First Oscar Predictions of the Year - Complete!

Whew. That took longer than expected but you can now see all of the "April Foolish" first-round predictions for this Oscar year, albeit compiled in May & June and delivered to you in early July. Since the first wave of 20 categories takes so long to compile (updates are easier) we should note up front that James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg, another film centered on the Nuremberg Trials, was scheduled for a November 2025 release after the weeks of research for these charts so it is not yet included.  That said we can hardly claim it a certainty as a competitor. World War II is no longer automatic "Bait" for voters, Vanderbilt is not (yet) an Oscar player and though the cast has four previously nominated actors none are the sort that Oscar voters ALWAYS watch regardless. Anyway, we'll save it for the next up date.

What follows are a dozen key questions were asking ourselves in July about the upcoming competition before things really heat up during the fall film festivals. We've love to hear your thoughts on these 12 questions...

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Eye Candy Predix Pt 2: Will "Wicked" be crowned again in Costume Design?

by Nathaniel R

WICKED FOR GOOD

I cheered when Paul Tazewell won Best Costume Design and Nathan Crowley won Production Design for Wicked and yet I also felt a sense of dread. One of my great popculture fears in this franchise era is that the Oscars will one day lose their identity and become something akin to the Emmys with the same achievements winning again and again. Naturally then I'm excited to see new variations on the pinks and greens and golds and blacks of Wicked's color palette in Wicked For Good but also don't want to see it win back to back Oscars in the eye-candy categories, since it's essentially one long film, split into two. (It's the same reason I rolled my eyes that the Academy felt the need to nominate Stuart Craig and Stepheni McMillan for a full half of the Harry Potter franchise films even though their work was strong).

So what might oppose total Wicked dominance in the eye-candy categories come Oscar time?  Specifically costume design...

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Team Experience Oscar Predictions: Final Scores

by Cláudio Alves

Let us be glad. Let us be grateful. Let us rejoicify... that the awards season is over.

The Oscars have come and gone, and it's time to settle some scores. Nothing too dramatic, of course, just the matter of who, in the Team Experience, was best at predicting the 97th Academy Awards winners. Eric Blume took the honors for the nomination period, but the tables have turned. The king has fallen, and a new queen has risen – all hail, Lynn Lee! She correctly predicted 18 out of 23 categories, accounting for a roughly 78% success rate. On the other hand, I did the worst of the lot, with only ten correct predictions, or a 43% success rate. It's pretty dire, but that's what you get when you go "no guts, no glory" on some of these…

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Oscar Night in Review: Highs, Lows, and "What Just Happened?" Head Scratching

by Nathaniel R

Conan O'Brien hosts the 97th Academy Awards. Photo © Myung J. Chun for the Los Angeles Times

It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.”
-Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Another cinematic year has ended. Another eagerly awaited Oscar night's credits roll over clips of the key moment. Out there in the dark, at home and at Oscar parties, everyone immediately wishes to put it all behind them. I am also that livery-stableman, but shouting "Wait, wait! There are a few things we should talk about before we depart!" So please bear with us, dear reader, as we think aloud at you and with you (should you choose to join in the conversation) and wrap up this cinematic year and twisty awards rollercoaster. We'll try to 'get away from (this) amusement' within a week's time and move on to 2025 (and other years as we do for mini celebrations). That's the goal.

So let's talk Oscar night's highs and lows and wtf moments...

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Nathaniel's Top Ten List. The Film Bitch Awards Begin...

by Nathaniel R

 

For this cinephile, the film year doesn’t officially end until the naked gold men are handed to their blessed new owners, deserving or otherwise. (If you’re looking for my predictions that article is here or in various Oscar volleys) So as we enter the third month of 2025 the books must now close on 2024. It’s time for even champion procrastinators like myself to participate in their mandatory subjective “Best” proclamations. For the next week or three I’ll be posting the Film Bitch Awards, the public honors for my private darlings, beginning with this Top Ten List / Best Picture, announcement today. These awards are the site's most enduring annual tradition and though I agonize over them (call it ‘permanent record’ anxiety as I never change them after the fact because I want them to feel respectable in a time capsule way) I deeply love the process of listing and favoriting and ranking. It’s one small ritual to bring order to the chaos of life. I imagine I’ll still do it even after the world collapses in three years time and we’re all living in a hellish installment of the Mad Max Saga. What will there be to rank… Rocks? Cancerous growths? Abandoned ruins? Who knows but I’ll do it. Until then we have civilization and the movies...

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