"Argo" Blu-ray cover art

Credit: Warner Home Video

The year being back-loaded with awards hopefuls as usual, most of the films up for major awards at the Oscars this year haven't been available on home video yet. Indeed, it was interesting that no film could really make a DVD/Blu-ray release part of its campaign, as we've seen in the past. The only Best Picture nominee that has been widely available is "Beasts of the Southern Wild," until today.

If you haven't had a chance to see the film everyone's talking about the last few weeks, the film that seems poised to win the Best Picture Oscar on Sunday, "Argo" hits shelves today on DVD and Blu-ray. The disc has four featurettes on the making of the film and the history behind the story it depicts. Ben Affleck provides a standard commentary as well.

Mychael Danna holds aloft his prize after winning the Golden Globe last month. Is an Oscar next?

Credit: Todd Williamson/Invision for Fox Searchlight/AP Images

For veteran Canadian composer Mychael Danna, his journey with “Life of Pi” began 10 years ago when he read Yann Martel’s novel. “I remember thinking, ‘I hope nobody makes a film of this book and wrecks it,’” he says.

Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field in "Lincoln"

Credit: DreamWorks Pictures

(Welcome to the Oscar Guide, your chaperone through the Academy’s 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment will hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 24, with the Best Picture finale on Friday, February 22.)

The sound categories this year ended up being quite the race. A publicity angle was even built around the work put into one nominee; it's been the presumed frontrunner for a while for a reason. You never can tell just which side of the Best Picture slate the branch will fall, though. Sometimes detours are taken into high gloss stuff, sometimes prestige takes over. Sometimes there's a balance.

This year featured a bit of a curve ball early on when the Cinema Audio Society added films like "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" into the serious discourse, while the Oscar nominations ultimately yielded, for both sound categories in fact, a bit of a surprise showing for the overall Best Picture Oscar frontrunner. But then, I suppose that shouldn't be such a surprise, in the final analysis. Coattails do exist.

The nominees are…

John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Ben Affleck in "Argo."

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Yesterday, we led with "Lincoln" being taken to task for its factual infidelities; today, it's the turn of "Argo." Critical screeds against the Best Picture frontrunner are always a dime a dozen at this point in the season -- frankly, a defence of Ben Affleck's film would make for fresher reading right now -- but Andrew O'Hehir's Salon piece on why "Argo" doesn't deserve the Oscar is as cogently argued as any: "I’m less concerned with the veracity of individual details than with the fact that 'Argo' uses its basis in history and its mode of detailed realism to create something that is entirely mythological. It’s a totalizing fiction whose turning points are narrow escapes and individual derring-do designed to foreground Affleck and his star power." Personally, I don't think Affleck's star power is all that selfishly showcased -- but hey, I like the film. [Salon]

Assuming best supporting actor is one of the first few awards handed out, will there be any surprises left afterward?

Has it come to this? Has the race for best picture become - gasp - anticlimactic? Will "Argo" really defy history and become on the fourth film ever to win best picture without a director nomination?  According to all my peers and, um, myself that appears to be the case.

One of many powerful protests depicted in David France's "How to Survive a Plague."

Every year Oscar's documentary category seems to provide historical lessons for generations to learn from now and in the future.  This year, "5 Broken Cameras" helps shine the light on non-violent resistance in the West Bank; "The Gatekeepers" reveals that many of Israel's greatest hawks are now doves; "The Invisible War" pulls the curtain on clandestine operations funded by the American government; and one of rock n'roll's forgotten heroes is rediscovered in "Searching for Sugar Man." One of the most important nominees, however, tells the tale of an incredible grassroots movement that began in New York City to fight the battle against AIDS when it appeared no one else was, "How to Survive a Plague."  Noted author and journalist David France used amazing and rate video of this organization -- better known as ACT UP -- the centerpiece of his debut documentary.  France took some time last week to chat about his cinematic journey, the reaction to the death of Ed Koch and why "Plague" is already a winner before he hits the Academy Awards red carpet.

"Argo"

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

The epic journey of Ben Affleck's "Argo" began at the Telluride Film Festival in September. After a couple of years of pandering a bit by accepting Toronto-bound Oscar bait in the form of films like "Black Swan," "The Descendants" and "127 Hours," and then bizarrely bemoaning the surge in awards coverage they yielded, the festival's directors pulled back over the last two years, retreating to their former identity of carefully curating selections from international festivals. But they nevertheless left room for one "Sneak Preview" on the line-up this time around, and that film was "Argo."

The film blew the roof off at its first screening there for patrons of the festival and attending press. A burst of applause hit at the film's oft-discussed airport climax and the stage was set for an Oscar thoroughbred to find its way through the season. But there were still six whole months in the season left to go. And no one wants to be a frontrunner too early for too long.

Soon enough, another film would join the conversation, as David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and delighted audiences there. But "Argo" still had plenty to offer as it had its "official" premiere at the fest, duking it out with Russell's film for the coveted Audience Award.

"Lincoln."

Credit: DreamWorks Studios

(Welcome to the Oscar Guide, your chaperone through the Academy’s 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment will hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 24, with the Best Picture finale on Friday, February 22.)

Best Film Editing is the technical category most closely linked to Best Picture: the slate is routinely dominated by Best Picture contenders, and it's an oft-repeated stat that no film has won the top prize without an editing nod since "Ordinary People" 32 years ago. That's no random Oscar voodoo. Editing is a narrative-determining craft -- it's often said the editor functions as another screenwriter -- so it stands to reason that the Academy's favorite films figure most into this category. A bad film can be beautifully shot or scored, but it's rarely beautifully edited.

Last year, however, the voters threw away the category's unofficial rulebook by handing the win to David Fincher's thriller "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" -- while a film not nominated for Best Picture has taken the prize on occasion, it was the first film since "Bullitt" in 1968 to win this category and no other. This year, however, promises a less surprising result, in a category ruled by Best Picture frontrunners, and featuring just one first-time nominee.

The nominees are...

Best Actress winner Maribel Verdu in "Blancanieves."

Credit: Cohen Media Group

"The Impossible" remains, to my mind, one of this season's biggest lost contenders. With a more focused campaign and an earlier release date, this visceral true-life survival story set against the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami could, I think, have gone over in a big way with Academy voters, reaping a lot more than a lone Best Actress nod for Naomi Watts. Anyway, spilt milk.

As it stands, the Spanish production's biggest night of the season was always set to be its home country's Goya Awards. Even there, however, the local box-office smash wound up ceding top honors to "Blancanieves," Pablo Berger's artful silent take on the Snow White story (yep, another one). The film, which I was charmed by at last year's London Film Festival, was Spain's submission for this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but didn't make the Academy's shortlist.   

"Lincoln."

Credit: DreamWorks Studios

In these final days of voting, the last thing you want is headlines like "The Oscar for Best Fabrication," yet the already ailing "Lincoln" got saddled with that in a Maureen Dowd op-ed that was the weekend's most talked-about Oscar piece. Seems this story of a Connecticut congressman taking issue with some artistic license taken by Tony Kushner, essentially switching the 13th Amendment vote of the state's House members, won't go away. Kushner, who had the error pointed out to him at an early stage by one of the film's historical advisors, continues to defend his position, saying, "History doesn’t always organize itself according to the rules of drama." Congressman Joe Courtney continues to push for the error to be amended in the film before it is integrated into school syllabi across the country. What do you think? [New York Times]