Alright, here we go. We’ve got 25 days until the Academy Awards and 23 categories to cover. Many races are blissfully open right now, but there are plenty of precursors in the next few weeks waiting to tell us which way the wind is blowing. I have my hunches, but that is all they are for the moment. The Directors Guild will announce its winners Saturday. The BAFTAs take place Sunday. The PGA Awards are Feb. 25, and the SAG Awards roll around Feb 26. That’s a lot of info about to come our way, but let’s take stock of where we think we stand.
As the nominations leader and the most critically acclaimed film of the year, Everything Everywhere All at Once is your de facto frontrunner. People love this movie, and love matters when it comes to voting for Best Picture. On my scorecard, for the time being, I have the film converting five of its 11 nominations into statues, taking home Picture, Director and Original Screenplay for the Daniels, Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan, and Editing.
The film is also probably running around second or third place in most of its other categories. In particular, there is heat on Michelle Yeoh to catch up and take Best Actress from presumed favorite Cate Blanchett. Five wins would already be the most for a Best Picture winner since The Artist in 2011. Six or more and we’re getting into Slumdog Millionaire sweep territory, which has only happened a couple times this century. But if people truly love this film as much as it seems, there is every possibility they will just mark the box next to it all the way down the ballot.
All that said, the leader at this point in the race doesn’t always hold to win. If we called the race at this point, your past winners would include The Power of the Dog, 1917, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, and La La Land, and those are just examples from the past six years. So, it’s worth it to wonder what may be lurking with a shot.
The Banshees of Inisherin is second in nominations, tied with All Quiet on the Western Front. It has support from the actors branch, the largest branch of voters, though it should be noted both this and Everything Everywhere have four acting nods. Writer-director Martin McDonagh is well liked by the Academy, and it is hard to find anyone with anything truly negative to say about the film.
For my two cents, Todd Field’s TÁR is probably sitting in third place by virtue of the fact that it has nominations in all of the most important categories (Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, Editing, and Cinematography) and it has the patina of a true masterpiece. It has the feel of a Roma or There Will Be Blood, historic feats of filmmaking that will be remembered long after the Oscars race has run its course. They are movies that critics of the Academy Awards would call “too good to win Best Picture,” a suggestion that the Academy is too middlebrow to reward something so artful and majestic.
Neither film has the “love” factor to it, though. Banshees is well liked and TÁR is admired, but Everything Everywhere is beloved. If we are going by that metric, Elvis and Top Gun: Maverick are probably the next two after the frontrunner.
If Top Gun: Maverick were going to win, it would probably have a Best Director nomination. CODA won without one last year, but that was a movie admired for its acting and writing. Top Gun is absolutely a director’s picture, which makes its lack of a nomination there suspicious from a Best Picture potential standpoint.
Elvis, on the other hand, is an interesting case. It is very divisive. People either love it or they hate it, which is usually not the kind of film that wins the top prize, unless there are enough people who love it. However, none of that divisiveness precludes it from being a big winner on the night, and as it stands, I have it predicted in four of the eight categories for which it is nominated.
I am betting on Austin Butler to triumph in a truly competitive Best Actor race. I am going out on a limb to predict the four big action movies nominated for Sound split the vote and the award falls to the musical. Meanwhile, the flashiness of the Production Design and Cinematography could easily win voters over. Honestly, Costume Design and Makeup and Hairstyling are not out of the question either.
Could Elvis be this year’s Mad Max: Fury Road or La La Land, scooping up all the crafts awards while another movie holds sway at the top of the ballot? It is at least first or second in five of the six categories I just named, with Sound the exception where I am currently projecting something a little wonky – which I reserve the right to change when we get there.
In the acting races, Quan is running away with Supporting Actor and no one has yet stepped up to challenge Angela Bassett for Supporting Actress. Blanchett had a big lead in Actress at the beginning of the season, but all the support for Everything Everywhere has people switching their bets to Yeoh. I am not ready to go that far, but we’ll see what BAFTA and SAG have to say.
And, that just leaves Best Actor, a three-way race with no clear favorite as of this date. Again, BAFTA and SAG will change that, unless they split, which is entirely possible. Maybe Butler wins both and the race is over. Maybe the Brits go for Colin Farrell and SAG goes with Brendan Fraser, which would leave all options on the table. If asked to rank them, currently, I would have Butler, then Farrell, then Fraser, but I don’t think there is a lot separating them.
We’ll save most of the below-the-line analysis for the rest of this series, as well as the shorts, the docs, and the animated and international features. I am excited for the race ahead. There are a lot of great artists nominated for tremendous work, and many of them are within striking distance of a win. It’s all possible right now, which makes this the best time of the season. As the possibilities come off the table and certain wins become inevitable, it gets less and less fun. So for now, let’s enjoy the mystery.
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