Peter Jackson Lords It Over Our Readers

OK, we’re not the Academy. But nearly 900 Film & Video subscribers responded to our email survey asking them to pick their favorites in major Oscar categories. The results weren’t even close. The capper to Jackson’s cinematic trilogy dominated each category where it was eligible – picture, direction, cinematography, editing, visual effects, sound mixing and sound editing. Can any one film really represent the most vibrant, creative work done in each of those categories in a single year? Maybe not. But Jackson and crew are clearly poised for recognition for a singular, sustained achievement that encompasses three feature-length films and comprises top-flight work in every cinematic discipline.

Kudos for The Return of the King also honor big-time Hollywood risk-taking, a fine art that some say has gone the way of the dodo. There’s arguably no other moment in film history when this trilogy could have been greenlighted- a few years earlier, CG technology didn’t exist to handle the film’s massive battle scenes; much later, and executives at newly merged AOL Time Warner would have nixed the investment in a heartbeat.

Finding Nemo won best animated feature by a landslide, with 85 percent of the vote, but the documentary category was a nail-biter. In the end, the failed-film documentary Lost in La Mancha- which must have touched a real nerve-eclipsed Errol Morris’s provocative Robert McNamara profile The Fog of War by a mere four votes.

Magazine lead times being what they are, the Oscar nominations were still up in the air as we went to press in mid-January. So we took our best guess at 10 front-runners in each category, based on our consultations with industry insiders, and invited readers to pick one or write in a neglected favorite. By the time you read this, all the nominees will have been announced.

If The Return of the King marches to a clean sweep on Oscar night, well, you heard it here first. Counting the top five vote-getters in each category as our "nominees"- but excluding docs and animated features- here’s how the F&V picks break down.

Among the numerous runners-up, only film editor Sally Menke — Quentin Tarantino’s secret weapon since Reservoir Dogs — made much headway. She was often cited for her work on the headstrong nonlinear narrative and action choreography of Kill Bill Vol. 1, although not enough to unseat Jamie Selkirk, who kept the three-and-a-half-hour The Return of the King on its storytelling toes. Among editors who voted, the margin between Bill and the King was even slimmer. Editor Stephen Merrione was picked for editing the fragmented 21 Grams, representing that film’s sole showing on our list.

As far as surprises go, there weren’t a lot once you get past the top-of-mind phenomenon that is The Lord of the Rings. Readers have fond memories of Seabiscuit, which came in second in our Best Picture race, so Universal’s campaign for that one might pay off with a nomination. But that film’s director, Gary Ross, was left out altogether, with The Last Samurai’s Edward Zwick instead cracking the final five.

Finally, a number of films performed relatively well despite not actually appearing on our ballot. Mea culpa. Readers repeatedly cited the whimsical Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean as write-ins for Best Picture, Eduardo Serra’s luminous work on Girl With a Pearl Earring for cinematography, the unexpectedly rich soundscape of Kill Bill Vol. 1 for sound editing, and spelling-bee nail-biter Spellbound for documentary.