by Nathaniel R
Over at the Oscar Nomination Index, you can survey the whole field and see how we did on our predictions. The short answer is NOT GREAT. But want the long answer? If you do click to read more...
We got a little too daring in our Acting predictions since the truth is that Oscar rarely strays from the template set by the Globes and SAG so two criticarl darlings who were iffy given the precursors (Banderas and Nyong'o) got a split result with only one of them making it. But Oscar not getting adventurous is why we stuck with Erivo & Theron in Best Actress despite a lack of passion for those performances out there in the (online) world and why we should have predicted Leonardo DiCaprio all along.
As for director, that fifth spot also went where most people expected it to go but we thought they'd get artier. So now you have the real thing (Martin Scorsese) competing directly against his imitator (Todd Phillips... since Joker is just basically a knock off Taxi Driver/King of Comedy goosed up to also be part of the Batman franchise)
We tend to do very well on Cinematography each year and correctly predicted The Lighthouse. We just picked the wrong film to miss for its placement. The Irishman's nods for Cinematography and Costume Design both feel quite excessive, considering the rich array of options the Academy has but this year is one of those years where lazy voting reigned. We haven't done the research yet but years with FOUR films hitting 8 digit nomination counts we think are fairly rare and Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1917, and The Irishman all accomplished that this year. So in short they were obsessed with those four films. We think slot five, if we went back to the five nomineees only days is tougher to say. What is in fifth place really: Marriage Story or Jojo Rabbit or Little Women?
We were saved by rioting with Parasite landing in Production Design and Editing but those two categories otherwise feel quite lazy. I dont even dislike Jojo Rabbit the way so much of the internet does but what business does its Wes Andersony stylings have doing in thse categories? Marriage Story would have made a great editing nominee but was nowhere to be found in the visual categories.
It's cute that even though you can't count on the Sound branch to differentiate between Mixing and Editing (their nominations are usually 4/5 or 5/5) you can usually count on them to give one random movie its sole nod. That year that honor goes to Ad Astra and we're delighted because we love that movie and it had no Oscar campaign to speak of. When a movie doesn't have a campaign and shows up you know people who were voting for it actually think of it as "Best" in that category.
Let us not speak of the horrific snubbing of the year's best Original Song ("Glasgow" from Wild Rose) in favor of simple tunes and dross. LET US NOT.
And finally let's hear it for HONEYLAND which is the first film *ever* to score in both Best Documentary and Best International Film simultaneously... though many films before it have tried! Otherwise, true to form, the Documentary Branch ignored the year's biggest doc hit (Apollo 11) so we were perhaps silly to predict it.
And finally, because we like to be totally transparent here, marvel at how poorly we scored on Live-Action Shorts. It's the worst we've ever done in the shorts categories. It's hard to be *that* wrong when you have only 10 finalists to choose from so WHOOPS. We were somewhat redeemed with the 4/5 score in Documentary shorts though.
How'd you do on your predictions? What were you most proud of? Where did you fail spectacularly?