Making sense of the 2014 Oscar nods

The Oscars are back on March 2, and veteran Ellen DeGeneres will be on hosting duty for a second time. This year the Academy has kept it predictable with safe picks.
Leading the nominations are Gravity and American Hustle with ten each and 12 Years a Slave with nine. But best not to read too much into the numbers. Only last year Lincoln, despite 12 nominations, managed only two wins. Big snubs for Coens' Inside Llewyn Davis, Saving Mr Banks, and The Butler.
The most relevant category for cineastes - Foreign Language Film - has some real surprises. The Globes got it spot on with its nominees that included Blue is the Warmest Color which is out of Oscar contention on a technicality, and Asghar Farhadi's The Past which was apparently not good enough. The shootout here will be between The Great Beauty and The Hunt, two incredible films that deserve every accolade that comes their way. 

On the Best Actor front, no luck for Tom Hanks, Idris Elba, and Joaquin Phoenix who failed to get a nod. But all the nominees have a solid shot at holding the shiny statuette. Could this (finally!) be the moment for Leo DiCaprio in what is arguably one of his lesser-nuanced performances, one that relied on pure energy? Or will Christian Bale take it for putting on weight and a wig? My money, however, is on Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club), who is on a roll in this late surge of a career that has mostly been spent in unserious rom-coms and B-action flicks.
Best Actress is no easy call either. Meryl Streep, that permanent fixture on the nominee list, probably won't get it. And surprisingly there was no love for Oprah Winfrey in The Butler. The battle then is between Amy Adams for American Hustle and Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine. My vote goes to Adams for the tightrope she walks in her role filled with accents, sympathy, confusion, and pizzazz. 

Nine nominations make up Best Film, but this is essentially a three-horse race between Gravity, American Hustle, and 12 Years a Slave. Frankly, Hustle is nowhere near the class of the other two; one a VFX heavy thriller set in space and the other a period slavery drama. While it would be exciting to see Gravity take it, the odds and trends favor 12 Years.... Remember the hoopla around Avatar vs The Hurt Locker, The Social Network and Inception vs The King's Speech? The geeks and their toys always lose. The average age of the Academy voter is 62, and 12 Years... has all the elements in place to affect their hearts. Consequentially, Steve McQueen will probably become the first black man to win Best Director, though there is no doubt in my mind that Alfonso Cuaron really pushed the envelope in this department for Gravity.
Other predictions: Jared Leto (plays an HIV+ transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club and uses his favored trick of losing a ton of weight to look skeletal) and Lupita Nyong'o (as much as we love Jennifer Lawrence, her work in Hustle simply did not stand out) for Best Supporting Actor and Actress respectively; Best Cinematography and most other technical awards to Gravity, the 62-year olds are confused about the role VFX plays it seems with Life of Pi taking this category last year.