Oscar Winner Predictions: Best Art Direction

The competition: Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, Inception, The King’s Speech, True Grit

Previous winners: Avatar, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Sweeney Todd, Pan’s Labyrinth, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Aviator
Who should win: Inception
Who will win: The Art Directors Guild breaks down nominees into genre categories, and so “The King’s Speech” won the period film award and “Inception” took the fantasy prize. The race should be down to those two. For the record, this category tends to favor films that with nominations in non-technical categories, though that’s a trend just waiting to be broken. “Alice in Wonderland” isn’t going to win here because its production design was fairly divisive, and many were unimpressed with the visuals of “Harry Potter.” I wouldn’t count out “True Grit” since some might have liked its Western settings. I’m not sure whether “Inception” will sweep the technical categories or if “The King’s Speech” will sweep them all. Tentatively, I’ll throw my backing behind the more visually striking of the two, “Inception.”