My Oscar Predictions for Entertainment Purposes Only

(which is as it should be because I’m not very good at them)

OK guys — Today’s Fun Friday is all about me and my stupid Oscar thing! So at least I’m having fun. I have seen all the Best Picture nominees (links to those here) and most of the other major nominees; the show is Sunday, and I am ready to play.

Caveat: As in the past, I reserve the right to change minor-category predictions last-minute before the ceremonies. (Not the big eight, though — these are Price-Waterhouse firm!) You are most likely to see changes in the Live Action/Animated Shorts categories because this weekend I might go to the theater and actually see the damn things, which usually doesn’t do me much good predictions-wise (though last year I saw all the cartoons and nailed that category, because the winner was self-evidently the sappiest one running). So watch this space.

Here are my guesses.

Best Picture: Oppenheimer. I told you good people about my issues with it, but it’s a spectacle, sure enough, and seems more meaningful than it is — the feel-bad movie of the year! Plus it made a billion dollars and wasn’t about a doll. And there’s no sign of a feel-good underdog coming up on the rail as happened the year before last.

Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer. Serious filmmaker, good work, can’t fail.

Best Actor: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer. Everyone says so and it’s easy to guess why: They saw him in “Peaky Blinders” as a street thug and then saw him in Oppenheimer as a tortured saint and thought, whoa, acting. (And it is!) I still hold out a wan hope for Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers. After years of what I once called Giamatti’s raging schlub routine the voters may think his Paul Hunham is just a slightly more polished version thereof. Or maybe they saw what I saw: A character who at the outset is preposterous, affected, a living caricature – and then Giamatti shows us why. It’s like snow melting off a monument. Oh well.

Best Actress: Sarah Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall. Now here’s a sucker bet! The factors are these: first, Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone, both fantastic and beloved, will split the vote and give Hüller a path; second, voters will have seen The Zone of Interest, in which Hüller is also excellent, and be favorably disposed toward her as a result. But when it comes down to it I’d say her performance here is just too good to lose. The dilemma of the film makes you pay close attention to her all the way through, in her evasiveness and in her forthright rage, and you always believe her but you’re never sure what it means. (Heads up, gamblers: I usually blow this category, and my case here is very close to the case I made for Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter. As I said, these predictions are for entertainment purposes only! Wager responsibly!)

Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer.
Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers.

I’m not a total idiot. These are a lock. (I thought Downey was OK, but Randolph was a small movie of her own about grief and grind and finding a way.)

Best Original Screenplay: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall. I think the voters look at the scripts, which are usually posted online, and this one, in addition to its dramatic excellence, just looks with all its diagrams and digressions like it was a lot of hard work.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer. I was almost talked by the oddsmakers into betting on American Fiction, because I could believe the voters would like to make a little space amid the Oppenheimer wave for the fun, slightly edgy and black·ish family comedy-drama. And then I thought: Maybe this could be a sop to Barbie, the other billion-dollar movie whose lack of major category nominations people got pissy about. But then I thought: Would voters really assert that a movie about the philosophical ramifications of the nuclear bomb is the best film but the one with the best writing is about a doll? No, Oppenheimer’s rolling.

Best Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer. It’s like JFK (which won its year) — there are just so many different styles going on and they all dazzle the eye. Speaking of which:

Best Editing: Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer. Imagine being the traffic cop for van Hoytema’s barrage of images and Nolan’s quantum leaps!  (It occurs to me that the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon of last summer involved two movies that basically pummeled their audiences with ripe and rapid imagery, as summer movies are supposed to do, but with the traditional macho violence replaced by existential agony and ecstasy — a post-modern idea of the blockbuster. I still think Barbie gave us the better deal.)

Best Score: Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer. All the other nominees are like nice accompaniment to their pictures, but Göransson’s geiger-counter-and-screams soundtrack melds well with the intrinsic misery.

Best Song: Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell, “What Was I Made For?” Barbie. I can’t be the only one who gets the giggles that Billie Eilish is going to have more Academy Awards than Prince and the Beatles.

Best Production Design: Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, Barbie
Best Costume Design: Holly Waddington, Poor Things

The experts at Gold Derby have this the other way around, but attend my logic: Barbie is almost nothing but production design (and high concept, which is almost the same thing), and I actually noticed the costumes in Poor Things and I’m an old bum in chinos and a black t-shirt.

Animated Feature: The Boy and the Heron. Don’t bet the farm or even the farmstand but I can’t believe they’d do Miyazaki like that.

Animated Short: WAR IS OVER!
Live-Action Short: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Documentary Short: The ABCs of Book-Banning
Documentary Feature: 20 Days in Mariupol

What do I know. (I started watching Henry Sugar on Netflix, BTW, and was so enraged by it I turned it off 10 minutes in. It was like a parody of a Wes Anderson movie.)

Best International Feature: The Zone of Interest.

Best Sound: Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn, The Zone of Interest. The bright boys say Oppenheimer but as with recent winners like Sound of Metal the sound design in The Zone of Interest is intrinsic to the overall vision.

Best Special Effects: Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima, Godzilla Minus One.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston, Poor Things. Do I really want to take a sucker bet on Makeup and Hairstyling? The pros say Maestro, and it’s good work, but Poor Things had a lot of cool grisly shit going on and I really think a lot of voters are still mad about Lenny’s nose.

See you on the red carpet!