Oscars 2013: 8 movies that could earn a Best Picture nod

Nominations for Best Picture won't be announced until Jan. 10, but these films stand the best chance of earning nods in the category.

7. 'Django Unchained'

Andrew Cooper, SMPSP/The Weinstein Company/AP
Christoph Waltz (l.) and Jamie Foxx (r.) in 'Django Unchained'

Previous Best Director nominee Quentin Tarantino's story of a man fighting to free his wife from a sadistic slave owner made some wonder if Tarantino's film might be too over-the-top for the Academy. But two of his previous films, "Inglourious Basterds" and "Pulp Fiction," earned Best Picture nominations, and "Django" is doing fairly well so far with a Best Motion Picture – Drama nod from the Golden Globes.

7 of 8

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.