Featured Post

Letterboxd Reviews

So as you know, I stopped writing lengthy reviews on this site this year, keeping the blog as more of a film diary of sorts.  Lo and behold,...

Thursday, January 14, 2016

2016 Academy Awards Predictions

Updated 1/14 - 8:50am
I'll be back Thursday morning to see how I fared.  An odd year as nothing has really taken the lead and run with it.  Also rather odd in that I feel that I'm way behind on Oscar-related films.

Best Picture
1. Spotlight
2. The Martian
3. The Big Short
4. The Revenant
5. Mad Max: Fury Road
6. Brooklyn
7. Carol
8. Bridge of Spies
9. Room
10. Straight Outta Compton
alt. Inside Out, Trumbo
I'm not quite sure of the algorithm as to how they choose the nominees, but I think it has to do with how many first place finishes there are in the rankings.  With this in mind, I feel like the Best Picture line-up could end at #6...or perhaps it's so wide open that we could have a ten-large field this year.
Update:  You can either count this as 8/8 or 7/8 -- Carol didn't get the nod, but slots 8 and 9 did.

Best Actor
1. Leonardo DiCaprio - The Revenant
2. Matt Damon - The Martian
3. Michael Fassbender - Steve Jobs
4. Bryan Cranston - Trumbo
5. Eddie Redmayne - The Danish Girl
alt. Will Smith - Concussion
Update: 5/5 -- slots 4 and 5 are such a waste here...

Best Actress
1. Brie Larson - Room
2. Saoirse Ronan - Brooklyn
3. Cate Blanchett - Carol
4. Alicia Vikander - The Danish Girl
5. Charlotte Rampling - 45 Years
alt. Jennifer Lawrence - Joy
Update:  4/5 (thanks to Academy "cheating") -- I thought the Academy would be smart enough to realize that Vikander is a leading actress in The Danish Girl, but they voted her as Supporting.  Jennifer Lawrence sneaks in because of that.

Best Supporting Actor
1. Mark Rylance - Bridge of Spies
2. Sylvester Stallone - Creed
3. Christian Bale - The Big Short
4. Idris Elba - Beasts of No Nation
5. Jacob Tremblay - Room
alt. Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton - Spotlight; Paul Dano - Love and Mercy
(really one of the most wide-open categories this year...only 1 and 2 are locks above)
Update:  3/5 -- as I said, a wide open category with Ruffalo getting in along with Tom Hardy from Revenant who didn't make an appearance in any precursors.

Best Supporting Actress
1. Rooney Mara - Carol
2. Jennifer Jason Leigh - The Hateful Eight
3. Kate Winslet - Steve Jobs
4. Jane Fonda - Youth
5. Alicia Vikander - Ex Machina
alt.  Helen Mirren - Trumbo
Update:  3/5 -- With the Academy's cheating moving Vikander to supporting for The Danish Girl, I guess I'm 3/5 here, but since I chose Vikander anyway (albeit for a different role), maybe it still counts?  Ha!

Best Director
1. Tom McCarthy - Spotlight
2. Ridley Scott - The Martian
3. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - The Revenant
4. George Miller - Mad Max: Fury Road
5. Adam McKay - The Big Short
alt. Todd Haynes - Carol
Update: 4/5 - Shocked that Ridley Scott who almost seemed a given to win didn't make the cut, but the director's branch of the Academy has been known to shake things up in recent years.  In is Lenny Abrahamson for Room -- I really need to see that one.

Best Adapted Screenplay
1. The Big Short
2. Carol
3. Steve Jobs
4. Brooklyn
5. The Martian
alt. Room
Update:  4/5 - For the second year in a row (last year it was Gone Girl), my favorite screenplay of the year in (thus far) in Steve Jobs gets shoved aside.  Room gets bumped up.

Best Original Screenplay
1. Spotlight
2. Inside Out
3. The Hateful Eight
4. Bridge of Spies
5. Trainwreck
alt. Ex Machina
Update: 3/5 - No Trainwreck (an out-there prediction, I know) or Hateful Eight (they love Tarantino, seemingly), but the alternate (and deserving) Ex Machina moves up and Straight Outta Compton joins the list

Best Animated Film
1. Inside Out
2. Anomalisa
3. The Peanuts Movie
4. Shaun the Sheep Movie
5. ??
Update:  3/5 - No Peanuts and the branch went with two unknown features which they often do, but it's always difficult to determine which independent features they'll go with.

Overall:  35/48 -- pretty bad and worse than last year.  (If you include my alternates, I raise that score by 4 and I'm still bitter about the category fraud placement of Vikander's Danish Girl performance in supporting.)   Oddly enough, I've seen a lot of movies I've liked this year, but I'm feeling very removed from this whole Oscar landscape this season.  Perhaps it's because the two of the three movies I've really liked -- Steve Jobs and Ex Machina -- haven't been embraced by the Academy as much as I would've liked.  Brooklyn making the cut is nice because its simplistic story certainly wasn't a given for the win, but with only three nominations (I think) for the film, the passion isn't there for this one either.

No comments:

Post a Comment