by Nathaniel R
I'll spend the rest of the weekend completing the annual Film Bitch Awards (the Oscar parallel categories that is) for my own list-making pleasure and for those of you who enjoy them. But first a final round of our favourite kind of punditry - who will be Oscar nominated?. If you're a longtime reader you'll know we find this question infinitely more fascinating than who will win and we've long bemoaned how the internet has turned "who will win?" into a year-long sport when that's not all that fun to talk about in comparison to the complexity and party-combo possibilities of a top 5 in each category. Plus, it's downright rude to be handing out statues all year before all the competitors have been seen! Can you imagine the World Series announcing the final two teams at the beginning of the season, or RuPaul's Drag Race sending 11 queens home on the first episode without watching them lipsynch or seeing even one of their runway lewks? No! It's f***ing rude to ask who will win before January, you know? How can there be a "best" before all the contenders have screened? [/Rant].
Let's hit the final "Who Will Be Nominated?" predictions...
Helpful Guide
For a cheat sheet on all final predictions - here's the Index Page
For a more indepth overview on any category - click on its title below. On each category page you can see individual predictions from team members here at TFE as well as Nathaniel's official charts.
mea culpa... we were wrong about Licorice Pizza being a niche fetish object. So many people seem to love it.
PICTURE | DIRECTOR
We find it helpful to consider a "top five" as if Oscar still played by those rules they had for the bulk of their lifespan. Judging by precursors we suspect that's The Power of the Dog, Belfast, Dune, Licorice Pizza, and Don't Look Up (and in that order). The volatile season hasn't been volatile enough to fear for West Side Story, King Richard, or CODA though if any of them are a surprise omission the tea leaves were probably there all along. For the final two spots we're thinking Tragedy of Macbeth (due to pedigree + late surge) and Being the Ricardos (due to showbiz themes + acting branch support + older members).
The big question is whether or not Drive My Car can smoothly pull in to its own reserved parking spot in Best Director and Best Picture despite no substantial precursor love outside of "International Film"... We're predicting that it lands in one (Director) but not the other (Picture). So in other words we won't be surprised if it shows up in either, both, or neither.
ACTRESS
Lady Gaga is the only actress who hasn't missed a beat in precursors. Olivia Colman and Nicole Kidman (despite the BAFTA misses) also feel safe but for the rest its an all out war given the volatile precursors. Chastain has the right kind* of role and precursors but people don't love her film, Kristen Stewart the right kind of role and critical support despite a rocky awards season and a polarizing film, Jennifer Hudson has the right kind of role and the very important SAG nod , and Alana Haim and Penélope Cruz are arguably surging just in time. Any combo of two from those five feels super plausible. The BAFTA nominations for Tessa Thompson and Reinata Reinsve are much appreciated but we think it's too little too late for an Oscar play. So final predictions (gulp): Chastain, Colman, Cruz, Gaga, and Kidman. (We'd feel much safer about this guess if Parallel Mothers had any heat outside of Best Actress... and we're nervous about leaving Hudson out.
*by "right kind" we don't mean quality, complexity or anything other than that it's a biopic role -- which is inarguably Oscar's favourite type of role.
ACTOR
As for the leading men. It's only confusing for one spot. It would be utterly shocking if Cumberbatch, Garfield, Smith, or Washington missed the lineup at this point. Precursors have rallied consistently around those four men, as have the media. But who is running fifth? Will it be DiCaprio for a popular film, Cage as a critical darling, Bardem as a SAG favourite who is also having a good year, or something more shocking like Mahershala Ali (popular right now even if his sci-fi tinged drama is very very sleepy and underseen) or Peter Dinklage (who once felt like a slam-dunk until the film just refused to be come out and is now scheduled for well after the nomination announcement). Simple logic says it's Bardem. But we've opted at the last minute to return to DiCaprio since Don't Look Up appears to be an industry favourite and the BAFTA nod is telling. We were tempted to continue predicting Cage due to passion votes but we don't fully believe that the industry has been paying close attention to critical passion for his performance (partially because it wasn't completely loud with Benedict Cumberbatch taking the lions share of critics prizes.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
We're sticking with Balfe, DeBose, Dunst, Ellis, and Negga for this category though we're still super nervous about Negga given that there has weirdly not been broad support for her brilliant film. Three women feel like they could legitimately disrupt that party though (Dowd, Buckley, or Matlin) but we are guessing they won't because the five predicted, outside of Negga, are all in widely seen and mostly loved movies.
SUPPORTING ACTOR
For Supporting Actor we are hoping against hope that the BAFTA nod for Mike Faist transfers since he's the MVP of West Side Story. But that feels unlikely. We're predicting Cooper, Hinds, Leto, Kostur, and Smit-McPhee. We had actually been planning to drop Cooper from the mix (due to the comic nature of the role and its brevity) for Jesse Plemons (coasting in with Power of the Dog's strength) on this last prediction round but after seeing Licorice Pizza's strength at BAFTA when it's so very American and got such a late start, we're keeping Cooper (even though... ironically, he didn't benefit from the film's BAFTA love. Go figure. Punditry is confusing -- it's all head games with some gut reading and the occassional heart tug)
We think it's either Cooper or Plemons or JK Simmons (please no) for the fifth spot though... and for wildly different reasons we'd be a little surprised if it's Affleck, Dornan, or Faist (even though we like all three of those options) turned up.
INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
I settled on Lunana (Bhutan), Compartment No 6 (Finland), A Hero (Iran), Drive My Car (Japan), and Worst Person in the World (Norway) a month ago and am not budging. It's a major risk to leave out buzzy titles like The Hand of God (italy), and Flee (Denmark) but something buzzy had to go since there were six titles that could have safely used that adjective and there is always something without a ton of buzz to make the party more interesting! Elisa and Claudio spoke to this in their wide ranging discussion. This category has a lot of strong options and we salute anyone who gets it exactly right in their predictions.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE | ANIMATED FEATURE
Very very bad news for Flee fans (a group of which we are a part). Though it won Documentary Feature, International Feature AND Animated Feature at our own Team Experience Awards, I'm predicting it misses all three specialty categories with Oscar. I won't be surprised if it shows up in one or two but running the risk of three (AND presenting yourself as a Best Picture candidate as well) always felt like it might splinter the vote or come across as greedy or even make voters feel safe in leaving it off their ballots in the assumption that it would get its due from another branch.
Why leave it out of animation you ask? That's where it has the easiest road to a nod but we've been surprised by the staying power of the non-exciting Disney option Raya and the Last Dragon and it's just a hunch that Japan's Belle is going to swoop in last minute as our "international" option in that category since its visual dazzle and animated craft is safely on the utterly extraordinary side --especially compared to Flee even if the latter is more satisfying as a "movie". Click on over for more on these categories.
COSTUME DESIGN | CINEMATOGRAPHY | PRODUCTION DESIGN | EDITING | VISUAL EFFECTS | MAKEUP
Click on over for those categories. Dune is the only film that's going to show up everywhere but Belfast and Power of the Dog's results in craft categories are arguably going to show us how strong they are as potential frontrunners for the top prize. West Side Story, No Time To Die, and Nightmare Alley feel like the wildcards of these categories and could score abundantly or face-plant despite strong plays for their artisans. We're currently predicting a rough Tuesday morning for West Side Story with only 6 overall nominations though we did leave it in one odd place (Editing). It famously missed the Editing Guild nomination but we want to take a risk there. Just a gut feeling that it scores there despite its rocky precursor journey.
ORIGINAL SCORE | ORIGINAL SONG | SOUND
These categories get the least amount of attention at The Film Experience and that's entirely on me, Nathaniel, since audio is the section of filmmaking that I obsess over least (strange given personal ove of the movie musical!). We'll work on improving that next year with the help of the team and a good start were those Score and Song volleys between teammates. But as discussed in the volley, the Song categories have lots of rule problems that need to be addressed in order to make it actually relevant to the experience of watching a film. Click on over for the final predictions. Opted for Encanto's current popularity to translate to "Score" since it feels like there's an opening there.
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY | ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Whoops. We nearly forgot the writing categories. Yikes. We're prepared to be disappointed with both. We cannot believe we're at a place where we think brilliant Tony Kushner is going to be shut out for his fascinating and complicated rethink of West Side Story but that's where we are right now. (Sigh).
SHORT FILM CATEGORIES -TBA
We're leaving these for the weekend as we want to try to watch a few more before making the final predictions
WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THESE FINAL PREDICTIONS? ANY RISKY CALLS YOU WANT TO MAKE FOR OSCAR NOMINATION MORNING?
The Oscar volley discussions in case you missed them: