First Oscar Predictions of the Year - Complete!

Whew. That took longer than expected but you can now see all of the "April Foolish" first-round predictions for this Oscar year, albeit compiled in May & June and delivered to you in early July. Since the first wave of 20 categories takes so long to compile (updates are easier) we should note up front that James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg, another film centered on the Nuremberg Trials, was scheduled for a November 2025 release after the weeks of research for these charts so it is not yet included.  That said we can hardly claim it a certainty as a competitor. World War II is no longer automatic "Bait" for voters, Vanderbilt is not (yet) an Oscar player and though the cast has four previously nominated actors none are the sort that Oscar voters ALWAYS watch regardless. Anyway, we'll save it for the next up date.

What follows are a dozen key questions were asking ourselves in July about the upcoming competition before things really heat up during the fall film festivals. We've love to hear your thoughts on these 12 questions...

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Get Ready for a New Oscar Category: Best Casting

by Cláudio Alves

Until today, Animated Feature was the youngest category. SHREK was its first winner .

Though some people say the Oscars already have too many categories, the Academy disagrees. Today, AMPAS announced a new awards category meant to honor casting directors. It won't be an Honorary or Special Achievement Oscar like it happened in the early days of such races as International Film and Visual Effects, but a regular competitive category. We'll see the first nominees for this new prize in two years' time, during the season of the 98th Academy Awards, honoring 2025 releases. One assumes the Board of Governors will use that time to establish specific rules and eligibility requirements…

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Weekend Awards Wrap-Up: From the PGA to Cinema Eye

by Cláudio Alves

THE ZONE OF INTEREST proved an unexpected hit with the Producers Guild of America.

Oscar voting is ongoing, so this past week's honors feel especially important. They can be the spotlight that shines on a movie at just the right time, reminding Academy members of its merit as a contender. But of course, in terms of guild honors, they're also a way for awards obsessives to get a sense of what movies the industry values most. For example, the latest onslaught of guild nods makes the picture clear for those doubting that Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest could succeed beyond critics' prizes. If an organization as mainstream-inclined as the PGA can embrace Jonathan Glazer's latest nightmare, what's stopping AMPAS from doing the same?

So, from producers to regional critics, Annie nominees to Cinema Eye winners, this is what happened last week…

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Best Ensemble, Casting, Stunts, and More...

by Nathaniel R

EEAAO an easy choice for "Best Ensemble" discussions.

With the SAG Awards airing tonight -- we expect to see encore speeches from Blanchett, Fraser, Bassett, and Quan since the acting winners tend to get set in stone once televised ceremonies begin -- let's talk acting categories that Oscar doesn't have. Here are my personal favourites for Casting, Ensemble, Stunts, and Juvenile Performances, a couple of prizes which SAG has and two that they don't...

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Judy Garland @ 100: 'Easter Parade'

Team Experience is revisiting a dozen Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here’s Mark Brinkerhoff on one of her most popular pictures...   

Judy Garland: physical comedienne. This may not be the descriptor that comes to mind when it comes to the one, the only, The Voice. But as superlatives go, it’s the one that fits like a dainty, sturdy little glove on the hand of a one-of-a-kind talent in her very prime.

At 26 (and newly a first-time mom to then-baby Liza), Garland, less than a decade removed from her superstar-making performance in The Wizard of Oz, was reemerging in MGM musicals with a proto-Barbra-Streisand-as-Fanny-Brice performance in what would become her second biggest hit of the ‘40s (following mega-musical, Meet Me in St Louis, four years earlier). Easter Parade is a Funny Girl period-adjacent set tale of a novice singer-dancer plucked from obscurity by a storied showman...

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