It’s that time of year again – a time in which a year in the cinematic world is punctuated with high fashion, high intrigue, pronunciation gaffes, Steve Harvey-esque blunders, and internet-breaking selfies. If you can’t tell yet, I’m talking about the Oscars. The nominees have been out for months now, and I’ve seen a fair few of this year’s major contenders, and so I decided to put together a rare non-Tuesday post giving a basic preview of what you might expect from watching, mostly using that as an excuse to provide some (perhaps woefully misguided) predictions:
Allison Janney will win the Best Supporting Actress trophy for her role in I, Tonya. I admittedly haven’t seen Mudbound or Phantom Thread (for which Mary J. Blige and Lesley Manville are nominated, respectively), but nonetheless I’m fairly confident about this prediction, as Janney has already won the BAFTA Award and the Golden Globe, beating out each of her Oscar competitors in each one of those with her turn as LaVona Golden. See my full review of I, Tonya, in which I laud Janney’s performance specifically, here.
I’m thinking about pursuing this sense of style myself. Thoughts?
Daniel Day-Lewis will score the Best Actor trophy. I’ve only seen Daniel Kaluuya‘s performance in Get Out as far as the nominees for this category are concerned, but knowing what most of us do about Daniel Day-Lewis, it’s hard to bet against him. Not nearly as confident about this prediction, as I could also see Gary Oldman grabbing the Oscar for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (he’s more or less swept 2017’s awards cycle so far, so my predicting that he won’t win the Oscar bit of a hot take), but I think it would be fitting for Day-Lewis to nab his third statue for Best Actor with his supposed swan song.
DDL looking very confident about this year’s awards.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri will take the remaining two acting categories. Poor Richard Jenkins. He deserves better than being completely overshadowed by Sam Rockwell‘s once-in-a-career performance as racist sheriff’s deputy Jason Dixon, but I’m pretty sure that’s what’ll happen, as – like Janney – he’s already more or less swept this category in a number of other awards (BAFTA, Golden Globes, SAG, and many more). As for Best Actress, it’s the same story with Frances McDormand, who plays a small-town mother seeking justice for her late daughter. I didn’t write a review for Three Billboards, but I did see it, and it would be a huge shock to me if either McDormand or Rockwell lost.
Sam Rockwell and Frances McDormand arguing about who’s better at acting.
The Shape of Water will win Best Directing, along with a number of production-centric awards. While I may have been slightly underwhelmed by The Shape of Water, it’s doubtlessly a technical and artistic achievement that deserves the awards I’m sure it will score this coming Sunday. Specifically, keep an eye on Best Production Design, Film Editing, Sound Editing/Mixing, and possibly even Best Original Score, although I wasn’t a huge fan and am pretty much perpetually rooting for John Williams.
Did someone says Oscars?
Get Out‘s sole award will be for Best Original Screenplay. While it’s also nominated for Best Directing, Best Actor, and Best Picture, I’m not sure I see it winning any of those, staring down Del Toro, Day-Lewis, and a number of other fantastic films/filmmakers in those categories, but it’s got a really good shot to win this award based on its strong and timely story and premise. I’d also root for the very funny dark horse The Big Sick in this category, and actively root against The Shape of Water, as it’s really a story that hardly feels all that original.
I get uneasy just looking at this picture.
Garden Party will win the award for Best Animated Short. This is one of only three categories for which I’ve seen all the nominees (I’ve also seen all of the nominees for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing), so it should in theory be one of the stronger predictions I make. If it were up to me, I’d pick Negative Space myself, as it was far more emotionally evocative, but Garden Party was the most visually impressive of the 5 entries, so I’d have to put my money on it. Sorry, Kobe.
One of the many visually stunning shots from Garden Party.
You’ll hear Blade Runner 2049 called at least once. Of all of the movies I’ve mentioned so far, the movie I’ve left out that’s contending in the most categories is Blade Runner 2049, which is nominated in five categories (Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Production Design), so this is really just playing the odds – while it has some stiff competition in all of those fields, probability suggests that it’ll win at least one statue. I haven’t seen it, but my money is probably on Best Cinematography.
Spooky.
The winner for Best Picture will be … sheesh, who the heck knows. The five movies I’ve seen on this list (of the nine) have all been really great in their own unique ways, and while I feel bad copping out on this the most important of the predictions, it’s really hard to choose. Gun to my head, my money would be on either Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, or Three Billboards, though I could also see The Shape of Water winning. To me, The Post, Get Out, and Dunkirk are long shots, with the remaining two – Phantom Thread and Darkest Hour – falling somewhere in the middle.
Timothee Chalamet scored a Best Actor nomination and starred in two Best Picture nominees in 2017 – I’d call that a good year, but there’s also a lot of crossover between Best Picture noms this year: Bradley Whitford, Lucas Hedges, Nick Searcy, Kathryn Newton, Tracy Letts, and Caleb Landry Jones have all appeared in two of the nominees, and Michael Stuhlbarg is just the sixth actor of all time to star in three nominees from the same year.
Should be an entertaining show! Tune in to The Academy Awards on Sunday, March 4th, at 8PM EST to see how many of these predictions I got right, and how many I got hopelessly, hopelessly wrong. Hey, I’m not a fortune teller.
If you want to know more about some of my thoughts on those of this year’s contenders that I’ve reviewed, check out my previous posts on The Shape of Water, Lady Bird, and I, Tonya.
Tuesdays with Cory 