by Nathaniel R
CODA and Power of the Dog face off on Oscar night this Sunday.
Y'all, I'm tired here at TFE HQ. It's been a bear of a couple of years with the pandemic and we pray never again to have Oscar seasons this long. Late April in 2021 and late March in 2022 were ROUGH and by the end of it everyone was exhausted and angry and combative about movies they previously loved. Early February when people are still really obsessed with their favourites (the Parasite year) was perfect! In the final weeks via BAFTA, CCA, SAG, DGA, PGA, and the others guilds we saw top prizes for CODA and for Power of the Dog but lots of mixed messaging. Will Best Actress (the only acting prize with any wiggle room) really go to Chastain? What the hell is going to win Best Editing since there's been absolutely no consensus there?!
Only four things are certain on Oscar night...
- A streaming service is going to win Best Picture for the very first time
- Dune will not go home empty-handed
- Jane Campion, Ariana DeBose, Troy Kotsur, and Will Smith are all taking home Oscars
- The ceremony will piss Oscar-lovers off. This is already set in stone since ABC and the Producers of this year's show are being so crass and cluelesss about not honoring eight categories live and their choices of presenters as well as dumb twitter gimmicks and whatnot all seem like terrible ideas.
Everything else is up in the air, though. Rarely has there been a year with this much uncertainty about who might win in so many different categories still at the close of voting and we fully expect to get a terrible prediction score this year. But it's still fun to try.
FINAL PREDICTIONS TIME
(Click on the categories for more info if you'd like and to cast your final votes as to who SHOULD win on the indidivual chart polls.)
LIVE ACTION SHORT
Chris didn't love these but I really admired all of them but one...sorry On My Mind. The Long Goodbye has the star power (Riz Ahmed) and ends with a gut punch. Please Hold has the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other x factor with its near-automated-future gallows humor. Ala Kachuu -Take and Run, which is about women abducted from the city for forced marriages in the sticks, is disturbing but hopeful. The Dress has a powerful central performance and gets at the difficulty of body positivity if you don't fit beauty standards.
Will Win: The Long Goodbye since it feels like it pushed the hardest in campaigning. Plus Riz Ahmed's starpower will help just like Oscar Isaac's did last year. Thankfully this short is a lot better than Oscar Isaac's was.
Could Win: Ala Kachuu - Take and Run. But really any of them since the short categories are notoriously hard to predict.
Should Win: Ala Kachuu -Take and Run is the strongest as a whole and it feels almost like a feature despite its economy, all because it's so engrossing and polished.
ANIMATED SHORT
This category thankfully has loads more visual and tonal variety than its parent category, Animated Feature, which we previously dissed for being 4/5 CGI adventure/comedy. Very happy to report that none of these five shorts would make a bad winner which is pretty rare. Strong field this year.
Will Win: Bestia seems to have pushed the hardest in campaigning -- have you seen the shot of Steven Spielberg posing with a figurine from the movie? It also stands out from the pack being dark and disturbing and adult. Its protagonist is a memorable porcelain nightmare.
Could Win: Affairs of the Art, which looks like messy frantic sketches in motion, is about an oddball family of obsessives. It also had advertising dollars to spend. But nothing is ever certain in the shorts categories. It could be any of them.
Should Win: Box Ballet. Short, funny, incisive, stylish 2D animation. The character designs of the boxer and the ballerina in this love story are quirky and endearing and a perfect yin yang amusement.
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Two of these have gotten a lot of buzz.
Will Win: Audible is the engrossing story of a football team at a high school for the deaf. The characters are so interesting you'll wish it was a whole feature. Currently streaming on Netflix.
Could Win: Queen of Basketball, available on YouTube, is an endearing traditionally constructed short about Lusia Harris, a pioneer of women's basketball. The short has a high profile and it's impossible not to fall in love with Lucy so that could definitely be enough for the win. This is director Ben Proudfoot's second consecutive nomination in this category and he's only 31. He was up last year for A Concerto is a Conversation.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
I defer to others on this category as I'm not a documentary aficianado
Will Win: Summer of Soul has swept the precursors, allowing nothing else the chance to get any oxygen in the race. That's one way to win. Plus it gives people joy and joy is needed.
Could Win: If a miracle occurs perhaps they'll realize they aren't giving thrice-nominated Flee the statue anywhere else and award it here? Team Experience really loves Flee but it feels like it would take a miracle to win it an Oscar despite its historic three-peat in the nominations.
ANIMATED FEATURE
This one feels like a nail-biter but Pixar's undervalued Luca, Denmark's personal and moving Flee, and Disney's glossy expensive Raya and the Last Dragon are just happy to be nominated.
Will Win: Encanto was all the rage just before voting, doing amazing numbers on Disney+, topping the Billboard charts, and winning BAFTA. Plus more often than not, voters default to the Mouse House in this category.
Could Win: Mitchells vs the Machines dominated the critics awards and took the Annie Award as well. An upset win is not out of the question. In fact, it looked like the probable winner until just last month.
Should Win: Flee for its humanity, its messaging, and the brilliant expressionistic use of the medium for different purposes than usual.
INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
Congratulations to all because it is tough to land in this category with 90+ films competing for the 5 slots.
Will Win: Japan's contemplative three hour grief drama Drive My Car has been so dominant in the conversation that a loss would be truly shocking at this point. There are voters who are like "what's the big deal?" but it's easy to assume that those aren't the type of voters who also take the time to watch the international features and vote in this category (one of the only categories where you have to actually watch movies to vote). Those three additional Oscar nominations (Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay) help lock this one up.
Should Win: Norway's Worst Person in the World aka the Best Non-English Language film of 2021. Joachim Trier's insightful revelation of a existential romantic comedy is an instant classic.
SOUND
We didn't think we'd miss there being two sound categories, but we kinda do. If Oscar voters had been better about differentiated sound mixing from sound editing throughout history the loss would sting more, though.
Will Win: Dune has the edge here since the sound is incredible and incredibly foregrounded. It even starts with memorable alien sound on a black screen. "dreams are messages from the deep"
Could Win: West Side Story since musicals, like sci-fi epics, are quite reliant on their sound work.
Should Win: Dune though The Power of the Dog also has brilliant sound work.
ORIGINAL SONG
Gone are the glory days of this category but we're glad we'll get performances on the show (all of the songs are being performed except Van Morrison's "Down to Joy" from Belfast). Songs are the perfect time to stretch and refill drinks and chat with friends while bopping to the music.
Will Win: "Dos Orugitas" from Encanto. Here's a chance to give Lin-Manuel Miranda his EGOT and even if voters don't obsess over this song they might do that to honor his very big year. Plus he's a sweet guy and well loved. We think they won't care much which song was submitted and just want to honor the music of Encanto. On the other hand...
Could Win: "No Time To Die" could continue the very new trend of Bond songs being dominant in this category (people think this is a long tradition but it isn't. It's just the Craig films). Plus Billie Eilish is so popular that the documentary about her even made the finalist list in Doc Feature. In fact if there is a rare tie it feels as likely here as anywhere.
Should Win: "No Time To Die" though there's not much competition given that this category is depressingly reliant on superfluous end credit songs these days.
ORIGINAL SCORE
Another strong category though my own choices only overlap by two.
Will Win: Dune has the edge since its Hans Zimmer's most popular score in a good long while and he's very famous among composers with only one Oscar win to date.
Could Win: Encanto could definitely surprise here, especially if they want to honor its popular music. What's more Hans Zimmer got a bit of rough press in a recent Vanity Fair article about the film music industry as we discussed in our Oscar volley.
Should Win: The Power of the Dog an instantly memorable insinuating score; it almost feels like an additional character in the quadrangle.
MAKEUP AND HAIR
This category used to favor old age makeup and genre films but lately it's become the realm of the biopic.
Will Win: The Eyes of Tammy Faye has been doing well in this category in precursors and Oscar voters are very fond of biopic transformation. Even if Chastain loses, this could still win.
Could Win: Dune since it has memorable makeup work, particularly on its villain Baron Harkonnen. Dune is, in some ways, a Mad Mad Fury Road wild card. It could thoroughly dominate the techs rather than just score in a few places.
Should Win: Dune
VISUAL EFFECTS
The category where blockbusters reside.
Will Win: Dune
Could Win: Spider-Man No Way Home... but only if voters have thoroughly internalized the silly media shame about them not honoring the biggest blockbuster of the year. (Never mind that it didnt deserve Oscar nominations. That didn't enter the mass media brain)
Should Win: Dune though Free Guy makes lively clever use of visual effects and wouldn't be a terrible winner (if Dune wasn't there that is...)
FILM EDITING
Is Film Editing the year's most tense competition? What a pity that it's been shunted off the program since Oscar-fanatics know that in tight races Editing is one of the most crucial categories in sensing upsets or hidden strengths or cementing frontrunners. After this category was added to the Oscars there were only one maximum two films a decade that won Best Picture without being nominated here (It Happened One Night, The Life of Emile Zola, Hamlet, Marty, Tom Jones, A Man For All Seasons, The Godfather Part II, Annie Hall, Ordinary People). But starting with 1981 the trend changed and it became impossible to win Best Picture without the nomination. The only exception in the past 40 years was a Best Picture winner that was engineered specifically to look like it had no editing whatsoever (Birdman, 2014). This is the most worrisome statistic for those predicting CODA to prevail on Sunday night. If The Power of the Dog wins here (unlikely) before the ceremony begins, fans can probably stop worrying about it losing Best Picture.
Will Win: Dune. Almost predicted Don't Look Up under "dreadicting" but since it feels like a toss-up and Dune feels like it will emerge with the most statues, we wanted to give it one more win.
Could Win: ANY OF THEM. This race is very tight. King Richard and tick tick BOOM! won the ACE Editing award but that's guild voting only and we have no other indications of what might prevail since the Critics Choice and BAFTA both selected films that were not Oscar nominated and the Globes don't have this category. Meanwhile Dune and The Power of the Dog led the nominations overall which indicates cross-branch support. (The branches nominate separately but everyone votes on the winners). Only one film has no suggested advantage here (Don't Look Up!) but on the other hand it has very visible editing. We'd argue this this is the only category this season which is legitimately a five-way race.
Should Win: The Power of the Dog. Read our interview with Peter Sciberras here.
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Eye Candy Pt 1 (aka the Moulin Rouge! categories)
Will Win: Nightmare Alley. If the voters feel like stepping away from Dune somewhere in the tech categories, Nightmare Alley qualifies under "Most Production Design". Plus they were generous with nominations for this film (Best Picture?) given its tepid reception with the public and critics in comparison to expectations.
Could Win: Dune is just as likely, though.
Should Win: Dune. What amazing world building!
COSTUME DESIGN
Eye Candy Part II (aka the Moulin Rouge! categories)
Will Win: Cruella. That garbage dress was THE Costume of the year.
Could Win: Dune but only if it proves a tech-sweeper. What's hurting Dune most is surely the fact that they can reward it again in a couple of years if Villeneuve lives up to expectations with the sequel.
Should Win: Cruella
CINEMATOGRAPHY
What a stacked category this year.
Will Win: The Power of the Dog. The race is going to be close but we're predicting they'll want to make history with the first Oscar for a woman in this category. Ari Wegner is only the second woman ever nominated.
Could Win: Dune which took the American Society of Cinematographer's award.
Should Win: Either of those would make beautiful deserving winners and the extra fun thing is that both of those cinematographers got their high profile break working for Jane Campion. Greig Fraser (Dune) did Bright Star (2009) just before his career took off and Ari Wegner is breaking out now via Power of the Dog after a short string of impressive edgy work in Australian, British, and American films (Zola, Lady Macbeth, In Fabric, True History of the Kelly Gang)
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
A baffling race. Not from indecision but from the forceful left turn this category took.
Will Win: CODA has a few noticeable strengths (warmth, tearjerking, loveability, Troy Kotsur, an unfailingly great Joni Mitchell song) but its writing is just about the last thing we'd list aong them. Still, sometimes people just have to like the movie to vote for it wherever. It already took the BAFTA and the WGA in this category despite its perfunctory writing. What's more if there's ever a category where we'll see split-votting (a common theory, conspiratorial or otherwise) it's here since all four of its competitors are likely to split the votes among Academy members who lean toward more sophisticated cinema and auteur visions.
Could Win: The Lost Daughter if Oscar voters want to see Maggie Gyllenhaal with a statue (they might) and feel like CODA has enough with its Best Supporting Actor win and possible Best Picture triumph.
Should Win: The Power of the Dog but at this point given all the hits the film has taken we don't expect Jane Campion to win all three of the Oscars she's up for.
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Tough call this year. Belfast led for a long time. Don't Look Up made a very brief but showy splash. Then Licorice Pizza made a lot of noise. But now...?
Will / Should Win: Worst Person in the World. Going out on a wild limb with this one as I was predicting Belfast in my head for months even when Licorice Pizza had steam. Is this "hope-dicting" since it's clearly the best of the bunch? Possibly! But using the same theory as we used in Adapted the other four films are possibly splitting the votes among those who like readily accessible crowd-pleasing stuff. And even Licorice Pizza's author Paul Thomas Anderson is on record as a huge fan of Worst Person. What's more Worst Person surged late and this is the only place to reward it since Drive My Car is winning International Film. And one more point in its favor: who doesn't want to hear the sentence "And the Oscar goes to... The Worst Person in the World" (The Oscar did do that once but they didn't say it out loud!)
Could Win: Belfast or Licorice Pizza. Both feel very possible and it all depends on whether voters want Kenneth Branagh or Paul Thomas Anderson to finally win an Oscar. Both have been nominated multiple times in more than one category but have never won. Now watch it be Don't Look Up just to irritate us!
SUPPORTING ACTOR
The least exciting acting category year in and year out. There's always a filler nominee (JK Simmons, Being the Ricardo), usually one coattails performer (Jesse Plemons, Power of the Dog), and one long-career 'we like you' tribute (Ciarán Hinds).
Will Win: Troy Kotsur, the only Oscar-worthy element of CODA, has this in the bag. What's more if the film does pull off a Best Picture upset they really should give him that Oscar, too. Enthusiasm for his work is the secret weapon that kept the film in play long enough for it to finally catch on as a whole film more than a year after its initial premiere.
Should Win: Kodi Smit McPhee is the best of the nominees though our own ballot overlaps only with Kodi & Troy.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
A character we obsess over often in the popular series Supporting Actress Smackdown - 42 episodes to date.
Will Win: Ariana DeBose is a lock for performing Rita Moreno's classic 1961 role in the remake of West Side Story. This will be only the third time a single character has led to two different actors becoming Oscar winners after "Joker" (Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix) and "Vito Corleone" (Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro). "Anita" will be the first female role that does this.
Should Win: Kirsten Dunst. As discussed on the current Supporting Actress Smackdown, she gives the most accomplished performance here while Aunjanue Ellis also wows by completely elevating a stock role.
LEAD ACTOR
Coronation time!
Will Win: Will Smith has been a superstar for so long and with superstars they just need to find the perfect role to remind people of their particular gifts and charisma and why they became superstars and to not have the bad luck of some undeniable performance up against them. Check and check.
Should Win: Benedict Cumberbatch gives his best performance, and against-type too, in Power of the Dog. But Smith and Garfield would also make lovely winners so it's all good. Denzel and Javier already have their Oscars and are just happy to be there this year. Good category though.
LEAD ACTRESS
This is TOUGH.
Will Win: Jessica Chastain. Usually we like to take a big swing in at least one high profile category but this year confusion reigns and there are no 'gut-feelings' helping out. So we're sticking with what is perceived to be a "weak" frontrunner.
There is a chance that the other biopic transformations (Spencer, Kidman) dent Chastain's pull which would help Cruz and Colman. But they've both already won and Cruz also probably has the least seen film among the five; there are still pockets of voters who are weird about foreign language films. Other previous foreign-language winners here have been in higher profile films, too (Sophia Loren, Marion Cotillard). What's more Cruz's performance is of the subtle three-dimensional non-flashy kind which usually struggle to win.
Previous wins are also probably not helping Colman, Kidman, and Cruz robbing them of a strong narrative. So there's also a chance that this is totally between Chastain and Stewart since neither have won before and Chastain can play the overdue card and Stewart the breakthrough card. Both actresses have campaigned hard this year. '
In short, no matter which theory prevails it's always Chastain versus so... defaulting to Chastain since it's not a two person race.
Could Win: Kristen Stewart or Penelope Cruz... neither would be shocking since they have passionate supporters. But do they have enough of them within the Academy or are those fans nearly super-noisy online? We're guessing it's the latter, especially in the case of Stewart whose most ardent fans seem to be younger than your average voter. We'd only be surprised to see Colman or Kidman triumph this year.
Should Win: Olivia Colman is the best of the bunch but we're actually rooting for Jessica Chastain because she's also brilliant and hasn't won the Oscar yet and should have already.
DIRECTOR
Locked up.
Will / Should Win: Jane Campion has swept the season of Director statues and no one has emerged as a rival. It's hers whether or not her glorious movie wins Best Picture. This is also very exciting because she's the first woman to have received more than one nomination in Best Director and she'll only be the third woman to ever win this category. Well done, Jane.
PICTURE
At first it was Belfast vs. Power of the Dog. Then (briefly) Don't Look Up versus Power of the Dog. Then (very briefly) West Side Story vs Power of the Dog. In the final three weeks it definitely became CODA versus Power of the Dog. Preferential balloting has given us some tremendous winners (Moonlight, Nomadland, Parasite) but it's also delivered duds (Green Book) and likeable but not great oddities (Shape of Water)
The Best Picture nominees have 60 nominations between them.
Will Win: The Power of the Dog. Yes, it's taken a lot of hits in the past two weeks and, yes, this totally could swing CODA's way (more on that in a minute) but we think, in the case of a nailbiter, that the generous nomination count for Power of the Dog (just consider Production Design and Supporting Actor which both felt like "extra" nominations due to actual love not just respect) and maybe even the preferential ballot will help.
On the other hand you can truly come up with ANY theory around preferential balloting since the possibilities can feel so limitless, so who knows.
Could Win: CODA. Apple's film wisely, though surely unintentionally, stayed under the radar enough that it curiously felt like a discovery for a lot of people late in the game (despite being the earliest film released and Apple spending loads of money on it). That accidental stealth attack kept it safe from the kind of scrutiny that hit the other contenders (especially Belfast, Power of the Dog, and West Side Story) and in some cases undid them. Though the family drama is a tearjerker and moving, its unspecial filmmaking and it's just so easy. The Academy sometimes does swings that way like the 'we solved racism!' wins for Green Book or Driving Miss Daisy but in the past few years they've been awarding tougher and aesthetically exciting films. Will they revert to TV movie simplicity, however darling, or stick to their current trend of artistic films that are likelier to stand the test of time? The subject matter might be hurting The Power of the Dog (the Academy has always been a bit misogynistic and homophobic and anti-intellectual... just like America in general) but CODA is not without its own problems. The quality of the filmmaking is probably hurting it with across the board support since you have to bend yourself into pretzel-shape to consider it above the quality of an earnest TV movie. (And if it is as generously loved across the board as people are claiming it is why didn't it land in Actress, Supporting Actress, and Song too? The excuse might be that it wasn't widely seen before nominations but if so, how did it beat very high profile contenders to that adapted screenplay nomination?)
In short Best Picture feels like a 50/50 proposition. We'll see.
Should Win: The Power of the Dog by a country mile though it's easy to understand voters who are passionate about West Side Story, Drive My Car, and Dune, too.
And that's it.
Predicted win totals though we expect to be very wrong this year. What a wild season of twists and turns...
4 for Dune
3 for The Power of the Dog
2 each for CODA, Encanto, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye
1 each for Cruella, Drive My Car, King Richard, Nightmare Alley, Summer of Soul, West Side Story, and Worst Person in the World.
HOW ARE YOU FEELING ABOUT YOUR OWN PREDICTIONS... AND THESE?