Another day another dizzying array of last minute nerves over this confusing Oscar race. We've already talked Picture, Director, Actor, and the Screenplay categories right here. Now several more categories...
Animated Feature
A couple of months ago The Red Turtle looked like the sure thing "art" entry in the this category but it doesn't appear to have gathered much momentum and I worry it may be omitted. Working the opposite trajectory is Kubo and the Two Strings (more and more popular... could it even give Zootopia a run for the win?) and My Life as a Courgette which could pick up nominations in both animated feature and foreign language feature, something that has never happened before.
Documentary Feature
The only question that seems relevant at this point is "can anything beat O.J.: Made in America?"...
The television miniseries that obeyed the letter of the law if not the spirit to become Oscar eligible, is so widely popular it looks unstoppable. Of course it has the advantage of having 8 hours to make its case (which in documentary is not a bad thing since they're often loaded with information and case-making). According to THR's Scott Feinberg people are even voting for it in the Best Picture category. I personally think this would be the worst thing to ever happen to the Motion Picture Academy if they let a television miniseries compete for their top prize? Why even have a Motion Picture Academy if it's not different than the Television Academy? (The quality of the documentary is of course irrelevant to this discussion... just as arguments about the quality of various acting performances are completely irrelevant to the discussion of whether the role is supporting or leading)
Anyway I've opted to double down... on the race-focused documentaries in predictions. The topic is too crucial at this horrible juncture in American life and I think the Academy will care. I'm predicting that the wildly acclaimed Cameraperson misses. Not because it isn't deserving but because this is one of Oscar's most conservative branches (conservative aesthetically not politically, he hastens to add.
Our fury levels will be at maximum if Sing Street doesn't get a song nomination
Original Song & Original Score
It seems crazy that we can't assume that this category will be filled entirely by La La Land, Moana, and Sing Street but we can't because it's always a strange slippery category. As such I have no confidence in my predictions which involve all three of those films for four of the five slots.
As previously noticed I am 100% sure that most online pundits will be very wrong about the Original Score category. Most pundits appear to be predicting a line up replete with first time Oscar nominees... some even predicting 4 of the 5 nominations to go to newcomers. This just does not happen in that category (even 2 of 5 being newbies is uncommon!). The music branch is quite insular, regularly patting each other on the back rather than listening to what's out there (or so it appears given their habits). Could the recent expansion of the Academy make them a little looser about what they'll listen to? We shall see. But still the maxium first time nominees I'd ever risk predicting in this category is 3/5. I'm willing to hear great arguments about what might happen because I'm at a loss and went with Oscar's two favorite drugs (Williams & Desplat) one semi-regular (Marianelli) and two freshmen out of the five or so very buzzy 'never been nominated' gang who are in the hunt. All that said a category of mostly newcomers would be great since it's so rare and every artform needs fresh blood.
Most pundits think guild favorite will get Oscar sound nominations. Who am I to argue? ;)
Sound Mixing and Sound Editing
The easiest way to predict this is of course to just go with the CAS nominees but because we like to try for 5/5 perfect scores (which results in worse scores sometimes!) we rarely carbon copy the guild nominees since Oscar rarely carbon copies them in total. I don't recall the sound in Deadpool being anything special but the movie surely has to show up somewhere given the noisy campaign ...so maybe Sound Editing? I believe the sound categories might also save the fading Sully from going Oscar nominationless but we shall see.