Thursday
Apr182019
April Foolish Predictions #10: Best Actress
Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 1:09PM Our annual inevitably foolish April Oscar predictions are now complete!
There's so many questions to consider now that the first Oscar charts for Best Actress (and all other categories) are now up. We've asked you seven questions for the comment party after the jump...
- Are they really going to keep nominating Amy Adams if they don't plan to hand her the win? If she's nominated for Joe Wright's Woman in the Window this year, in which she plays an agoraphobic child psychologist, it would be her 7th nomination. Only one woman has ever lost with that many nominations: Glenn Close who set the record just last season.
- Might we have our first ever 'majority minority' Best Actress lineup? It's more possible than history suggests it could be given that Alfre Woodard (Clemency), Cynthia Erivo (Harriet), Jodie Turner Smith (Queen & Slim), and Awkwafina (The Farewell) all have what appear to be terrific leading roles this year.
- Which previous Best Actress winner will return? Who can generate the most heat this year for a threat of more glory: Charlize Theron (Untitled Roger Ailes Project), Frances McDormand (Nomadland), Emma Thompson (Late Night), Helen Mirren (The Good Liar), or Natalie Portman (Lucy in the Sky)?
- What is Meryl Streep's role like in The Laundromat anyway? At this point it really doesn't sound like an acting showcase movie. But that's because we know so little.
- Which film do you think will hog the acting nominations? Looking back over all the nominations it looks like we've predicted 2 to be the max acting nominations from a film (JoJo Rabbit, Roger Ailes Project, and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) but last year we had two different films with three acting nods so perhaps this is lowballing guesswork.
- Which future behemoth did we underpredict? Looking back over all the nominations it appears the most nominations we've predicted for any film is 7 for the Harriet Tubman biopic from Kasi Lemmons. That's all too low for a frontrunner!
BONUS TRIVIA QUESTION: Thinking back on previous years I couldn't recall years where the Best Picture nomination leader was lower than 9 or 10 until I remembered 2007 when No Country and There Will Be Blood ruled and 2005 when Brokeback Mountain led the nods; in both of those years the top nomination tally was 8. Can you think of a year where the picture with the most nominations had a tally lower than 8?
Reader Comments (53)
Finger snaps to you, Withering Looks. Right on.
People may read too much into Toni Collette’s Hereditary omission. Not only was it a stacked year, her movie was an emotional wrecking ball of a film that likely turned off a lot of people at THAT scene. Collette could’ve overcome it because she externalizes the shock of the audience beautifully and is just THAT good, but the third act goofiness (which doesn’t mean it was bad, just more explicitly “goofy”) probably lost her the nom. And while Us has an odd last act as well, it’s a special case for several reasons: Oscar loves “we read the tea leaves” afterglow nominations that show they were right to award its writer/director and star for earlier projects. Both of them also just ANOTHER huge year at the Oscars for producing BlackKklansman (Peele) and starring in Black Panther (Nyong’o). Not to mention Oscar loves movie stars that are also fashion goddesses, and that the actors branch loves high-wire, visibly challenging performances. She won’t win, but third tier for a NOM seems low considering the how unusual the circumstances. I said this repeatedly about Olivia Colman last year: previous stats are all well and good as indicators, but buzz, momentum and the temperature of the room have to be taken into account. Us was a massive hit, and even those who don’t like it found room to commend the risks that were taken on her part.
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