It's time for final Best Picture predictions!

For the next week we'll be sharing final predictions for each Oscar category. We're starting with the big kahuna, Best Picture because it's the most crucial. It's a domino effect essentially since each year shows us that once voters favor your movie, they just favor it whether or not it's particularly worthy from one category to the next. We'll start with the not so obvious (if you ask me) question:

What would be nominated in a five film year?

Past statistics will tell you that that would be the DGA lineup (BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Roma, A Star is Born, and Vice) because prior to 2010 when the Best Picture category expanded, the DGA lineup was slightly more predictive of Best Picture than of Best Director, as curious as that might seen. But it wasn't infallible, of course. And we don't think those would be the five this year. 

So let's take them in the order of strength after the jump...

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FYC: Nicholas Hoult in "The Favourite"

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

The Favourite is making a big splash this awards season – there’s no question of that. Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz are looking good for Oscar nominations, even if the classification of the latter two in the supporting race continues to infuriate Nathaniel every time a new organization announces. Its screenplay is a shoo-in, director Yorgos Lanthimos has a good shot, and the film will also be cited in a few technical categories.

There’s one great element of the film – aside from its makeup and hairstyling, which failed to make the finals -- that likely won’t be on the Oscar list. Though the film is dominated by women, one male actor makes quite an impression...

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Dorian Awards Favor 'The Favourite'

by Murtada Elfadl

The Favourite lived up to its title with GALECA’s Dorian Award voters, who named the audacious historical romp Film of the Year and bestowed its star, Olivia Colman, with the Film Performance of the Year—Actress tiara for her funny and heartbreaking turn as Queen Anne. Two results that we suspect will be popular with The Film Experience community. The movie talso scored Screenplay of the Year honors for Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara.

However for the three other acting awards for film, The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics followed the critical consensus. Ethan Hawke in First Reformed, Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk and Richard E Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, added another award to their heavy mantles. Roma and Alfonso Cuaron continued their dominance of the critics awards by winning Foreign Language Film of the Year and Best Director.

GALECA’s unique categories made space for films that have not been recognized widely...

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GALECA Favours "The Favourite" as Nomination Leader

by Nathaniel R

The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Journalists have announced their official nominations for 2018. It's GALECA's 10th year as an organization making this an anniversary year. As ever, full disclosure on such things, a few of our contributors here at TFE are members of this organization with encompasses over 200 journalists from the UK, US, Australia, and Canada. The all time most-awarded films by GALECA were Carol (2015) and Moonlight (2016) so that's a good track record. The Favourite leads the movie nomination this year while Pose led the TV side.

Recently the Online Film Critics Society had a slate that also favored The Favourite but the Yorgos Lanthimos pitch-black comedy emerged with nothing when the actual winners were selected. It kinda makes you think. Could The Favourite also lead the Oscar nominations but lose everything? 

After the jump the full list of nominees with quick commentary...

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Aquaman still tops. Mary Poppins also floats

We haven't done a full weekend box office post in some time since we've been sharing the 'top grossing of the year' lists which are all updated if you missed them and you can see the hits in 11 different categories including docs, foreign films, female directors, gay directors, films with female leads, etcetera...

But as for what people were seeing Christmas week and this past weekend, here are the nation's top dozen+ movies chart for both wide releases and limited/expanding titles. Which titles were you catching up with?

Weekend Box Office (Actuals) (December 28th-30th)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1 Aquaman  $52.1 on 4125 screens (cum. $189.3) Review, Podcast	1 🔺 Simmba $1.7 on 300 screens *NEW*

2 Mary Poppins Returns $28.3 on 4090 screens (cum. $99.2) Podcast ❤️	2 🔺 If Beale Street Could Talk $766k on 65 screens (cum. $1.9) Review, Podcast ❤️

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