Skip to main content

I was going to thank all the little people, but then I remembered I am the little people.

Prediction
2018 Oscars

I’ve seen six of the nine Best Picture nominees so far (and should see Phantom Fred, I mean Thread, on Thursday), and I’d argue only two of those have no business being there (The Post and Darkest Hour). I don’t think either are in danger of troubling voters for the top award, in a ceremony that has always been politically fuelled but just now even more so. As such, what might on one day be a frontrunner could get bumped for not sending out the right messages in the right way the next (which, if it doesn’t win, will surely be the bone of contention for Martin McDonagh’s contender). My track record with these guesses is usually in the 50-60% region, which an uninformed person (not that I’m suggesting I’m informed) could probably get close to, so if you’re aiming for aggressively average standards, I’m virtually impossible to beat. Accordingly, let the guessing begin:

Best Picture
Winner: The Shape of Water
I’d like to win: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
The Interesting Choice: Get Out

The outside outsiders in this category, as in “don’t stand a chance of even offering a last-minute surprise”, are Dunkirk, The Post, Phantom Thread, and Darkest Hour (some were surprised the last two even managed to get nominated). Which takes us into the political vote arena (The Post is too ineffectual in its sincerity to seriously court Academy members); Call Me By Your Name, as a gay love story, seems unlikely so soon after Moonlight took the surprise statuette last year, and if it were getting serious press for the big award, there might be more scrutiny of why voters are considering a 16-year-old’s relationship with a 25-year-old approvingly in the year of Kevin Spacey’s ignominy. Lady Bird is liked, but I don’t think loved (or, in the year of #MeToo, giving a female-helmed picture the main prize would be irresistible). If not for the racism debate, I’d have pegged Three Billboards as the likely winner, so I’m unsure there’s sufficient appetite for McDonagh’s wilfully-difficult-to-pigeonhole approach. Get Out could still come in as an inside outsider, the way The Silence of the Lambs, another early year release and another horror movie, did, but I think I have to fall in with the hot favourite The Shape of Water. It has all the necessary present-and-correct empowerment issues, it offers a distinctive authorial voice, and it’s roundly liked. Could the plagiarism suit dint its chances? If it doesn’t win, that will be the claim, but you might as well point to whatever is in the air surrounding the actual winner (if it’s Get Out, the success of Black Panther may be considered to have prodded voters in that direction, or if it’s Three Billboards, the BAFTA glory). I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a settlement in due course either way, though.

Best Director
Winner: Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)
I’d like to win: Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)
The Interesting Choice: Jordan Peele (Get Out)

Del Toro’s work on The Shape of Water will likely be recognised even if it doesn’t take Best Picture, and he very much deserves it (what faults the picture has lie in his – honestly, not inspired by anyone else’s stage play, really – screenplay, rather than his execution of it); I think he’d get my vote even if McDonagh had been nominated. Dunkirk’s more impressive for its editing than direction. No one is talking about Gerwig’s skills as a director, which speaks volumes. Paul Thomas Anderson bags his second Best Director nod (the previous was also with Daniel Day Lewis), but I don’t think enough people care about Phantom Thread, let alone love it. Peele would be interesting, a much more impressive first timer than Gerwig, but I suspect, even if Get Out takes the big prize, he won’t join it as director.

Best Actor
Winner: Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour)
I’d like to win: Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out)
The Interesting Choice:  Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) 

Oldman’s a shoe-in for this, it seems, and like Casey Affleck last year, he seems to have staved off potential bad press concerning past words and deeds to lay claim to the podium. Great actor that he is, I’d rather have seen him honoured for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. His turn as Churchill dazzles, but it feels a little too much like an effortless scoop. Denzel’s presence is of the obligatory Meryl Streep nod type, while Day Lewis gets nominated in part as a forlorn attempt to keep him from retirement (but not serious enough an attempt to give him the award). That leaves young pups Timothee Chalamet (the recipient of serious accolades, and if this was Best Supporting Actor rather than lead, would probably be a shoe-in) and Kaluuya. I greatly enjoyed the latter’s performance, but a reactive part like that is less likely to get serious buzz than one reliant on showboating.

Best Actress
Winner: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri)
I’d like to win: Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water)
The Interesting Choice: Margot Robbie (I, Tonya)

I wouldn’t be at all unhappy with favourite McDormand winning, but she already has an Oscar, and I was even more impressed by Hawkins. Meryl’s there because she’s Meryl, while Saoirse Ronan is undoubtedly going to win at some point, just not this time. Robbie doesn’t have a hope, but that would make her getting it the more interesting result.

Best Supporting Actor
Winner: Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project)
I’d like to win: Willem Dafoe  (The Florida Project) 
The Interesting Choice: Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project)

Most of the main categories have seemed a lock for a while now, not least Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards, but I wonder if the debate over his character might not have a negative effect on the night. Woody did well just to get nominated, Richard Jenkins was last given a nod for The Visitor, but I don’t think his Shape role is as interesting, and while the background to Christopher Plummer’s casting is a story in itself, no one is enthused enough about All the Money in the World to reward him (he got his Oscar a few years back anyway). So I’m leaning towards Dafoe, who’s great, and should have been given a few Oscars by now.

Best Supporting Actress
Winner: Allison Janney (I, Tonya)
I’d like to win: Mary J Blige (Mudbound)
The interesting choice: Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird)

I think we can rule out Lesley Manville and Octavia Spencer (underseen movie and past Oscar winner respectively, added to which the latter’s role, like Jenkins, isn’t really notable enough to get her a little gold man). Allison Janney, like Rockwell, has been the main one to beat for most of the awards season (both nabbed Golden Globes), and I think she’ll probably take it, certainly over Laurie Metcalf. But the underseen Blige could still be the outsider, not to count out, if the Academy isn’t expressly averse to Netflix (which they may be).

Best Adapted Screenplay
Winner: Call Me By Your Name
I’d like to win: Mudbound
The Interesting Choice: Logan

I should say, I don’t think Logan deserves to win (it just isn’t that great a piece of writing), but it would be different if it did. The Disaster Artist is the last vestige of the ubiquitous James Franco’s once unswerving path to the Oscars, and its chances have gone the same way, while Molly’s Game is about as likely as Phantom Thread taking Best Picture. This is where the otherwise unrewarded Best Picture contenders make do with consolation prizes, so Call Me By Your Name is pretty much a cert, but I’d like to see Mudbound’s screenplay recognised.

Best Original Screenplay
Winner: Get Out
I’d like to win: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
The Interesting Choice: Get Out

I don’t think Get Out’s the best screenplay by any stretch – its metaphor doesn’t quite follow through – but it’s structurally very sound, and satisfies for its neatness. I’ll have to reserve judgement on Lady Bird until I’ve seen it, but otherwise, Three Billboards is the at the front of the pack (Golden Globe and BAFTA). Nevertheless, Get Out is probably expected to win something, and this may be the most likely category.

Best Animated Feature
Winner: Coco
I’d like to win: Loving Vincent
The Interesting Choice: The Boss Baby

Why would The Boss Baby winning be interesting? Because it probably shouldn’t have even been nominated in the first place. Ferdinand is likewise filling the category out a bit. Like too many of this year’s nominees, though, there isn’t really any doubt about the winner.

Cinematography
Winner: Blade Runner 2049
I’d like to win: Blade Runner 2049
The Interesting Choice: Darkest Hour

Again, you can’t buck the smart money here, or Roger Deakins finally claiming his first Oscar. I don’t have a problem with any of these getting noticed, except perhaps Dunkirk. Darkest Hour, a film with a lot of issues, might be the most unlikely choice, but Bruno Delbonnel (who has worked with, amongst others, Jeunet, Burton and the Coen Brothers) did a beautiful job on it.

Best Production Design
Winner: The Shape of Water
I’d like to win: The Shape of Water
The Interesting Choice: Blade Runner 2049

While Blade Runner 2049 was one of my two favourite films of last year, I can’t favour it for this category, simply because the design, as striking as it is, pales in comparison to the gorgeously cluttered original. Still, a science fiction winner would be different (as opposed to the more commonplace fantasy winner).

Best Costume Design
Winner: Phantom Thread
I’d like to win: The Shape of Water
The Interesting Choice: Victoria and Abdul

The one win Phantom Thread can guarantee. Would Victoria and Abdul winning be interesting? Well, I don’t think anyone expects it.

Best Make Up and Hairstyling
Winner: Darkest Hour
I’d like to win: Darkest Hour
The Interesting Choice: Victoria and Abdul

Ditto this category. I don’t understand why they expanded the number of VFX nominees but kept this at three, and three not very interesting choices at that. I guess Oldman sports a decent fat suit, but it’s no Nutty Professor.

Best Film Editing
Winner: Dunkirk
I’d like to win: Baby Driver
The Interesting Choice: Baby Driver

Baby Driver scooped this one at the BAFTAs, and I think a lot of people would probably respond to the musicality of Wright’s choice over the more austere Dunkirk, but like Phantom Thread’s gowns, it’s likely to bring home the bacon in these tech categories.

Best Sound Mixing
Winner: Baby Driver
I’d like to win: Blade Runner 2049
The Interesting Choice: Blade Runner 2049

That said, I’m not plumbing for Dunkirk in all three editing/sound categories. Although, I think Blade Runner’s aural immersion would be the most interesting choice.

Best Sound Editing
Winner: Dunkirk
I’d like to win: Blade Runner 2049
The Interesting Choice: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Dunkirk, but can you imagine how irate The Last Jedi loathers would be if it managed to sneak off with an Oscar (not remotely likely, I know).

Best Visual Effects
Winner: War for the Planet of the Apes
I’d like to win: Blade Runner 2049
The Interesting Choice: Blade Runner 2049

Another shoe-in, although really, how much more impressive are these apes three films in that they need recognition now? Any of the other four would be more interesting.

Best Original Score
Winner: The Shape of Water
I’d like to win: Phantom Thread
The Interesting Choice: Dunkirk

I liked Shape of Water’s score well enough, if it’s maybe a bit too self-consciously quirky, but just because I don’t love any of them, I’d go for Jonny Greenwood’s luxuriant classic Hollywood score. Dunkirk, being an anti-score, would definitely be different if it was picked.

Best Original Song
Winner: This Is Me (The Greatest Showman)
I’d like to win: The Mystery of Love (Call Me By Your Name)
The Interesting Choice: The Mystery of Love (Call Me By Your Name) 

Remember Me (Coco) appears to be the hot tip, but really, it’s inconsequential anodyne nausea on a plate, and how can they not go with the super catchy, anthemic and rousingly affirmative This is Me? That’ll be the one with the shelf life. I found Mighty River (Mudbound) a bit overemphatic, while Andra Day (Marshall) has a pair of lungs on her, but my pick would be Sufjan “Cat” Stevens’ perfectly poised piece for Call Me By Your Name.

Best Foreign Language
Winner: The Square
The Interesting Choice: On Body and Soul

The Square seemed to be the one to beat at one point (I really didn’t rate the director’s Force Majeure, so I’m not sure I’ll agree), but A Fantastic Woman is currently leading it, because trans is so hot right now. Loveless doesn’t seem to be winning the same love its director’s Leviathan elicited a few years back. I’ve yet to see any of these, but the outsider On Body and Soul looks the most interesting of the bunch.

Best Documentary Feature
Winner: Faces Places
The Interesting Choice: Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

In this year’s selection there’s Last Men in Aleppo, another propaganda piece in favour of the White Helmets (the Oscars really love them, so that’s cause enough to be dubious), a nice safe anti-Putin piece (because that’s pushing the envelope) about Olympic doping (Icarus), a police racism film (Strong Blood), and a doc on the only financial institution to face criminal charges in the aftermath of the subprime crisis (Abacus: Small Enough to Jail). The winner, though? Smart money is on Face Places, a feel-good crowd-pleaser (as much as docs attract crowds, anyway) about a photographer and filmmaker bonding around France.

Best Animated Short
Winner: Lou
The Interesting Choice: Garden Party

Is Pixar likely to take home both animation categories? Why ever not? The lost property Cookie Monster-looking character in Lou is a definite winner, and like all Pixar, it turns incredibly mawkish at the end, so what’s not to like? Dear Basketball did nothing for me, even though the animation is very good, because it’s about basketball. I’ve only seen the trailers for the other three, but Garden Party’s animation impresses the most.

Best Documentary Short
Winner: Edith + Eddie
The Interesting Choice: Edith + Eddie

Oldest Interracial newlyweds turns into a dark family feud is getting all the positive press, and understandably so. The other contenders’ subjects include heroin (er, Heroin), cooking (Knife Skills), more police racism (Traffic Stop), and an artist on prescription meds (Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405).

Best Live Action Short
Winner: The Silent Child
The Interesting Choice: The Eleven O’Clock

Two of these (Dekalb Elementary and Watu Wote) are inspired by shootings, one has racist killers in 1955 Mississippi (My Nephew Emmett), another a British deaf girl (The Silent Child), while the final contender is a comedic encounter by a psychiatrist with a patient who thinks he’s a psychiatrist (The Eleven O’Clock). Dekalb Elementary is the favourite.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
Labels:

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .
Post a comment
Read more

Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

Private’s Progress (1956) (SPOILERS) Truth be told, there’s good reason sequel I’m Alright Jack reaps the raves – it is, after all, razor sharp and entirely focussed in its satire – but Private’s Progress is no slouch either. In some respects, it makes for an easy bedfellow with such wartime larks as Norman Wisdom’s The Square Peg (one of the slapstick funny man’s better vehicles). But it’s also, typically of the Boulting Brothers’ unsentimental disposition, utterly remorseless in rebuffing any notions of romantic wartime heroism, nobility and fighting the good fight. Everyone in the British Army is entirely cynical, or terrified, or an idiot.
Post a comment
Read more

Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.
Post a comment
Read more

It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

Psycho (1960) (SPOILERS) One of cinema’s most feted and most studied texts, and for good reason. Even if the worthier and more literate psycho movie of that year is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom . One effectively ended a prolific director’s career and the other made its maker more in demand than ever, even if he too would discover he had peaked with his populist fear flick. Pretty much all the criticism and praise of Psycho is entirely valid. It remains a marvellously effective low-budget shocker, one peppered with superb performances and masterful staging. It’s also fairly rudimentary in tone, character and psychology. But those negative elements remain irrelevant to its overall power.
Post a comment
Read more

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.
Post a comment
Read more

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr
Post a comment
Read more

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.
Post a comment
Read more

I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.

North by Northwest (1959) (SPOILERS) North by Northwest gets a lot of attention as a progenitor of the Bond formula, but that’s giving it far too little credit. Really, it’s the first modern blockbuster, paving the way for hundreds of slipshod, loosely plotted action movies built around set pieces rather than expertly devised narratives. That it delivers, and delivers so effortlessly, is a testament to Hitchcock, to writer Ernest Lehmann, and to a cast who make the entire implausible exercise such a delight.
Post a comment
Read more

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.
Post a comment
Read more

Look out the window. Eden’s not burning, it’s burnt.

Reign of Fire (2002) (SPOILERS) There was good reason to believe Rob Bowman would make a successful transition from top-notch TV director to top-notch film one. He had, after all, attracted attention and plaudits for Star Trek: The Next Generation and become such an integral part of The X-File s that he was trusted with the 1998 leap to the big screen. That movie wasn’t the hit it might have been – I suspect because, such was Chris Carter’s inability to hone a coherent arc, it continued to hedge its bets – but Bowman showed he had the goods. And then came Reign of Fire . And then Elektra . And that was it. Reign of Fire is entirely competently directed, but that doesn’t prevent it from being entirely lousy.
Post a comment
Read more