The Film Bitch Awards begin: Score, Song, and Sound

Illustration © Tom Ralston. See more of his work here.Yes, we're finally starting! Since Oscar nominations are next week, we have to get through the parallel categories quickly, before we can dive into the crazier stuff (which we always have fun doing). First up the five sound categories. A reminder that we have two score categories since there are so many movies each year that rely as much on their soundtracks as their instrumental scores, or use a great deal of pre-existing material within their score. 

On the sound pages you'll find honors for You Were Never Really Here, Annihilation, Mary Poppins Returns, First Man, Roma, A Star is Born and more so have a look, won't you? 

Final Predictions: All Visual Categories

We're almost to the nominations, can you believe it? So we're furiously trying to wrap up our predictions. Let's do Costume Design and the rest of the eye candy categories.

COSTUME DESIGN
My favourite tech category should give three-time winner Sandy Powell a historic THIRD double-nomination in a single category with both Mary Poppins Returns and The Favourite feeling secure for nominations. It also feels like there's little chance that Black Panther could miss, and we expect voters will want to take this opportunity to finally hand Ruth E Carter her Oscar (this will be her third Oscar nomination, tying her with Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer for most Oscar nominations for a black woman). Those are the locks...

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Watch at Home: Eighth Grade & Old Man and the Gun

What's newly available for home viewing? Herewith a quick survey of new releases andgreat deals

DVD/Blu-Ray
• Halloween -  Jamie Lee Curtis returns to battle her star-making demons in this monster hit
• Madeline's Madeline - While it wasn't quite an arthouse hit, this experimental film has obsessive fans. 
• Mid90s -Jonah Hill's directorial debut
• Monsters & Men - John David Washington is up for a Spirit Award for his supporting role in this well reviewed race drama
• Old Man and the Gun - Robert Redford charms, and Sissy Spacek and Casey Affleck provide soulful support in this mellow but pleasing bank robbery movie...

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It's time for final Best Picture predictions!

For the next week we'll be sharing final predictions for each Oscar category. We're starting with the big kahuna, Best Picture because it's the most crucial. It's a domino effect essentially since each year shows us that once voters favor your movie, they just favor it whether or not it's particularly worthy from one category to the next. We'll start with the not so obvious (if you ask me) question:

What would be nominated in a five film year?

Past statistics will tell you that that would be the DGA lineup (BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Roma, A Star is Born, and Vice) because prior to 2010 when the Best Picture category expanded, the DGA lineup was slightly more predictive of Best Picture than of Best Director, as curious as that might seen. But it wasn't infallible, of course. And we don't think those would be the five this year. 

So let's take them in the order of strength after the jump...

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More Guild Nominations: Cinematography & Sound

by Nathaniel R

Lukasz Zal's exquisite black and white cinematography for COLD WAR has been somewhat overshadowed by Cuarón's ROMA. Can Zal score his second Oscar nod?

It's that Oscar nomination voting week when the awards just don't stop, everybody getting boosts via the Globe wins, the BAFTA nominations (soon), and multiple guild announcements. Here's two more after the jump with commentary for cinematography and sound categories... 

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