April Foolish Predix Pt 2: Visuals & Sound
Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 11:25PM 
Hello brave readers willing to fantasize about the 93rd annual Academy Awards while the bulk of the internet (but not us!) is convinced they won't exist! We've previously covered potential options for Best Animated Feature so now let's talk all the craft categories before we get to the 'big eight' (Screenplays, Director, Acting, and Picture). It's a wild wild world out there in terms of possibility. We only know:
a) which movies are "definitely*" still planning to open this year
b) the kinds of things Oscar tends to like in a normal year
c) a vague idea and plentiful hunches about which movies are closest to being finished in post-production and will risk opening.
So please take all of these predictions in the way they are intended: a bit of fantasy escapism based on past punditry experience mixed with vague ideas about what might happen in the future of this tumultuous year.
VISUAL CATEGORIES
Our favourite film categories to think about apart from Actressing & International Film. Come look at what we think might happen in Costume Design, Cinematography, and more.
SOUND CATEGORIES
These are much less fact-based. Composers are often the last part of a creative team hired so a lot of upcoming pictures dont have composers announced yet. Especially since Hollywood isn't at work at the moment. So this is wild guesswork. We also dont know which movies will have original songs. So we are blindfolded while looking at these crystal balls. It's quite odd, punditry, in this pandemic world.
Reader Comments (9)
I suspect the score to the Pixar feature Soul by rising boy wonder Jonathan Batiste will dominate the category. The snippets of the music on YouTube are terrific.
Some films to look out for - especially in these tech categories - Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley (if it is prepped in time) given that Del Toro is an often technically impressive filmmaker working with more resources and a bigger cast than ever before, and Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho (especially look for this in Costume Design given that it is about someone interested in fashion design who ends up time travelling - potentially ripe material from a consistently high-quality, visually creative director).
I think Robert Yeoman should be included somewhere in the cinematography predictions for The French Dispatch, since he received a nomination for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Particularly if there are slim pickings this year, he would be a likely second-time nominee.
I'd forgotten about Ammonite... maybe they can finally give Saoirse her long-awaited Oscar this year.
Duncan i purposefully excluded films i thought had *no* chance to be ready in time and Nightmare Alley was one of them. I also left out King Richard for the same reason. Neither had enough filming done before the shut down I dont think.... but again it's guesswork.
Is Johnny Flynn's Queen Bee from Emma an original song cause it's lovely.
In terms of Original Song, there's The Other Side from TROLLS WORLD TOUR (performed by SZA and Justin Timberlake), assuming that Universal go to the effect of campaigning for the film to be eligible
Thanks Nat, it's so exciting to be thinking about these possible upcoming movies.
I would love to see EMMA get some love - that's a film that's only gotten better in my memory (and it was the last film I saw in a cinema!!).
And if Summer movie season is effectively wiped out / postponed, it could really change the number of realistic contenders for categories like Visual Effects. It will be a fascinating next few months!
I looooove you have "Mulan" in your April Foolish predix for Best Makeup & HAIR....!
After watching Hoyteyama's work on "Dunkirk", I am flatly convinced there is nothing he and his team cannot do with a camera. I would put him into the Cinematography top five for sure. The trailer for "The Green Knight" looks so good that this may also belong in Cinematography, as well as Production Design.