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| Pictured: Oscar winner with no social relevance to anyone but Hollywood |
First let us concentrate on the short award categories; Best Documentary Short, Live Action Short and Animated Short. Don't discount these on your Oscar ballot come Sunday; they're on the whole, the least predictable categories largely because most Academy voters don't see all of the nominees. Exposure is key here:
Best Animated Short:
Best Documentary Short:
Best Live-Action Short:
Now we have the lesser technical awards. These are the ones where the presenters take longer to explain the award than the recipients do when making their speeches. Sometimes these awards are peppered in throughout the ceremony and give an indication on which movies have momentum on their side. In the case of Visual Effects it's usually an excuse to give a mindless blockbuster some recognition. These categories include Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup, and Visual Effects.
Best Sound Editing:
Best Sound Mixing:
Best Production Design:
This category is all over the map! Mad Max and The Revenant are up there but so are The Danish Girl, The Martian and Bridge of Spies, a whole mess of movies that couldn't be more diverse. Smart money is once again on Mad Max: Fury Road which will probably win. Does it deserve to win? Yeah, I think so.
Best Costume Design:
Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Best Visual Effects:
Mad Max: Fury Road! Shhh, don't struggle, don't fight it, just witness.
Now we get into the production awards we kinda care about. The ones that don't need explanation but don't feature pretty people taking home a statuette. They're also the categories where Mad Max turns into a pumpkin. The awards are: Original Score, Original Song, Documentary, Animated Film, Foreign Language Film, Film Editing and Cinematography.
We have some heavy-hitters in this category. Thomas Newman who scored Bridge of Spies has been nominated 12 times. John "I provided the soundtrack to your childhood" Williams has been nominated a whopping 42 times and won 5! Then there's the legendary Ennio Morricone who has never won despite providing the soundtrack to your father's childhood. Morricone's work in The Hateful Eight is one of the few sure things this Sunday; he will be the winner. He's also is most deserving of the win even though his work on The Hateful Eight isn't as iconic as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
This category has been fun to watch over the last few years. Look back far enough and there seems to be competing patterns. Recently it's a tug-o-war between catchy tunes featured in animated movies and documentaries with showstopping anthems. For the first time ever there are two of the latter and none of the former. What's even more interesting is the Docs nominated for Best Song; Racing Extinction and The Hunting Ground aren't even nominated for Best Documentary. We live in a crazy world. The winner will be: The Hunting Ground's song "Til it Happens to You" a powerful ballad dedicated to rape victims. It will provide Lady Gaga yet another award but in this case I really do thing she deserves to win; sorry Fifty Shade of Grey.
Best Documentary:
Another for sure thing this award season is Inside Out. I would be very surprised if it isn't the eventual winner. The film most deserving the win is definitely The Boy & the World which was one of the most fascinating animated films I have seen this decade.
Best Foreign Language Film:
Son of Saul will be the winner. It simply has too much going for it; positive word-of-mouth, it takes bold cinematic risks which, unlike Best Picture is actually encouraged in this category. Plus its story takes place during the Holocaust. Does it deserve to win however? Well Mustang comes with similar positive buzz and it features timely messages about living in a more pluralistic society. I'm going to indulge myself and say Mustang deserves the win.
Here is where Mad Max is going to falter a bit. Yes it's nominated and yes it's the odd-on favorite though not by much. The Big Short will be the winner in this category on the strength of more American-centric themes, bigger names and previous work by editor Hank Corwin. Most deserving of the win, in my humble opinion is actually dark-horse nominee Tom McArdle for Spotlight. Nowhere is there a more tactile building of evidence and execution of themes than in Spotlight and the editing is an underrated invisible hand that we all should celebrate.
There is so much love for The Revenant's cinematography that I find it hard to believe it won't win against Mad Max, Hateful Eight and Carol. The Revenant will not only win the award but will be cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki third win in a row. The deserved win however is Roger Deakins for Sicario who has been nominated 13 times yet has never won. Those who have seen Sicario can attest that the cinematography as the best thing about that movie.
Now we get to the categories we all care about. The ones that bring to mind the glamour and prestige that comes with watching the Oscars. These categories are not only ones we easily recognize and look forward to watching but they are most susceptible to bias. They're not just acting awards, they're lifetime achievement awards. One can't help but think that if Roger Deakins was an actor, he would have gotten his golden statue years ago. The awards are as follows: Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Actor and Actress, Best Director and of course, Best Picture.
The media is predicting this category to be a two movie race between Inside Out and Spotlight. Both provide some excellent writing and while Inside Out can be commended for its originality the winner will be: Spotlight. Early on it was the odds-on favorite to win Best Picture but so much steam has been taken out of its campaign as of late that it may just win Original Screenplay as a consolation prize. In my experience, the category of Original Screenplay has always featured the best film of the year. No it won't win but I think the most deserving film is Ex Machina; one of the most underrated films of the decade.
Let's face it, the nomination process for this category was very cluttered. With the amount of biographies and movies based on novels and comic-books, I truly think they should expand this category to 10. No The Revenant wasn't nominated nor was Trumbo, Lady in the Van or Creed but Carol was! Okay let's get to it; the winner will be: The Big Short because of course it will! Most deserving to win however is The Martian which made physics, chemistry and botany actually exciting.
It basically comes down to Sylvester Stallone and Mark Rylance for Creed and Bridge of Spies respectively. As I said before, the acting awards are part-lifetime achievement award thus Sly will win and finally take home the prize for playing the same damn character he's played since the start of his career. Most deserving of the prize for, you know, actually acting is hands down Tom Hardy for The Revenant who did most of the crap Leo did sans slipping into a moose carcass.
This horse race is the tightest out of all the categories. It literally is a coin-toss between Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl and Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs. Yet there's enough support for both to split the vote allowing Rooney Mara from Carol to spoil and spoil hard. Despite this risk, I'm going to have to predict Vikander as the ultimate winner. It comes down to her recent Screen Actors Guild Award and Critics' Choice Award. That and the fact that unlike Steve Jobs which is considered a lesser Aaron Sorkin film, The Danish Girl is a landmark film (for better or worse). Most deserving of the win however is...Alicia Vikander for Ex Machina. Yes I know she's not nominated for that movie but dammit she should be!
Best Actress:
Brie Larson is a forgone conclusion. She deserves to win for Room and she will win for Room. I defy the Academy to prove me wrong.
Doesn't it seem like the further down we get, the more certain it becomes? It really is Leo's to lose this year and despite some minor ankle biting by Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl and Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs I really don't see DiCaprio losing out to either. Leo DiCaprio in Revenant for the win! Deserved win: Channing Tatum for Jupiter Ascending; he made it through the movie without laughing, that to me is an accomplishment.
In the directing category, George Miller of Mad Max fame is proving a real threat to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu who won last year for Birdman (2014) and hopes to repeat history with The Revenant. Back to back wins aren't entirely out of the realm of possibility. Joseph L. Mankiewicz won Best Director for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950) though that was over fifty years ago. Despite believing that the deserved win should go to 70-year-old veteran George Miller the winner will ultimately be: Inarritu for The Revenant.
Finally the largest and arguably the most important award of the night; Best Picture. There are eight nominees all of which are very good, high-quality films that are sure to entertain anyone who watches them. They are: The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road, Room, Spotlight, Brooklyn, The Martian, Bridge of Spies and The Big Short. Taken out of the running right away are Brooklyn and Bridge of Spies which, while decent films don't have that many exemplary things going for them. The Big Short and The Martian are excellent films sure to be popular long past this year's hoopla. My heart ultimately is with The Big Short though we all know that the Academy has bias towards comedies. There's a double handicap for The Martian which is also a science fiction film. This leaves The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road and Spotlight.
Mad Max has a lot of things going against it. It's a sci-fi action epic, it's a sequel, it's not an American production and it's a blockbuster. None of these things would be enough to handicap a movie during any given year but all these factors together all but eliminate Mad Max. Spotlight was an early favorite and its narrative; The Boston Globe's take-down of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, was enough to give its brand a moral edge. Despite this however, The Revenant has surged into the lead thanks in part to good marketing, a certain actors inevitable, long awaited triumph and said actor's speech at the Golden Globes where Leo masterfully branded the film a movie that treats Native Americans with respect. Spotlight suddenly lost its underdog Cinderella story narrative and became "that newspaper movie" seemingly overnight. The eventual winner will be: The Revenant.
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