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Oscars 2021: Nomination Prediction Results

February 9, 2022February 9, 2022 Jeremy BeckOscars

When it comes to this year’s Oscars, we can agree to disagree. Or maybe we can disagree about what we agree on. From my particular vantage on Film Twitter, it was hard to tell whether this year’s slate of nominations constituted a triumph or a travesty. Did the Academy make some brave and unexpected choices? Or were its curveballs simply, to quote a certain aesthete, a sly declaration of new classic status slipped into a list of old safe ones?

As is ever the case, it’s hard to get too excited about this year’s Oscar nominees, but it’s also silly to be too disappointed by them. By and large, the Academy highlighted some pretty good movies and artisans, even if their picks rarely aligned with my own. The day our respective selections do match perfectly will be cause for trepidation rather than celebration. After all, what am I without my own weird, idiosyncratic, inimitable taste? Read More

Oscars 2021: Nomination Predictions

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 Jeremy BeckOscars

Hey, the Oscars are back to normal this year, right? Well, sort of. Following last year’s ill-advised, pandemic-influenced decision to extend the 2020 eligibility window by two months, this year’s period is correspondingly shorter, spanning from March through December of 2021. Of course, release date is really just a state of mind for the Academy; how else to explain the qualifying run, that ubiquitous, noxious trend in which buzzy contenders—including Cyrano, Petite Maman, and The Worst Person in the World—receive invisible one-week December releases in New York and L.A. in order to be deemed “2021” films, even though the vast majority of American audiences can’t see them for months later?

It’s annoying, but release-schedule and eligibility-fudging shenanigans aside, the good news is that the compressed ten-month window hasn’t yielded a shortage of strong candidates. I’ll wait until next month before unveiling my official top 10 list, but despite the routine prophecies of the death of cinema, there were still plenty of good movies to watch in 2021. Now, whether that sustained quality will actually translate to this year’s nominations is anyone’s guess, though widening the inevitable gap between personal darlings and populist favorites is arguably part of the Academy’s function. Put differently: What’s the point of the Oscars if not to complain about them? Read More

Oscars 2020 Recap: Not Quite Out of Sight

April 26, 2021April 25, 2021 Jeremy BeckOscars

Anthony Hopkins (not) appearing at the Oscars

Well, that was… different.

Look, I don’t envy Steven Soderbergh and the other producers tasked with running the 93rd Academy Awards. The ceremony was doomed to fall under the giant shadow cast by the COVID-19 pandemic—not just because it presented an enormous logistical challenge in the era of masks and social distancing, but because the show itself was celebrating ~~a year’s~~ 14 months worth of films that were released during a time when virtually nobody was going to the movies. The result was a telecast that needed to be fluid and innovative in an industry that prizes consistency and tradition.

Soderbergh’s team tried. Even with nominees spread across the globe rather than packed into the Dolby Theatre, they attempted to mount a more intimate-feeling gathering, one reliant on conversation and eye contact as opposed to engineering and bombast. As the capper to an absurdly lengthy awards season, the Oscars are typically meant to feel gigantic, but here they aimed to be small, even cozy. Read More

Oscars 2020: Prediction Roundup

April 25, 2021April 23, 2021 Jeremy BeckOscars

At long, long last, the 93rd Academy Awards are finally airing tonight. We’ve spent the past week running through our predictions and preferences in the 20 feature categories (sorry, I skipped the short subjects). For your handy convenience, here’s an omnibus post detailing all of our predictions, with links to more detailed analyses.

Curiously enough, even with Nomadland being the clear Best Picture frontrunner, I’m only predicting it to win three total Oscars; that’s the same number I’m predicting for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which didn’t even score a Best Picture nomination. Does this mean anything? Probably not, but we’ll see what happens!

Best Actor
Will win: Chadwick Boseman—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (confidence: 3/5)
Should win: Chadwick Boseman—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Worst omission: Hugh Jackman—Bad Education Read More

Oscars 2020: Best Director and Best Picture

April 23, 2021April 23, 2021 Jeremy BeckOscars

And here we are. It’s been a busy week here at MovieManifesto: We’ve already analyzed 18 feature categories at this year’s Oscars, including the lead and supporting actors, the screenplays, the big techies, and the odds and ends. Now, we get to the top two prizes. Will there be a Picture/Director split, as has happened three times in the past five years? Let’s find out!

BEST DIRECTOR

NOMINEES
Lee Isaac Chung—Minari
Emerald Fennell—Promising Young Woman
David Fincher—Mank
Thomas Vinterberg—Another Round
Chloé Zhao—Nomadland Read More