by Nathaniel R
Whew. Can y'all give me a round of applause? Somehow I finished the April Foolish charts in all the early doable categories (i.e. all but documentaries and the three shorts categories) before April was done! Let this be a new leaf turned as we need lots of new leaves while we reinvent ourselves FOR 2018.
The freshly baked charts...
PREDICTION INDEX | PICTURE | DIRECTOR | ACTOR
And the charts that previously went up, some of which we've discussed on the blog....
ACTRESS | SUPPORTING ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTRESS | SCREENPLAYS | FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM | VISUAL CATEGORIES | MUSIC AND SOUND CATEGORIES | ANIMATED FEATURES
As you can see if you peruse them, they're filled with all sorts of narrative possibilities. Some of those stories they tell are in direct opposition to one another. I urge all of you to try this year in advance thing at home some year. It's incredibly confusing because each time you place a movie here you have to figure how it might affect things over there since there are distinct patterns to the way things happen.
Steve Carell in "The Women of Marwen" based on the story that also informed the documentary "Marwencol"
It's like trying to construct a crazy intricate jigsaw puzzle without the final image to work from! You can make it up as you go along but what the hell kind of picture are your fingers forming? And no matter how careful you are some things never end up making any sense...
I decided not to predict Robert Zemeckis's Women of Marwen in any category because I've been burned so often before with that director's post Forrest Gump oeuvre which usually sounds more intriguing on paper than it ends up being. And yet by the time I got to Best Actor I went there... despite another Steve Carell option on the table in a film (Beautiful Boy) I expect will go over better. Perhaps it's this year's Leonardo in Blood Diamond instead of The Departed gobsmacking conundrum!? But I'm quite well aware that the Best Actor predictions make less sense than they should as three men predicted are from films from which I've predicted no other nominations to emerge. That would be highly odd if not quite record breaking. Still, the Best Actor and Best Director fields were tough to finalize this year as I had no strong hunches or, when I did the strength of the hunch collapsed as soon as I put it into chart form. Eventually I finalized with frankenstein monster charts sewn from bits of previous attempts.
Moving on to a sillier topic, I don't quite have the faith in Mary Poppins Returns that the charts suggest I do so if the charts are 100% accurate this early (tee hee!) I've accidentally predicted that Mary Poppins Returns will break Carol's modern expanded BP era record of "most nominations without a Best Picture nod". This was accidental but the predictions for Mary Poppins and A Star is Born were otherwise quite intentional because I tend to give musicals the benefit of the doubt and the culture is definitely getting used to them again. I also like how showing faith in musicals tends to make other stuffier people's heads explode since the knives are always out for musicals before they've been screened... and afterwards, too!
I couldn't tell you why I'm optimistic about "Mary Poppins Returns" but somehow I am.
I'm so happy that the charts are finished (until the next do-over). It's your turn. What are your hunches for 2018's Oscar movies and, more crucially, which hunch can't you shake even though you know that it's ridiculous or a least the longest of shots?
Spill it in the comments!