2017 Oscar Predictions
Welcome to Snob Super Bowl 2017!! On Sunday, the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will give out 24 little gold bald men.
Some will be deserving, others won’t be. But all of them are fun to spend way
too much time predicting and analyzing, only to find out we were all clueless. Last
year my predictions beat every expert, but this year will be tricky, both
because I’ve gone against the grain more than I usually do, and because a
chaotic political climate could hurt the prospects of the looming juggernaut
that is La La Land. Remember, when
AMPAS voted on the nominees, Obama was still POTUS. We knew Trump was coming,
and knew it would be a disaster, but now we know that it’s actually even worse.
Will that affect anything? Read on to find out.
As always, all incorrect predictions are fake news.
Best Picture
Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw
Ridge
Hell
or High Water
Hidden
Figures
La
La Land
Lion
Manchester
by the Sea
Moonlight
If you’re betting actual money on the Oscars, you should
absolutely bet on La La Land to win
Best Picture. It’s by far the safest pick. Now that we’ve gotten that out of
the way, please allow me to spend several paragraphs explaining why I actually
think Moonlight will pull off the
upset.
First, we need to go over the voting rules for Best Picture,
because they’re different than any other category, and they’re important. Voters
rank the Best Picture nominees in order of preference, and the goal is for the
winner to get over 50% of the first-place votes. If that doesn’t happen
initially (which it probably won’t), then the nominee that gets the fewest
first-place votes is thrown out, and the second-place votes on those ballots
become first-place votes. If still nothing has 50%, then the process repeats—the
8th place film gets booted out, and those second-place votes get
reallocated, and so on. And eventually something will have at least 3,350
first-place votes.
Now, awards analysts will often say that getting the most
second place votes is extremely important, but that’s actually not true.
Getting the most second place votes doesn’t matter; what matters is getting the
most second place votes on the ballots
that get eliminated first. So here’s the real key: figure out what films
are likely to get the least amount of first-place votes, and then try to figure
out what the people who thought those were the best films of the year might
plausibly think are the second best films of the year.
So okay, let’s start getting really hypothetical and try to
game this out. Let’s say the films with the lowest amount of first-place votes
are probably Fences, Hell or High Water, and Hidden Figures, which seem reasonable
since those are the three nominees with the lowest amount of total nominations.
Now try and get in the heads of the people that think those are the best films
of the year. What might they think is second best? All three films are
character-driven dramas about social justice. Two are indies. Two are about
African-Americans. For all three films, it seems far more likely that their
voters would gravitate more toward Moonlight
being higher on their ballots than they would La La Land.
So that’s the mathematical reason I think Moonlight will win. Now here’s the
political one: In three of the last five years, the Best Picture Oscar has gone
to a film that is about Hollywood or the entertainment industry (The Artist, Argo, and Birdman). After
two years of #OscarsSoWhite, and with a truly incredible “black” film on the
ballot (which is, by the way, the most critically revered film of the year), I
think a large swath of the Academy will feel truly embarrassed if La La Land wins over Moonlight. A La La Land win could further the narrative that “Hollywood doesn’t get
it,” which the Academy really doesn’t want. And that brings us to the Trump
factor; if ever there were a time people might feel galvanized to recognize a
movie about a gay black protagonist growing up in the ghetto, it’s 2017.
Yes, La La Land tied
the all-time nominations record with 14, while Moonlight *only* got eight, but that doesn’t matter as much as it
seems like it would. Last year, Spotlight
only received six nominations while Mad
Max: Fury Road and The Revenant got
10 and 12, respectively, but Spotlight won
Best Picture. With both the math and the politics in its favor, not to mention
merit, Moonlight will do the same. Or so I think.
Best Director
Damien Chazelle, La La
Land
Mel Gibson, Hacksaw
Ridge
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester
by the Sea
Denis Villeneuve, Arrival
Unlike Best Picture, for all of the other awards it only
matters how many first place votes you get. And I just don’t see anyone getting
more first place votes than Damien Chazelle. Having just turned 32, and with
two masterpieces already under his belt, he’s the very person that the word
“wunderkind” was created to describe. I’m not totally ruling out Barry Jenkins
here (unlike the other three nominees, who I am totally ruling out), and voters
surely know that no person of African descent has ever won the Best Director
Oscar. But even still, it would be a massive shock if Damien Chazelle doesn’t become the youngest Best Director winner in
history on Sunday.
Best Actor
Casey
Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Andrew
Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Ryan
Gosling, La La Land
Viggo
Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel
Washington, Fences
Pundits
spent all of 2016 thinking Casey Affleck had this in the bag, and now they’ve
spent all of 2017 thinking Denzel will beat him. This is primarily based on two
things—that Denzel won the SAG Award, and that Casey Affleck’s sexual
harassment allegations will sink his chances. But honestly, I think this is a
case of pundits subconsciously changing the narrative because you just can’t
write about the Oscars for six months without desperately trying to find new
angles.
The Academy
has a voting body of a little under 6,700 people. SAG has a voting body of
165,000. To say SAG’s voting body is more populist in its leanings is a massive
understatement. Denzel winning the SAG Award likely means little more than that
he’s a more popular figure, and most SAG voters are barely-working actors that
revere him. Academy voters aren’t as star struck. And as for Casey Affleck’s
sexual harassment allegations, I hate to point this out (because it’s unfair
and it sucks to use it as an arguing point), but there just aren’t that many
women in the Academy. Affleck could get literally zero votes from women and
still win handily.
To be
clear, I don’t think it’s a sure thing that Affleck will win this; not only
does Denzel have a good chance, but so does Viggo Mortensen. If Affleck loses,
I actually think it’ll be to Viggo, who has long been highly respected in the
industry, and people (rightly) believe Captain
Fantastic is the role of his career. But in the end, I still think Casey Affleck wins it. His portrayal of
grief and loss in Manchester by the Sea isn’t
just great; it’s that rarified level of great that future generations will
still talk about and study.
Best Actress
Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie
Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence
Foster Jenkins
This is a two-woman race: Stone is the front-runner and
Huppert is the spoiler. They both fit the predominant Oscar narratives for this
category: the beautiful young ingénue and the long-respected veteran that’s
somehow never been awarded. But the key difference here is that there just
isn’t much support for Huppert’s film, Elle.
It missed the cut on getting nominated in the Best Foreign Film race, and it’s
subject matter of rape fantasy may be too much for a lot of the Academy’s older
voters. While Emma Stone has been
criticized for not being the greatest singer, the fact that she did it live on
camera for her show-stopping number (“Audition”) should get her more than
enough support to win.
Best Supporting
Actor
Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Jeff Bridges, Hell or
High Water
Lucas Hedges, Manchester
by the Sea
Dev Patel, Lion
Michael Shannon, Nocturnal
Animals
When Mahershala Ali lost at the Golden Globes, pundits
started believing he may be vulnerable here, but it’s useful to remember two
things about the Golden Globes: 1) they have an extremely small voting body of
less than 100 people, so anomalies can and do happen, and 2) there’s zero
overlap between that voting body and the Academy. So honestly, Ali’s Globes
loss means nothing, and any lingering doubt that he’s winning the Oscar should
have been put to rest when he gave the single best speech at the SAG Awards
three weeks later. That’s something that really matters to AMPAS voters—whether
or not they want to hear you give another speech. And these voters absolutely
want to hear Mahershala Ali give
another eloquent speech, and they want Oscar viewers to hear him too.
Best Supporting
Actress
Viola Davis, Fences
Naomie Harris, Moonlight
Nicole Kidman, Lion
Octavia Spencer, Hidden
Figures
Michelle Williams, Manchester
by the Sea
This race is the biggest sure thing on the board. Viola Davis will win, and it’s not even
worth writing about anyone else’s chances. So instead, I’ll use this space to
weigh in on whether or not she’s guilty of category fraud for being campaigned
here instead of as a lead actress. Personally, I don’t think she is. My
definition of lead vs. supporting is simple: who is the movie about? With Carol last year, for example, I thought
that was egregious category fraud because that movie was clearly about the two
women as a couple, so campaigning one as lead and the other as supporting was
ridiculous. But I see Fences as a
movie about Denzel’s character. He has several scenes without her, and the
reverse isn’t true. Yes, she’s very important, but the plot doesn’t revolve
around her. I think she plays a supporting role.
Best Adapted
Screenplay
Arrival, by Eric
Heisserer
Fences, by August
Wilson
Hidden Figures, by
Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi
Lion, by Luke
Davies
Moonlight, by
Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney
Even though this race features five Best Picture nominees,
it’s actually one of the safest bets on the board. Moonlight probably shouldn’t be in this category
at all, because the only thing it’s adapted from is an unproduced play. The
Writers Guild ruled it an original screenplay (a category that it won), but
regardless of how ridiculous the designation is, it’s going to win. Not only is
it deserving, but voters will also see it as their only chance to award Barry
Jenkins, because he’s so widely expected to lose the Best Director race to
Damien Chazelle.
Best Original
Screenplay
20th
Century Women, by Mike Mills
Hell or High Water,
by Taylor Sheridan
La La Land, by
Damien Chazelle
The Lobster, by
Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou
Manchester by the Sea,
by Kenneth Lonergan
It’s pretty unlikely La
La Land will win this award, as most people think the screenplay is one of
the film’s few weak points. Hell or High
Water has a decent shot, because that film is clearly adored by a lot of
the Academy and this is likely the only race it has a remote chance in. But
really, Manchester by the Sea should
have this in the bag. This is Lonergan’s third nomination in this category, and
the film is a masterwork of tone and restraint.
Best Animated
Feature
Kubo and the Two
Strings (Travis Knight)
Moana (Ron
Clements and John Musker)
My Life as a Zucchini (Claude
Barras)
The Red Turtle (Michael
Dudok de Wit)
Zootopia (Byron
Howard and Rich Moore)
If you’re looking for the category where anti-Trump
sentiment will galvanize into a specific result, this is the one. Zootopia
is basically a giant anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-xenophobia,
anti-bigotry parable, told with the help of adorable sloths. It looks
unstoppable here.
Best Documentary
Feature
Fire at Sea (Gianfranco
Rosi)
I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul
Peck)
Life, Animated (Roger
Ross Williams)
O.J.: Made in America (Ezra
Edelman)
13th (Ava
DuVernay)
This is probably the single most difficult category for me
to predict. Fire at Sea is the only
one I haven’t seen, but it’s also the only one I don’t think can win. In a year
where four of the five directors in this category are black, the Academy would
get utterly eviscerated for giving the Oscar to the lone white dude. But from
there, I think anything could happen.
The experts are all picking O.J.: Made in America, which, to be clear, is a towering achievement
and would be a deserving winner. But I don’t think it’ll win for two reasons:
1) it’s facing the “is this film or television?” controversy, which will
undoubtedly cost it some votes. But, I think more importantly, 2) it’s nearly
eight hours long, and one of the enduring lessons of every Oscar season is that
Academy members find it extremely difficult to spend the time even watching all
of the nominees, and this problem gets especially exacerbated in the
documentary/animated/foreign film categories. Let’s say, conservatively, that
20-30% of voters don’t watch this (and it may be far more than that). If that
happens, it’ll need a huge majority of voters that do see it to also vote for
it, and that may be too much to overcome given the strength of the competition.
So what’s left? 13th
has the possible advantage of being by a director, Ava DuVernay, who is
widely viewed as having been snubbed two years ago for Selma, and one should never underestimate the power of a make-up
vote. Life, Animated has the huge
advantage of being the only film of the bunch that’s not depressing, which has
carried recent winners like 20 Feet from
Stardom and Searching for Sugarman.
And because the film is sort of about the power of animation, it could
basically sweep the votes from the Academy’s animation branch, which is no
small thing in a race where every vote will matter.
And then there’s I am
Not Your Negro, a stunning and powerful essay film about the writings of
James Baldwin. It has the quality, subject matter, and title to win, and it’s
less than 1/5 the runtime of O.J.: Made
in America. It also opened in theaters as voting was taking place, and its
uniformly excellent reviews may have helped to place it in the forefront of
voters’ minds. In a race where I think nearly anything could happen, I’m going
with my heart and picking my favorite: I am Not Your Negro.
Best Foreign
Language Film
Land of Mine (Denmark,
Martin Zandvliet)
A Man Called Ove (Sweden,
Hannes Holm)
The Salesman (Iran,
Asghar Farhadi)
Tanna (Australia,
Martin Butler and Bentley Dean)
Toni Erdmann
(Germany, Maren Ade)
This category has gone through two prevailing trains of
thought. Toni Erdmann had been
considered the strong front-runner since its premiere at Cannes last May, all
the way until it lost the Golden Globe last month. Then, when President
Snowflake ordered his Muslim travel ban last month and The Salesman’s director, Asghar Farhadi, announced he wouldn’t be
attending the Oscars, everyone switched to assuming it would now win, to “send
a lesson to the President.”
There are a few problems with both of these theories. Toni Erdmann is by far my favorite film
of the bunch, but the nearly three-hour German comedy won’t play especially
well on screeners, and I have a suspicion that it’s one of those films that
critics like far better than audiences. I’m rooting for it, but I’m not
optimistic. As for The Salesman, it’s
slower and more minimal than the other films in the race, and I don’t see it
winning because voters like it the best; if you don’t think it can win purely
on the strength of protest votes, then it can’t win at all. And the problem
with the protest vote theory is that Farhadi won’t be there to give a protest
acceptance speech, so what, really, is the point?
Instead, I would look to either Land of Mine or A Man Called
Ove. The former is an extremely powerful anti-war film about Nazi POWs
being forced to defuse millions of landmines along the Danish coast in the
summer of 1945. The latter is a Swedish octogenarian dramedy about an angry old
man dealing with his new middle-eastern neighbors. A Man Called Ove, which
was also one of the year’s most successful foreign films at the box office, is
the kind of film that I can see provoking Academy voters to just say, “Sure, I
should vote for the Iranian film, but fuck it, I like the one about the old
Swedish guy better.”
Best
Cinematography
Arrival
La La Land
Lion
Moonlight
Silence
The biggest question for all of the craft awards is, Will
voters really consider the nominees for each category, or will they just check La La Land for every box? I don’t know
the answer, but I’m guessing it’ll be a middle ground of both—basically that
voters will go with La La Land as
long as they think it’s at least fairly deserving. That’s the case here; a good
argument could be made for all five nominees, but the lighting and framing of La La
Land created some truly
stunning imagery, and that’ll be enough to win.
Best Costume
Design
Allied
Fantastic Beasts and
Where to Find Them
Florence Foster
Jenkins
Jackie
La La Land
Here’s a category where La
La Land actually might be vulnerable. When people vote for Best Costume
Design, they need to be able to picture the costumes in their head. Can you do
that with La La Land? Are the
monochromatic dresses enough? Can they compete with the blood-stained pink suit
that Natalie Portman wears in Jackie?
Did voters even watch Jackie? I
dunno. But I sense there’s just enough backlash to La La Land’s assumed domination that voters will look for
categories to award something else, and picking Jackie here will be one.
Best Editing
Arrival
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
La La Land
Moonlight
I’d love to believe Moonlight
has a shot here—its editor is the first black woman ever nominated in the
category—and if it somehow won that would be a sign that a Best Picture upset
could be in the cards. But even though some people (erroneously) think La La
Land drags in the middle, it should still prevail here.
Best Makeup and
Hairstyling
A Man Called Ove
Star Trek Beyond
Suicide Squad
There’s no way in hell that the unmitigated disaster that
was Suicide Squad will win an Oscar,
and I just watched A Man Called Ove three
days ago and honestly can’t even recall it using any notable makeup. So Star
Trek Beyond basically wins this one by default.
Best Production
Design
Arrival
Fantastic Beasts and
Where to Find Them
Hail, Caesar!
La La Land
Passengers
Arrival was
nominated for eight Oscars and doesn’t have a very good chance to win any of
them. That’s just how it goes sometimes. (Gangs
of New York went 0-10 in 2003.) But, if it’s going to win anything, this is
probably the category. I kind of want to pick it, but it just seems like this
category will succumb to the La La Land tidal wave.
Best Visual
Effects
Deepwater Horizon
Doctor Strange
The Jungle Book
Kubo and the Two
Strings
Rogue One: A Star Wars
Story
Personally, I’d love to see the epic collapsing and folding cityscapes of Doctor Strange win
here, but everyone seems far too smitten with the talking CGI animals of The
Jungle Book for anything else to have a shot.
Best Original
Score
Jackie (Mica Levi)
La La Land (Justin
Hurwitz)
Lion (Dustin
O'Halloran and Hauschka)
Moonlight (Nicholas
Britell)
Passengers (Thomas
Newman)
It’s tricky with La La
Land to separate the score from the individual songs, and to be honest, I’m
not even sure most voters will have a clear understanding of exactly which
pieces of music in La La Land they’re
meant to consider in this race. But it won’t matter. As much as I’d love to see
Moonlight prevail here for its
stunning score of sparse, chaotic violins, there’s just no way voters won’t
award the best musical in a generation with the Oscar for best music. They’re
checking the La La Land box.
Best Original Song
“Audition (The Fools Who Dream),” from La La Land (by
Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, and
Justin Paul)
“Can’t Stop the Feeling,” from Trolls (by Justin
Timberlake, Max Martin, and Karl
Johan Schuster)
“City of Stars,” from La
La Land (by Justin Hurwitz, Benj
Pasek, and Justin Paul)
“The Empty Chair,” from Jim:
The James Foley Story
(by J. Ralph and Sting)
“How Far I’ll Go,” from Moana
(by Lin-Manuel Miranda)
There’s a theory being bandied about that maybe the two La La Land songs will split the vote,
and the Moana song could win. If that happens, for those of you
keeping score at home, that means Lin-Manuel Miranda will have won an Oscar, a
Tony, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Pulitzer Prize in just under 2 ½ years. He would
be only the 13th person to win the EGOT (and both the youngest and
fastest to do so), and only the third person ever to win the PEGOT (the other
two are Richard Rogers and Marvin Hamlisch). So, honestly, that would be kind
of sweet. Plus, he’d give a great speech!
But real talk. Not gonna happen. This award has been
engraved with the name “City of Stars” since
the moment that first La La Land teaser trailer dropped last summer.
Best Sound Editing
Arrival
Deepwater Horizon
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land
Sully
First, here’s your quick annual reminder on what the
difference is between the two sound categories: Sound Editing is
basically sound creation. It’s
manufacturing, and recording, every sound that happens in a film but that
doesn’t literally happen in front of the camera—dinosaurs roaring, transformers
transforming, aliens gurgling, et cetera. Sound Mixing, on the other
hand, is controlling the volume and focus of all of these sounds within the
finished film. Sound mixers guide your ears to what’s important when dozens of
things are happening simultaneously on screen, from dialogue to score to sound
effects.
Contrary to popular belief, Oscar voters actually don’t just
go with the eventual Best Picture winner when it’s a nominee. Since 2000, only
one Best Picture winner has won this category—The Hurt Locker. In that same timespan, this award has never been
won by a musical, while it’s been won by an
action/war/sci-fi/monster/super-hero movie in every year but one (when Hugo won in 2011). But, and this is
crucial, this award usually does go
to a Best Picture nominee. Voters essentially just pick whichever Best Picture
nominee they think had the most noises. This year, that’s probably Hacksaw
Ridge. But beware: if La La Land wins
this award early in the night, that’s a likely sign that it’s just going to
sweep everything.
Best Sound Mixing
Arrival
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land
Rogue One: A Star Wars
Story
13 Hours: The Secret
Soldiers of Benghazi
Regardless of where you stand on Mel Gibson films, you
should really be rooting for Hacksaw
Ridge in this category, because it’s sound designer Kevin O’Connell’s 21st
Oscar nomination, and the poor guy has still never won. He owns the all-time
Oscar record, across all categories, for most nominations without a win.
But, sadly, precedent suggests he won’t win this year
either. Unlike Sound Editing, this category tends to be very kind to musicals
(or musical-adjacent films, like Whiplash
or Ray). Eight musical-esque
films have been nominated in this category since 2000, and five of them won. On
the other hand, only two war films have won in this category over the same
timespan. It would be a surprise if La La Land didn’t prevail here.
Best Animated
Short Film
Blind Vaysha
Borrowed Time
Pear Cider and
Cigarettes
Pearl
Piper
Under normal circumstances, my first rule of this category
is that the Pixar film won’t win. Since last winning in 2002—before the company
was seen as such an animation juggernaut—Pixar has lost this category eight
straight times. Voters just don’t like picking the Goliath against four Davids.
But the problem this year is that the other four choices are mostly
underwhelming, and the Pixar film, Piper, is really, really great. So what will
voters do?
I don’t think Borrowed
Time or Pear Cider and Cigarettes
have a chance; they’re just too forgettable. A lot of experts are picking Pearl because it’s the first virtual
reality film nominated in this category, but the problem is that most voters
won’t see it in virtual reality—I didn’t either, and I can say it’s pretty
unimpressive in standard format. That leaves Blind Vaysha, an innovative
film stylized as stop-motion woodblock prints. While it has the advantage of
being the most visually distinct (usually important in this race), its story
may be too esoteric, especially compared to the universality of Piper. I think it’s a wash, but in the
end I’m sticking with my theory that Pixar can’t win in this category until I’m
proven wrong.
Best Documentary
Short Film
4.1 Miles
Extremis
Joe’s Violin
Watani: My Homeland
The White Helmets
This is the only category that I haven’t seen the films, so
we’ll do this fast: Watani, The White Helmets, and 4.1 Miles are all about the Syrian
refugee crisis, so they’ll likely cancel each other out. (Though White Helmets, which George Clooney has
optioned for a feature remake, may have the advantage of wider exposure and
pull through from the pack.) That leaves the medical one (Extremis) and the Holocaust one (Joe’s Violin). Precedent for this category suggests that uplifting
films and Holocaust films have a huge advantage, and Joe’s Violin is both.
Best Live Action
Short Film
Ennemis Intérieurs
La Femme et la TGV
Silent Nights
Sing
Timecode
I feel like the same thing happens in this category every
year: there are four heavy-ish films and one funny one, and the funny one wins.
You have to remember, most voters watch the shorts in a single sitting, so if
one of the five feels markedly different in almost any way, it has a huge edge.
Silent Nights and Ennemis Intérieurs are
both immigrant dramas, and feel overly familiar. Sing has a memorable ending and message, but sure takes its time
getting there. I think La Femme et la TGV
has a decent shot, because one should never underestimate Oscar voters’ love
for charming octogenarian stories. But it’s not as good, as charming, or,
perhaps importantly, as short, as Timecode.
An expressive and poignant film about two parking lot attendants who make
dancing videos for one another, Timecode is the only film in the
bunch that’s under 20 minutes, and it ends on a killer, Billy Wilder-esque
final line.
And that's the way the cookie crumbles.
