Awards Coverage, The Scope

2023 Oscar Predictions

It’s funny how long controversial Oscar moments live in our memory. The infamous mix-up between Best Picture winner Moonlight and La La Land, for instance, happened six years ago, yet it feels like it could have happened yesterday. The same could be said for when Crash won Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain in 2005, where many people wished that there actually was a Best Picture mixup. Then there’s 2022, when Best Actor winner Will Smith infamously walked up and slapped Chris Rock in front of 15 million viewers for an off-color joke he made about his wife. That happened a year ago, and it’s still being talked about to this day, including in Chris Rock’s recent comedy special “Selective Outrage,” where he slapped back at both Will and Jada (“I didn’t have any entanglements!” he clapped over the weekend).

With all of these flubs, flashbacks, and eff-ups still living in our memories years later, this makes me even more excited for this year’s Oscar ceremony than usual. What surprises await this year? Will Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announce the wrong winner yet again? Will Mark Wahlberg pronounce the name of Women Talking correctly? Will Will Smith and Chris Rock box it out on stage like Apollo Creed? Who knows! Your guess is as good as mine, folks.

Speaking of guesses, with the 95th Academy Awards taking place next weekend, it’s now or never when it comes to making my predictions. After all, we can’t predict everything that’ll happen on Oscar night, so let’s have fun with the things we can predict, starting with…

Best Picture: Ah, Best Picture. We meet again. This category has become noticeably dicey to predict in recent years. Out of the past 10 ceremonies, I’ve predicted the Best Picture winner correctly four times: Argo in 2012, 12 Years A Slave in 2013, Birdman in 2014, and Nomadland in 2020. Every other year has been a complete and utter crapshoot. The Shape Of Water won in 2018 despite no other science-fiction film winning out of the Academy’s 90-year history. Same goes for Parasite in 2019 in regard to International films. The Power Of The Dog seemed primed to win Best Picture last year, but CODA snuck up right behind it and snatched it from its grimy hands. Which is all fine and dandy because, as you might remember, The Power Of The Dog was vastly, vastly overrated.

Since the Producers Guild of America award seems to carry more weight than it has in previous years, it seems that Everything Everywhere All At Once is the clear frontrunner for Best Picture this year. If it is, then it is more than deserving, because film duo Daniels created one of the most immersive cinematic experiences of all time with that picture. I’ve never seen a film that has been simultaneously exciting, gripping, absorbing, emotional, weird, funny, unusual, horrifying, and heartfelt all at once. It truly is one of the most unique moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had in the theater, and it stands out amongst its fellow nominees.

Sure, there are other great movies that are in contention, from Martin McDonagh’s Banshees Of Inisherin to James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way Of Water to Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, but none of them have the momentum or the energy behind them the way Everything Everywhere All At Once has all season long. If Best Picture wasn’t going to go to Everything Everywhere All At Once, my next best guess would be All Quiet On The Western Front since it’s the next most-nominated film at nine nominations total. But since its predecessor already won Best Picture (albeit in 1930), it doesn’t seem likely that its remake would reach the same heights. Everything Everywhere All At Once is the most likely Best Picture winner. If it does end up winning, then the Academy got it right this year big time.

Best Director: Daniel Kwan and Scheinert defeated Steven Spielberg to secure the DGA, which means they’re all but assured to win Best Director for Everything Everywhere All At Once. It’s just as well, because they easily delivered one of the most creative, unique, original, mesmerizing, and breathtaking films I’ve seen in the past several years. I will be overjoyed if the Daniels end up taking home one of the night’s biggest prizes. Now if only someone would explain to me why Ruben Ostlund is nominated here for Triangle of Sadness.

Best Actor: I actually agonize quite a bit over this category and how badly two different nominees deserve to win here. On one hand, Austin Butler gave a mesmerizing and incredibly gifted performance as the King of Rock N’ Roll in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, brilliantly resurrecting the rock icon and giving him humanity, heart, and soul. On the other hand, Brendan Fraser is at the best he’s ever been in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, and he gives a deeply intimate and tragic performance as a morbidly obese father who is slowly dying from heart failure.

It’s a close call, and I honestly wish I didn’t have to pick between these two amazing performances. But if we’re going solely off of impact, it’s no question that the Best Actor Oscar belongs to Brendan Fraser. Sure, he hasn’t done anything as significant up until now, and he was downright awful in those Godforsaken Mummy movies. Despite all of this, he gives a real tearjerker of a performance as Charlie and he makes you reflect on life, love, joy, happiness, grief, trauma, sadness, and all of the emotions in between. Austin Butler solidified himself as Elvis in our hearts forever, but Brendan Fraser shattered our hearts as Charlie.

Best Actress: As great as Michelle Williams and Ana de Armas were in The Fablemans and Blonde respectively, this year’s Best Actress race boils down to two phenomenal performances: Cate Blanchett in Tar and Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I’m going with Michelle for three reasons. One: Cate Blanchett already has two Oscars, one for The Aviator and one for Blue Jasmine. The only other actresses to secure three Oscars are Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand, and I’m sorry, but I just don’t see Cate Blanchett being on Meryl Streep’s level, no matter how great her performance was. Two: Michelle Yeoh won the SAG Award for Best Actress, and seven times out of 10, that’s been most accurate in predicting the Oscar winner too. And three: She just plain deserves it. Between portraying a strict and overbearing mother, a dissatisfied wife, and a neglected daughter, Michelle wore many faces in Everything Everywhere All At Once, and she portrayed all of them beautifully.

She perfectly encapsulated womanhood while simultaneously demonstrating how generational trauma affects more people than just yourself. Dare I say, her performance was perfect in Everything Everywhere All At Once, and her fellow nominees will be hard-pressed to unseat her.

Best Supporting Actor: Ke Huy Quan, without question. I know that Everything Everywhere All At Once demanded more dramatically from both Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu, but it could be argued that Waymond was just as central to the film as much as his on-screen wife and daughter were. Not only that, but Ke Huy Quan did a brilliant job portraying multiple versions of Waymond, not just as his shy and squeamish self from the main universe, but also as the superheroic action-hero version of himself from the Alphaverse. His monologue on doing laundry and taxes was the most powerful, pure thing out of the whole movie, and Ke Huy Quan proved he’s more than just Short Round from Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom.

Best Supporting Actress: First of all, what on Earth is going on with Hollywood’s sudden aversion to Stephanie Hsu? She was every bit as essential to the film as her on-screen parents were, arguably more so since the main conflict dealt directly with her character and her search for meaning and purpose in all of her different lives. Yet, since the Golden Globes took place back in January, she’s been relentlessly snubbed in place of her co-stars, and I don’t know why. She wasn’t nominated for the Golden Globe. She wasn’t nominated for the BAFTA. She was nominated at the SAG Awards, but she lost to… Jamie Lee Curtis. For what? All her role entailed was stapling a circle to her head, griping about taxes, and licking Michelle Yeoh’s hot dog fingers. She had nowhere near the depth, complexion, and variety that Stephanie Hsu brought to her performance, yet she’s consistently been recognized more on the awards circuit than Stephanie Hsu was, and I don’t know why. She should be at the top of consideration for supporting actress this year, but because of how relentlessly she’s been snubbed all season, she’s at the bottom of the pack, which is easily the most disrespectful thing to come out of awards season this year by far.

That being said, I think Best Supporting Actress this year will go to Angela Bassett in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She brilliantly and powerfully portrayed everyone’s collective grief over Chadwick Boseman, and there were moments in the film where it didn’t feel so much like she was acting as much as she was just expressing her genuine emotions. I can’t explain why Michael B. Jordan was stupidly snubbed years ago in the first Black Panther, but that’s neither here nor there. Angela Bassett deserves this year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar. If Jamie Lee Curtis somehow nabs it away from not one, but two deserving nominees, I’m going to drown her Oscar in dirty hot dog water.

Best Animated Feature: First of all, what an amazing year in animated film. Yes, the animated feature category is usually one of the strongest every year, but this year that’s especially the case. With this year’s five nominees including Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, The Sea Beast, Turning Red, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, any one of these nominees is more than deserving of the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Not for nothing, three of these movies made it onto my best films of the year list. It might have been four if Puss In Boots: The Last Wish wasn’t released so damn late into the year.

That being said, I think this year’s animated feature Oscar should go to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Not only is it beautifully animated with expert craftsmanship and detail with its stop-motion animation, but it also carries a maturity to it that makes it feel as relevant for adults as it does to children. It is easily one of the most beautiful, thoughtful, and poignant remakes of 2022, and it deserves nothing less than the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

On another note, I am absolutely baffled that Pinocchio only secured one nomination in the animated film category. I understand it not getting a Best Picture nomination, but seriously: nothing for music? Cinematography? Production design? Good gravy, if Avatar can get nominated for production design for its animated work, surely Pinocchio deserves nothing less.

Best Documentary Feature: In most other years at the Oscars, there’s usually a clear frontrunner when it comes to Best Documentary, whether you’re talking about My Octopus Teacher in 2021 or Summer of Soul in 2022. We don’t have that privilege this year with all of the nominees being on mostly equal footing. The closest one to a frontrunner I can think of is Fire of Love, which was recently announced to being adapted into a feature-length film. But just because it’s more popular doesn’t automatically make it the winner. After all, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was simultaneously one of the highest-grossing and most well-made documentaries of all time. It wasn’t even nominated in 2019.

No, for Best Documentary, I think the Academy is going to go more topical than anything else, and there’s probably no other film more timely than Navalny, which focuses on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020. With the ongoing Ukrainian War costing hundreds of lives daily, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Academy highlighted a film that brought attention to this issue, especially since previous Oscar winners CitizenFour and Icarus had similar subjects.

Of course, this could just be me trying to justify my prediction for an otherwise unpredictable category. Take your pick. Mine is Navalny. Screw Putin.

Best International Feature: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — if a Foreign-language film is nominated for Best Picture, it’s a lock in the International Film category. With All Quiet On The Western Front being nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, it’s safe to say that Edward Berger’s gripping war epic will win the International Feature Oscar as well. It’s more than deserving, with Berger creating a harrowing yet tragic portrait of war and how it does nothing but take lives and leave families devastated. While there’s much well-deserved confusion as to how on Earth Decision To Leave was snubbed in this category, there’s no questioning the emotional impact behind All Quiet On The Western Front and how much it deserves to win. I can’t wait to see Edward Berger win his first Academy Award. That’ll be a big moment to pay attention to on Oscar night.

Best Original Screenplay: Everything Everywhere All At Once, no contest. Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees Of Inisherin was equally as emotional and heartbreaking, but it lacks the complexity, the innovation, and the creativity that Everything Everywhere All At Once has. I make no exaggeration when I say it is the most original screenplay I’ve ever read. I don’t know how the Daniels’ came up with the wacky, crazy, bat-insane ideas they come up with in that film, but they did it and they turned it into something meaningful, sincere, and deeply profound. If that doesn’t deserve to win Best Original Screenplay, then none of the nominees do.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Let’s start with the obvious question here: what the heck even counts as an “adapted” work nowadays? Out of the five nominees, only three of them are based on preexisting works. The other two are sequels to original films (Top Gun: Maverick and Glass Onion). What’s worse is that one of those movies, Knives Out, was first nominated for original screenplay before its sequel flipped over to the adapted side. What gives? How can something be considered original in one second and adapted in the next? Why weren’t these movies nominated for original screenplay? What confused, outdated system is the Academy using to make these confounding nominations?

As far as the remaining nominees go, it’s pretty clear who the winner will be: Women Talking. Living hasn’t generated anywhere near enough conversation to even be considered in the running, and as great as All Quiet On The Western Front is, its greatest strengths lie elsewhere beyond the writing (such as Edward Berger’s phenomenal direction, James Friend’s breathtaking cinematography, the disquieting and eerie visual effects). That leaves Women Talking as the most likely winner for this category. If, for any reason, either Top Gun or Glass Onion wins, I will pull my hair out and question reality as I know it.

Best Cinematography: Out of all of the categories from this year’s Oscar ceremony, the worst one by far is Best Cinematography. Not only are there two nominees nobody’s even heard of before (Bardo and Empire Of Light), but Elvis is nominated under this category. ELVIS. Over Everything Everywhere All At Once? Over The Banshees of Inisherin? Over Top Gun: Maverick? The Fabelmans? The Northman? The Batman? Nope? I could pick like 10 movies that deserve to be here more than these nominees, so the fact that these were the ones we ended up with is utterly infuriating.

That being said, it does make my job of predicting the winner easier, so the Oscar for Best Cinematography this year will go to All Quiet On The Western Front. It may not be as spectacular as the other movies I mentioned, but the scope of its battles is phenomenal and it does a brilliant job showcasing how war tears apart the body and the soul. It’s not my favorite cinematography of the year, but then again, none of these nominees are. If, for some bizarre reason, All Quiet On The Western Front doesn’t win, it will be a snub on monumental levels.

Best Film Editing: Yes yes yes, I know Best Film Editing is the biggest joke of a category since that stupid “Oscars Cheer Moment” award was introduced last year. Not because film editing isn’t important, mind you, but because the Academy consistently names some of the stupidest winners more than any other category. Dunkirk won in 2018 despite being more incomprehensible and disjointed than a Michael Bay picture. Bohemian Rhapsody’s win in 2019 was straight-up laughable. And can anyone tell me with a straight face why The Power Of The Dog was even nominated last year? If Peter Sciberras’ editing was that outstanding, he would have edited The Power Of The Dog down from two hours to one hour. Or even better, barely a minute.

That being said, the category has been making something of a comeback in recent years, with The Sound of Metal and Dune being the most recent winners. The fact that Academy voters are beginning to take film editing more seriously gives me hope for the category this year, although it wouldn’t surprise me if they still gave it to Elvis or something.

Anyhow, predictions. I love Paul Rogers’ work on Everything Everywhere All At Once and thought he did a brilliant job diving into all of these different multiverses and editing them into one cohesive story. But by that same token, Eddie Hamilton also had to take over 800 hours of flight footage and edit all of that down into the lightning-quick action sequences you see in Top Gun: Maverick. For context, that’s more footage than all three films in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy — combined.

Film editing this year is really something of a coin toss, especially since there are two outstanding nominees that are more than deserving. But as far as my coin toss went, I’m going with Top Gun: Maverick. Whatever wins, it can’t be worse than Bohemian Rhapsody’s Best Film Editing win… probably.

Best Makeup And Hairstyling: First of all, why on God’s green Earth is Everything Everywhere All At Once not nominated for Best Makeup? The many different forms, shapes, and appearances of the Jobu Topaki prove that it should have at least been a contender. Or at least, more of one than Elvis, whose greatest makeup work was making Tom Hanks look fatter than he normally is. But I digress. This is one of many snubs from the night, and unfortunately, it isn’t the last one.

Despite that, there actually is a clear winner in this category, and that is Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. People who were shocked to find Brendan Fraser’s sudden weight gain for that film might be surprised to find out that he was wearing a fat suit the entire time. That’s especially stunning since there are extended sequences in that film where Charlie can be seen naked, and there is zero indication that body isn’t his own. It’s that convincing.

Of course, there’s other incredible makeup work that deserves to be praised, such as transforming Colin Ferrell into the Penguin for The Batman or covering soldiers in mud and gore in All Quiet On The Western Front. But there really is no defeating The Whale. At least, as long as Austin Butler’s bloated fat suit in Elvis doesn’t take it first.

Best Production Design: If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Oscar for Best Production Design, it’s to never bet against Baz Luhrmann. The past two times his films have been nominated for Best Production Design, they’ve won it for both Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby. I expect this year to be a three-peat as Elvis wins for production design yet again. Frankly, I’ll be shocked if any other nominee wins. If there is a technical category that Elvis excels in, it’s definitely production design.

Best Costume Design: Elvis. See production design above.

Best Musical Score: As controversial as Babylon is, the one thing I think everyone can agree on is that the score is mesmerizing. That’s thanks to composer Justin Hurwitz, who has been Damien Chazelle’s primary collaborator since his 2009 debut Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench. He even won two Oscars in 2017 for La La Land. With Babylon being nominated in three categories, it isn’t expected to win much on Oscar night, but its best chances do lie in Best Musical Score.

Compare that alongside the likes of its fellow nominees. Hauschka’s score for All Quiet On The Western Front is so bloated and droning that it’s offensive that it’s even nominated. Carter Burwell’s score for The Banshees Of Inisherin is so mopey it’s pathetic. Son Lux’s composition for Everything Everywhere All At Once is the most beautiful and transcendent score of the year, but this is their first nomination, so their chances are pretty much zilch. And John Williams for The Fabelmans? How many Oscars does that guy have again?

Nah, Babylon has the best chances here. I’m still personally rooting for Everything Everywhere All At Once to win, but I’m not betting on it. Meanwhile, let’s all share our collective frustration that The Batman wasn’t even nominated. That snub alone makes this category that much less legitimate.

Best Original Song: Yet another great category for the Oscars this year. This year has five outstanding nominees from five outstanding artists: “Applause” from Diane Warren, “Hold My Hand” from Lady Gaga, “Lift Me Up” from Rihanna, “Naatu Naatu” by M.M. Keeravani and Chandrabose, and “This Is A Life” by Son Lux. In any other year, any one of these nominees could have been the clear-cut winner, but 2022 just happened to be the year they all collided. They’re all simply outstanding nominees, and any one of them deserves to take home the Academy Award on Oscar night.

As great of a problem as it is to have such a competitive category, it unfortunately makes predicting this year’s winner an absolute nightmare. “Hold My Hand” is an absolute banger from Lady Gaga, while “This Is A Life” is an intimate and personal little lullaby-like tune that’s a personal favorite of mine. But if we’re going with the populist’s vote, there’s no denying that RRR’s “Naatu Naatu” has a real shot at winning this year. Not only was RRR ridiculously skipped over in the International Film category, but “Naatu Naatu” is just EPIC in all caps. The most impressive part? You don’t even need to understand the lyrics. The song is just that infectious to listen to on its own.

I honestly don’t know who the Best Original Song Oscar is going to on Oscar night, but my bet is on “Naatu Naatu.” Either way, I can’t wait for the live performance.

Note: Yet another snub among many is the Weeknd’s “Nothing Is Lost” from Avatar: The Way Of Water. Abel’s vocals and the heart-wrenching lyrics hit harder and harder after you’ve seen the movie.

Best Sound: As competitive as this year’s sound category is, I don’t think anyone seriously expects any of the nominees to unseat Top Gun: Maverick, do they? I mean sure, The Batman’s sound work stands up just as much as its Oscar-winning predecessor The Dark Knight, All Quiet On The Western Front uses the presence and absence of sound to brilliant yet horrifying effect, and Avatar: The Way Of Water got incredibly creative with the sounds of the Na’Vi, the human invaders, and the Tulkun alike.

That being said, nothing beats Tom Cruise breaking the sound barrier in the first 10 minutes of the film, and the rest of the movie doesn’t let up. The entire film feels like you’re in the cockpit while 1,000 feet in the air, with the G-forces constantly pushing against your body. The out-of-this-world sound design is to thank for that. Another film could steal this Oscar in an upset win, but it isn’t likely.

Best Visual Effects: If any other film wins Best Visual Effects over Avatar: The Way Of Water, I’m going to burn the Dolby Theatre to the ground. As amazing as Top Gun: Maverick, All Quiet On The Western Front, and The Batman are, the visual effects are just one part of those films’ brilliance — especially when so much of it is practical effects. Avatar: The Way Of Water, on the other hand, utilizes both practical and computer-generated effects to brilliant effect, beautifully blending both styles into a mesmerizing display of Pandora. Avatar: The Way Of Water is the clear-cut winner. If anything else wins, it will be straight-up thievery.

And now, those pesky short categories that I never see every year but still have to predict nonetheless. How about we go with An Irish Goodbye for live-action short, The Elephant Whisperers for documentary short, and My Year Of Dicks for animated short since the title is funny. That’s about as good a metric as any when predicting the short categories.

Well, that’s all until next weekend, folks. Good luck with your Oscar ballots, and whatever you do, stay away from Chris Rock, or he’ll make his next comedy special about you.

– David Dunn

Tagged Academy Awards, All Quiet On The Western Front, Chris Rock, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Oscars, The Whale, Top Gun: Maverick

Mar 28 2022

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Awards Coverage, The Scope

Shoulda, CODA, Woulda: How The 94th Academy Awards Was A Knockout

Umm… okay then. Guess we gotta talk about the Oscars.

Let’s start by saying that I had no idea what to expect going into this Oscar ceremony. Between the producers cutting eight categories from the live telecast to a couple of superfluous awards that served as half-hearted attempts to win over a mainstream audience to Amy “Joke Thief” Schumer being named one of the Oscar hosts, I was not expecting this to be a good ceremony at all. After all, the past few ceremonies have been struggling immensely with audience ratings and viewership. All of these ludicrous changes seemed like they were going to worsen the symptoms that were already there.

Well, I was half-right. While the technical categories were still minimized during the live telecast, they did have a small snippet play of the winners accepting their awards. So they weren’t so much “cut” from the ceremony as they were simply edited down for time, which still isn’t ideal, but I’ll take what I can get. The superfluous “fan-favorite” and “cheer moment” awards were also not highlighted as much as I feared they would be, briskly montaging through their winners and nominees before cutting straight to commercial. It was a surprisingly good use of time, didn’t take up too much space, and got to involve more movie fans in the voting process. Plus, Zack Snyder now gets to technically call himself a two-time Academy Award-winner, which he’s more than earned since the Academy shelved his cut of Justice League from any Oscar consideration for some arbitrary reason (God knows he deserves it more than The Power Of The Dog does).

Even the hosts were really good. Wanda Sykes’ wit and sassiness easily stole the show, with her tour through the Academy museum easily being the biggest highlight (the part where she pointed to an orc and called it “Harvey Weinstein” had me dying). Regina Hall was also really funny, pulling up all of the most attractive guys in the Dolby Theatre and saying she was going to administer a COVID test “with her tongue.” Even Amy Schumer had her charming moments, especially one hilarious bit where she dressed up as Spider-Man and shot silly string at the audience.

Dare I say it, this telecast was more fun than last year’s Academy Awards. That’s especially surprising considering how much behind-the-scenes drama was going on.

Unfortunately, this is still the Oscars, and every year brings its own variety of shocking surprises. After previous ceremonies where Best Picture winners got mixed up, a Korean film took home the top prize, and an In Memoriam segment where the Academy disrespectfully sped through it like it was trying to skip a cutscene, I thought I had seen it all.

I was wrong. I was so, so, so very wrong.

Best Picture:

Let’s start with the good news: The Power Of The Dog lost 11 out of 12 of its nominations, including Best Picture. It more than deserved it too since it’s one of the most tepid and stale movies ever put in the running for Best Picture. How it got this far is beyond me, and I’m glad to see it bomb so precariously at the Oscars, even if my ballot suffered as a result of it.

Instead, the tender deaf family drama CODA took home the top prize at this year’s Academy Awards. This is surprising for a few reasons. For one thing, out of all 10 nominees, CODA was tied with Licorice Pizza for the least amount of nominations with three. This meant that in the grand scope of things, CODA had the most to overcome, especially with Dune and The Power Of The Dog sweeping across the nominations board.

For another thing, its director Sian Heder was not nominated for a Best Directing Oscar, and that hindered its chances even more. Sure, a Best Picture win wasn’t impossible (Green Book won Best Picture in 2018 despite also not receiving a Best Director nom), but considering eight out of the past 10 Best Picture winners were at least nominated for Best Director, it was nothing but an uphill battle for CODA. The fact that it persevered and pulled off a Best Picture win despite everything it was up against makes CODA’s victory all the more incredible.

Either way, congratulations to this amazing film and its heartfelt victory. I still feel like Dune was the most visionary out of all of the Best Picture nominees, and Tick, Tick… BOOM! and The Last Duel were still straight up robbed in this category. That doesn’t change how important CODA’s win was for the deaf community or how grateful I am to it for taking away the win from The Power Of The Dog. God, do I hate that film.

Best Director: Unfortunately, The Power Of The Dog did win one Oscar last night, and that was Jane Campion for Best Director. She didn’t deserve this award any more than Simon McQuoid deserved it for his Mortal Kombat remake, but like I already said, CODA’s director wasn’t nominated in this category anyway, so if The Power Of The Dog had to sneak in a win, I guess Best Director is most acceptable. I’m still infuriated over the fact that Denis Villeneuve wasn’t even nominated for Dune. He more than deserved to win, not to mention at the very least get nominated. A cinematic crime if there ever was one, and it unfortunately won’t be the last one the Academy ever commits.

Best Actor: This is where the ceremony gets really, really bizarre. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Will Smith won Best Actor for playing Venus and Serena Williams’ father in King Richard, a win he absolutely deserved due to his sincere and deeply moving performance in that film. Unfortunately, absolutely nobody was paying attention to that moment or his speech because they were still reeling from when Will Smith slapped the bejeezus outta Chris Rock minutes earlier for joking about his wife’s hair loss, calling Jada Pinkett Smith “G.I. Jane.” Then Will Smith just strutted off, sat back down, and yelled at Chris to “Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth.”

Man. Talk about everybody hates Chris.

Now look, this is a very loaded moment, and I’m not going to even begin trying to unpack this because of all of the complex emotions tied into this. I will simply emphasize three truths. First of all, it was a bad joke on Chris’ part to make. A really, really, really bad joke. Jada had spoken publicly several times before about how much her hair loss has affected her and her well-being, so it was highly insensitive for him to make that remark without realizing how she or her husband might take it. Whether that joke was prewritten for the ceremony or if Chris made it up on the fly doesn’t matter. It was in poor taste, and Chris should have known better.

Second, Will Smith probably could have handled the moment a little better. Should he have? I admit I don’t know the answer to that. Or at the very least, I don’t know how I would have reacted if my wife and I were caught up in that same moment. Would any of us have? It was an idiotic comment to make, and in a flurry of rage, Will was blind to reason and self-control and acted solely based off of his instincts. His reaction was a very human one. Could he have potentially waited during a commercial break and confronted Chris then without involving the entire theater and the television audience? Again, I don’t know. It’s a difficult situation to get caught up in, and unfortunately, neither party is really free from blame.

Regardless of whether you see Smith or Rock primarily at fault, it doesn’t change the fact that this situation colored the rest of the ceremony in an awkward and uncomfortable way. After that very intense altercation, I couldn’t focus on Questlove’s moving speech about advocating for Harlem with Summer Of Soul. I couldn’t really tune in to Will Smith’s acceptance speech when he won his Oscar. I couldn’t even really celebrate CODA’s Best Picture win. All I could think about through the rest of the ceremony was that damn slap. It kind of took away from the rest of the evening and sadly kind of ruined the ceremony for me. That really, really sucks.

We’ll see in the coming days if the Academy decides to discipline Smith in some way for his actions. Regardless, I hope they don’t decide to revoke his Oscar. He’s worked way too long and too hard to have this honor taken from him now just because of one altercation. I hope the Academy can see past that and Will and Chris can come to some understanding afterward regardless.

Best Actress: As predicted, Jessica Chastain won Best Actress for her performance in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye. I’m happy she has finally earned an Oscar, especially after a long and illustrious career with credits including The Help, The Tree Of Life, Zero Dark Thirty, and more. But considering this is the same category where both Jodie Comer and Lady Gaga were robbed for their performances in The Last Duel and House Of Gucci, I’m too pissed about this category to properly celebrate her win. I guess I’m just grateful Nicole Kidman didn’t win for her half-hearted performance as Lucille Ball in Being The Ricardos. Still, what slim pickings we have for Best Actress this year guys.

Best Supporting Actor: This is easily my favorite win and moment out of the whole night. After playing the role of a loving father and husband in the drama film CODA, real-life deaf actor Troy Kotsur won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. It was a touching moment before Troy even stepped onto the stage to accept his award, with Youn Yuh-jung not only signing his name to himself but with the crowd also showing the “clapping” sign to show their support for Troy. Him dedicating his success to his father and to those who empowered him throughout his career was sincerely heartfelt and deeply touching to listen to. I’m not crying, I swear.

Best Supporting Actress: In the first acting Oscar of the night, Ariana DeBose won for her performance as Anita in West Side Story. She joins an elite club of actors winning Oscars for the same role, including Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, and even Rita Moreno. Congratulations to Ariana for her much-deserved win. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

SOURCE: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Best Animated Feature: No surprise here either: Encanto won Best Animated Feature. Again, I would have preferred the Oscar go to The Mitchells v.s. The Machines, but in a year where Luca, Flee, and Raya And The Last Dragon were all nominated, this was a spectacular year where all of the nominees were deserving of the win. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: the real winner here is the Best Animated Feature category overall. Congratulations to all of these amazing nominated films and their achievements.

Best Documentary: In the midst of all of the awkward Will Smith and Chris Rock drama, Questlove won his much-deserved Oscar for his restoration and revival of the Harlem Cultural Festival in Summer Of Soul. His film was the most deserving winner, especially when Val wasn’t even nominated in the first place.

Best International Feature: Drive My Car won this year’s international feature Oscar, and props to Ryusuke Hamaguchi for not letting the orchestra play him off stage. If the Academy can give Will Smith 10 minutes for his acceptance speech after clocking Chris square in the mouth, they can give Ryusuke Hamaguchi two minutes to thank his cast and crew.

Best Original Screenplay: I’m a little flabbergasted that Kenneth Branaugh’s Belfast won Best Original Screenplay over Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, especially when his body of work has been more consistent and creative than Branaugh’s. Still, Belfast is some of his most genuine work yet, and I hope he writes more screenplays like it in the future. Congratulations to him and his upset win.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Just like how it stole The Power Of The Dog’s chances at winning Best Picture, so too did CODA seal its fate by winning the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. I’m still stunned that Sian Heder wasn’t nominated for Best Director, but at least she didn’t go home empty-handed and won an Oscar for her writing. Other Best Picture-winning directors aren’t so lucky (see Driving Miss Daisy, Gladiator, Chicago, etc.).

Best Cinematography: The first of many awards to not be televised live, Greig Fraser won for his stunning and captivating work on the science-fiction epic Dune. It’s criminal to imagine that we couldn’t see him accept his award live. If you want to support more of his work, check out The Batman in theaters. You’ll see more of Greig Fraser’s mesmerizing technique on display and you’ll get to see a hauntingly great superhero flick at the same time.

Best Film Editing: Joe Walker followed up Dune’s next technical feat by winning Best Film Editing. With credits that include Shame, 12 Years A Slave, Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049, it’s hard to imagine it taking so long for him to win his first Oscar. But clearly his patience paid off for him. I can’t wait to see his work on Dune 2.

Best Makeup And Hairstyling: The Eyes Of Tammy Faye won best makeup. Is anybody legitimately surprised? Let’s just be grateful Coming 2 America didn’t win instead.

Best Production Design: Dune once again wins for its brilliant realization of Arrakis and its many warring factions. At this point in the ceremony, I’m losing my mind a little bit that Dune has won half of its technical awards and has yet to get a full spotlight moment during the main telecast. I’m grateful they weren’t outright cut from the ceremony, but I really can’t understate how stupid it was to edit these awards down from the main telecast. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Best Costume Design: It was split down the middle on this one between Cruella and Dune, and I’m glad I went with the popular vote on this one, because Cruella barely snagged it from Dune. Personally, I felt Dune had a stronger showcase of its outfits and costumes, but if Cruella were to shine in any category, costume design was its best chance to do so. At least Cruella’s outfits weren’t made out of puppies… yet.

Best Musical Score: While he couldn’t be there in person to accept his award, Hans Zimmer won his second Oscar for his hypnotizing score on Dune. His work on that film displays the very best of his talents. He couldn’t have won for a better score: not even Inception or The Dark Knight trilogy.

Best Original Song: It was a close call between Billie Eilish’s “No Time To Die” and Encanto’s “Dos Oruguitas”: and “No Time To Die” clinched it, in no small part thanks to Billie Eilish’s breathtaking performance. I’m just grateful that Billie Eilish can now cement herself among the all-time definitive James Bond singles. Imagine how maddening it would have been if Billie Eilish lost while Sam Smith won for their dry, drab, melodramatic single “The Writing’s On The Wall.” Thank God that didn’t happen and Billie Eilish can now call herself an Oscar winner. She more than deserves it.

On another note, Lin Manuel-Miranda had to unfortunately skip out on the Oscar ceremony due to an untimely positive COVID test from his wife. Pray for them as COVID hits a little closer to home for their family this week.

Best Sound: Dune again, obviously. This is the fifth Oscar the star-studded saga has won and the fifth one to get edited down from the ceremony. At this point, the eight category snubs are gradually becoming the Dune snubs and it’s royally pissing me off.

Best Visual Effects: FINALLY. After snubbing the picture all blasted night, Dune FINALLY got its moment to shine by winning in the Best Visual Effects category. It’s incredibly frustrating that it takes SIX Oscar wins to get TWO MINUTES of recognition for its hard-working artists and animators, but better late than never I guess.

With that, we come to the dreaded short categories. As with any other year, I’ve gotten most of these wrong save for Best Live-Action short for The Long Goodbye, which I didn’t realize until the ceremony that it was actually produced by Sound Of Metal actor Riz Ahmed, which now makes him an official Oscar winner. Good for him. I thought I’d have to wait much longer to see him win an Oscar, and here he is a year later proving me wrong just like that. Man, do I love it when a pleasant surprise comes my way.

With that, my final tally for this year’s Academy Awards is 17, which is a slight improvement over last year’s ceremony. Where will the Oscars go from here? Hopefully back to a regular telecast with all of the award categories included this time, and ideally with less slapping involved.

– David Dunn

Tagged Academy Awards, Coda, Dune, Oscars, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye

Mar 21 2022

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Awards Coverage, The Scope

2022 Oscar Predictions

Is it just me, or are the Oscars feeling much less relevant than they used to be? I’m not talking about them being out-of-touch or frustrating. Good golly, if we had to stop the presses every year the Oscars got something wrong, they wouldn’t be running long enough to produce a single envelope. I’m talking about the Oscars themselves feeling like they don’t matter anymore. In the past, the Oscars felt like a monumental event, almost as epic and cinematic in scope as the movies themselves they were honoring. Nowadays, they feel arbitrary, complacent — even unimportant. No longer the pinnacle celebration of the movies like they once were, now… just another awards show. Is this what the Oscars have become? Is this what they are destined to be?

Every year, the Oscars have made one dumb decision after another that has confounded and confused audiences at the same time. This year, those dumb decisions come in two regarding what to cut and what to include in the telecast. For the first time in Oscar history, eight categories will not be announced live and will instead be pre-taped an hour ahead of the telecast, including film editing, makeup, original score, production design, sound, and the short categories.

I understand cutting the short categories: they’re lesser known than their feature-length competitors are and don’t have a widespread audience outside of Academy voters, so recognizing them through other avenues like the governor’s awards makes more sense. But what’s the excuse behind cutting the five technical awards? You’re shelving recognizing these pretty important artistic elements… just to save time? Are you kidding me?

And it would be one thing to scrap these technical awards if it meant dedicating that time to something more worthwhile, like either a larger presentation for the other awards or the In Memoriam segment. But nooooooo, instead, those awards are getting scrapped for more musical numbers, cringey comedy segments, and two new superlative awards: the Fan-Favorite Oscar and the Cheer Moment Oscar, which is basically the equivalent of the failed “Popular Film” category the Oscars have tried to introduce for several years now.

Which, by introducing these new categories, the Oscars create a new problem by trying to solve an old one. The issue viewers like myself have had with previous ceremonies is NOT the fact that there wasn’t a “Popular Film” category: it was that you didn’t include the most popular or most notable films of the year in the Best Picture lineup. You do not need to create a whole other category for movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars, Skyfall, or The Dark Knight trilogy. You JUST need to include them in consideration for larger awards like Best Picture. THAT IS IT. We are not asking for separate recognition. We are asking for equal recognition alongside the rest of the under-the-radar movies that are considered some of the best pictures of the year: because they ARE. This new move solves nothing and instead just creates more issues for the Academy Awards. Because you know, that’s something we need more of.

But like with any other Oscar ceremony, the biggest issues are not just with how they choose to present these awards on the small screen — it’s also with the individual winners they choose. Let’s hop into my predictions for the 94th Academy Awards and the biggest problems I have with this upcoming ceremony:

Best Picture: At this point, it’s pretty much a given that The Power Of The Dog will win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Not only has it been nominated the most out of the past five ceremonies with 12 nominations total, but it has also won nearly every Best Picture award this season from the Golden Globes to the BAFTAs. It’s rare that a film sweeps the entire awards season before losing the Best Picture Oscar at the 11th hour. In fact, the last time that happened was in 2019 when 1917 lost Best Picture to Parasite, and that instance was very much the exception and not the norm. I don’t expect that to happen again this year as The Power Of The Dog will inevitably win the highest honor of the night, just like it has been for the past two months.

Now, does it deserve to win Best Picture? Absolutely freaking not, and it’s very rare that I speak so definitively on a Best Picture nominee. With most other Oscar ceremonies, I usually try to see the Best Picture winner from the Academy’s angle and try to understand the value they see with a particular film. Even in ceremonies where I’ve blatantly disagreed with the Academy, I can at least appreciate certain aspects of the eventual winner. For instance, I find The Shape Of Water to be a beautiful and heartfelt tribute to forbidden love even if it is equally strange and bizarre in the same sentence. Green Book was your basic, by-the-books, feel-good anti-racist movie that succeeded in making its point, even if other movies made that same point better like with BlacKkKlansman and Black Panther. Even Nomadland, which I still profess is a bland and uneventful film, at least possessed some beauty between its sweeping score, cinematography, and subject matter.

The point is, I can find redeeming qualities in each of the Best Picture winners from the past few years if I try hard enough. I can’t find any such redeeming qualities in The Power Of The Dog, a film that is so comatose, boring, and painfully lifeless that to keep it on life support for this long can be considered cruelty. I make no exaggeration when I say I hate this movie and how little it rewards you for suffering through its two-hour runtime. I quite literally would prefer any other nominee win Best Picture over The Power Of The Dog. That includes Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, West Side Story, and Being The Ricardos, a movie that isn’t even nominated for Best Picture but deserves it more than The Power Of The Dog does anyway.

But none of my animosity changes the fact that The Power Of The Dog is most poised to win Best Picture regardless. I’m praying that I’m wrong and some other more deserving film sweeps it under the rug. But until that actually happens, my skepticism has the better of me.

Best Director: Jane Campion won the Director’s Guild Award for The Power of the Dog, which inevitably means she will also win the Oscar for best film direction. Again, I quite literally would prefer any other nominee win in this category over her, including Steven Spielberg for West Side Story. But the DGAs have nevertheless spoken, which by extension means the Academy has also spoken. I’m still livid that Denis Villeneuve was not nominated for his captivating and stunning realization of Frank Herbert’s vision in Dune regardless. That snub alone speaks more to how out-of-touch the Academy Awards have become than Jane Campion’s eventual Best Director win ever will.

Best Actor: I’m split for Best Actor, perhaps more than any other category, because two of my most favorite performances of the year are in the running here: Will Smith for King Richard and Andrew Garfield for Tick, Tick… BOOM! They both have so much going for them. First of all, both of them have been nominated for best acting Oscars before, with Will Smith being nominated for Ali and The Pursuit Of Happyness and Andrew Garfield being nominated for Hacksaw Ridge. Second of all, both of them are playing real-life figures, with Smith playing Venus and Serena Williams’ father Richard and Garfield playing Rent musical legend Jonathan Larson.

But on a much more simple level, both really deserve the Oscar because their performances are just that dang good. Smith brings a vulnerability, a deep-rooted love, passion, and father’s heart to Richard Williams dying to see his little girls succeed, while Garfield plays the aspiring musician eager for more yet feeling like time is running out for him. This is a tough, tough race this year, but I’m going with the math on this one. Will Smith has so far won the Golden Globe, the Screen Actor, and the NAACP Image Award for his performance as King Richard. That makes him the safest bet to win Best Actor, and that’s the one I’m going with.

Your day will come soon, Andrew. In the meantime, be grateful that it literally took a Hollywood titan like Will Smith to stop you from winning Best Actor. It’s a privilege to lose to the best, and you definitely have that situation here with Will Smith and Andrew Garfield for this year’s Best Actor race.

Best Actress: On the other hand, Best Actress this year is a complete and utter crapshoot. Kristen Stewart, who was once considered a leading contender for her portrayal of Princess Diana in Spencer, has now faded into the background as she failed to earn both a Golden Globe and a Screen Actor nomination. Penelope Cruz doesn’t fare much better considering her nomination for Parallel Mothers was a shock in and of itself. And don’t even get me started on Nicole Kidman being nominated as Lucille Ball for Being The Ricardos. She shouldn’t even be nominated in this category, let alone potentially win.

That leaves Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter and Jessica Chastain for The Eyes Of Tammy Faye. I haven’t seen either film, so my prediction in this category is intrinsically worthless either way. I’m going with Jessica Chastain simply because Colman has already won an Oscar for The Favourite while Chastain hasn’t won yet despite being nominated twice before. I’m still frustrated that Lady Gaga and Jody Comer were snubbed in this category regardless for their stellar performances in House of Gucci and The Last Duel. Both of them not being included here automatically makes this category less credible in my eye. Next.

Best Supporting Actor: Out of all of the races this awards season, few have been as interesting to watch take shape as Best Supporting Actor. First Kodi Smit-McPhee won Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes for his role as a soft-spoken son with a darker side to him in The Power Of The Dog. Then real-life deaf actor Troy Kotsur won the Screen Actor for playing a loving father and husband in the family drama CODA. Which of these actors will take home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor? My money is on Troy Kotsur for CODA. Authenticity usually gives you a competitive edge in the acting categories. In the case of Troy Kotsur, not only was he one of the most charismatic and heartfelt additions to CODA, but he’s also been a lifelong advocate for the deaf community throughout his 30-year acting career. Kodi Smit-McPhee might pull off a surprise upset win, but God, I don’t want him to. Give Troy Kotsur his Oscar, Academy. He deserves his moment to shine.

Best Supporting Actress: The one thing that seems to be universal about Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story is that people LOVE Ariana DeBose as Anita. She deserves the affection, because not only did she take an iconic role that was once inhabited by Rita Moreno, but she somehow managed to bring her own life and passion to it and made it her own. She was a clear standout in the movie, and she definitely deserves all of the acclaim she has been getting for reviving this beloved character for a new age on the big screen.

Would it be a little redundant to give two different actresses an Oscar for the same role twice? Sure, but Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix both won Oscars for playing the Joker, so I’m not mad if Ariana wins an Oscar for the same role that made Rita Moreno an Academy Award winner as well. Go for Ariana DeBose on Best Supporting Actress, she’s a lock in this category.

Best Animated Feature: First of all, what a packed category this year. With any other given ceremony, the Oscar for Best Animated Feature is usually pretty straightforward to predict with one obvious standout clearing out the rest of the nominee pool (Toy Story 3, Frozen, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, etc.). That isn’t the case this year with an incredible lineup of nominees including Encanto, Flee, Luca, Raya and the Last Dragon, and The Mitchells V.S. The Machines. For all intents and purposes, any one of these amazing films could win Best Animated Feature on Oscar night, and all of them are equally deserving. I can’t really say that about any other year for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, and that alone is an achievement worth celebrating this year.

That being said, I think Encanto is going to end up winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature this year. Not only is the animation beautiful, the characters lovable, and the music catchy and clever, but it is arguably the most popular and most talked-about film out of all of the animated nominees. That’s never a bad thing going into the Oscar race, especially when Disney and Pixar are involved.

While I personally would love to see either The Mitchells V.S. The Machines or Luca take home the Oscar this year, Encanto is not a bad pick by any means and arguably deserves the Oscar even more than other winners from the past few years. We’ll see what happens on awards night, but regardless of which film wins, the Best Animated Film category is the biggest winner at this year’s Oscars.

Best Documentary Feature: Looking past the Academy’s disrespectful snub of Val, there is one clear standout in the Best Documentary category this year, and that is Summer Of Soul. Beautifully restored in vivid picture and sound quality, Questlove brilliantly brings the Harlem Cultural Festival experience to the big screen in a way that no other film can. Were Val nominated this year, I would have been more split in this category. But since Summer Of Soul is the only true contender, that makes my choice for Best Documentary easy.

Best International Feature: Drive My Car. Not only is it also nominated in the Best Picture category, but its director Ryusuke Hamaguchi also received two other nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. No other international feature nominee can say the same, so Drive My Car is a lock for this win.

Best Original Screenplay: More than any other nominee in the Best Original Screenplay category, the one thing you can say about Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is how original it is. From its dreamy, euphoric sense of 70s nostalgia to its off-brand and awkward style of comedy, Licorice Pizza is quintessentially Paul Thomas Anderson and he succeeded in making it his own. Whether you like it or not is another thing entirely. Still, I find how personal and profound it is to be endearing in its own way. Kenneth Branaugh’s Belfast might pull an upset win, but considering it hasn’t won much since its original Best Screenplay win at the Golden Globes, I have to go with Licorice Pizza on this one.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Power Of The Dog is probably going to win Best Adapted Screenplay as well, because why not? Sure, it wasn’t nominated at the WGAs this year. But then again, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm won adapted screenplay last year while The Father won at the Oscars, so maybe the WGAs mean diddly-squat nowadays. Either way, I’ll be actively rooting for any other nominee to win in this category besides The Power Of The Dog. Denis Villeneuve deserves to win for Dune solely because he was snubbed in the Best Director category anyway.

Best Cinematography: The first of many sweeps to come on Oscar night, Dune is the favorite to win Best Cinematography and easily deserves to win the most out of all of the nominees. Sure, Best Cinematography is a stacked category this year with Dan Laustsen, Bruno Delbonnel, and Janusz Kaminski offering stiff competition for their work on Nightmare Alley, The Tragedy Of Macbeth, and West Side Story respectively. But Greig Fraser made too good of use of his gorgeous, massive sceneries and masterfully immersed you in the death, destruction, and desolation of Arrakis. No other film this year came even close to reaching the visual achievement that Dune did, and Greig Fraser had a big hand in that and deserves the Oscar for it. If for some obscene reason Ari Wegner snabs Best Cinematography from him for The Power Of The Dog, I will lose my mind.

Best Film Editing: Dune again by a very, very, very long mile. While I questioned for a second if The Power Of The Dog bias would blind Academy Award voters to make the wrong choice, I think Dune is going to come out on top for a few reasons. For one thing, it has racked up the most best film editing honors so far this awards season (including Best Edited Feature Film from the American Cinema Editors). For another, Joe Walker has amazingly enough not won a Best Editing Oscar yet despite being nominated twice for 12 Years A Slave and Arrival. Tenure usually gives you a competitive edge at the Oscars, so it’s best to root for Joe Walker and Dune for Best Film Editing.

Best Makeup And Hairstyling: First of all, why on God’s green Earth is Coming 2 America nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling? The only film whose makeup looked sillier than that film was Norbit in 2007. What is it with Eddie Murphy and his movies constantly being nominated for best makeup year after year? Is he for some reason considered Meryl Streep in the makeup category? Is there a specific clause in his films that his producers need to pour a crapton of campaign dollars into the Oscars to score a makeup nomination? WHY IS COMING 2 AMERICA NOMINATED FOR BEST MAKEUP? WHY? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?!?!

Moving past that obscene and ridiculous nomination, the one film whose makeup job truly impressed me this year was The Eyes Of Tammy Faye. With Cruella, Dune, and House Of Gucci, you can still clearly identify each actor and tell them apart despite the makeup they’re wearing (including even Jared Leto’s turn as Paolo Gucci). But in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, I couldn’t even tell that Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield were even in the film. Honest to God, when I saw Tammy Faye first appear on screen, I thought Bryce Dallas Howard was playing her, not Jessica Chastain. That type of makeup job is transformational, and that usually earns its makeup artists the Oscar.

Best Production Design: From its massive sets and sceneries to the intricate detailing on the ornithopters and carryalls, Dune builds an ingenious and imaginative world through its masterful production and set design. If we’re picking the leader in this category, Dune wins by a huge, huge margin, even alongside fellow competitors Nightmare Alley and West Side Story.

Could either one of those titles pick up an upset win in production design? It’s possible but unlikely, especially when you consider how much world-building Dune really did in that film. When it comes to production design, creating a world as immersive and immaculate as Arrakis usually brings home the gold (see Avatar’s Best Production win in 2010, Mad Max: Fury Road’s win in 2016, Black Panther’s win in 2019). I think Dune’s stunning production design will yield the same result for the science-fiction film on Oscar night.

Best Costume Design: It comes down to Cruella and Dune for this year’s Best Costume Design race. Considering fashion is one of the key elements behind Disney’s live-action remake/prequel to 101 Dalmatians, it’s no surprise that Cruella’s incredible and exotic outfits make it one of the biggest contenders for best costume design this year. Then again though, Dune’s wardrobe is arguably just as masterful with all of the variety and culture between all of the different outfits that the film’s many factions wore. It’s a tough one, but I have to go with Cruella solely because the costume design is literally baked into the film’s plot. Don’t be surprised if Dune ends up stealing this one too though.

Best Musical Score: I know Hans Zimmer previously won an Oscar for The Lion King in 1994, but few of his scores are as captivating and imaginative as Dune’s exotic chants and drum beats are. It’s been five months now since I’ve seen the film, and its haunting and beautiful melodies are still stuck in my mind. That makes Dune the frontrunner for the Best Original Score Oscar. I don’t see any other nominees winning this award, and frankly, none of them deserve it over Hans Zimmer anyway.

Best Original Song: First of all, props to all of the incredibly competitive nominees in this year’s Best Original Song category. With most other Oscar ceremonies, there is usually a clear frontrunner that takes home the Oscar gold. That isn’t the case this year, with this year’s nominees including Billie Eilish, Van Morrison, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Diane Warren, and freaking Beyonce. When BEYONCE is nominated for an Oscar and she’s considered the underdog, you know you have a competitive category in your hands. It honestly makes picking a winner so, so difficult, and the fact that Best Original Song is so unpredictable this year is honestly the best compliment I can give to all of its nominees.

That being said, we still need to predict a winner, and this year’s race comes down to Billie Eilish for “No Time To Die” and Lin-Manuel Miranda for Encanto’s “Dos Orugitas.” While I love the eerie, haunting, and tragic piano notes of Billie Eilish’s monumental James Bond overture, “Dos Orugitas” is a beautiful and heartbreaking melody about love, loss, growth, and moving on. I mean, have you even read the translated lyrics? The song alone is wonderful to listen to, but it’s the deeper meaning behind it that really shatters your heart while slowly mending it back together piece by piece.

I dunno. Either one has a really good shot at winning on Oscar night, but I’m going with my gut on this one and predicting that Lin-Manuel Miranda wins for Encanto. Feel free to flip a coin if you’re having a hard time choosing one or the other.

Best Sound: Dune, 100%, no questions asked. I know No Time To Die and West Side Story put up solid efforts, but there is no other film this year that carries the unique sounds and ambiances that Dune does. Even if this award was split into best sound editing and mixing, I would still advocate for Dune in both categories. That makes it a solid lock in my book, especially when it comes to the Best Sound Oscar.

Post-script: What the crap is The Power Of The Dog doing being nominated here? What did its impressive sound work entail? Benedict Cumberbatch playing the banjo?

Best Visual Effects: As visually spectacular as Shang-Chi and Spider-Man: No Way Home is, Marvel has not won a Best Visual Effects Oscar since 2004 for Spider-Man 2. It’s unreasonable to think that’ll suddenly change now, especially with the snubs of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame from the Oscars’ most recent ceremonies.

Now Dune, on the other hand, has delivered a visual epic and odyssey unmatched by any other sci-fi blockbuster in the past few years, including even Avengers: Endgame. It may be considered sacrilegious by the comic book community to say that better visual effects exist outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s okay to say that in Dune’s case because it happens to be true. From the endless desert seas of Arrakis to the massive sandworms that burrow beneath them, every single frame of Dune immerses you in this dry, desolate, and desperate landscape that nobody can escape from. You never feel like you’re merely watching it: you always feel like you’re experiencing it.

Not only do I believe that Dune has a real shot at winning the visual effects Oscar — I even believe it deserves to win over the other nominees, including Shang-Chi and Spider-Man. If it doesn’t win, well then the Academy has truly lost all of its marbles. Luckily, I don’t think that’s happened to them… yet.

And as always, I’m completely clueless when it comes to the short categories since I’ve never watched any of the nominees. This year, I’m predicting Boxballet for Best Animated Short, When We Were Bullies for Best Documentary Short, and The Long Goodbye for Best Live-Action Short. Don’t ask my metrics for why I picked those. I literally just like their titles.

Do I even bother predicting the Oscars’ Fan-Favorite and Cheer Moment categories? Both of those “awards” are painfully bad efforts at connecting with mainstream movie audiences, and they both backfired in really awkward ways. When Camilla Cabello’s Cinderella has the potential to win an Academy Award, that category has officially lost any and all credibility whatsoever.

Regardless, I guess they are both still technically award categories anyway. So I’m going to predict Spider-Man: No Way Home wins the Fan-Favorite Award while Avengers: Endgame wins the Best Cheer Moment. They bloody well better win them too, especially since neither of them had a fair shot at winning an Oscar in their respective categories anyway.

Okay, I’m done with my predictions folks. I’ll see you on Oscar night… or maybe not. It is, after all, a school night.

– David Dunn

Tagged Academy Awards, Dune, Encanto, Oscars, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, The Power Of The Dog

Oct 12 2020

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Awards Coverage, The Scope

Top 10 Oscar Snubs Of The Decade

For every great moment that happens at the Academy Awards, there are 15 terrible moments that follow them. That’s why when Argo won Best Picture in 2013, Ben Affleck was still snubbed a Best Director nomination. That’s why when Moonlight won Best Picture in 2017, it was robbed of its Oscar-winning moment when La La Land was accidentally announced the winner. And while Spotlight, The Revenant, and Mad Max: Fury Road were all racking up Oscars left and right in 2016, black talent was still missing from all four of the best acting categories regardless. There were several awful moments the Academy Awards have brought us over the past several years. Here are 10 of the worst that happened this decade.

Tagged Academy Awards, Argo, Captain America: Civil War, Creed, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, Inception, It, Rush, The Lego Movie, Uncut Gems, Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Aug 19 2020

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Awards Coverage, The Scope

Top 10 Oscar Wins Of The Decade

There aren’t many good moments to pick from Academy Awards history. Whether it’s Seth McFarlane hosting the ceremony or Faye Dunaway flubbing up the Best Picture winner, the Oscars are filled with one maddening, cringe-worthy moment after another. That’s part of why the good moments are so endearing and memorable, despite also being so far and few in between. With the 93rd Academy Awards postponed to April 2021 (potentially even further with how the rest of 2020 is going), now is a great time to reflect on the 2010s and go over the 10 best Oscar wins of the decade. Spoiler alert: I’m not wearing pants while I’m making the list.

Tagged Academy Awards, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Oscars

Jan 14 2020

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Awards Coverage, The Scope

Why So Snubby?

SOURCE: WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Another year, another Oscars ceremony without a host. This is a year of many firsts for the Academy Awards. For one thing, this is the first year in quite a while where they’ll be hosting the ceremony in early February as opposed to late February/early March, so they’ll essentially be airing it in back-to-back weekends between the DGA’s and the WGA’s. This is also the first consecutive year to conduct the ceremony hostless, a trend they’ll be keeping up from the previous year when Kevin Hart was dropped from the show. And perhaps most surprisingly, this is the first year where the film to get the most nominations is not a period piece or a biopic, but a comic-book film.

Yes, dear reader: the critically-lauded Joker received not one, not 10, but 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Since the Academy has an especially sordid history with snubbing one comic-book film after another (with the likes of The Dark Knight, The Avengers, Captain America: Civil War, Logan, and many more), I’m surprised they recognized Joker with so many nominations. Granted, none of them are undeserving. Joaquin Phoenix has certainly earned his Best Actor nomination, as did Todd Phillips for his Best Director nomination. Besides those nominations, Joker is also nominated for Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Cinematography, Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Costume Design, Sound Editing, and Mixing.

Following up Joker with 10 nominations is the Sam Mendes WWI drama 1917, the Martin Scorsese gangster epic The Irishman, and the hotshot Quentin Tarantino love letter to 60s cinema Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Again, none of these Best Picture nominees are surprising in the least. The Academy laps up Martin Scorsese just about as many times as they do Meryl Streep, and war pictures have a great track record with getting nominated by the Academy as well. Pay attention to 1917 and The Irishman in the technical categories especially. They stand a really good chance at snagging a few of those awards.

The biggest surprise out of those three films was how many nominations Once Upon A Time In Hollywood racked up. With 10 nominations, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is officially Tarantino’s most nominated film, right after Inglorious Basterds with eight nominations. Not that it wasn’t deserving. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt alike were both spitfires in the movie, and Tarantino was arguably at his best behind both the script and the director’s chair. But sweeping the technical nominations was especially unexpected. A few of them, such as cinematography and costume design, were a given. But sound editing, mixing, and production design? That came from left field out of nowhere.

Next up with six nominations apiece is the WWII satire film Jojo Rabbit, the coming-of-age drama Little Women, the heartbreaking divorce homily Marriage Story, and the eerie yet entertaining Parasite. Parasite is certain to have the newly-named International Feature Film award on lockdown, and director Bong Joon-Ho is an early favorite in the directing category as well. Little Women was a little unexpected for best leading and supporting actress, adapted screenplay, costume design and original score, but since no female directors are nominated for Best Director this year, it’s kind of necessary to give this much love to a female empowerment film. Marriage Story, meanwhile, swept in most of the acting categories, with Scarlett Johannson even being nominated twice for both Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit. Do any of these films stand a chance against the heavyweight titans of Joker, 1917, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and The Irishman? We can only wait until Oscar night to find out.

And the last, but certainly not least, Best Picture nominee is the racing drama Ford v Ferrari, which is also nominated in the sound and film editing categories. The most shocking thing about this nominee isn’t that it only has four nominations (against everything else, that’s more or less to be expected). What’s shocking is that Christian Bale, who gave a stellar performance as Ken Miles, isn’t nominated for Best Actor. And to be fair to the other nominees, I haven’t seen Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory or Jonathan Pryce in The Two Popes. But they don’t stand a snowballs chance against their peers, so you have to wonder why Bale wasn’t even being considered over them?

SOURCE: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Speaking of snubs, this year has no shortage of them just like with any other given year. The biggest snub Disney fans will notice is that Frozen 2 isn’t nominated for Best Animated Feature, although it is still nominated for Best Original Song with “Into The Unknown.” Jordan Peele’s thoughtful and observant horror film Us was given a resounding zero nominations, not even for Lupita Nyong’o for her hypnotizing dual performance as a petrified mother and her murderous doppelganger. Perhaps most shockingly, Uncut Gems was nominated for a big, fat “nothing” for this year’s ceremony, not even a Best Actor nomination for Adam Sandler’s mesmerizingly brazen performance. Thanks a lot, Academy. We’re going to get Grown Ups 3 now because of you.

But the most maddening has to be the absence of Rian Johnson’s masterful murder-mystery Knives Out, a movie that challenges us socially and politically as much as it does narratively and thematically. Knives Out was brilliant in just about every which way it could be, from the performances and the cinematography to the music and the editing. Even the bloody costumes and set designs were among the most colorful and stylish production jobs of the year. But nope, no nominations for those categories either. I get that five nominations limit what you can include in these categories and where. Still, I would have been fine to knock down a few nominations from Joker if it meant a few more nominations for Knives Out. At least Rian Johnson was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, so he can now call himself an Academy Award nominee at the very least.

Overall, this is a decent year for the Oscars. I’m glad to see comic-book movies like Joker get a little more love this time around, even if it is arguably a little too much love. Regardless, we have a lot to look forward to and many more surprises and snubs coming our way. Get ready, folks. At least there won’t be a host on February 9.

– David Dunn

Tagged 1917, 92nd Academy Awards, Academy Awards, Ford v Ferrari, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Oscars, Parasite, The Irishman

Feb 10 2019

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Awards Coverage, The Scope

2018 Oscar Predictions

I have a long and complicated love-hate relationship with the Academy Awards. Every year, they never cease to surprise, satisfy, disappoint, and frustrate me all at the same time. Remember last year when Roger Deakins finally won his first Best Cinematography Oscar for Blade Runner 2049 after being nominated a whopping 14 times? What about the year before that where there was the infamous Best Picture winner mix-up between Moonlight and La La Land? And don’t even get me started on the year when Sylvester Stallone lost Best Supporting Actor for Creed to Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies for simply putting on a more sour face than Stallone did.

Year in and year out, the Oscars issue their regular round of wins and snubs every time they host the Academy Awards, which I’m fine with. These are competitive awards, after all, and winners and losers are to be expected in every category. But at the very, very least, could you at least attempt not to snub the most deserving winner? I get being split in a category where Incredibles 2 and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse are nominated side-by-side, but then what’s the excuse for Bradley Cooper not even having a Best Director nomination for A Star Is Born? What, you needed to save room for a guy named Yorgos Lanthimos? Give me a break.

For this year’s Oscars, I’m expecting two things. One: that this will be the first Academy Awards to be conducted without an Oscar host in three decades. That’s thanks to Kevin Hart dropping out from the job in December after some homophobic tweets resurfaced from the comedian’s past. I get the outrage and the criticism that Hart rightfully deserved for his lewd and inappropriate comments, but did he have to drop out from hosting over it? For God’s sake, Seth MacFarlane hosted the Oscars in 2013. Who gets more offensive than that guy?

Two: A Star Is Born is going to lose in mostly every category, which is especially frustrating given how emotional and provocative that film was. Sean Penn echoed my thoughts exactly when he penned an essay to Deadline saying that A Star Is Born “brings people together without saccharine, sugar, or salesmanship.” I just like that he used the word “saccharine” correctly in a sentence. Can we just hand hosting duties over to him? Clearly, his head is in the right place.

What else am I expecting from this year’s ceremony? Let’s hop into my predictions for the 91st Academy Awards and find out.

Best Picture: Best Picture is usually the easiest category to predict ahead of the Oscars, mostly because the Academy’s tastes are generally geared towards biographies and historical pieces. But this year, the Academy seems to have gone in a completely different direction from its usual nominees. Black Panther, for instance, is the first superhero movie to have ever been nominated for Best Picture. A Star Is Born is also nominated, which is irregular because the last time the Academy nominated a reboot for Best Picture was with Mad Max: Fury Road in 2016. And Roma? Completely out of left field. The last time a Foreign-language film was nominated for Best Picture was in 2012 with Amour. In total, 10 Foreign-language films have been nominated for Best Picture throughout Oscar history, but none of them have ever won. Not once.

Normally, I would predict a movie like A Star Is Born would win Best Picture given its massive impact and popularity with audiences everywhere. But its competition is stacked very heavily against itself this year with the likes of The Favourite and Vice, and it isn’t expected to win a lot of other awards this year.

Then again though, Spotlight also won very few Oscars during the 88th Ceremony, yet it still walked away with the highly-coveted Best Picture award from the night. So who knows? Maybe this category has just become bonkers in general.

My next best guess would be Alfonso Cuaron’s passion project Roma, a heartfelt and sincere movie about a family’s relationship with the children’s home maiden. And yes, I understand that a Foreign-language film has never won Best Picture before in Oscar history. The same thing was also true for science-fiction movies until The Shape of Water won Best Picture last year. In times like these, it’s best to play unpredictable just like the Academy does. So to Roma with love, I say it will win.

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón won the DGA award for Roma, which means he will also win the Oscar for Best Director. This will be Cuaron’s second win for Best Director, his first being from the 2013 science-fiction thriller Gravity.

I prefer it go to Spike Lee for his phenomenal work on the brilliant satirical race drama BlacKkKlansman, but I understand it can be perceived as an inflammatory picture and it won’t sit well with some voting members. I just wish the Academy wouldn’t play it safe as often as they do. It’s outrageous enough that Lee’s 1989 film Do The Right Thing wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture or Director at the 62nd ceremony. To continue to disregard him after the fact is straight-up robbery.

Side note: Why on Earth is Pawel Pawlikowski nominated for Cold War? That selection is more random than Solo’s nomination in the visual effects category. More on that here in a bit.

Best Actor: The matchup here is between Christian Bale for Vice and Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody. Who will win it? The Vice President or the rock star? Dick Cheney or Freddie Mercury? The esteemed four-time nominated Oscar winner or the first-time freshman nominee? The race is very tight in this category, but I’m marginally placing my chips on Malek. His performance as Freddie Mercury was absolutely mesmerizing, and he essentially resurrected the iconic Queen singer for one last “We Will Rock You” on stage. The Oscar could really go to either actor on awards night, but for myself personally, I’m placing my bets on the underdog. I’d recommend flipping a coin if you’re having trouble deciding in this category.

Honorable mention goes to Bradley Cooper for his heart-stirring performance in A Star Is Born, which I find superior to both Bale and Malek’s performances but behind in the Oscars race. Six out of the past eight best acting winners were all for biographical movies, and since Cooper is playing an original character rather than imitating a real-life historical figure, that sadly puts him behind the pack in the race for Best Actor. That’s a real shame because Cooper was arguably the best part of A Star Is Born and his work deserves to be recognized. Maybe one day he’ll win the Oscar, but it’s not likely that it will be in 2019.

Best Actress: Glenn Close for The Wife. Not only has she been nominated six times before and has never won once, but her performance in The Wife has been widely acclaimed and is mostly considered to be the pioneering force behind the picture. Mind you I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t compare it to the likes of Lady Gaga’s performance in A Star Is Born or Yalitza Aparicio’s in Roma. However, in terms of both stature and seniority, Close is the safe choice. Place your bets on her for Oscar night.

Best Supporting Actor: The night’s first biggest snub comes in the Best Supporting Actor category, where Michael B. Jordan is unforgivably skipped over for his mesmerizing and intimidating presence as the Black Panther villain Killmonger. What happened to the Academy? Ever since they awarded Heath Ledger the Oscar as The Dark Knight’s Joker in 2008, they’ve suddenly gotten cold feet when it came to considering other supervillains for best acting awards. It isn’t like Michael B. Jordan is undeserving of the recognition. At the very least, I would hope you would consider him more over the likes of Adam Driver from BlacKkKlansman.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m still happy Black Panther got nominated in seven other categories. I just feel that Jordan’s nomination should have been its eighth.

Now then, predictions. Mahershala Ali won the Oscar two years ago for his role as a reluctant drug dealer in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. The momentum behind Green Book seems to be carrying him well through Awards season, as he’s already picked up both the Golden Globe and the Screen Actor. Sure, it’s possible that someone like Sam Elliott or Sam Rockwell could pick it up for A Star Is Born or Vice, but it isn’t very likely. For that reason, I would suggest going with Ali for Green Book.

Best Supporting Actress: Regina King for If Beale Street Could Talk. It’s possible that Amy Adams could pull an upset for playing Lynne Cheney in Vice, but it isn’t very probable considering how much King has dominated awards season so far. It’ll be exciting to see which way the Academy leans on Oscar night, but at the very least, let’s agree that it’s outrageous that Emily Blunt isn’t nominated alongside her Oscar-nominated kin for her skillful work in A Quiet Place.

Best Animated Feature: As much as the Academy has snubbed superhero fanfare in its ceremonies many years prior, the one category where the Academy has always been kinder to superhero movies is for Best Animated Feature. The Incredibles was among the first Pixar movies to win Best Animated Feature in the 2000’s, while Disney’s Big Hero 6 also marked itself as the first Marvel movie to win an Oscar in a best feature category.

Of course, this doesn’t make Incredibles 2 or Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse the automatic winners for this year’s ceremony. It does, however, give them a slight edge over its competition. The question now is which one will take home the gold? As a big Spider-Man fan, I love Into the Spider-Verse and have a preference towards its win. Incredibles 2, meanwhile, came to the theaters about 10 years too late, so I’m equally bittersweet and sour over its nomination as well. This could be my own bias speaking here, but I think Into the Spider-Verse has a real shot at winning the Best Animated Feature Oscar this year. If Spidey does pull off the win, it will be the Web-head’s second Oscar statuette right after his win for Best Visual Effects in Spider-Man 2: and it will be very well-deserved.

Best Documentary Feature: Since the only thing that Hollywood loves more than Ruth Bader Ginsberg is Meryl Streep, it would be foolish to think that any other nominee could possibly beat out RBG for Best Documentary. I’m still frustrated that the phenomenal Mister Rogers tribute Won’t You Be My Neighbor? wasn’t even nominated in this category. Mister Rogers was a good neighbor to you, Academy voters. And you repaid him by slamming the door in his face.

You disgust me.

Best Foreign-Language Feature: Roma. In every year that the Oscars has nominated a Foreign-language movie for Best Picture, that nominee has always gone on to win in the Best Foreign-Language film category. It would be lunacy to believe that precedent could possibly change now.

Best Original Screenplay: While Green Book won the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay and is technically in the lead for this race, I don’t think it will win, especially when you consider the fact that the Oscars and the Golden Globes haven’t matched up in the writing categories for the past few years. Instead, I’m predicting that The Favourite will win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. It’s nominated for 10 Oscars, after all. To think that it will walk away empty-handed on Oscar night is just blissful ignorance.

Best Adapted Screenplay: BlacKkKlansman. It’s a sodding shame in and of itself that this is the first year that Spike Lee has even received a Best Director nomination. To rob him of his win for Best Adapted Screenplay now would just be plain cruelty.

Best Film Editing: Normally I’d vote for the action movie when it comes to Best Film Editing, especially since the past three winners have all been for action movies (see Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, and Mad Max: Fury Road). This year, however, there is an issue with that approach: there isn’t an action movie nominated. I guess you could argue that BlacKkKlansman has action in it, but the film is more of a dramatic political thriller than it is a blockbuster. I wouldn’t stake my chips on it.

Now Hank Corwin, on the other hand, is a master at jump cuts and quick cutaways, and his technique is evident in both of his nominated films The Big Short and Vice. This category is a toss-up just like so many others this year, but if I had to select the most reliable choice, I would choose Vice. Don’t be surprised if I get this category wrong this year, however.

Best Cinematography: Roma. Alfonso Cuaron’s cinematography was masterful on this project, whether it was with the gorgeous and captivating wide shots of Mexican scenery, or the intimate and personal close-ups of a family’s small life in their home.

Matthew Libatique deserves an honorable mention for his affectionate work on Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born, but the win is more or less locked in this category. If Roma deserves to win any Oscar this night, it would be for cinematography.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Vice. Transforming Christian Bale from the skinny Welsh that he is into one of the most controversial political figures of our time was no small feat to accomplish. I didn’t even recognize Bale the first time I saw him on the big screen as Dick Cheney. That immersion is too impressive to ignore and should not go unnoticed by Academy voters (although to be fair, Bale gaining 40 pounds for the role didn’t hurt the makeup artists chances much either).

Best Costume Design: Normally the period piece would be the shoo-in for this category, which in this case would make The Favourite the, uh, favorite to win. However, the Academy has recently backpedaled from period pieces at their ceremonies. Mad Max: Fury Road surprised everybody and won Best Costume Design in 2016, while the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them won the year after. I didn’t think it was possible, but it seems the Academy is getting period piece fatigue. No category is more evident in this than it is in costume design.

With that context in mind, Black Panther seems to at the most significant advantage to winning Best Costume Design this year. It’s true that Sandy Powell is nominated twice here for The Favourite and Mary Poppins Returns. However, she was also nominated twice in 2016 and still lost to Jenny Beavan for Mad Max. Meanwhile, Ruth Carter incorporated African and Japanese cultures into her outfits for Black Panther, giving them a blended feeling of both tribalism and capability.

If Carter does win, not only will she be the first African-American to win Best Costume Design at the Oscars – she will also be the first African-American nominee. Either way, she has made significant strides in this year’s ceremony.

Best Production Design: Black Panther. If anything else wins, then Thanos didn’t wipe out enough of the universe in Infinity War.

Best Original Song: As much as I love Kendrick Lamar’s lead single “All the Stars” from Black Panther, it is neither the strongest nominated song or the most relevant to the picture it’s nominated for. A Star Is Born’s “Shallow,” on the other hand, is both a powerhouse country ballad and an incredibly emotional tribute to the relationship of the film’s two stars. Lady Gaga was wrongfully snubbed several years ago when her sexual assault anthem “Til It Happens To You” lost to the mopey James Bond single “Writing’s On The Wall.” Her win for “Shallow” this year will be well-deserved and will make up for that indescribable snub.

Best Musical Score: This is one of the more robust categories to predict this year because unlike previous years where the apparent winner stood out from the rest of the crowd, most of these nominees just kind of blend together. My favorite of those nominated is Ludwig Goransson for his tribalistic, Conga-like vibe for Black Panther, but I’m not foolish enough to believe he can win. After all, he’s only the second composer to be nominated for a superhero movie in over 40 years. The first to be nominated was John Williams for his iconic Superman theme in 1978, and even then he lost to Giorgio Moroder for Midnight Express. If John Williams couldn’t win the Oscar for a superhero movie, what do you think Ludwig Goransson’s chances are? Zilch.

Then there’s Alexandre Desplat for Isle of Dogs and Marc Shaiman for Mary Poppins Returns. Desplat and Shaiman have been nominated for a combined 17 times, and Desplat has already won twice for The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape of Water. I don’t think either of these veterans is going to win the Oscar this year.

That whittles it down to Terence Blanchard for BlacKkKlansman and Nicholas Britell for If Beale Street Could Talk. This is Blanchard’s first nomination despite his career being as long as Spike Lee’s filmography, while this is Britell’s second nomination after scoring the 2016 Best Picture winner Moonlight. This race is essentially a toss-up, but my money is on If Beale Street Could Talk. It’s sweet, soft violin melodies capture both the beauty and the tragedy of the story it’s telling. If it’s nothing else, its musical score is tender and sentimental. Moving melodies like it are sure to swoon Academy voters’ hearts.

Best Sound Editing: Ideally, the number of Oscars that First Man wins would be zero. Unfortunately, for however boring and placid the rest of the movie is, its sound editing is admittedly very well done and immerses you into Neil Armstrong’s plight more than anything else in the movie does. While I would prefer this award go to the mesmerizing and ingenious A Quiet Place, I think First Man is more poised to win Best Sound Editing. At least they got the sound effects right in the movie.

Best Sound Mixing: A Star Is Born. There’s no educated reason why I think it will win over the other nominees. I just love the movie.

Best Visual Effects: First thing’s first – why the blast is Solo: A Star Wars Story nominated here? That movie looked uglier than a squashed Ewok between Chewbacca’s armpits. I’ve made it no secret that I detest that movie with every fiber of my being, but the sheer fact that it got nominated over the likes of Aquaman, Mary Poppins Returns or Deadpool 2 is just baffling to me. Apparently if you’re a Star Wars movie, you’re in the clear for a visual effects nominations at the Oscars – even if you’re a BAD Star Wars movie.

Moving on to the real contenders. For several years now, Marvel has been continuously snubbed by the Academy over and over again in the visual effects category. The Avengers losing to Life of Pi in 2013. Doctor Strange losing to The Jungle Book in 2017. Don’t even get me started on the fact that Captain America: Civil War wasn’t even nominated altogether.

Time and time again, Marvel has been robbed of the visual effects recognition that they’ve so clearly deserved in the many years before. 2019 will be its year of recompense. Avengers: Infinity War is arguably the most visually dynamic of any MCU movie produced so far. From the luscious scenery to the brilliant rendering of Thanos’ gargantuan body, every attention is paid to detail with love and affection. I may be setting myself up for disappointment here, but I believe Infinity War has a real shot at winning the VFX Oscar this year – especially when its competition is Neil Armstrong, a video game, and a silly old bear from the Hundred Acre Wood. Fingers crossed on this one.

And as always, we now move on to the detestable short categories – the nominees which almost nobody has seen, but are regardless expected to predict anyway. I already saw Bao in theater when I went to go see Incredibles 2, so I’m picking that one for Best Animated Short solely out of familiarity. I have no idea what I’m doing for the other two categories, however, so I’m just going to throw out my decision based on the two most interesting titles: Period. End of Sentence. for Best Documentary Short and Skin for Best Live Action Short. Good luck to everyone else predicting these categories, along with everything else on Oscar night.

– David Dunn

Tagged A Star Is Born, Academy Awards, Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book, Oscars, Roma, The Favourite, Vice

Feb 19 2018

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Awards Coverage, The Scope

2017 Oscar Predictions

The more I cover the Oscars, the more frustrating they become to me.

Oh, don’t get me wrong: I’ve always disliked the Oscars, long before I even started this website in 2013. That’s because they have consistently snubbed the most obvious winners ceremony by ceremony, almost for as long as the Oscars themselves have existed. Perfect example: how is it that Alfred Hitchock, the iconic director behind classics such as Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds, has gone through his ENTIRE 50-year career and never won a single Oscar? Meanwhile, Edith Head has won eight Academy Awards. Who? My point exactly.

You would think that by this point, the Academy would wisen up and make more educated decisions in their awards and nominations. But no, if anything, they’ve gotten worse. 2016 famously had that #OscarsSoWhite controversy, where they embarrassingly snubbed the cinematic epics Beasts of No Nation, Creed, and Straight Outta Compton in their acting and picture categories. They had that clumsy envelope mishap last year during its best picture announcement for Moonlight. Not to mention that it has snubbed masterpieces such as Rush, The Dark Knight Rises, Catching Fire, Captain America: Civil War, and Patriot’s Day in all of its categories from the past several years. I completely understand these movies not getting nominated for best picture or director. But seriously, not even costume design?

This year, their snubbing is arguably at their worst yet. For one thing, they’re still refusing to fill all 10 of their best picture slots, capping it off at nine nominees. Why do they keep doing this? There’s no reason to be that disinterested in a potential 10th nominee. Either go all in with your slots, or wuss out and go back to five nominees so we can all go to bed sooner. Opening a potential tenth spot just to leave it empty is like flipping the middle finger to the fans behind Blade Runner 2049, The Big Sick, Logan, War for the Planet of the Apes, Baby Driver, and so, so many others. It’s disgraceful to the film community and it’s disrespectful to the passionate fans behind it. You might as well fill a Transformers movie in the tenth slot since you’re basically eliciting the same disgusted reaction from your viewers anyway.

But nevermind the empty 10th slot. This night is about the movies that are getting recognized: the so-called “best of the year.” It would be great if anybody has seen them. Call Me By Your Name, a coming-of-age romantic Italian drama, grossed the lowest of any best picture nominee at $25 million. The other coming-of-age drama Lady Bird performed better at $48 million, but it still pales in comparison to Dunkirk’s $500 million box office numbers. Phantom Thread didn’t even break its budget price, bringing in a measly $27 million against its production costs of $35 million. Why, then, is it nominated for six Academy Awards? Because Daniel Day Lewis is in it, I guess. Although oddly enough, that excuse didn’t work for Academy favorite Meryl Streep this time around, since her film The Post is only nominated for two awards this year. Is her time in the spotlight finally up? We can only hope so.

Regardless of my annoyances with the Academy’s nomination process, these are the movies we have to pick from, and the winners aren’t going to predict themselves. Let’s hop right into this year’s Oscar predictions.

SOURCE: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Best Picture: Predicting this category has become a crapshoot wheel of fortune for the Oscars. Half of the best picture winners from the past decade haven’t even won best director, and the rest of them have arrived to their best picture win through very strange methods. Argo won best picture in 2013 despite Ben Affleck not even being nominated for best director. 12 Years A Slave won best picture in 2014 despite Gravity sweeping the rest of the night. Spotlight won best picture in 2016 despite winning only one other award from the night for best original screenplay. And don’t even get me started on last year’s best picture mixup fiasco between La La Land and Moonlight.

The selection process for these best picture winners have become completely lopsided and unpredictable. Perhaps that’s why I’m struggling so much in my prediction for best picture this year. In previous years, best picture was usually the first category I checked off in my predictions. This year, it was my last. It’s seriously become that uncertain.

The best picture race this year has boiled down to two pictures: The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Most people believe that The Shape of Water is going to snag it, mostly because of its sweeping in the Producer’s and Director’s Guild Awards. I’m not convinced. For one thing, a science-fiction film has never won best picture in Oscar history. Not once. Not 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. Not Star Wars in 1977. Not E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial in 1982. Not Apollo 13 in 1995. Not Avatar in 2009. Not Inception in 2012. Not Gravity in 2013. You want to talk about Oscars bias? Nominate a science-fiction film for best picture. It almost immediately dashes all hopes of a best picture win.

That being said, the genre that the Academy is consistently in favor of are dramas. Every single best picture winner from this decade has been a drama film, from The Hurt Locker all the way to Moonlight. This works in favor of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri because it is based in a realistic setting as opposed to The Shape of Water’s fantastical one.

I have no idea who is going to win best picture this year on Oscar night. The confusion from previous ceremonies has completely dashed my confidence in predicting this category. But if we’re basing our decision solely on trends repeated throughout Oscar history, then Three Billboards is the safest choice. I will be fuming if The Shape of Water becomes the first science-fiction film to win best picture over Star Wars.

Best Director: Guillero Del Toro won the DGA award, which means he’ll also win the best directing Oscar for The Shape of Water. I’d prefer it go to first-time writer-director Jordan Peele, whose horror-satire film Get Out was a clever and ingenious look at race culture and how neo-liberalism negatively impacts minority communities. However, Del Toro did deserve an Oscar years ago for Pan’s Labirynth and was wrongfully snubbed against Germany’s The Lives of Others. I guess this year will give him the recompense that he’s so desperately deserved this entire time.

Best Actor: No contest, Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour. Not only does it take a lot of talent and dedication to portray a historical figure as significant as Winston Churchill, but Oldman is another actor that the Academy has disregarded time and time again for the past several years. He didn’t even get his first nomination until 2011 for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. His win for Darkest Hour will make up for all the years the Academy has snubbed him.

Best Actress: While Sally Hawkins’ performance was the best thing to come out of Guillero Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, I highly doubt the Oscar will go to her, especially since a best acting award hasn’t gone to a non-speaking role since Jean Dujardin for the silent film The Artist in 2011. Since this is the case, I’m going to go with my runner-up option with Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Her strained performance as an grieving mother devastated by the loss of her daughter was beautifully poignant and tragic, not to mention that sassy spunk she threw around at anyone in her general direction. Her character was one of the most memorable figures to come out of cinema this past year. I will be infuriated if the Oscar is awarded to anyone else besides McDormand or Hawkins.

Best Supporting Actor: Forgiving the fact that Bill Skarsgard was unforgivably snubbed for his performance as the creepy titular monster in Stephen King’s It, we have a toss-up in this category between Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Williem Dafoe for The Florida Project. I’m going with Rockwell for Three Billboards. His performance as a spoiled, self-centered police officer who doesn’t deserve a badge or a gun was both wildly entertaining and intimidating. You couldn’t really predict what he was going to do next, whether he was jamming to his earbuds in the police station or throwing an advertising manager out of a two-story building. His wildcard of a character won me over, and I would be seriously surprised if the Academy decided to skip over him.

Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney for I, Tonya. Not only does she look disturbingly immaculate compared next to Tonya Harding’s real-life mother LaVona Golden, but her genuinely tense and unfiltered presence fueled Tonya Harding’s drive throughout the picture. Boy, am I grateful that she’s not my mother.

SOURCE: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Best Animated Feature: While Loving Vincent was a beautiful love letter to Vincent Van Gogh and features over 65,000 frames of oil paintings on canvas, it’s very hard to see this film beating out Pixar’s Coco, especially when you consider how much today’s social climate is stacked against Mexican immigrants. I have to go with Coco for its representation and wonderful tribute to Mexican culture.

Best Documentary Feature: I was surprised to find that Jane and Step weren’t nominated for best documentary this year despite their outstanding performance during their theater run. But nevermind, I haven’t seen any of the nominees this year for best documentary anyway (shocking, I know!)

My first prediction for this category would have been Last Men In Aleppo. Not because I know whether the movie is any good or not, but only because it reminded me of Gary Johnson’s embarrassing “Aleppo” moment in 2016. Political blunders aren’t enough to hand out Oscars, however, but they are enough to hand out Raspberry Awards. With any luck, Johnson might soon be able to put “Razzie Award-Winner” on his resume.

My best guess is that Faces Places will win best documentary. The reason why is because the premise is that its filmmakers JR and Agnes Varda travel around France creating portraits of the people that they come across. I haven’t heard of a premise so heavily engrossed into its filmmakers since Banky’s Exit Through The Gift Shop in 2011. So for the sake of its immersion and first-person perspective, I’m going with Faces Places.

Best Foreign-Language Feature: I’ve heard nothing but good things about The Square, and early on in awards season it looked like it might sweep at the Oscars. But nah, if we’re predicting the winner solely based on relevance, I’m going with A Fantastic Woman. A film about a transgender woman mourning over the death of her husband while being alienated by his family could not be more pertinent in today’s hateful and divisive society. A Fantastic Woman? Indeed.

Best Original Screenplay: Another category with some fantastic frontrunners that’s hard to choose from. The Big Sick was a poignant and darkly humorous observation on the fragility of human life and how fleeting moments of happiness and love really are. Get Out was a creative and captivating horror-comedy on the impacts of white supremacy against minority communities. And Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a tragic dramedy that profoundly elaborated on rape culture, police brutality, racism, and homophobia fantastically wrapped into one immediately moving package. All of these nominees are worthy contenders in this category. The question is who will be the winner?

A lot of eyes are on Get Out since Jordan Peele recently won the WGA award for best original screenplay. However, the WGA’s are not the most consistent when it comes to predicting this Oscar category, especially with last year’s mixup when Manchester By The Sea won against WGA winner Moonlight for best original screenplay, which in turn won against WGA winner Arrival for best adapted screenplay. How can Moonlight be nominated for both original and adapted screenplay, you ask? Great question. I wish I could give you an answer that made any sense.

Since this category is seriously confused to begin with, I’m going with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as the winner for best original screenplay. It covers just as much ground as Get Out does, except it does it in a much more realistic, practical setting as opposed to the horrific confines of a white supremacist family’s mansion. No, I’m not saying the satirical tone works against Get Out’s favor. I’m saying Three Billboards is more believable than Get Out is, although that doesn’t make either of them any less important. I wouldn’t be surprised or upset if Peele ended up taking home the Oscar for Get Out, but my money is on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. God help me if The Shape of Water ends up being the winner.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Let’s get one thing straight here: Logan deserves to be the winner of this category, hands down. Taking the superhero genre and flipping it on its head into a somber dystopian tragedy, Logan is one of those films that shows our iconic blockbuster heroes as older, crippled versions of their former selves, reflecting on their broken identities as they use the last of their days to give Logan’s daughter a chance at life. By every definition, it is one of the best films of the year and definitely one of the best superhero dramas of all time.

It deserves to win the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. It absolutely will not win it.

First of all, while it’s tonally different from the rest of the genre, it’s still technically classified as a superhero movie. That’s works against itself at the Oscars, because the only genre that the Academy is more biased against besides superhero movies are horror movies. A superhero film has never been nominated for best picture at the Oscars. Not once. Not Spider-Man 2 in 2004. Not The Dark Knight in 2007. Not even Wonder Woman or Logan this year.

The Academy just does not like to recognize superhero movies, plain and simple. That bias is exactly why Logan will not win best adapted screenplay at the Oscars. A sham, but not surprising with the Academy Awards involved.

However, there is one genre that the Academy loves to lap up, and that is LGBT dramas. The Imitation Game won best adapted screenplay in 2015, while the fantastic Moonlight also won best adapted screenplay last year. I haven’t seen Call Me By Your Name, but given the Academy’s recent track record with LGBT representation, I think it’s a safe bet for this year’s Oscar ceremony. Call Call Me By Your Name the winner for best adapted screenplay.

SOURCE: Warner Bros. Pictures

Best Film Editing: I’ll give Lee Smith this much credit: when we’re in the heat of battle in Dunkirk, the action flows effortlessly, and Smith does a great job cutting from shot-to-shot, giving us multiple perspectives at once while at the same time making the action fluid and coherent. The problem as I’ve outlined in my review is that the rest of the film’s assemblage is chaotic, nonlinear, and incomprehensible, jump-cutting from multiple different passages of time at once and overlapping their events one on top of the other. I don’t blame Smith for this as much as I do Christopher Nolan however, as this confusion was the creative decision he made through writing his screenplay. Fun fact: Nolan originally considered not writing a screenplay at all for Dunkirk. Appropriate, since he rightfully isn’t nominated for best original screenplay this year either.

Anyhow, back to editing. The rightful winners in this category are Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos for Baby Driver, as the way they timed their editing and Baby’s driving to the tunes of 1970 hits was clever, skillful, and captivating all at once. First-time nominees are less likely to win in this category, however, and this is both Machliss and Amos’ first Oscar nominations.

Smith, however, has been nominated twice before in previous ceremonies, once for Master and Commander: Far Side of the World in 2003 and once for The Dark Knight in 2008. Couple that with the fact that action films are a genre favorite in this category (Hacksaw Ridge won this award last year, and Mad Max: Fury Road won the year before that), and you have this year’s best film editing winner in Dunkirk.

Best Cinematography: Before Leonardo DiCaprio, cinematographer Roger Deakins was the most snubbed nominee at every single Oscar ceremony. He should have won with his first nomination in 1994 for The Shawshank Redemption, but he lost to John Toll for Legends of the Fall. He was nominated in 2007 for No Country for Old Men, but lost to Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood. And he was nominated again in 2012 for the James Bond film Skyfall, but lost to Claudio Miranda for Life of Pi. He’s been nominated 14 times now and has never won once.

Enough is enough. If Roger Deakins doesn’t win this year for Blade Runner 2049, I’m going to flip a lid. I suspect I wouldn’t be the only one.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The first time I saw a still of Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, I thought he had purposefully put on a lot of weight for the role. Turns out he just had a lot of prosthetic makeup on, and good gravy did it have me fooled. While Victoria & Abdul and Wonder also had some great makeup work, neither of them convinced me that their actors were entirely different people. So that settles it for me: Darkest Hour will take home the Oscar for best makeup and hairstyling. I’m still bitter that It wasn’t even nominated in this category, however.

Best Costume Design: It would be pretty pathetic if a film about a dressmaker didn’t win best costume design at the Oscars, now wouldn’t it? I loved the costumes in Victoria & Abdul, and the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake struck out in its visual design as well. But if Phantom Thread was going to win any award at the Oscars this year, it would be for costume design. So that’s the one I’m going with.

Note: Wonder Woman is missing in this category. I just needed to point that out.

Best Production Design: This is actually one of the tougher categories to predict this year, because the truth is I love all of the nominees here. Beauty and the Beast looked gorgeous in the design of its magnificent castle and its inanimate inhabitants, while Blade Runner 2049 magnificently recreated the bleak, dystopian future that we first got exposed to in the original Blade Runner 30 years ago. Both Dunkirk and Darkest Hour accurately depicted the WWII era, with Dunkirk going as far as to use real 1940’s British planes and seaboats for the film.

Nothing, however, visually encapsulated me like the colorful 1960’s designs of The Shape of Water’s city streets, the dark, opaque laboratories, or the dimly lit movie theater resting below Elise’s apartment. I’m split in this category because all of the nominees are equally outstanding, but if I picked the one that I recognized the most while watching, it’s not even a contest. The Shape of Water wins.

Note: Again, Wonder Woman is missing in this category.

SOURCE: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Best Musical Score: Alexandre Desplat won his first Oscar in 2014 for scoring The Grand Budapest Hotel, a quirky and loveable picture whose music perfectly matched the introverted tone that it was going for. This year he’s nominated again for scoring Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, and his music beautifully captured the intrigue and mystery behind this underwater sea creature discovering his feelings for another mortal. His music is completely encapsulating every time you listen to it. For that reason, I have to go with The Shape of Water.

Another Note: Do I really have to spell it out for you at this point? WONDER WOMAN.

Best Original Song: If you didn’t cry during that moment in Coco where Miguel sang “Remember Me” to his Great-Great-Grand-Mama, I’m convinced you have no soul. It was a beautiful, simple song, one that pays respect to the Mexican-American culture and to remembering our heritage. I suspect there will be a lot of outrage if anything but “Remember Me” wins best original song, so I’m going to play it safe and go with Coco.

Best Sound Editing: Dunkirk, hands down. The first ear-screeching “BANG” that echoes in the theater hummed in my ears as if I had just dodged a bullet, and the rest of the film pays as much attention to the haunting sounds and noises of the battlefield. I remember very few films that were as masterful in their sound work as Dunkirk was, so I must advocate for its win in this category.

Best Sound Mixing: Dunkirk again. The way Christopher Nolan uses different sound effects in building up tension and unease in a scene is truly masterful, and the sound engineers did a fantastic work at incorporating all of the sounds together in the film. I do love Baby Driver for how it incorporates classic songs into its high-octane action and stunts, but if we take that film out as a possible upset win, the clear frontrunner is Dunkirk.

Best Visual Effects: Viewers were frustrated in 2015 when Christopher Nolan’s space exploration film Interstellar won the best visual effects Oscar over Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. This year will give them the recompense that they need. While Blade Runner 2049 and Star Wars: The Last Jedi sported some of the most visually spectacular moments of the year, nothing surpasses the visual effects team’s efforts behind the digital recreation of primate animals and their behavior in War for the Planet of the Apes. I can potentially see one of the other nominees possibly taking home this award in an upset win, but when I really think about it, no one else could be more deserving. War for the Planet of the Apes will win best visual effects.

On a side note, who on Earth thought it was a good idea to nominate Kong: Skull Island for this award? Did nobody see Wonder Woman? Beauty and the Beast? Thor: Ragnarok? Spider-Man: Homecoming? Alien: Covenant? Wolf Warrior 2? Boss Baby?

And finally we come to the forever-dreaded short categories, the nominees which nobody has seen, but for some reason are always expected to predict anyway. I’m just going to rattle off my answers and shove them out of the way. Dear Basketball, Heroin(E), and The Silent Child.

That’s all for me, folks. See you on awards night where I will no doubt be shaking my fist at Wonder Woman’s absence.

– David Dunn

Tagged 90th Academy Awards, Academy Awards, Call Me By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Jimmy Kimmel, Lady Bird, Oscars, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

Feb 16 2017

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Awards Coverage, The Scope

2016 Oscar Predictions

I’m preparing to rename the 2016 Academy Awards “The La La Land Awards.”

Seriously, ever since it broke award records at the Golden Globes back in January, the amount of traction La La Land has received has been absolutely ridiculous. Almost immediately, everyone started predicting that La La Land would sweep awards season, from the BAFTAs all the way to the Academy Awards. That train kept going and going and going, and like the Energizer Bunny, it never stopped.

I know two things for certain at this point: Jackie Chan will win an honorary Oscar, and La La Land will sweep Oscar night. That’s it. I don’t know how many awards La La Land will win, or what awards the other best picture nominees will win, and I especially don’t know what will win in those blasted short categories. A lot of people are saying that there’s a strong chance that La La Land will win 11 Oscars, putting it in an exclusive club with Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Titanic, and Ben-Hur. With my current predictions, I have them winning 10 Oscars, but it can really go in any direction on Oscar night.

Either way, I’m expecting a full rundown of snubs and surprises this year, just as there are a few during every ceremony every year. Let’s go through my predictions and see where they’re expected to be:

Best Picture: No surprise here. La La Land is going to take home the highly coveted award for best picture. Last year, I went against my gut predicting that The Revenant would beat out Spotlight for best picture. While I was correct in predicting the other categories, Spotlight still managed to nab the top prize, despite only winning one other award from the night. I’m not going to make the same mistake again this year. La La Land it is.

Best Director: Damien Chazelle won the DGA, so more likely than not, that also means he’s going to win the Oscar. He wasn’t nominated in 2014 for his masterful work on Whiplash. Him winning for La La Land this year will make up for that snub years ago.

Best Actor: One of the first categories where the odds are split right down the middle for me. It’s down to Manchester By The Sea and Fences for this one. Casey Affleck won the golden globe. Denzel Washington won the screen actor. Who’s going to take it?

It’s a tough race, but I’m going with Denzel for a few reasons. First, the Screen Actors Guild is more accurate at predicting best acting Oscars than the Golden Globes are, even if it is by a fraction. Second, with most best actor wins, their performances usually break out emotively, expressing a wide range of emotions for voters to judge from. Great as Affleck’s performance was in Manchester By The Sea, it was also very muted and soft spoken, which works against him compared to Denzel’s confrontational, intimidating presence in Fences. This category really is a flip of the coin here, but I’m betting on Denzel.

Best Actress: Another pincher. Emma Stone for La La Land versus Isabelle Huppert for Elle. Who will win? Since Stone has La La Land by her side, I’m betting on her. Again though, this category can go either way.

Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali for Moonlight. Even though you could make a strong argument for Dev Patel in Lion or Michael Shannon in Nocturnal Animals, Ali has had the traction for a long time now and strong support from the acting community. If he didn’t get it now, it would be one of the biggest upsets of the year. Considering we already got one last year with Sylvester Stallone losing for Creed, I’m not looking for another upset anytime soon.

Best Supporting Actress: Can we all agree that Viola Davis was robbed in 2011 from her performance in The Help? Her portrayal as a confused yet courageous housemaid compelled the film forward in its narrative and made her one of the standout performances of the year. She deserved to be recognized alongside her acting colleagues including Jean Dujardin in The Artist, Christopher Plummer in Beginners, and Octavia Spencer in The Help as well. The award instead went to Meryl Streep for her performance in the dull, lifeless, mind-numbingly tedious The Iron Lady. Oh, don’t worry about it Academy voters! Give her all of the awards, why don’t ya?

In the place of that massive snub, Viola Davis will win her first Oscar this year for portraying the supportive, strong-willed, yet heartbroken Rose Maxson in Fences. The fact that she will be recognized for her hard work is encouraging. The fact that she will get it at the cost of Naomie Harris’ performance in Moonlight is not. Different performances, yes. Powerful performances, yes. But when it all comes down to it, it’s a matter of opinion, not quality, as to which performance deserves the Oscar more. I felt Harris’ was superior, but I have a feeling I’m going to be in the minority on that one. It’s a shame Harris and Davis had to go against each other in the same year. They’re both outstanding talent.

Best Animated Feature: Zootopia. Even though Disney’s other animated nominee Moana is more deserving, there’s no denying the popularity and the influence that people share for Zootopia. Cute and cuddly zoo animals beat The Rock going on a deep sea adventure.

Best Documentary Feature: O.J. Simpson has been getting a lot of attention this year. The TV drama based on his notorious murder case, “The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”, broke critical and commercial barriers and won the Golden Globe for best television miniseries. His documentary O.J.: Made In America also swept critics’ top ten lists, both for best of the year and for documentaries. I can’t see another film winning this year, so I’m going with O.J.: Made In America.

Best Foreign-Languge Feature: I have a good feeling about Toni Erdmann. While The Salesman has also been getting a lot of traction and buzz for the Oscar, Asghar Farhadi already won the foreign-language Oscar in 2012 for A Separation. Repeated wins are unusual in this category, so I’m betting on Toni Erdmann in its place.

Best Original Screenplay: The great thing about La La Land is how many layers it has to peel away, not just as a fun and snappy musical and comedy, but also as a complex drama, a heartfelt romance, and a journey towards pursuing your dreams. The script is one of the greatest things about La La Land, but it isn’t the best thing. No, the best things from the film are its brilliant score and standout performances from Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. The script supplements their talent. It doesn’t provide it.

Since this is the case, I’m going against the grain here and guess that Kenneth Lonergan will win best original screenplay for Manchester By The Sea. That’s a movie that has less to work with than La La Land does, and yet, it ends up doing so much more. It’s a heartbreaking tragedy, a family drama, a dark comedy, and a tale of mending open wounds that achieves everything that it set out to do. For its ambition, bravery, and intimacy in handling the delicate topic of death and how we react to it, I’m going with Manchester.

Best Adapted Screenplay: It’s hard to imagine any other nominee winning this year besides Moonlight. That’s because with it, Barry Jenkins broke barriers in racial, economic, and homosexual communities, and it allowed viewers to understand its characters because of their experiences, not because of what they looked like. Arrival was equally genius in its structure and Fences was faithful to its source material. But I’m going with Moonlight, if for no other reason than it deserves it the most.

Best Film Editing: I’m going to start this by saying that literally everyone in this category deserves the award over Tom Cross for La La Land. Everyone. Joe Walker’s smart sequencing of events built up the intrigue and the mystery surrounding Arrival. John Gilbert’s assemblage of chaotic, bloody firefights in Hacksaw Ridge made all of the madness clear and readable. And Moonlight was especially outstanding in its editing, in how it gradually built up Chiron’s childhood and how it carried over into his adult years. All of these nominees are most deserving for the Oscar for best film editing. None of them will get it.

Instead, Tom Cross will win best film editing for work on La La Land. Why? Because he won the ACE award for best editing, which is more often than not accurate in predicting the Oscar winner. So Cross it is.

If this goes down as I predict, this will be the win that frustrates me the most on Oscar night. Don’t get me wrong, Cross is an exemplary editor. But the editing is not the thread that holds La La Land together. It is the music, the acting, the story, the cinematography, the art direction. Every element in the film fits and works with each other in the way that it needs to. Cross just had to assemble it all together. I realize that in itself is a time-consuming job, but it required no innovation on his part, no deep attention to detail. Just an observation on the characters and the scenery and arranging clips into the right order.

If you think I’m overreacting, look at his work on Whiplash, which won him his first editing Oscar in 2014. Now compare that to La La Land. You will see for yourself how much more difficult and impressive it was to edit that action together compared to the lighthearted ambiance of La La Land.

Moving on.

Best Cinematography: The best cinematographer in this category easily goes to Bradford Young, whose skillful, deliberate shots built up the suspense and the eerieness of Arrival. But by this point in the night, La La Land will already be on a roll, and I don’t expect Arrival to derail the train anytime soon. Linus Sandgren will win best cinematography for La La Land. Celebrate by singing a song and two-stepping to it.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: This is a difficult category to pick this year, because unlike previous years, there’s no clear standout among the nominees. A Man Called Ove is so under the radar that it’s barely gotten any attention, so you can already cross that right off the list. And everyone hates Suicide Squad, so I don’t expect a win there either. Since I’m out of options, I’ll begrudgingly guess Star Trek Beyond will win the Oscar, even though it’s only repeating the work that it did the first time it won in 2009.

Best Costume Design: While Jackie and Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them both demonstrated some outstanding outfits, it’s hard to imagine La La Land working without the great costume work by Mary Zophres. From Ryan Gosling’s suave jazz suits to Emma Stone’s elegant dresses, her costumes made every scene come alive with the music. For that reason, I’m going with La La Land.

Best Production Design: First thing’s first: Passengers, get your butt out of here. Doctor Strange deserved to be in your place. Second: with a pack of outstanding nominees including Arrival, Fantastic Beasts, and Hail, Caesar!, it’s hard to pick the most worthy out of these nominees. However, none of these films throw you back to the classic Hollywood musical days where sets were filled with bright lights, vibrant colors and beautiful designs. I’m going with La La Land since it does exactly that.

Best Musical Score: La La Land. It will be a national outrage if anything else wins.

Best Original Song: This award is obviously going to go to La La Land. The question is for which song? La La Land is nominated twice here, once for “City of Stars” and another for “The Fools Who Dream.” Considering that I’m still humming “City of Stars” weeks after seeing the film, I’m placing my bet on that one.

Side note: Twenty One Pilots should have been nominated here for their phenomenally dark and ethereal work on “Heathens.” Suicide Squad got straight up robbed on that one.

Best Sound Editing: How many action films have won for best sound editing? Too many, that’s how many. From the past six years, six action films have won the Oscar in this category. Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty tied in 2012. American Sniper won in 2014. And Mad Max: Fury Road also won last year. At this point, I would be foolish not to go for the action-packed war epic like all of the Academy voters. So I’m going with Hacksaw Ridge. Deepwater Horizon also has a good chance of nabbing it too.

Best Sound Mixing: La La Land. It’s hard to time music to action on-screen, especially when that action includes tap-dancing and motion choreography. La La Land did exceptionally well not only with its music, but with making it relevant in every scene. So La La Land it is.

Best Visual Effects: The most visually impressive out of the nominees here is easily Doctor Strange, whose shape-shifting, mind-bending visuals bend and break reality barriers like you wouldn’t believe. Visual effects are supposed to be transportive in their art, and I haven’t visually seen a film like Doctor Strange since Avatar or Inception.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to get it. Why? Because a Marvel property hasn’t won a best VFX Oscar since over a decade ago with Spider-Man 2. If Iron Man, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and X-Men: Days of Future Past couldn’t nab it, then it’s highly unlikely Doctor Strange will now, no matter how good the visual effects may be. The fact that Captain America: Civil War isn’t even nominated in this category should tell you everything about the Academy voter’s opinions of superhero movies.

Since that is the case, I’m going with my runner-up option, which is Jon Favreau’s live-action remake of The Jungle Book. His team expertly combined practical effects with CGI, and the body movements of the animals were so accurately depicted that it’s hard to tell that they’re not real animals. If The Jungle Book had any achievement, it was in its visual effects, so that’s the one I’m going with.

And now we come to the infuriating short categories. I never know what to put any year, considering I’m never able to see any of the nominees. The following are just blind guesses: Piper for animated short, Joe’s Violin for documentary short, and Silent Nights for live action short. Watch me get all of them wrong this year. Just wait.

That concludes my predictions for this year’s La La— oops, I meant Oscar ceremony. I’ll see you guys on awards night, preferably without any singing.

– David Dunn

Tagged Academy Awards, Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Manchester By The Sea, Moonlight, Oscars

Feb 17 2016

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The Scope

Leo’s Pursuit For The Oscar Is Now A Video Game and It’s Perfect

That’s it. My life is perfect. I can now die a happy man.

For those of you that don’t know, Leonardo DiCaprio has spanned a long and successful career, with many arguing that he’s been long overdue an Oscar since being nominated for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? in 1993. This year, all of the buzz is on his side for his pivotal performance as Hugh Glass in the survivalist drama The Revenant.

In the case that he doesn’t get it again, however, at least we can say we got a hilarious video game out of him getting nominated.

The game is called Leo’s Red Carpet Rampage, and it features everyone’s favorite Oscar nominee racing for the statue against his fellow nominees, including The Martian’s Matt Damon, Steve Jobs’ Michael Fassbender, Trumbo’s Bryan Cranston, and The Danish Girl’s Eddie Redmayne. The game features Leo going up against hordes of paparazzi, flashing camera lights, acceptance speeches, overacting, and Lady Gaga. Oh, and there’s hilarious mini-games in between all of the mayhem, including “Qualude Overdose” featuring the infamous scene from Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street, and “Find The Black Nominee” which is pretty self-explanatory.

Hint: You’re never going to win the second one.

The game was created by video game developers The Line, and can be played at redcarpetrampage.com. Feel free to click and try it out. I know I’ll be playing it until Oscar night.

Click here to play.

– David Dunn

Tagged Academy Awards, Bryan Cranston, Eddie Redmayne, Lady Gaga, Leo's Red Carpet Rampage, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Michael Fassbender, Oscars, Steve Jobs, The Danish Girl, The Line, The Martian, The Revenant, Trumbo

DAVID DUNN

Film Critic. Analyst. Devotee.

Tag Archives: Academy Awards

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Leo’s Pursuit For The Oscar Is Now A Video Game and It’s Perfect

Click here to play.