Oscar Volley: Best Costume Design is all about aliens, monsters and demon twinks

Our Oscar volleys continue with the site’s weekly RuCappers, Cláudio Alves and Nick Taylor, tackling Best Costume Design…

Never trust a twink in oversized clothes and Coke bottle glasses with a hungry gaze.

CLÁUDIO: Hello, hello, hello, it's time to discuss my favorite Oscar category - Best Costume Design! And to keep the tradition going from these volley's last few seasons, why don't we start by describing a sartorial mélange of all nominees? Imagine me coming to you in Varang's war headdress and Marty Mauser's Coke bottle glasses. I'm also in a plus-sized cut of Smoke's azure-leaning ensemble, but instead of a 1930s suit jacket, I'm donning the powder-blue doublet from Hamlet's first staging. For extra accessories, let's go with the anachronistic Tiffany beetle jewelry with which Mia Goth adorns herself in Frankenstein.

What about you, dear Nick? What are you wearing, diva?

NICK: For this year’s runway, I’m seizing on the crimson death currents uniting these films…

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Oscar Volley: The Inaugural "Best Casting" Race

We kick off our annual post-nomination Oscar Volley series with the newest Oscar category: Best Casting. There have been calls to add Casting as a category for decades but the Academy always resisted... until now. 

Regina Hall & Chase Infiniti in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. Casting by Cassandra Kulukunis

NATHANIEL: Abe, I'm sure I've shared this before but since we were assigned Best Casting -- in its inaugural year! -- I feel the need to shout that this film craft, alongside Editing, are the only two I feel I would have been great at, had my life taken a different path. I never took any steps toward making movies -- mostly scared off by how much time people devote to making just ONE if they're on the filmmaking side when my appetite is closer to 200 movies a year and ample time to obsess over about 30 of them as an audience member.

To jog your memory as we begin our discussion, here were the finalists in the category with the eventual nominees in bold...

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Team Experience Oscar Predictions: The Final Scores

by Cláudio Alves

Nobody predicted SINNERS to secure Delroy Lindo his first Oscar nomination. | © Warner Bros.

How did your Oscar predictions turn out? At The Film Experience, ten writers did their best, and now we have results. Baby Clyde achieved the highest accuracy, dethroning former champion Eric Blume. But there’s more, so check the full data below. When we aggregate predictions, surprises emerge: none of us saw Delroy Lindo or Avatar in Costume Design coming. Conversely, everyone expected Paul Mescal in Best Supporting Actor, so we all misjudged that race.

Without further ado, here’s the final score…

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Guessing Game: The First Roles of Each Oscar Nominee!

by Nathaniel R

Leonardo DiCaprio's debut film "CRITTERS 3"

A spot of guessing game fun today. Some Oscar nominees are movie stars from the jump but most actors have to build their careers up slowly increasing the size and quality of their roles over the years until their awards breakthrough. 5 of our current 20 nominees across Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Supporting Actor kicked off their feature film career with a leading role. Can you guess who they were? Even more difficult can you pair each nominated actor with the name of their first credited feature film character? The answers to this quiz are after the jump but first jot down your guesses and see how many you can get right before looking... 

In Their Feature Film Debut They Played a Character Named...	The Current Oscar Nominees
1) Alex Dwyer	A) Jessie Buckley
2) Ben Crandall (LEAD)	B) Rose Byrne
3) Danny Vance	C) Timothée Chalamet
4) Drug Kingpin	D) Benicio Del Toro
5) Duke the Dog-Faced Boy	E) Leonardo DiCaprio
6) Erik (LEAD)	F) Jacob Elordi
7) Josh	G) Elle Fanning
8) Jules	H) Ethan Hawke
9) Lucy (2 Years)	I) Kate Hudson
10) Moll (LEAD)	J) Michael B Jordan
11) Rafi	K) Inga Ibsdottir Lilleas
12) Rastus Sommers	L) Delroy Lindo
13) Rena	M) Amy Madigan
14) Renate	N) Wunmi Mosaku
15) Rooster	O) Wagner Moura
16) Seema	P) Sean Penn
17) Sigrid Auge (LEAD)	Q) Renate Reinsve
18) Skye Davidson	R) Stellan Skarsgard
19) Teen #2	S) Emma Stone
20) Terry Jean Moore (LEAD)	T) Teyana Taylor

THE ANSWERS ARE AFTER THE JUMP... 

Got your guesses ready? Tell us how you did once you've read the answers...

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The Best Actress Race: Nomination Tracks & Frankenstein Fusion

by Nathaniel R

I should probably switch this up as I've been doing it annually, but I can't resist. I love imagining a Frankenstein-fusion of the parts of all the  BEST ACTRESS nominees.  If you smoosh or stitch Renate, Kate, Emma, Jessie, and Rose together our Best Actress Category Avatar is a mid-career still-ascending brunette star on her second nomination. She's also dabbled in musicals, played Sally Bowles in "Cabaret", and BAFTA recognized her genius before Oscar voters did!  Maybe she has false memories of winning an Oscar but this is only her second nomination. Her director has a proven track record with guiding actresses -- she may have even worked with them before -- to stellar performances. She's a fire sign with earth rising, a wife, a mother of two, and she just turned 40.

The movie she's nominated for is a drama about a young grieving mother struggling to balance her artistic career ambitions, with her obnoxious needy child--- wait, is she Alice from Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore?. No uh, never mind, the movie is weirder than that. There's a darkly comic subplot about incels and mysterious holes in her ceiling but the main thrust of the narrative is that the most important man in her life (was it her dad or husband? I forget) is perpetually absent, consummed by his own artistic career ambitions, and has no time for her needs! 

See the updated Best Actress chart 
The chart includes a daily poll, "How'd They Get Nominated?" speculation (not meant as judgment -- nobody is nominated on performance alone!), stats, anecdotes, and trivia.