April Foolish Predictions #5: Visual Categories

[drumroll] Our annual April Foolish Oscar Predictions continue

"Nomadland" was shot by the cinematographer of "The Rider"

We always mention at the start of all this that we call them April Foolish predictions because it's foolish to assume we know anything at all quite yet. Oscar buzz begins the day of announcement for projects with "pedigree" but the reality of the Oscar race is much more complex than that as the quality of films, size of campaigns, box office results, media pets, and public perception all end up weighing in later in the year. So consider these early bird predictions as "what ifs"... we do not pretend to have the year figured out just yet as we're going on hunches...

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I've been obsessing over this shot in "Us"

by Nathaniel R

Not sure if there's an audience out there for a return of our Hit Me With Your Best Shot series but Jordan Peele's horror smash Us would certainly be a worthy candidate for the treatment. Lately I've been obsessing over this particular image (above) in which Red (Lupita Nyong'o) has handcuffed Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) to her own coffee table. It's not just the slow upsetting crack of the glass, or Lupita's stunning dual performance...

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The Joyous Triumph of "Black Panther"

by Chris Feil

Of all of the great wins of Oscar night, some of the most uplifting belonged to the team from Black Panther. The film ran a gauntlet in the past year - early release, genre bias, institutionalized racism - to defy the odds and rack up three richly deserving wins in Costume Design, Production Design, and Original Score. It was the most popular film of the year and yet these wins still shouldn't be taken for granted, theirs a collective trio representing the world we experienced when we experienced Wakanda.

Adding to the sense of massive victory here are several crucial pieces of contextual trivia...

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Podcast: Oscar's Self Destruction, Guild Prizes, and Sundance Winners

with Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl 

 In this episode Murtada and Nathaniel sound off on Sundance buzz, and the current madness of the awards race and Oscar's late-life identity crisis and one shockingly ill-thought-out decision after the next, ad infinitum.

Index (58 minutes)
00:01 Sundance buzz: The Farewell, Clemency, One Child Nation, Them That Follow , and The Report
17:25 Recent guild prizes: Bryan Singer & Rami Malek's Bohemian Rhapsody and how everything keeps going wrong this awards season.
22:34 Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade's surprise DGA win
26:00 Oscar's identity crisis and its increasingly terrible decisions. Murtada tries to talk Nathaniel off the ledge.
36:00 Spike Lee and Bradley Cooper at the DGAs and guilds confusion about Best Picture
45:40 Trying to survive Oscar's dwindling sense of self and we're back to Sundance to talk about next year's Oscar possibilities, especially in regards to Clemency
56:00 Annie Awards and wrap-up

Referenced in the Podcast
• Nathaniel's "Awards Season is Killing Me" Rant
• DGA winners
• Murtada's Sundance Coverage

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Sundance Glory / Oscar Doom

23 days til Oscar!

The only (current) 23 year-old in the world who is also an Oscar-nominated actor if not this year

Can you believe we're less than a month from Hollywood's High Holy Night? Since today's magic number is 23, we're sharing a gallery of beauties related to that number starting with Timothée Chalamet. Now, he didn't make this year's Oscar list despite precursor attention for Beautiful Boy but he is still the only current 23 year-old who can claim the title "Oscar-Nominated Actor". Please enjoy this photo gallery of other number 23 related beauties after the jump...

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