Welcome friends, to the most polarizing and
unpredictable Best Picture race of my lifetime! Oh, and also welcome to the
2018 Oscars, the year of #TimesUp, the year of #MeToo, the first Oscars Harvey
Weinstein won’t be attending in probably 30 years, and the first Oscars where
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway (they’re back!) will announce the correct Best
Picture winner. This also happens to be the first year where I didn’t read
predictions from anyone else before making my own. I have listened to podcasts
or seen tweets where people made their predictions for a few of the top awards,
but I haven’t actually looked at a full set of predictions from anyone, and on
most of the smaller categories, I haven’t even seen or heard a single
prediction yet. So let’s see if I’m actually any good at this! This will be
fun, and also mildly terrifying.
The goal is always to go 20-4, which I’ve never
actually done. My best is 19-5, and I usually get 17 or 18 (as do most
experts). Particularly exciting this year is that there’s a wide range of Best
Picture predictions, probably the widest ever. While many experts have
converged on The Shape of Water, I’ve also seen experts predict Get
Out, Three Billboards, and Lady Bird, and I’m (perhaps
stupidly) picking none of those.
So read on for all of my predictions and
rambling logic, as well as for fun things like which winner will be the oldest
Oscar winner in history, and which winner will get the evening’s first standing
ovation (the first of many). Categories are listed in vague order of relevance,
with all nominees appearing alphabetically at the top, and then my predicted
winner is hidden somewhere in the explanation—but in bold for those of you that
don’t want to read all 7,000 words of this mess. (Shame!)
BEST PICTURE
Call Me By Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
First, a quick refresher on the rules: Academy
members are asked to rank all nine nominees in their order of preference. The
goal is for one film to receive over 50% of the first-place votes. Assuming
that doesn’t happen on the initial ballot count (which would be virtually
impossible), then films start getting eliminated from contention. First, the
film that gets the fewest amount of first-place votes gets eliminated, and all
of the ballots where that film was ranked #1 get reallocated, turning into
votes for whatever those ballots had ranked second. Assuming that still no film
has over 50% of the vote yet, then the new lowest film is eliminated, the
ballots that had that film ranked first are turned into votes for what was
ranked 2nd on those ballots, and so forth. Until eventually one film has over
50% of the vote.
Now, this year is really tricky, because passion
seems very equally spread among several of these films. On the first vote
count, I don’t think any film will even get 20% of the first place votes. That
means that getting to a winner won’t simply be a matter of eliminating the
bottom few films. It’s very likely that at least six—or probably even seven—of
the nine films will have to be eliminated before a winner can be declared. And
that means that how voters rank their entire ballots will really come into
play. A film getting a lot of second-place votes won’t be all that matters. By
the time the sixth film is eliminated from contention, reallocating that film’s
ballots will likely be based on what many of those voters ranked 4th or 5th,
because their top four films have all already been eliminated. So here’s what I
think the key is, as I explained on
Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast a few weeks ago: we’re effectively looking for the film that finishes lower
than fifth on the fewest number of ballots. That’s our target.
So how do we figure out what that is? Ha! No one
knows. But we can guess at a lot of things. From the outset, we can divide the
Best Picture nominees into two groups: the ones that will get eliminated early
and the ones that won’t. Darkest Hour, The Post, Call Me By
Your Name, and Phantom Thread look to be, in some order, the four
films that will get the fewest first-place votes, and will therefore be
eliminated early in the process. How the ballots that ranked any of those films
#1 get reallocated will be important to the next step of the process. Because
the voters that heavily support Darkest Hour and The Post will
tend to be older people with more traditional taste, I think the reallocation
of those votes will heavily favor Dunkirk, and give it enough of an
extra bump to survive the fifth elimination. From there, it starts getting
really difficult to predict, and involves VERY hypothetical territory. But once
it’s down to the final four films, I like Dunkirk’s chances specifically
because I think it has the best chance of staying in the top half of most of
the ballots.
Fair or unfair (it’s unfair), Get Out, Lady
Bird, and The Shape of Water are films that many voters just don’t
get. Get Out strikes some people as nothing more than a well-done genre
film that voters are being race-baited into supporting, Lady Bird feels
too uneventful and provokes a “nice, but is that it?” reaction, and The
Shape of Water requires the audience to be able to get behind a woman
having a visibly sexual relationship with a vaguely monstrous sea creature. Three
Billboards, meanwhile, has been the subject of several pseudo-eviscerations
by the critical community, and some voters will decide they agree with those
takes, or that the critical backlash to the film is enough reason to not
support it. There will be a decent number of voters that place some or all of
these toward the bottom of their ballots. But Dunkirk, for better or
worse, just isn’t a movie that no one gets. At the very least everyone respects
it as an immense piece of craft, even if they find it slightly confusing or
emotionally distant.
Here’s how I imagine voters filling out their
ballots: they know what films they love, and they put those at the top. Then
they know what films really didn’t work for them, and they put those at the
bottom. And when it comes to filling out the middle—the films they don’t feel
particularly strongly about one way or another—they’ll just put Dunkirk at
the top of that group, because at the very least it was an incredible
undertaking. I think Dunkirk will rack up enough first place votes to
survive the first four rounds of elimination, it will rack up enough vote
reallocations from the Darkest Hour and The Post ballots to
survive the fifth elimination, and it will rack up enough fourth- and
fifth-place votes across all of the ballots to keep getting steady bumps with
every subsequent elimination, while other films succumb to just not really
working for a significant amount of voters. Dunkirk is the film
that everyone agrees on just enough, and in a bizarro year like this
one, I think that’s the kind of math we’re looking for.
BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Most pundits believe this is a two-person race,
but I think it’s actually a 2 ½-person race, with Paul Thomas Anderson as the
half person. That does, unfortunately, still mean that Gerwig and Peele have
virtually no chance here, but they both have an excellent chance to win Best
Original Screenplay, so all is not lost for them. Paul Thomas Anderson is the
interesting one. Phantom Thread is basically a film about being an
Anderson-like director. It’s about the narcissistic compulsion to control every
element, and use others as glorified props and enablers for your own creativity,
while still (sort of) loving and appreciating them for the small ways in which
they make your art possible. There’s clear evidence that the Academy loves Phantom
Thread a lot more than we thought prior to the nominations, and Paul Thomas
Anderson has been one of the most passionately adored auteurs for nearly two
decades. He has a chance here. It’s just not a great one.
Between Nolan and del Toro, it’s a tough call.
The consensus is that del Toro will win, and I won’t argue that too much; he’s
won all of the major precursor awards and his film has more overall
nominations. Best Picture and Best Director also tend to go to different films
most of the time these days, and because I’m predicting Dunkirk to win
Best Picture, it theoretically makes perfect sense that del Toro should win
here. But there is a part of me that thinks, because most voters assume The
Shape of Water will win Best Picture, that may incline more of them to
support Nolan here. But I’m trying to squash that voice that demands I
overthink everything. Guillermo del Toro will become the fourth Latino
Best Director winner in the last five years, following wins by his countrymen
Alfonso Cuarón in 2014 and Alejandro G.
Iñárritu in 2015 and 2016).
BEST ACTRESS
Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Meryl Streep, The Post
The four acting categories are fascinating this
year, because they’ve gone to the exact same four actors in all of the major
precursor awards—SAG, the Golden Globes, and BAFTA. In a world where people
increasingly agree on nothing, the idea that those three institutions AND the
Oscars would all have perfect alignment across all four acting categories is both
unprecedented and kind of insane. And I don’t think it will happen. Between
McDormand, Oldman, Janney, and Rockwell, I think one of them is staying in
their seat on Sunday night. The challenge is correctly guessing which one.
McDormand is a heavy frontrunner, but she’s not
without serious competition—particularly from Hawkins and Ronan. At the age of
23, Saoirse Ronan already has three nominations, and Lady Bird is a
phenomenal showcase of her talents. She’s in virtually every scene, she loses
her accent, and the role depends on her ability to portray a mostly selfish
teenager without ever losing the audience’s sympathies or rooting interests.
Meanwhile, Hawkins is the star of the Best Picture frontrunner that received 13
nominations, and it required two things of her that are hallmarks of numerous
Best Actress winners: a character with a disability and a substantial amount of
nudity. That’s kind of a joke, but it also kind of isn’t. Hawkins showed
incredible vulnerability, both physically and emotionally, in a role that
didn’t even allow her to use her voice. She had to visibly emote everything in
a way that came across without being over the top or devolved to pantomime. No
one should be surprised if either Ronan or Hawkins win. But I don’t think they will.
Awarding Frances McDormand the Oscar for her role in Three Billboards
is not the most flawless statement of solidarity the Academy can give to
the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements, but it’s the one we’re going to get.
BEST ACTOR
Timothée Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.
In our quest to find the big upset in the acting
categories, don’t look here. There are only two times in my life that I have
been watching a movie in a theater—long before that year’s Oscar
nominations—and known within a matter of minutes, beyond any doubt, that I was
watching an Oscar-winning performance. The first time was Christian Bale in The
Fighter, and the other was Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour.
It’s true that Oldman is maybe (probably) an
asshole, and it’s true that a shocking upset by either Chalamet or Kaluuya
would be an incredibly exciting moment for Oscar viewers. But if either of
those things actually prevent Oldman from winning, it won’t really be the good
look for the Oscars that people think it would. Yes, it could lead to a future
ratings bump and excitement that some conclusions aren’t as foregone as we
assume, and it could lead to nice PR about how it’s time to no longer award men
like Oldman. But the worst thing the Oscars can do to damage their long-term
reputation is hand out awards for blatantly transparent political reasons, and
denying Oldman his deserved reward for such a monumental performance would be
just that. I said the same thing last year about Casey Affleck’s impending
win—it’s perfectly okay to be against men like this getting these roles in the
first place, but once they do, and they turn in performances like these, I
think we just have to tip our hats. We don’t want the Oscars to turn into “Best
Actor That We Think Is Still Basically an Upstanding Guy.” If one performance
was better than the others, then that’s who deserves the Oscar. And this year,
in this category, that evaluation is easy.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water
And here we are, my big upset pick! (Well, other
than Best Picture, which my thinking on may just prove that I’m a crazy
person.) Alison Janney has won the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild Award,
and the BAFTA Award for her role as Tonya Harding’s abusive mother in I,
Tonya, but I don’t think she will win the Oscar. How do I discount so much
precedent for her to win the Oscar? Well, I don’t take the Golden Globes
seriously at all. The winners are decided by less than 90 people who have
absolutely no voter overlap with the Academy, and there’s virtually nothing to
be gleaned from their results. With SAG, when the results differ from the
Oscars, I think the SAG winner tends to lean a little more mainstream and safe
than the Oscars, or the SAG winner is a more popular and beloved figure. Two
recent examples are Denzel’s SAG win over Casey Affleck last year, or Idris
Elba’s win over Mark Rylance two years ago. Lady Bird is a more subtle,
less plot-driven film than I, Tonya, and I think it’s the exact type of
film that SAG wouldn’t appreciate as much as the Oscars. And as for BAFTA, I
think I, Tonya prevailed there for the same reason Three Billboards did—because
it’s the perfect depiction of how Brits see America in the Trump era.
And I just don’t think those sets of reasoning
or circumstance apply to the Oscars. There’s less overlap than you’d think
between the Academy and either BAFTA or SAG, and Lady Bird feels like
the exact type of movie that the Academy will value more than other
institutions. It’s a film that’s genuinely American instead of stereotypically
American. Metcalf’s performance requires an emotional range that I, Tonya just
doesn’t demand of Janney. And that’s no knock on Janney, who is one of the best
actresses out there—but her role in I, Tonya just doesn’t give her the
opportunity to show all that she can do. Because of the wonderful depiction of
the mother-daughter relationship in Lady Bird, I expect women in the
Academy to strongly vote in favor of Metcalf. The key, then, is what the men
do. If men at least don’t favor Janney by too much, then Metcalf will win. But
if men vote for Janney in droves, then she’ll take it easily. I think it’ll be
really close, but I’m predicting Laurie Metcalf to pull off the upset.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water
Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the
World
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
Had The Florida Project gotten a Best
Picture nomination, I would have strongly thought about picking Willem Dafoe
here, because I really think he could win. But without that sign that the film
has substantial support in the Academy, it’s hard to talk yourself into it. And
Sam Rockwell benefits from having what is basically a co-lead role alongside
Frances McDormand. Though his character’s arc in the film isn’t especially
believable, that redemption is one of the major things you come away from the
film with.
In some ways a Rockwell win reeks of a “See, we
can ALL overcome racism” statement from the Academy. But despite some very fair
complaints out there about the way the role is written, Sam Rockwell
makes it work, and the way he plays the character almost convinces you that
someone writing him a letter about how he could be a good person was just the
lightbulb he’d needed this whole time.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Big Sick (Emily V. Gordon & Kumail
Nanjiani)
Get Out (Jordan Peele)
Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa
Taylor)
Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh)
There are two relatively easy eliminations here:
The Big Sick is the only non–Best Picture nominee in the field, and the
story for The Shape of Water—though lovely—is the most derivative and
predictable of the bunch. From there, it’s a bloodbath. Because Get Out and
Lady Bird also received Best Director nominations, they probably have
more support from the indie- or auteur-minded members of the Academy. But Three
Billboards appears to have the most support from the Actors Branch of the
Academy. I think the key here is (again) how women vote. Because this is a
winner-take-all category, a vote split between nominees pulling from the same
demographic could easily decide the race. If women vote overwhelming in favor
of either Lady Bird or Three Billboards, then the film they side
with will win. But if women tend to support both Lady Bird and Three
Billboards in fairly equal proportions, then Get Out will
most likely prevail. And that’s what I think will happen.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Call Me By Your Name (James Ivory)
The Disaster Artist (Scott Neustadter & Michael H.
Weber)
Logan (James Mangold, Scott Frank, &
Michael Green)
Molly’s Game (Aaron Sorkin)
Mudbound (Dee Rees & Virgil Williams)
This year is the first time in
over a decade that we’ve seen a Best Adapted Screenplay race with only a single
Best Picture nominee in it, and as such, Call Me By Your Name looks
like a very obvious winner. Further cementing that is its writer, James Ivory,
has three previous nominations as a director (for A Room With a View, Howards
End, and The Remains of the Day), and the 89-year-old has never won
before. When he does win—and he will—he’ll be the
oldest Oscar winner in history, across every category (unless Agnès Varda has already won for Best Documentary earlier
in the evening, because she’s eight days older than Ivory). While I think Mudbound
and Molly’s Game both have an outside chance, it’s really hard to
talk yourself into either one pulling off an upset.
BEST
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
A
Fantastic Woman (Sebastián
Lelio, Chile)
The Insult
(Ziad Doueiri, Lebanon)
Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev, Russia)
On Body
and Soul (Ildikó Enyedi, Hungary)
The Square
(Ruben Östlund, Sweden)
The Square
won the Palme d’Or at Cannes
and has been a presumed front-runner for this category ever since, but I think
it has one of the lowest chances. It’s just too esoteric and cryptic for the
broader Academy. I also don’t love the chances for On Body and Soul,
which will feel too small for voters who prefer this category to make some kind
of grand statement about the world. The others each have a good shot. The
Insult is powerful, and there’s certainly some recent precedent for this
award to go to films exploring the complicated social politics of the Arab
world. But that might be the exact reason The Insult doesn’t win;
because voters will feel they’ve already been there and done that with the two
Asghar Farhadi films that have won this category in the last six years.
I think Loveless and A
Fantastic Woman have the best chances. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s previous film, Leviathan,
was nominated in this category three years ago, and both films are extremely
critical of how contemporary Russian society is dehumanizing its citizens in
subtle but affecting ways. That’s a message that could have powerful sway with
the largely liberal Academy, who are no big fans of Russia at the moment. But
that’s also the problem—technically, the Oscar for
Best Foreign Language Film is actually an award for the country, not for
the film or the filmmakers. If Loveless wins, the presenter of the award
will open the envelope and read that the winner is Russia. Who knows how many
voters thought about this small technicality, but the word “Russia” absolutely
appeared on their ballots, and that might be enough to make a difference in a
race with no clear favorites.
That’s why I like A Fantastic Woman to
win here. The story of a transgendered woman dealing with her partner’s
less-tolerant family in the wake of his death, A Fantastic Woman is a
film that speaks to the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements, as well as to the
broader movement of progressive politics and the newly diversified Academy.
It’s also a wonderfully made film that doesn’t resort to preachiness by keeping
many of the lead character’s emotions internalized. For voters looking for a
film that would be a powerful steward of where we are as a global film
community, A Fantastic Woman will be their best choice.
BEST
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Abacus:
Small Enough to Jail (Steve
James)
Faces
Places (Agnès Varda & JR)
Icarus (Bryan Fogel)
Last Men
in Aleppo (Feres
Fayyad & Steen Johannessen)
Strong
Island (Yance Ford)
Normally, the easiest way to
starting the process of elimination with the Best Documentary category is to cross
off the most depressing film, which never ever wins. That’s undoubtedly Last
Men in Aleppo, but it’s slightly more complicated this year because the
filmmakers won’t be able to attend the ceremony due to the travel ban. Last
year, when that happened to the Iranian film The Salesman, the extra
support and attention it garnered the film helped it actually win the Best
Foreign Language Film Oscar. But that won’t happen this year. Most Oscar voters
won’t resort to protest votes over the same thing for a second year in a row,
and I just don’t see a film this unbearably depressing succeeding in a race
where that tends to be a death sentence.
I also think we can cross off
both Abacus and Strong Island. They’re both very good (seriously,
you should watch them), but neither have something specific about them that
will galvanize voters—something that both Faces
Places and Icarus absolutely have. For Faces Places, that
something is Agnès Varda. The 89-year-old French
New Wave legend has never won a competitive Oscar, and if she wins here she
would become the oldest winner in Oscar history, across any category. And Faces
Places also happens to be a beautiful, funny, and uplifting movie in a
category where that typically makes a big difference. Icarus, meanwhile,
is nothing less than the film that got Russia banned from the Winter Olympics,
which, by the way, were happening as voters were filling out their ballots.
It’s one of the hardest calls of the year, but I think Icarus wins.
We saw three years ago with Citizenfour’s win that voters respond to the
opportunity to award a documentary that unveils a major world event as
it’s happening. And because Agnès Varda received
an honorary Oscar last year, I think just enough voters will feel that she’s
already been taken care of and they’re free to vote for the film that stuck it
to the Russians.
BEST
ANIMATED FEATURE
The Boss
Baby (Tom McGrath)
The
Breadwinner (Nora
Twomey)
Coco (Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina)
Ferdinand (Carlos Saldanha)
Loving
Vincent (Dorota Kobiela & Hugh
Welchman)
The Boss
Baby is this year’s Suicide Squad:
the single worst film to be nominated for an Oscar. So it’s out. And I confess
I haven’t seen Ferdinand or The Breadwinner, but they’re not
winning anyway. It’s theoretically possible to talk yourself into Loving
Vincent, which has stunning style and feels like the most original of the
choices. But it’s also a movie with a forgettable script, so you’d have to talk
yourself into voting for style alone. That just won’t work against Coco.
A top-tier Pixar film has never lost this category, and this year won’t be the
first time.
BEST
ORIGINAL SCORE
Dunkirk (Hans Zimmer)
Phantom
Thread (Jonny Greenwood)
The Shape
of Water (Alexandre Desplat)
Star Wars:
The Last Jedi (John
Williams)
Three
Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Carter Burwell)
The Last
Jedi is the easiest one to cross
off, because very few voters will even understand how to differentiate the new
elements that Williams wrote for this film from the classical elements used in
every Star Wars film. And I don’t see Dunkirk or Three
Billboards being much of a factor here because they’re just not films where
the scores stay with you. This is effectively between Phantom Thread and
The Shape of Water, both of which are excellent. In some ways the Phantom
Thread score may be the better, more compelling piece of music, which is
why its chances have to be taken seriously. But The Shape
of Water’s score is the one that voters may feel pairs more elegantly
to its film, helping the viewer into the elegiac beauty of the story in a way
that seems almost more whimsical than heavy-handed.
BEST
ORIGINAL SONG
“Mighty River” (Raphael Saadiq,
Mary J. Blige, & Taura Stinson, Mudbound)
“Mystery of Love” (Sufjan
Stevens, Call Me By Your Name)
“Remember Me” (Kristen
Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez, Coco)
“Stand Up For Something” (Common & Diane
Warren, Marshall)
“This Is Me” (Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, The
Greatest Showman)
My single biggest wish for the 2018 Oscars—other
than to go 24-0 on my predictions—is for Sufjan Stevens to win for his utterly
gorgeous song from Call Me By Your Name (which is used to great effect
in the film). And he has a small chance, as do Mary J. Blige, Diane Warren (a
nine-time nominee that’s never won), and the Coco song. It’s possible to
talk yourself into a narrative for all four to be the winner. Sufjan will
appeal to all of the younger, more auteurist members of the Academy that don’t
like awarding conventional Oscar fare, Mary J. Blige is having a moment, Diane
Warren is due, and the Coco song is basically the film’s driving plot
point. But they’re still all going home empty. “This Is Me” is the
perfect Oscar song—it’s great on its own, it’s used to powerful effect as the
film’s centerpiece, it’s anthemic, it has real showmanship and pizazz, it’s
classical Broadway appeal will resonate with older voters while it’s proud
stance on identity will appeal to younger and minority voters, and the song reached
the zeitgeist by being played ad nauseam during the Olympics. It has absolutely
everything going for it that a Best Original Song nominee could, and it’s not
going to lose.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Blade Runner 2049 (Roger Deakins)
Darkest Hour (Bruno Delbonnel)
Dunkirk (Hoyte Van Hoytema)
Mudbound (Rachel Morrison)
The Shape of Water (Dan Laustsen)
This is the first nomination for Morrison,
Laustsen, and Van Hoytema, and it’s the fifth nomination for Delbonnel. But
it’s the 14th nomination for Roger Deakins, and he’s never won. This is the
year that changes. Blade Runner 2049 had the year’s most
arresting visuals, and the demands of justice for Deakins have taken on a life
of their own. This is the evening’s most guaranteed standing ovation.
BEST EDITING
Baby Driver
Dunkirk
I, Tonya
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
On one side are three films that might win Best
Picture, and on the other side are two films that primarily work because of
their great editing. In some ways Dunkirk would seem to be the obvious
winner, because it’s a tense war film that juggles several plot lines and
dozens of characters. But I don’t love its chances because I think the film’s
editing is one of the few major complaints people have about Dunkirk—they
don’t understand the film’s timeline and why it switches between day and night,
and they can’t tell the characters apart.
Instead, I would really look to either Baby
Driver or I, Tonya here. For the latter, the skating scenes—and
making Margot Robbie look like she legit belongs in the olympics—could be
enough to get it the win. But I can’t escape the feeling that Baby Driver
is taking this home. The whole film is essentially a two-hour music video,
and editing is primarily what makes it all work. Plus, I, Tonya is
considered an extremely likely winner in the Supporting Actress category, and I
really do believe that a lot of voters try to spread the love as much as they
can (while still voting for deserved winners).
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Beauty and the Beast
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
This one is (probably) easier than it might
seem. What’s the chief visual element voters will associate with each of the nominees?
For Beauty and the Beast, it’s probably the costumes. For Blade
Runner 2049, it’s certainly the cinematography. For Darkest Hour, it
has to be the makeup. And for Dunkirk, it’s likely the editing. But for The
Shape of Water? It’ll be the whole visual style of the movie—the
pervasive use of green, the way the ‘60s lab looks, the double apartment above
the old movie theater. And if voters aren’t clear whether the creature’s style
counts as costume design or production design (it’s actually the former), that
will help it even more.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Blade Runner 2049
Guardians of the Galaxy,
Vol. 2
Kong: Skull Island
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
War for the Planet of the
Apes
I think Blade Runner 2049 is the least
likely to win here, because there’s no particular element or scene of effects
wizardry for voters to latch onto, and most of the film’s stunning imagery will
be credited to the cinematography rather than the effects. Beyond that, voters
basically get to choose what animal(s) brought to digital life they found most
impressive: cute little porgs, an angry raccoon and his pet tree, one giant
ape, or a whole hell of a lot of normal-sized apes. I would bet on the latter,
because there are so many more of them, and they’re almost the entirety of the
movie. The emotional tug of War for the Planet of the Apes rests
almost solely on the shoulders of the effects team, and they are the chief
reason the movie works. None of the other nominees can say that.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Beauty and the Beast
Darkest Hour
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water
Victoria & Abdul
This category is randomly kind of tricky. Phantom
Thread feels like the obvious pick because it’s a movie about a
dressmaker, and a significant amount of its imagery is devoted to that task.
But the film’s costume design is actually kind of understated and doesn’t call
attention to its opulence as much as its precision. That makes Phantom
Thread difficult to predict with too much confidence, because this category
tends to very explicitly be about the film whose costumes do call
attention to themselves. In that spirit, Beauty and the Beast is the
obvious pick for most opulent costume design. But it also might be a film that
few voters got around to watching, and that’s tough to overcome when you’re up
against three best picture nominees.
The biggest threat to Phantom Thread is
probably The Shape of Water, both because of the beautiful design for
the creature and because it’s a film that could sweep most of the craft
categories on sheer momentum. But it will be unclear to many voters whether the
design of the creature counts for this category or for production design, and I
just can’t talk myself out of Phantom Thread here. I don’t
imagine voters spending a lot of time deciding on this category, and when they
look at the five options, there’s only one that will make them think “Oh yeah,
the film about costume design.”
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Darkest Hour
Victoria & Abdul
Wonder
Turning Gary Oldman into a convincing Winston
Churchill is the best film makeup achievement we’ve seen in years, and Darkest
Hour is winning an Oscar for it. I’m sure Wonder also had great
makeup, but I didn’t see it, and I doubt many voters did either. Victoria
& Abdul, meanwhile, just feels like it’s here because they
needed a third movie on the ballot. This is the easiest category on the board.
BEST SOUND EDITING
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
First, here’s your quick annual
reminder (copied and pasted from last year!) 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.
The Best Sound Editing Oscar
almost always goes to a Best Picture nominee, but there’s virtually no
correlation between this award and what actually wins Best Picture. Basically,
voters just end up picking whichever Best Picture nominee in the category they
think had the most noises. This year, that’s undoubtedly Dunkirk,
and it should win here. But if The Shape of Water wins this early in the
night, that could be a bad sign that it’s just going to run the table.
BEST SOUND MIXING
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Since 2000, this award has split pretty evenly
between tense action/war movies and musicals (or musical-adjacent movies, like Whiplash).
And lo, Baby Driver is basically both of those things! The
way the film guides your ear between its intense car chases and its
compulsively enjoyable soundtrack should help it cruise to this award. If Dunkirk
pulls off an upset here, that could mean it has more support than people
realize, which would bode well for my Best Picture prospects. If The Shape
of Water wins here, that could mean it has a LOT more support than people
realize, and my Best Picture prospects are toast.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Dear Basketball
Garden Party
Lou
Negative Space
Revolting Rhymes
Outside of the major categories, this is
actually the toughest race for me to predict. The two big questions are: (1) Do
voters think of Kobe Bryant (the creator/producer/narrator of Dear
Basketball) chiefly as a an all-time great Los Angeles Laker, or chiefly as
an alleged (and probable) rapist? If it’s the former, then Dear Basketball is
probably our winner. If it’s the latter, that brings us to (2) Which of the
other films will voters most respond to?
I confess I have no clue what to do with the
first question. In a year that Casey Affleck isn’t even showing up to the
Oscars and Three Billboards may win best picture, it seems especially
unlikely that voters would award a probable rapist, but man, sports tribalism
is strong in people, and Hollywood loves the Lakers in a way that’s primed to
really challenge people’s rationality.
As for the other films, Revolting Rhymes is
the one that’s too long, so it’s out. Lou is by Pixar, which rarely wins
in this category (though they did last year), so we’ll say it’s out too. Negative
Space and Garden Party are tough to choose between. Garden Party is
probably the weirdest and the most impressively animated of the five, both of
which may help it stand out to voters. Negative Space is probably the
most narratively interesting, but it’s stop-motion, which usually doesn’t do
well in this category.
Dear Basketball has a score by John Williams and gorgeous hand-drawn animation by
Glen Keane—a long-time Disney supervising animator for films like Beauty and
the Beast and Aladdin—who is receiving his first Oscar nomination
here. Keane may strike some Academy members as due, but the presence of he and
Williams here may work against the film for the same reason Pixar rarely wins
in this category—it feels like too much of an unfair advantage against the
other, smaller films in the race. And narratively, Dear Basketball might
as well be what a high school freshman turned in for his first poetry
assignment. While the pull of awarding both Keane and an LA Laker will be
strong with a lot of voters, I think the controversial baggage of Bryant
(especially in the #TimesUp era) and the novice writing of Dear Basketball will
turn off just enough voters for Garden Party to get the
win. But also, I think I’d rather just get this one wrong than congratulate
myself for correctly predicting Kobe.
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
DeKalb Elementary
The Eleven O’Clock
My Nephew Emmett
The Silent Child
Watu Wote / All of Us
I think three of these are pretty easy to
eliminate; DeKalb Elementary is a compassionate look at a difficult
subject, but because it asks the audience to sympathize with a school shooter,
it’s just woefully in the wrong place at the wrong time. Watu Wote,
about real people surviving an African civil war, is the kind of movie that
never wins in this category—too heavy, and prevented by run-time constraints
from actually fleshing out the issues it’s dealing with. And The Silent
Child just feels like it was commissioned by an advocacy group.
I think the real question here is between The
Eleven O’Clock (the funniest of the bunch) or My Nephew Emmett (the
one with the best filmmaking). The cinematography in My Nephew Emmett is
impressive, and because it’s about a sudden tragic situation, the short
run-time actually works in its favor. But because voters generally watch all
five films in one sitting, being the lone comedic film in this category is a
huge advantage. And The Eleven O’Clock isn’t merely funny;
despite it’s painfully obvious plot holes, it’s the one film of the five that
you walk away wanting to talk to someone about.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Edith + Eddie
Heaven is a Traffic Jam on
the 405
Heroin(e)
Knife Skills
Traffic Stop
Because the documentary shorts are all quite a
bit longer than the animated or live action shorts (they’re all 30-40 minutes),
that makes it far less likely that voters will watch them all in one sitting.
That, in turn, makes it less likely that one has the power to stand out just by
virtue of being notably different than the others; the winner will have to
stand on its own merits. Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 is a nice
portrait, but doesn’t really present something that stays with the viewer. Traffic
Stop is the most frustrating of the five, because you just feel that
everyone acted poorly (though some—the cop—certainly more poorly than others).
The remaining three all give powerful takeaways
to the viewer. Edith + Eddie is the most depressing of the five, so I
don’t think that bodes well for its chances. Heroin(e) and Knife
Skills both strike me as very possible winners. The former—about three
women fighting in their own ways against the opioid epidemic in Huntington,
West Virginia—is the better of the two. But it also shows an unvarnished middle
America that I don’t think will be nearly as appealing to voters as the French
cuisine (by way of Cleveland) portrayed in Knife Skills. The
combination of a Bravo cooking show laced with progressive ideas about criminal
justice reform will be irresistible to voters.
And I’ll leave you with two other random
predictions:
1. This will be the most standing ovation-happy
Oscars ever, with a minimum of five.
2. The Post will be the only Best Picture
nominee that doesn’t win a single Oscar.
Happy viewing!!
