Every year, the Oscars and its preceding awards season gauntlet produces celebratory highs, cringe-worthy lows and many momentum swings. This year’s iteration, set to air on ABC on Sunday, Feb. 24, has been an altogether different kind of melee.
It all started last year with the fumbled announcement of a brand new category: Best Popular Film (huh?). Then the Kevin Hart hosting debacle happened, which is somehow still controversial since no replacement host has been found.
Rumors that certain categories (like Best Cinematography) will be presented during commercial breaks leaked. Then word spread that only two of the Best Song nominees would be performed live. They have since rejected that gem of an idea for an even better one: 90-second renditions of each tune!
The nominees themselves haven’t been particularly scandal-free either. Key figures of the Green Book contingent have made racist and insensitive comments (Viggo Mortensen and Nick Vallelonga need to just stop talking) or have been called out for past sexist behavior on set (zip up your fly Peter Farrelly).
But none of the bad and ugly stuff will deter us from making some good predictions about this year’s eventual winners.
Best Animated/Live Action/Doc Short: Weekend/Marguerite/Period.End of Sentence.
Covered in last week’s issue. Here’s hoping quality prevails.
Best Film Editing:Vice
Vice is a blunt satirical object that feels like it was released either too soon or too late for audiences to engage with the evil of its subject. Nevertheless, its editing choices are sly and experimental, and truly establish the film’s sense of rhythm. Through this lens, history becomes an unfolding tsunami of power grabs and manipulations.
Best Visual Effects/Sound Mixing/Sound Editing: First Man
If the Academy looks past the obvious blockbuster standards for these three categories (exemplified by Avengers: Infinity War, Bohemian Rhapsody and Solo: A Star Wars Story), it will go for Damien Chazelle’s sobering and minimalist portrait of Neil Armstrong, a mesmerizing feat of sound and visual fury.
Best Song: “Shallow,” A Star is Born
No offense to Kendrick Lamar, RBG, or Lin Manuel Miranda, but Lady Gaga has this one in the bag. The emotional and creative anthem of Bradley Cooper’s sterling remake perfectly embodies the film’s swirling melodrama. Also, it’s achieved crossover success on mainstream radio.
If Beale Street Could Talk
Best Score: If Beale Street Could Talk
Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk uses music to great affect in telling the temporally pliable story of two young black people trapped by systemic injustice. Don’t count out the kinetic scores from Black Panther or BlacKkKlansman (the great Terence Blanchard’s first ever nomination is one of the season’s best storylines.)
Best Production Design/Costume Design: Black Panther
The construction of Wakanda is itself a political act, and Ryan Coogler’s film dutifully represents every textured detail, elaborate pattern and vibrant hue that makes it a singular place.
Best Makeup & Hairstyling: Vice
If the Academy had any collective guts, Border would be the choice. But imagining stodgy old Oscar voters sitting through that strange, unsettling Swedish film and thinking, “Yeah, that’s my choice,” seems next to impossible. Christian Bale, on the other hand, is a known quantity having gained and lost weight for roles countless times. And the makeup job used to turn him into Cheney is indeed uncanny.
Best Cinematography: Roma
Alfonso Cuarón’s stunning black-and-white long takes are both technically impressive and emotionally hollow. Oscar’s electorate doesn’t care about the latter.
Best Documentary Feature: Of Fathers and Sons
Disclaimer: This will probably go to RBG, a formally basic movie of the moment. Minding the Gap and Hale County This Morning, This Evening are far superior films, aesthetically dynamic and tonally raw. The dark horse in this race, which imbeds itself in the family of Syrian jihadists, feels like the perfect combination of form and function that adventurous voters can get behind.
Best Animated Film: Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse
It’s just the most impressive, mind-bending and heartfelt superhero film to come around in a long time.
Best Foreign Language Film: Roma
Cold War has a puncher’s chance considering Pawlikowski’s previous win for Ida (2013), but this is Roma’s category to lose considering the love it received in countless other categories.
Best Original/Adapted Screenplay: Green Book and BlacKkKlansman
The irony of pairing these two particular films together should not be lost on anyone. Green Book won’t get shut out and this is the most likely place for it to be victorious (that is, if the apocalypse doesn’t happen and it wins the big prize). BlacKkKlansman’s script is adventurous and brazen, and a completely suitable winner.
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
The depth, empathy and force of King’s performance is immediately apparent the second she appears onscreen. Not a flashy turn by any means, but it is deeply human.
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali, Green Book
He is a staggeringly great as the conflicted protagonist in the latest season of HBO’s True Detective, and Ali plays pianist Don Shirley in his sleep. Still, he emerges as the most complex, tormented character in an otherwise cartoonish film.
Best Actress: Glenn Close, The Wife
She’s due! Close’s ham-fisted performance as a woman of talent, disregarded by her pompous Nobel Prize-winning husband, is the front-runner for a reason. If there were any justice in the world, Olivia Colman would stroll up onstage and accept this in character as The Favourite’s manic Queen Anne.
Best Actor: Christian Bale, Vice
Rami Malek’s fake teeth will reign supreme, but Bale has a long career of immersive performances and his deep dive as Dick Cheney is as disturbing as it is dedicated. Let’s stay optimistic people.
Best Director:Alfonso Cuarón, Roma
The merry-go-round of Mexican auteur’s winning this award continues for a second time, and why shouldn’t it? Cuarón’s intimate, nuanced direction is a master class in layered blocking and mise-en-scène.
Best Picture: Roma
If Green Book wins (and it very well might), this would be the ultimate cherry on top of a disastrous Academy Awards season that also saw fit to nominate the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody in multiple categories. Odds are that Roma is victorious. This sweeping, personal and gorgeous film is the perfect out for sensible Oscar voters trying to avoid lasting embarrassment. Question is, are there enough of them?