Will Omicron wreak havoc at the Oscars?

Early January is typically a big time for Oscar campaigns but the Omicron variant has events scrambling, postponing or cancelling. (Rumor is that an announcement of Sundance going all virtual is imminent.)

Patrick Ryan collected some thoughts about all of this from pundits (including yours truly) at USA Today so check it out. One of the things I mentioned to him that wasn't included since the article is more about what's happening rightnow is that I'm hopeful that the Oscars themselves will go on as planned. When they first announced the date for the tail end of March, it felt overly cautious. Though it seems like a million years ago the Parasite Oscars were in early February! Turns out the Academy was savvy not to try to jump back to previous timetables immediately! That extra padding they built in this time should help avoid another delay. 

Updated Oscar Prediction Charts 

Oscar Chart Revisions - Everything Updated!

We're finally done with the post finalist Oscar charts. So have a look at the list. Whenever you finish prognosticating individual categories and start taking a more holistic view, it's easy to see how difficult the prediction game can be before the guilds narrow things down. Do I really think we'll have, not one, but two Best Picture nominees (Licorice Pizza, CODA) with only two nods each? No i don't. But what to cut and from which category? Do I really think Belfast will get as many nominations as West Side Story? I didn't think so but on the other hand...

On the Best Picture page
Let's take a risk and read the future trajectory and drop Nightmare Alley from the top ten. The initial recency bias of its first wave of big expectations and precursor succcess is fading and nobody is much talking about already. But expectations matter so it could coast in anyway. 8 Best Picture spots feel fairly secure which leads you to ponder which would get the boot in the old days of just 5 nominees: Power of the Dog, West Side Story, Dune, Belfast, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, CODA, and Don't Look Up. But the 9th and 10th slots are a truly a free-for-all...

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Oscar Charts: Best Actor & Best Actress

by Nathaniel R

Stewart and Cumberbatch have hogged the lion's share of critics awards. Will gold statues follow?

Both lead acting charts have been updated so take a look at BEST ACTOR and BEST ACTRESS. Both categories are giving off the vibes of being set in stone already before SAG has even announced their nominations so we'll soon see if that's an illusion or the truth. I've made one big adjustment in Best Actor, having Leonardo DiCaprio in Don't Look Up vault over rising but minor critical darling Nicolas Cage in Pig and knocking out Peter Dinklage in Cyrano. Cage maybe could have happened had critics really rallied but they were too busy praising Benedict Cumberbatch to really take a Pig stand. As for Dinklage, though the role is an awards magnet,  MGM/UA just didn't seem to know what to do with that film even though it's a) easy to market b) well liked by most people who see it... and kept pushing back its release. Better to have just saved it for 2022 at this point we think. And for Best Actress, there are no major changes, just a bit of order shuffling. I'm sticking with the five women who keep getting cited everywhere. Yes, there is a lot of PERFORMANCE and PASSION happening in the second tier of Best Actress hopefuls but it's getting harder and harder to see a path for any of them, even previous Oscar darlings like Penelope Cruz (Parallel Mothers) and buzzy newcomers like Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza). Unless SAG honors one of them, it's this five until Oscar night. 

Revised Oscar Charts

• Director
• Lead Actress
• Lead Actor
• Supporting Actress
• Supporting Actor
• Cinematography
• Production Design
• Film Editing
• Visual Effects
• Makeup and Hairstyling
• International Feature Film
• Animated Feature
• Documentary Feature

Oscar charts: The more interesting than we were expecting it to be "Best Director" race

by Nathaniel R

The annual competition for Best Director at the Oscars is in a very interesting era. The Academy has become increasingly international so, in theory, we can expect more international figures to pop up in this category rather than just the superstar auteurs. Though it's long had the same racial problems as the acting categories it's always had those in a much less visible way... until recently. And it wasn't all that long ago that people (or, more specifically, the media) didn't grouse about no women being up for the prize. The movement for equity behind the camera only went truly mainstream in the past decade. Female directors have always been around, of course, if not in the same numbers they are today it's a topic Juan Carlos is currently investigating as he moves backwards in time through the Oscar years in his series "Through Her Lens" (new episode drops tomorrow).

For the first time in history we could be looking at a second consecutive win by a female auteur since Jane Campion is currently the favourite for The Power of the Dog. But who else will join her in the lineup? 

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Chart Updates: Film Editing, Production Design, Cinematography!

by Nathaniel R

All of the Visual categories in the Oscar charts have now been updated save Costume Design which we tend to give its own articles -- playing favourites, sorry! But looking over the charts and the possibilities, it does beg the question: are Dune and West Side Story just going to be nominated in every category? And will any other films core as many nominations?  The year isn't short on films that are visually remarkable of course. There's Power of the Dog, Nightmare Alley, Tragedy of Macbeth, The French Dispatch, The Green Knight, Passing, and more.

But the question is always what are voters actually watching and what are they liking? Being remarkable only gets you so far...

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