Happy Thoughts from Oscar Nominations!

We've delivered the hot takeaways, mourned the snubs, but now let's get positive. I polled Team Experience about what made them happiest this morning and which category is the best overall. I hope you'll chime in. An unexpected consensus emerged straightaway in their answers. More after the jump...

Which nomination made you happiest?

Tim: Kubo and the Two Strings for Best Visual Effects. It's a great movie that deserves as much as it can possibly get, and also a good reminder to keep our conceptions about what "counts" as film craft as broad as possible

Laurence: Kubo and the Two Strings for Visual Effects. After the Ex Machina win I got the sense that branch was becoming more interested in awarding outside the box effects, so I bet on this nomination happening early. It's stunning work even by Laika standards...

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More Final Predix: Foreign, Cinematography, Makeup, Visual FX, and Editing

Final Predictions Pt 1: Picture, Director, Screenplays, Actor, Supporting Actress  
Final Predictions Pt 2: Animation, Documentary, Score, Song, Sound

Part 3: We have to wrap up final predictions tomorrow! So here's another round of last minute parsing in five categories...

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Casting Society and ACE "Eddie" Nominations

Two branches of movie craftsmen have sounded off now in what will soon be a deluge of guild announcements. The casting directors and the editors have spoken and they've rallied behind some Best Picture hopefuls (the three frontrunners: La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, and Moonlight are showing up everywhere) and passionate fanbase movies (20th Century Women, Deadpool, Captain Fantastic) ...and 'oh, they remembered that!' surprises (Hail, Caesar!).

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"American Honey" & "Moonlight" lead the Spirit Award Nominations

Nominations have been announced for the 20th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards, which we generally abbreviate as "Indie Spirits" or "Spirits". American Honey and Moonlight, two idiosyncratic visions, lead with six nominations each. Moonlight, which takes the ensemble prize (but wasn't nominated for individual performances) will also presumably be hot with Oscars. The two other Oscar Best Picture contenders that did very well at the Spirits today were Jackie and Manchester by the Sea. Other People, the cancer dramedy loosely based on the directors own life, can also be very happy about its nomination showing. Other buzzy titles like Hell or High Water, 20th Century Women, and Loving had mixed success, picking up some key nods but not others despite their high profiles.

Moonlight receives six Spirit nominations... and seems likely to win a few of them.

 And here are two big reasons to celebrate -- Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic) and Isabelle Huppert (Elle) were both nominated. Oscar nominations are hardly done deals for either of those exquisite performances so any attention that can be drawn is worth celebrating. The full list with commentary after the jump (titles links go to our reviews)...

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Live By Night's All-Star Team

One of the advantages of opening extremely late -- though we hate to encourage it! -- is that you're fresh in the minds of voters when ballots arrive. With a film like Live By Night, which would probably not be a player next year if it had opened first quarter as originally planned (it's doing a qualifying week at Christmas) that could mean multiple nominations for its team. Ben Affleck is no fool and lined up a murderer's row of behind-the-scenes giants. Here are the most likely ways that it could affect the Oscar race...

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