Oscar Predictions: Cinematography, Production Design, Editing

by Nathaniel R

we're in mourning that we won't get to see DUNE this year...

You've probably heard that Dune is no longer a 2020 picture and will now arrive in the final quarter of 2021. This necessitated yet another revision just as we'd finished nearly all of the Oscar charts -- our work is never done! The biggest impact is in the visual categories. These should be interesting to follow this year in the absence of the kind of big budget spectacle films that often dominated visual categories. Does this mean voters will get more creative and search out further afield Production Design possibilities like, say, Shirley, or First Cow or I'm Thinking of Ending Things or more lax and just nominate their favourite Best Picture candidates in every visual category even if those pictures are mostly contained in one location (hi One Night in Miami, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) or out on the open road in a beaten down van (hi Nomadland)... 

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Oscar Prediction Updates: Picture, Director, Score, Song, Sound

Just as we'd given up on Minari being released for this year's awards season, a trailer shows up (albeit without a release date attached) and just as we'd decided that No Time to Die was going to be a hit in the craft categories -- especially given the dearth of big studio event films -- it gets delayed until Easter 2021. But we soldier on, happily, with the Oscar charts.

It's looking like a great year for black cinema (multiple films in play), a great year for Netflix (which didn't have the movie theaters closing problem), a good year for Nomadland, but otherwise things are still very uncertain. 

The following charts are all updated... 

• Index
• Picture 
• Director 
• Supporting Actor 

• Costumes & Makeup 
• Sound & Score 
• Screenplays 

• International Feature Overview 
• International Submissions Pt 1: Albania through Greece
• International Submissions Pt 2: Germany through Norway
• International Submissions Pt 3: Pakistan through Vietnam

What'cha think? Know of any original song contenders? (It's always so difficult to track them)...

First Images: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"

by Nathaniel R

Look, it's the first images from Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, based on the August Wilson play of the same name. It's part of his Pittsburgh Cycle of 10 plays documenting the African American experience (with each of the ten plays set in different decades). Denzel Washington is planning to produce all 10 (2 down, 8 to go... how many more will Viola get to star in?). Ma Rainey's... is set in the 1920s and stars Viola Davis as the singer Ma Rainey and Chadwick Boseman as her trumpeter Levee (the two 'star' roles in the show) and involves a very heated recording session and fights therein. The costumes you see here are by the indefatigable four-time Oscar nominee Ann Roth, who is still doing great work regularly at 88 years of age...

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New Oscar Predictions: Screenplays and International Submissions

OKAY. Finally we have succumbed to the enthusiasm that there just might be a winter movie season after all. Maybe? Perhaps? Might? So it's time to update all those Oscar charts. We'll work our way quickly up to the the acting categories, don't worry, since all the charts are in heavy progress behind the scenes. The following charts are now up: 

• Supporting Actor - Which we just discussed via Trial of Chicago 7 though I've altered one key detail from fears that Judas and the Black Messiah will not arrive at all by late February
• Screenplays - Original & Adapted Contenders
• International Feature Overview - Overall Stats & Wild Guesswork
• International Submissions Pt 1: Albania through Greece
• International Submissions Pt 2: Germany through Norway
• International Submissions Pt 3: Pakistan through Vietnam

What do you think will score in the screenplay categories?

"Trial of the Chicago 7" and Best Supporting Actor

by Nathaniel R

Abdul-Mateen, Shenkman, Rylance, Redmayne and Sharp in "Trial of the Chicago 7"

You've waited long enough. This is our latest ever take on the acting categories in 20 years of punditry. But you know, "2020". Consider it an all purpose hellscape excuse! Though Hollywood is still in disarray there will eventually be another Oscar ceremony. Nominations are still more than five months away (March 15th, 2021) so if this were any other year these prediction charts would essentially be the early August charts. Does that make sense? In other words, much about this Oscar season has yet to be revealed. 

But let's take a stab at Best Supporting Actor since we've just screened The Trial of the Chicago 7 which is basically the kind of movie that dreams of, no fantasizes lustfully, about filling in all five spots. The most Supporting Actor nominations to have arrived from a single film is three, which happened twice in Oscar history via The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part Two (1974). It will probably not happen again with Chicago 7, but it theoretically could given that it's ALL supporting actors all the time.  Let's rank them shall we, in terms of Oscar possibility...

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