I love movie stars (films, food and football are my entire life), but I won’t be staying up tonight for this dross. The dressing up box mafia preaching about politics at the BAFTAs was cringe AF and I won’t be subjecting myself to a bunch of millionaires lecturing me again, in addition to the yawn-tastic Blah Blah Land love-in.
Film
Who will win: La La Land
Who should win: Moonlight
Who might win: In the infinitesimal chance LLL doesn’t walk away with this, Moonlight has about a 0.0007% chance of an upset.
Who should have been nominated: A United Kingdom was ineligible, so Zootopia and er, Café Society. Honestly, it’s way better than Blah Blah Land! The stars in it actually had chemistry! The closing shot of the dreamy looks on Eisenberg & Stewart's faces was far more resonant and moving than that cliched, hackneyed 'what if' montage at the end of LLL.
Director
Who will win: Damien Chazelle for La La Land
Who should win: Barry Jenkins for Moonlight
Who might win: Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea. Although the odds of Damien Chazelle losing this is even slimmer than LLL not taking Best Picture. He’s got this sewn up.
Who should have been nominated: Ken Loach for I, Daniel Blake. Although had he won, he would have just taken the opportunity to hector the audience about what terrible people they were and how he knows better than all of us had he won, so on second thoughts…
Who will win: Creepy Affleck for Manchester by the Sea
Who should win: Honestly, I wasn’t enamoured with any of the three performances I've watched (Washington, Affleck, Gosling), but if I were to judge them on quality of the acting, Denzel owns this.
Who might win: Denzel Washington for Fences
Who should have been nominated: Chris Pine for Hell or High Water and Jesse Eisenberg for Café Society (JE will have to make do with the Razzie he won yesterday instead)
Actress
Who will win: Emma Stone for La La Land
Who should win: So once, I was on a date with insufferable clown who kept acting like he was the authority on The Wolf of Wall Street (even though he hadn't seen it). I'm afraid I'm now going to be a massive hypocrite and emulate said clown and say Isabelle Huppert, despite not having seen Elle. Because she’s a brilliant actress who’s long overdue, and everyone’s been raving about her icy portrayal of a complex character.
(and also because I'm hella salty towards Yellowface and the overrated film she was in).
Who might win: Isabelle Huppert for Elle
Who should have been nominated: Amy Adams for Arrival(!!!!) and Emily Blunt for The Girl on the Train. Note: I haven’t seen Aquarius or 20th Century Women.
Supporting Actor
Who will win: Mahershala Ali for Moonlight
Who should win: Mahershala Ali for Moonlight
Who might win: Unfortunately, Dev Patel is going to run Ali close for this Oscar. I think the balance is currently 51/49 in Ali’s favour, but it's so finely judged right now I wouldn’t be surprised if I checked the results tomorrow morning to see Patel has won. I’d be devastated, but not surprised.
Who should have been nominated: Trevante Rhodes for Moonlight (stunning performance and my favourite of the year by far) and Alden Ehrenreich for Hail, Caesar!
Supporting Actress
Who will win: Viola Davis for Fences
Who should win: Viola Davis for Fences. Knockout performance, despite the clunkiness of Denzel Washington’s slightly vain direction doing her no favours. Plus she's a screen queen who never phones it in (see: Suicide Squad) who's well overdue.
Who might win: Michelle Williams for Manchester by the Sea
Who should have been nominated: Lily Gladstone for Certain Women and Hayley Squires for I, Daniel Blake.
Original Screenplay
Who will win: Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea
Who should win: Taylor Sheridan for Hell or High Water
Who might win: Damien Chazelle for La La Land
Who should have been nominated: Jared Bush and Phil Johnston for Zootopia, and the Paedo for Café Society. But he's a paedo so who cares.
Adapted Screenplay
Who will win: Barry Jenkins for Moonlight
Who should win: Barry Jenkins for Moonlight
Who might win: Eric Heisserer’s slow-burning, cerebral script for Arrival has a fair bit of awards momentum, but if anyone’s going to trump Moonlight it’ll be Lion’s script due to the sheer brazenness of the Weinstein Company’s campaign. Just remember how hard they and Felicia Vikander campaigned for her fraudulent category Oscar last year. And Felicia saw the gold, so.
(Sidebar: The Weinstein Company are really trying to make that wannabe Leonardo DiCaprio, Dane DeYawn happen. Just check out this (unintentionally) hilarious trailer to Tulip Fever, which stars DeHaan and their girl Felicia:)
Who should have been nominated: Liu Zhenyun for Someone to Talk To and Whit Stillman for Love and Friendship
Editing
Who will win: Hacksaw Ridge. The vast majority of my predictions are copy+paste jobs from Nathaniel’s blog, but I disagree with him that LLL has this locked up. Hacksaw Ridge won the BAFTA in this category and seems to have ‘more’ editing in the in-your-face meaning of the word, so I’ve gone for that for my prediction.
Plus, this category, in recent years, has thrown up a few surprises, particularly The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s win in this category, meaning Editing is no long an automatic vote for the film Academy voters enjoyed the most.
(Obviously, I’m just deluded and refuse to accept a LLL sweep).
Who might win: La La Land
Score
Who will win: La La Land
Who should win: Jackie
Who might win: Passengers, because the fact that Thomas Newman (who's haunting scores for Finding Nemo, The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty and Road to Perdition are part of the reason I persevered with the violin when the going got hard) doesn't have an Oscar but Jennifer Lawrence does is a bit *clown music*. But I think LLL's got a tight grip on this, so he'll have to keep waiting for his Oscar.
Song
Who will win: 'Shitty of Stars', La La Land despite the fact that Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone's duet of it hurt my ears even more than the Boston accents in Manchester by the Sea did
Who should win: 'How Far I'll Go' from Moana
Who might win: there’s a chance that due to Blah Blah Land having two bland songs in this category ('Audition' being the other), they might split the vote, with some people voting for 'Shitty of Stars', and the others voting for 'Yawndition', there’s a glimmer of hope that Moana might be the beneficiary. I would love this.
Who should have been nominated: ‘Never Give Up’ by Sia, for Lion. It played over the closing credits whilst set to footage of the real Saroo’s journey and that in itself was more poignant than the majority of the movie.
I most certainly would not have nominated Shakira's song in Zootopia, which despite me loving both the film and the singer, was one of the most saccharine songs ever, and downright irresponsible in its suggestion that 'I wanna try everything I wanna try even though I could fail'. I daresay parents of children who decide to try to fly off the top of a building wouldn't be quite as fond of such a lyric.
I most certainly would not have nominated Shakira's song in Zootopia, which despite me loving both the film and the singer, was one of the most saccharine songs ever, and downright irresponsible in its suggestion that 'I wanna try everything I wanna try even though I could fail'. I daresay parents of children who decide to try to fly off the top of a building wouldn't be quite as fond of such a lyric.
Cinematography
Who will win: La La Land
Who should win: Moonlight
Who might win: Lion
Sound
Who will win: La La Land
Who should win: Arrival
Who might win: Hacksaw Ridge
Who should have been nominated: Kubo and the Two Strings
Sound Editing
Who will win: Hacksaw Ridge
Who should win: Anyone other than La La Land. I couldn't hear what they were mumbling half the time!
Who might win: La La Land
Who should have been nominated: Kubo and the Two Strings
Animated Film
Who will win: Zootopia
Who should win: Zootopia, although I love Kubo and the Two Strings, too. Both are 8.5/10s in my book and in my current top 6 of 2016.
Who might win: Kubo and the Two Strings. The surprise BAFTA win will definitely give their producers some hope, but ultimately, I think Zootopia’s charm is too strong.
Who should have been nominated: Nothing I can think of. Certainly not that over-long and over-convoluted Your Name, or that phoned in, disappointing sequel, Finding Dory. And DEFINITELY not that unbelievably unfunny, wannabe edgy Sausage Party. #ByeFelicia
Who will win: The 13th
Who should win: Haven’t seen any of them.
Who might win: OJ: Made in America
Foreign Film
Who will win: The Salesman. London Trafalgar Square is actually hosting a screening of this film today at 4:30pm, which I was intending on going to, but unfortunately I have some freelance programming work that needs to be done, so guttingly, I’m sitting this one out.
Who should win: Haven’t seen any of them.
Who might win: Toni Erdmann.
Who should have been nominated: Julieta
Makeup and Hair
Who will win: Star Trek Beyond
Who should win: Don’t care
Who might win: Suicide Squad
Who should have been nominated: A bit random, but I would go with Moonlight, for how they transformed Naomie Harris (who is 40 in real life but looks younger than Emma Stone, 28 #JustSaying) from the sleek Moneypenny we’re used to seeing, to a haggard druggie.
Visual Effects
Who will win: The Jungle Book
Who should win: Kubo and the Two Strings, hands down. Those origami battles were astonishing.
Who might win: Inception with A-levels, aka Doctor Strange
Who should have been nominated: Not Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad's distractingly bad effects, that’s for sure. I’m just surprised the Academy voters didn’t honour La La Land here, seeing as they seem to be giving out nominations to that Hollywood-fellating movie like smarties.
Production Design
Who will win: Unfortunately, La La Land
Who should win: Arrival
Who might win: Fantastic Oscar-Beggers and Where to Find Them
Who should have been nominated: Love and Friendship and Jackie
Costume
Who will win: I refuse to believe LLL will take this for some suits & skinny ties and Emma Stone’s colourful dresses. That would be one of the most egregious and lazy wins in Oscar history. I refuse to believe it and am refusing to predict it, even though it probably will. But I’m stubbornly predicting Jackie
Who should win: Jackie
Who might win: La La Land
Who should have been nominated: Café Society and Love and Friendship
I don’t predict short films, so I make that 8 wins for La La Land, which is excessive, to say the least, but given that they actually could win 13 (ties aren’t possible under this preferential ballot system), I’ll cut my losses and take 8. No more, please!
And if Mahershala loses to Dev Patel, then the Weinstein Company will have done their worst. As misdirected penance, I will write a scathing review of Tulip Fever on my blog (although let’s be real, it stars Dane DeYawn and Felicia Vikander. I was totally planning on doing that regardless). That'll teach them.
I highly recommend reading The Girl on the Train: A Novel.
ReplyDeleteI finished reading it today, and my conclusion is that its a very interesting book.