OSCAR PREDIX, Part 3: Features, Scripts, Editing

Today we talk the other features up for an Oscar in documentary, animated and international, while calling the editing and screenplay races as best we can.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

All Quiet on the Western Front
Argentina, 1985
Close
Eo
The Quiet Girl

This has to go to All Quiet, as the major international film and BAFTA winner of course. Not a close call for this one.

Winner: All Quiet on the Western Front

Alternate: Argentina, 1985 (the Golden Globe winner)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

All That Breathes
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Fire of Love
A House Made of Splinters
Navalny

On paper, the frontrunner for this category looked like Laura Poitras’s well reviewed All the Beauty and the Bloodshed for a while, but then Navalny came up from behind recently with wins at PGA and BAFTA. This was surprising to some but not to me. I though Navalny was likely to win all along, even if it had no precursor wins. It’s the kind of film for which winning an Oscar is a major political statement against Russia, and at a time of war in Ukraine, how can the voters turn that chance down?

Winner: Navalny

Alternate: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Dark Horse: Fire of Love

ANIMATED FEATURE

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish
The Sea Beast
Turning Red

Pinocchio takes this in a walk, because it’s won all the precursor awards. The respect for Guillermo del Toro is too engrained, but I haven’t felt a genuine love for the film like with some years in animated feature. Still, it won’t be taken down by anything else.

Winner: GDT’s Pinocchio

Alternate: Puss in Boots

Dark Horse: Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

EDITING

The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
TÁR
Top Gun: Maverick

This is kind of a tough one, as it could go to the BP favorite, but I’m thinking Top Gun can pull this off. This used to be correlated with Best Picture but that stat’s long dead, as it’s only happened twice in the last 15 years. And for whatever reason, lately the editing and sound awards have been paired together a lot. Both of them won the guild award, so that’s no clue except that it’s probably between them, and EEAO won the BAFTA as the sole prize that voting body gave the movie.

Winner: Top Gun: Maverick

Alternate: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Dark Horse: Elvis

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
TÁR
Triangle of Sadness

There are those who think Banshees can win this, but I happen to think EEAO will take it in its Best Picture sweep. The Best Picture winner usually wins screenplay as well, and though it can win without it, I don’t think that will happen this year.

Winner: Everything Everywhere All At Once

Alternate: The Banshees of Inisherin

Dark Horse: Tar

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

All Quiet on the Western Front
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Living
Top Gun: Maverick
Women Talking

I was all set to say Women Talking would take this, but after All Quiet’s BAFTA win, I wasn’t so sure. Then Sarah Polley won the Scripter and the WGA award over Top Gun, a combo which has normally secured the Adapted Screenplay Oscar in the past, so maybe BAFTA was a fluke on this one.

Winner: Women Talking

Alternate: All Quiet on the Western Front

Dark Horse: Top Gun: Maverick

OSCAR PREDIX, Part 2: Costumes, Makeup, Sets, Lighting, Music

The techs we’re doing today are exactly what you see in the title. This is where the also rans for Best Picture get their various consolation prizes.

COSTUME DESIGN

Babylon
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

I usually go by guild winners to determine these and since Elvis took the CDG and the BAFTA, I believe this award belongs to Catherine Martin for her recreation of Elvis’s stage looks. Everything Everywhere is a possibility too, for the wild sci-fi stuff they had for the multiverses.

Winner: Elvis

Alternate: Everything Everywhere All at Once

MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING

All Quiet on the Western Front
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis
The Whale

So, this is another one that went to Elvis at both the guild and BAFTA awards, but I suppose there’s some chance for The Whale (and if you’re picking Brendan Fraser for Best Actor I would definitely go with The Whale here, because that movie likely takes this if he’s winning the Oscar).

Winner: Elvis

Alternate: The Whale

Dark Horse: The Batman

PRODUCTION DESIGN

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
Babylon
Elvis
The Fabelmans

For this one I’m going with Babylon, because that is the one award where that film has managed to overcome its box office failure and poor reviews to somehow keep winning the precursor trophies for its sets, as it took both the guild and BAFTA awards.

Winner: Babylon

Alternate: Elvis (sometimes this is paired with costumes)

Dark Horse: All Quiet on the Western Front

CINEMATOGRAPHY

All Quiet on the Western Front
Bardo, False Chronicle and a Handful of Truths
Elvis
Empire of Light
Tar

Top Gun wound up snubbed here, despite having been considered the frontrunner for a while when it was winning all the critics awards for this category. So, technically this is an open race now, but I think All Quiet probably takes it? It won the BAFTA and wasn’t up for the guild award, which went to Elvis (which did beat Top Gun for that honor, which is interesting). It’s kind of a toss-up for this.

Winner: All Quiet on the Western Front

Alternate: Elvis

Dark Horse: Tar (unconventional choice but I wonder if this could come through here)

ORIGINAL SCORE

All Quiet on the Western Front
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans

I personally like the Babylon score but I think this one will go to the BAFTA fave, All Quiet, as another tech win for the Brits favorite movie (even though that score only has like two notes). Otherwise this could really go to anyone- if they want to make sure The Fabelmans wins something, John Williams could win here for example. It’s a tough call.

Winner: All Quiet on the Western Front

Alternate: Babylon

Dark Horse: The Fabelmans

ORIGINAL SONG

“Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

“Naatu Naatu” from RRR

“Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman

“Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick

“This is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All At Once

Ugh. This one is completely open, as the only good song here is the one from RRR, but I’m not convinced these people saw that movie (they should have, it was good). I’d like it to win, but I’m skeptical. Should I just follow my gut on this? I mean, the Academy does have a lot more international voters than it used to- maybe enough of them did see RRR and enough of the rest of them don’t care enough about this category to vote in it?

Winner: “Naatu Naatu” (going with merit and trust that RRR’s massive international box office success means enough Academy members saw it)

Alternate: “Hold My Hand” (another win for Top Gun, they like Lady Gaga, it makes some sense)

Dark Horse: “This is a Life” (I don’t even remember this song, but since EEAO is the BP frontrunner, I suppose this could be another award for it)

2023 OSCAR PREDIX, Part 1: VFX, Shorts, Sound

Okay, it’s time to do the Oscar picks. I always start with the techs of course, and with some of my biggest blind spots, the shorts (which I still believe should be moved to another ceremony entirely). But here we go.

VISUAL EFFECTS

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Top Gun: Maverick

Visual effects is one of the big locks of the night, so we start with an easy one. Avatar takes this in its sleep, much to James Cameron’s chagrin (because the movie is not the zeitgeist phenom the first one was, despite its amazing box office success, and is not the big Oscar favorite in top line categories like the first one was). But, do I really need to explain why it wins here? Didn’t think so.

Winner: Avatar: The Way of Water

Alternate: Top Gun: Maverick

SOUND

All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman
Elvis
Top Gun: Maverick

This is basically the same list of nominees as VFX except that Elvis is here. I personally think Top Gun has got to win some stuff on Oscar night, so I think this is one of them. Sound usually goes to an action movie or a musical, which is why Elvis has a shot. But Top Gun won the guild award over All Quiet, so there you go.

Winner: Top Gun: Maverick

Alternate: Elvis

Dark Horse: All Quiet on the Western Front (BAFTA’s overwhelming love of this film makes it a dark horse in multiple tech categories)

ANIMATED SHORT

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
The Flying Sailor
Ice Merchants
My Year of Dicks
An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake, and I Think I Believe It

Ughh, I hate the shorts and I hate predicting them. No offense of course to the no doubt wonderful work by these filmmakers but they deserve their own separate ceremony where the people watching all know and have seen what’s been nominated. And I don’t have to take a blind guess as to what wins. As it is, the frontrunner seems to be The Boy, The Mole, the Fox and the Horse (because it won the BAFTA), so let’s go with that.

Winner: The Boy, The Mole, the Fox and the Horse

Alternate: My Year of Dicks (why not?)

Dark Horse: Ice Merchants

LIVE ACTION SHORT

An Irish Goodbye
Ivalu
Le Pupille
Night Ride
The Red Suitcase

From what I understand, of this crop the one that feels the most urgent and timely is The Red Suitcase, so I’m going to choose that one. And don’t forget, for these categories the only people who can vote are those who’ve actually seen them all, which theoretically should matter for its quality.

Winner: The Red Suitcase

Alternate: An Irish Goodbye

Dark Horse: Le Pupille

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

The Elephant Whisperers
Haulout
How Do You Measure a Year?
The Martha Mitchell Effect
Stranger at the Gate

Finally, I think doc short is going to The Elephant Whisperers, because the subject matter is about rangers who are nursing young, orphaned elephants back to health in India who have been lost due to migration caused from climate change. Uh-huh. Who’s going to possibly vote against that? That reminds me of The Octopus Teacher’s win in documentary a couple years ago.

Winner: The Elephant Whisperers

Alternate: Haulout (this is also a climate change short that uses camera trickery to fool the viewers about what they’re watching- I could see this one happening too)

Top 10 Movies of 2022

I know, I know, I am so late with this list. But I had to catch up and make sure I’d seen everything before finalizing it. Not that it made too much of a difference this year, as most of my favorite films of 2022 came out long ago, and I don’t think anything I had to catch up with at the end of the year made it into my top ten.

1) NOPE

A provocative, unusual thriller from Jordan Peele that asks you to really think about and dissect what it is you’re seeing onscreen

2) HAPPENING

An intense, claustrophobic French drama about a rebellious college student in early 1960’s France who must track down a way to get an abortion. An excellent companion piece to the classic 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

3) RRR

This was the most movie you could see all year, a big, loud, Bollywood style, John Woo influenced action buddy cop movie that was 100% fun from start to finish

4) TAR

Cate Blanchett’s greatest performance as the self-destructive world class composer Lydia Tar, who finds herself in the throws of so-called cancel culture and makes every wrong move to get out of it

5) AFTERSUN

A nearly abstract memory piece that calls on the viewer to piece together the implications of a young girl’s childhood vacation with her father (Paul Mescal)- effectively devastating

6) ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Edward Berger’s German language adaptation of the classic novel is a solid, well crafted wartime drama that radiates authenticity

7) CYRANO

Joe Wright is just so darn good at swooning period romance- even in this pandemic saddled movie Peter Dinklage shines (and sings) as a different kind of Cyrano

8) THE FABELMANS

Steven Spielberg documents his own origin story in this warm and reflective look at his childhood in AZ; Gabriel LaBelle is a discovery as the young Spielberg stand-in

9) BONES AND ALL

This teen angst road movie is filled with gore and grossness, but sensitively filmed by Luca Guadagnino- Timothy Chalamet would be a huge star in another era; in ours he’s a phenom among those in the know

10) WOMEN TALKING

Women Talking is an intelligent, literate film written and directed by Sarah Polley that turns a book into a film that could well be turned into a play, a female companion piece to 12 Angry Men