bale. Ejiofor. We don’t know who will win. But who should win? This hour On Point: Who should win the Oscars?
- Tom Ashbrook

Claudia Puig, film critic for USA Today. (@claudiapuig)

Scott Tobias, editor at The Dissolve. (@scott_tobias)

USA Today: Oscar ballot: Who will win, and who should -- "Following one of the best years for movies in at least a dozen years, the best-picture race is particularly tough. Several films are worthy, and it seems to be a three-way race between Gravity, American Hustle and 12 Years a Slave. But of the three, 12 Years is the most deserving, given its ambition, top-notch cast, deftly written script, stunning cinematography and moving script based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man taken into slavery. "

The Dissolve: Why five is the magic number for Best Picture nominees — "The current wild-card Best Picture setup—in which anywhere from five to 10 films can be nominated, and we don’t find out how many made the cut until nomination day—has been in place for three years. That’s long enough to determine that it isn’t working, and Harris’ bigger-ended-up-smaller argument isn’t the only reason why."

Grantland: Oscar Season Turns Ugly -- "Right now, more than in any recent year, a kind of sourness has settled over the Academy Awards. As the season grinds along, the campaigning winds down, and the guilds hand out their various trophies, the prevailing (and possibly unrepresentative) sentiment among the Academy members I’ve talked to seems to be “Let’s get this thing over with.” The fights have all been had — is anybody really up for re-litigating American Hustle v. The Wolf of Wall Street? — and the movies themselves have been more than sufficiently chewed over; they’ve all been around for a long time now and, this weekend at least, more people bought tickets to watch pieces of Lego brawl with each other than attended every single Best Picture nominee combined.'