by Nathaniel R
Time for Oscar chart updates. And, the way we see it there are two relatively "open" slots in Best Picture with five films either showing some form of strength at the moment or feeling like they might happen. But which will prevail?
PICTURE
If we were still in a sliding scale Best Picture situation as we were at this time last year we'd only be predicting 8 films for the top honor, and in this order: All locked up -- The Power of the Dog, West Side Story, Belfast, King Richard, Dune, Don't Look Up; The Probablies - CODA and Licorice Pizza. But the Academy has ruled that we're back to a full top ten list like we had (briefly) in 2009 and 2010. So there are two spots open...
SAG results, which might be reflective of general industry mood and might not (the nominating committee changes each year and SAG-AFTRA is getting larger and larger and thus less and less traditional industry types) suggest that House of Gucci (three nominations including a surprise bid for Outstanding Cast) and Being the Ricardos (two lead nominations) are hot with actors. Actors make up the largest voting body in the Academy so that's important to consider no matter what you think of the films (which have both had it semi-rough with critics. On the other hand, AMPAS has traditionally leaned slightly more towards critical acclaim than SAG has so we think that the newly released Tragedy of Macbeth and (very surprisingly) Japan's Drive My Car are having considerable upward trajectory just before voting (which begins on January 27th). And then there's tick tick...BOOM! which has passionate fans but we suspect will be a no show (except in Actor) since Netflix can't receive ALL the nominations and they've already got two sure things in the Best Picture category.
DIRECTOR
We don't think the directors branch will be quite as adventurous as in recent years (the precursor season -- including critics awards -- hasn't instilled a lot of confidence that people are thinking about a wide swath of films this year) so it might surprise you that we're not predicting Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car. While critics groups have made a strong effort to convince the Academy that there is only one international feature worth watching from their screener pile, we think past AMPAS fandom for Almodóvar, Sorrentino, Farhadi, and even Larraín could all theoretically get in the way muddying the issue enough that Hamaguchi (a relatively new filmmaker and thus previously unknown to the mainstream American industry) will have to settle for International Film frontrunner status. Nevertheless he's definitely lept way up in the chart given the critical advocacy that's happening in precursor season.
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The WGA doesn't announce their nominations until the 27th but they won't help us much anyway since their strict eligibility rules knock out a lot of viable contenders (same thing in Adapted). So click on over to the chart to see what we're thinking. You'll notice there are no locks. I think you can still make an argument for anything in the top ten given past Oscar favor and this year's buzz, though they're still listed in order of perceived likelihood.
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Yesterday the USC Scripter nominations were announced. Since those are prizes from the USC Library, they typically focus on literary adaptations, so some potential biggies like West Side Story (stage musical adaptation), CODA (French film remake) are missing. They also don't honor foreign-language work so Drive My Car is absent. In short, since all three of those are very much in the running, the Scripter list announcement doesn't mean a great deal. It is however very bad news for book and play adaptations like The Humans, The Last Duel, Cyrano, and House of Gucci though we didn't suspect any of those were truly in the running anyway. Zola, adapted from a tweet thread, is way too cool for the US Scripters so it's not getting anywhere near the Oscars either (sigh).