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Oscars 2020: Nomination Predictions

March 11, 2021March 10, 2021 Jeremy BeckOscars

Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Oh look, it’s time for another Oscars. Business as usual, right?

As I’ve written in the past, the upheaval that the film and entertainment industry has suffered at the hands of COVID-19 is perhaps one of the pandemic’s less significant calamities. But the turmoil that it sowed for the Oscars strikes me as self-inflicted. Last June, after surveying an uncertain cinematic landscape where theaters were closed and new releases were being continually postponed, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the eligibility window for this year’s Oscars—which typically covers films that came out during the prior calendar year—would be extended to February 2021, and that it was correspondingly delaying the ceremony itself until late April. (Nominations will finally be proclaimed on Monday.) The theory, I suppose, was to broaden the pool of potential nominees, as though flipping the datebook from December to January would magically herald the sudden arrival of high-quality pictures that were heretofore unavailable.

This was, of course, nonsense; 2020 was already a terrific year for cinema, and in widening the window, the Academy implicitly derided the fertile crop of existing releases. Beyond that, the decision carried the unfortunate consequence of further prolonging the interminable period colloquially known as Awards Season: the annual ritual of critics’ groups and governing bodies bestowing honors on various films and artists, culminating with the Oscars’ ultimate crowning of the best of the best. Hell, by the time 2020’s Best Picture is announced, campaigns for 2021 Oscar candidacy will practically be underway.

So be it. It’s still the Oscars, meaning it’s still relevant in terms of the historical record; if the Academy’s actual choices for the best movies of 2020 scarcely matter, that’s no different from any other year. With that in mind, per tradition, here are MovieManifesto’s predictions for the nominations in 13 major categories of the 93rd Academy Awards: Read More

Oscars 2019: Parasite Triumphs, and So Does History

February 10, 2020March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckOscars

Every so often, the Academy gets one right.

Look, I don’t care all that much about the Oscars. They’re a self-congratulatory ceremony designed to honor the preferences of an insular collective whose tastes rarely mirror my own. Getting worked up about them is just silly. But they still matter, as a matter of historical record if nothing else. Sure, the Academy Awards can help launch careers or highlight social issues, but their primary function these days is statistical. Actors are identified in obituaries as having been nominated X number of times, while certain victories become data points—anecdotes used to spot cinematic trends in terms of genre, style, and demographics. How many war movies have won Best Picture? How many women have been nominated for Best Director? These questions are posed not just in esoteric bar trivia, but by scholars who seek to measure changes within the film industry, who participate in our ongoing quest to determine which movies we like and which we ruefully ignore. We pay attention to the Oscars because they matter; the Oscars matter because we pay attention. Read More

Oscars 2019: Prediction Roundup

February 9, 2020March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckOscars

One of these two gents is about to win an Oscar!

Before we concatenate all of our Oscar predictions: Did you ever want to listen to me talk about movies? Now you can! The SportsAlcohol team did a brief podcast on this year’s Oscars. We discuss which Best Picture nominee is most likely to be reviled in future years if it wins, why “brutally honest” anonymous ballots are bullshit, and how on earth The Two Popes scored three major nominations. It’s a fun chat. (We also did a much longer podcast on the Best Movies of 2019. Enjoy!)

With that out of the way, here are all of our predictions in a single omnibus post, with links to our more detailed write-ups. Oddly enough, I’ve discovered that the only race I’m emotionally invested in is Best Adapted Screenplay. Go Greta go! Read More

Oscars 2019: Best Picture and Best Director

February 7, 2020March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckOscars

And here we are. After a week spent analyzing 19 different feature categories at this year’s Oscars—including odds and ends, technical fields, supporting actors, lead performances, and screenplays—we’ve finally arrived at the big ones. Let’s get right to it.

BEST DIRECTOR

NOMINEES
Bong Joon-ho—Parasite
Sam Mendes—1917
Todd Phillips—Joker
Martin Scorsese—The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino—Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

WILL WIN
It used to be easy; whoever made the winner of Best Picture also won for Best Director. But the two categories have split as often as not in the past decade—five times in the past seven years, in fact—so now things are more complex. You can tie yourself into knots trying to locate points of synergy or disconnect between the two categories, but at this point, I’m partial to essentially ignoring the Best Picture lineup and analyzing the two fields independently. Read More

Oscars 2019: The Screenplays

February 7, 2020March 4, 2021 Jeremy BeckOscars

Almost there! We’ve already posted four different pieces on this year’s Oscars, looking at odds and ends, techies, supporting actors, and leads. Now, we’ll take a quick skim through the screenplay categories, before wrapping up with Best Director and Best Picture later today.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

NOMINEES
Knives Out—Rian Johnson
Marriage Story—Noah Baumbach
1917—Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—Quentin Tarantino
Parasite—Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won Read More