The Frontrunners and Their Challengers, New Year’s Edition

The two biggest mistakes a person can make when measuring the Oscar race is to think what critics do matters more than what the industry does. In fact, even the Oscar voters can differ dramatically from both. For the most part, their choices, it must be said, are good. Are they going to light the critics on fire for decades to come? Probably not. They are voted on by thousands and thousands of people, so individual tastes take a backseat to a consensus. The critics do a lot of the heavy lifting giving some films and performances a boost and helping to build a wave of unstoppable buzz, but they are also much more selective, with no group bigger than 200 or 300 members at the most.  The Golden Globe membership is about 100.

An awards consensus, though, is voted on by thousands:

SAG (2500 for nominations, 150,000 for winners)
PGA (7,000)
DGA (16,000)
WGA (20,000 or so)
Academy (6,000 or so)

In a given year, that consensus is easy to figure out. It might start with the critics, then run through the Globes, then the industry and finally the Oscars. There is some sense to the trajectory. But that doesn’t seem to be this year, at least not now. The reason for that is that the frontrunner was La La Land heading out of Telluride. What that means specifically is simply that everybody liked it, everybody loved it, no one hated it. At the same time, Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea (which got its boost in Sundance) both hopped on the train and it’s been those three movies ever since.

Still, the awards have to be decided and eventually they are decided. For Best Picture, it’s usually the Producers Guild that sets the ball rolling for what will win. For the acting categories, it’s SAG and for the screenplay awards it CAN be the Writers Guild. The guilds get us closer, but even they can still be off when it comes to how the Academy will vote.

The first wins are handed down from ballots going out and onward:

Oscar ballots go out January 5, 2017
DGA ballot deadline January 9, 2017
BAFTA nominations January 10, 2017
Producers Guild nominations January 10, 2017
DGA nominations announced January 12, 2017
Ballots are turned in: January 13, 2017
Oscar nominations are announced January 24, 2016.
SAG voting closes January 27, 2017
Ace Eddies – January 27, 2017
Producers Guild – January 28, 2017
SAG awards – January 29, 2017
DGA voting deadline – February 3, 2017
DGA Awards – February 4th, 2017
BAFTA Awards – February 12, 2017
Oscar final ballots go out – February 13, 2017
Oscar ballots turned in – February 21, 2017
Oscar ceremony – February 26, 2017

It all happens really fast.  It’s hard to turn around a consensus once it gets rolling unless, like last year, Best Picture was completely unpredictable with all three major guilds giving Best Picture to three different movies.
PGA – The Big Short
DGA – The Revenant
SAG – Spotlight

We really have absolutely no clue what the consensus will be at state. Nearly all of the pundits at Gold Derby and Movie City News, Kris Tapley and Scott Feinberg more or less have La La Land to win, disregarding that it missed the SAG ensemble nomination, believing that the film is a “two hander” and that it shouldn’t be nominated for ensemble if both of its leads were nominated.  I remain skeptical, no matter how much I personally love La La Land.

But let’s take a quick look at where things stand in terms of frontrunners and challengers, using Gold Derby as our guidepost:

Best Picture
The frontrunner – La La Land
The challengers – Moonlight or Manchester by the Sea (all three have buzz coming out of festival season, and have hit with critics and audiences so far. Two of them have ensemble nominations, which make them formidable.

Films that look for a nomination right now:
Arrival
Fences
Lion
Hidden Figures
Hacksaw Ridge
Loving
Sully

What could also surprise and win? Well, look at the SAG for starters – Fences, Hidden Figures, Captain Fantastic. It’s too early to see if these three are in play but a SAG ensemble nomination, particularly for Fences, is a good start.

Best Actor
The frontrunner – Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea – he has won virtually every critic award and a win for him could be a win for the movie.
The challengers: Denzel Washington who, hands down, gives the best performance of the year. He’ll be winning his third Oscar if he does, and that kind of power would be unheard of for a black actor in Hollywood. Washington is a cut above everyone else in the part but the Academy likes to spread the wealth.
The Dark horse – Andrew Garfield who plays two significant roles in two films his year, Hacksaw Ridge and Silence. He really does transform himself in both of these films, losing weight, suffering greatly.

Best Actress
The Frontrunner – Natalie Portman, Jackie (here is where I will depart from Gold Derby because I do feel she is the frontrunner now).
The Challengers – Emma Stone in La La Land. While it’s true that winning the Critics Choice would have solidified what seemed to be the performance of the year heading out of Telluride, it’s also possible Stone will still win. Portman will be winning her second Oscar and it seems a bit soon for that, unless Jackie manages a Best Picture nomination, which it might.
Annette Bening in 20th Century Women – while she missed out on the SAG, Bening’s career work overall and her involvement with the Academy and the Academy museum all seem to point to her getting a nomination here and it’s not outside the realm of possibility (though she would have to make history to do it) for her to win.
The Dark  Horses: Amy Adams in Arrival – a lot of people are underestimating Adams for this – because some think she might not even get a nomination, but she is beloved in the film and in the industry. She too could win.
Isabelle Huppert in Elle – She also has to get a nomination first, but who knows. She could be a dark horse surprise winner in a split up race.

Supporting Actor  
The frontrunner: Mahershala Ali in Moonlight
Challengers – If voters think Ali’s part is not big enough for the win, it’s possible it could go to an actor who really is a lead rather than supporting, that might be Lucas Hedges in Manchester by the Sea or, the bigger threat Dev Patel for Lion who acts his heart out in a much bigger part.

Supporting Actress
The Frontrunner: Viola Davis, Fences. She has no challenger.

Best Director
The Frontrunner – Gold Derby has Damien Chazelle as the frontrunner with a few people picking different options, but I think there is a good case for Barry Jenkins to be considered the frontrunner  – Jenkins would make history as the first black director and African American director ever to win — in 89 years. But also, he won New York and Los Angeles which puts him in an elite class of those who have done it. Of course, it doesn’t always translate to a win but it’s nothing to sneeze at.

Jenkins is as of now the first black or African American director to win both Los Angeles and New York:

Martin Scorsese – Goodfellas
Jane Campion – The Piano
Quentin Tarantino – Pulp Fiction
Curtis Hanson – L.A. Confidential
Steven Soderbergh – Traffic* + Erin Brockovich (NY and LA both cited him for both films)
Ang Lee – Brokeback Mountain*
Kathyrn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker*
David Fincher – The Social Network
Richard Linklater – Boyhood
Barry Jenkins – Moonlight

Chazelle has won: Critics Choice, Detroit, Las Vegas, Southeastern Film Critics, Washington DC, Boston, Atlanta
But Los Angeles + New York puts Jenkins slightly ahead, I think. At least for now, although it’s a toss-up.
Jenkins wins so far include: Chicago Film Critics, Dallas Fort Worth, Los Angeles Film Critics, New York Film Critics

The challengers  – they are Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea.
The dark horses – Martin Scorsese for Silence, stranger things have happened. Or Denis Villeneuve for Arrival.

Best Original Screenplay – the frontrunner with no challenger at the moment is Manchester by the Sea
Best Adapted Screenplay – the frontrunner with no challenger at the moment is Moonlight

Can either screenplay frontrunner be stopped? Not likely. Unless one is mistakenly left off the Oscar nominations list. In which case, other screenplays might rise to the top like Arrival or Fences.

Documentary Feature
The Frontrunner: OJ Made in America (but this is from a critics’ perspective. The Academy might not follow suit, being that it’s “TV” and all.)
The challengers: whatever else gets nominated and right now we have no clue what will. But Gleason is one I’d watch for a potential win if nominated. 13th is another.

Animated Feature
The frontrunner: Zootopia – its box office, its universal themes, its strong female lead…
The challenger: Kubo and the Two Strings

Foreign Language Feature
The Frontrunner with no challenger at the moment: Toni Erdmann

The rest of the categories are wide open and will depend, as these written down here, on whether or not they are nominated, obviously.

We’ll check back in in a couple of weeks.