"Dune: Part Two" does well with the WGA and VES

by Cláudio Alves

DUNE: PART TWO | © Warner Bros.

Due to understandable circumstances, the awards season calendar has been thrown into disarray. Last week was supposed to be dominated by the Hollywood guilds announcing their nominees, but many chose to postpone such fanfare in the face of the LA wildfires. Still, there are two more guilds to account for now, as the VES and the WGA have issued press releases with their members' best-of-the-year picks. For those trying to predict the Oscars, the re-emergence of Dune: Part Two as a contender is a notable development, especially since Denis Villeneuve just received a Best Director BAFTA nomination. Then again, when discussing the Writers Guild, the sheer number of illegible contenders makes their precursor status a bit iffy…

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Final Oscar Predictions!

by Nathaniel R

It's that time again. The Oscars are Sunday night so it's time to make those final calls. Oppenheimer is poised to win big but HOW big exactly? Clean sweeps have gone out of fashion in the past 25 years. The only "clean sweep" this century -- aka a movie nominated for a lot of Oscars that won ALL of them on Hollywood's High Holy night -- was 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Even more interesting than Hollywood's turn away from sweeps is that it's become common the Best Picture winner to NOT win the most Oscars. We like it when they spread the wealth but the overperformance last year of Everything Everywhere All At Once suggests that Hollywood may be entering sweep-mindset again.

We expect that Chris Nolan's atomic biopic Oppenheimer will have the biggest Oscar haul since Return of the King on Sunday though it won't break any records...

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The Oscar Shortlists are Here!

by Cláudio Alves

Like Scorsese's film, SOCIETY OF THE SNOW got into four different shortlists.

AMPAS has announced shortlists for ten categories, from International Feature to Makeup and Hairstyling. One can deduce plenty from the results, seeing what films overperform and which titles don't meet expectations. Well, at least that's true for the more general races. In something like International Feature, one can surmise other things, like the Academy's European bias, or how some titles are popular enough to make it there and Best Documentary. All in all, this should shake up predictions beyond these ten prizes, so there's much to analyze. After the jump, discover the complete lists and some additional commentary…

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Is Visual Effects this year's least competitive Oscar category?

by Nathaniel R

Oppenheimer

The Oscar race that looks the most perplexing from this distance and could get worse with strike related delays is surely Best Visual Effects. Dune Part Two, before its departure from the calendar year, was an easy lock for a nomination and threat for a repeat win. Oscar voters are hardly purists or elitists in this category, since some truly questionable nominations have occured over the years. But still, every presumable contender remaining (whether already released or planning to arrive in time) has significant obstacles to success...

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Oscar Volley: "Avatar" versus what in Best Visual Effects?

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category in the lead up to the ceremony. Here's Abe Fried-Tanzer and Nick Taylor to discuss Visual Effects.

Black Panther Wakanda Forever

ABE FRIED-TANZER: Hey Nick! Here we are discussing the category with the most stages of finalists, giving us a window into what could have been. I appreciated the inclusion of interesting choices like Bardo, Good Night Oppy, and RRR on the initial twenty-wide list, and was pulling for Nope and Thirteen Lives to move on from the next stage of ten. But none of that happened, and we’re left instead with five very different choices, none of which are based on original material.

There are some intriguing stats to share about these nominees, like that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever placed, but its predecessor (which scored a Best Picture mention) didn't in the same race...

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