April Foolish Predix Pt 4: Best Picture Contenders?

We'll finish up our April Foolish' work with the acting categories this week but for now all the other pieces of the prophetic (or not) puzzle are in place. You can see it all at the Prediction Index. We're usually about half right about Best Picture this early on but... which half? And of course this year is wildly different. It's the only time we've ever had a nationwide movie theater shutdown. Georgia plans to reopen movie theaters this month (medical experts think any such reopenings of crowd venues are premature) but most States aren't eager to risk it just yet.

About the current crisis and the Oscars....

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April Foolish Predix Pt 3: Directors and Screenplays

The even more foolish (in light of the current pandemic) annual tradition of "April Foolish Predictions" continues. As ever we're trying to suss out the Oscar race a year in advance. Well, 10 months in advance if you're getting nitpicky. We've previously covered Animated Features, Visual Categories, Music and Sound. Here's the index of predictions.

SCREENPLAYS
Depending on what happens with the calendar in terms of movie theaters reopening and distributor confidence Original Screenplay will be slimmer than usual. But how slim...?

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April Foolish Predix Pt 2: Visuals & Sound

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.

April Foolish Predix Pt 1: The Toons!

by Nathaniel R

Last year's animation race proved, just as we predicted, that the Academy's animated branch will only put up with a couple of sequels in any given year. For 2020 that wasn't going to be an issue as the scheduling wasn't sequel heavy. But then COVID-19 happened and the release schedules of everything got pushed back -- the latest calendar move is Disney/Pixar's Soul power-walking to Thanksgiving week where it will replace Disney's Raya and the Dragon, now pushed to 2021...

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Five Reasons the Oscars Won't Be Cancelled. (Relax)

by Nathaniel R

Regular readers know that we put our Punditry hat on and whip out the foggy crystal ball each year about this time. The reason is an attempt to predict the Oscar nominations nearly a full year in advance each season. We tend to do alright at this admittedly silly endeavour (silly because 90% of the films haven't yet been seen.) But 2020 is different. Perhaps you've noticed that movies haven't been opening for a full month now and all filming stopped in Hollywood. Some pre and post-production business is still happening in Hollywood but in very limited work-from-home capacity. In the twenty years of running The Film Experience we've truly never seen anything like this!

However, we wish to sound a note of optimism that you generally won't get elsewhere on the web due to the click-bait happy tone and echo chamber hysteria so many sites opt for. We don't feel there's any reason to assume that the Oscars will be cancelled. Here's why in five reasons...

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