Predictions Friday – Are We Having Fun Yet?

There is a list going around that is supposedly the leaked winners of the SAG awards. They do know in advance because the winners had be told in advance, in order to get their acceptance speeches recorded. Anyone in Oscar circles knows what the winners on this list are. I will not disclose them here but you can find them if you go online. Be that as it may, we are holding off on predicting the SAG awards for the time being.

We’ll proceed with our breakdown as if we’re weighing hypotheticals. In terms of who might win the SAG and how it might shift after those wins – we are looking at two things – Best Actress and Ensemble. We’ll also be looking at Supporting Actress, since we’re not really sure right now who will win. Best Actress is expected to be Carey Mulligan. But Andra Day won the Golden Globe and is not nominated for the SAG. Neither of them are nominated for the BAFTA but Frances McDormand is nominated for all three. That would mean the Best Actress would be wide open but SAG tends to trump the Globe.

On the other hand, if anyone other than Mulligan wins Best Actress then that might tip the Oscar in Day’s favor. But it will definitely be a cliffhanger. If Mulligan does win then we know we probably have a showdown between Mulligan and Day.

As for ensemble, Gold Derby has The Trial of the Chicago 7 winning this, but many, myself included, have Minari predicted. The question would then become: Would either of these two films winning, or any other film winning, shake up the Best Picture race at all.

Best Picture and Best Director still seem to be tilting in the direction of Chloe Zhao and Nomadland. Nothing has yet knocked that off the top spot – She will win the DGA and I’m guessing Nomadland and Chloe Zhao will also win at BAFTA. That would put, as Steve Pond said last week, Nomadland in La La Land’s place. La La Land was unseated by Moonlight in a shocking, dramatic, 11th hour win. Moonlight did not win the SAG ensemble, though it was nominated (La La Land, like Nomadland, did not have a SAG ensemble).

To understand the Moonlight win, though, you have to understand the why of it. Why did Moonlight beat La La Land? It was a combination of things, I think. Part of it was that there was a lot of last minute activism for Moonlight. It suddenly became the movie everyone loved. At the same time, the election happened and it changed the mood of the country. La La Land was already getting a lot of bad press at the time and the voters soured on it.

Oscar voters and voters in general need something to vote FOR. They rarely just give the award to “best” movie. Time decides a film’s worth, not the Oscar voters. Best is subjective, obviously, so usually there is what I think of as a “mitigating factor.” The Oscar win is more about the voters themselves, how they see themselves, how they define themselves. They will only vote FOR something that makes them feel good and makes them look good. The last part is most important to actors. To actors, their image is everything – their vote is their image and their image is their career. Since they dominate the Academy, it is always safe to go with the idea of what they feel good voting for and what makes them look good coming out of the ceremony.

But the actors alone can’t usually bring in a win for Best Picture. Other branches, ideally, are involved. Big branches like the directors and the writers. So that is why having the WGA+SAG ensemble win is a good recipe for an upset. Without the WGA, Chicago 7 would need maybe an ACE Editors Guild win, along with SAG, to pull off a Best Picture upset. If it does that, it needs to win in Screenplay. It is possible that a film could win just Best Picture and nothing else. It has happened before. But I would imagine if it’s that popular it will win other awards somewhere.

What Chicago 7 and Minari have going for them is that they have happy, not downer, endings.

For many decades, the Oscar race was about the singular male (almost always white) protagonist and an uplifting ending. When there wasn’t an uplifting ending the director was overdue (Scorsese, the Coens) or they were making history (Bigelow). But in general, a happy ending can often make the difference between what wins in a split.

La La Land also did not have an upper ending. Moonlight did. Moonlight left you feeling good and hopeful. La La Land made you feel despairing and doubtful. So it was a prefect recipe for an upset.

Nomadland does not exactly have happy ending, particularly, but Chloe Zhao winning – coming into the Oscar race with history made as the first woman to earn four nominations at once (Producer, Director, Writer, Editor). She would be the first woman of color to win Best Director and Best Picture.  It will make them feel good to see her win, just as it did with Kathryn Bigelow – because making history feels good. It just does. But the movie is also quite moving and beloved across the board. It has a very intimate relationship with the landscape and the lonely people migrating from job to job. It just doesn’t exactly have a super happy ending.

Chicago 7, by contrast, has that kind of ending when Eddie Redmayne is reading the names of those who died in Vietnam and that makes them heroes – they were willing to put their lives on the line to stop a war. Minari is also a very uplifting ending in that the family finally pulls together and feels its roots in the land – in Arkansas finally with Minari growing in the creek and the boy and the grandma simpatico.

But the rest of the films? The Father? Sound of Metal? Judas and the Black Messiah? Promising Young Woman? All of these movies have great endings, I think, but they are emotional or bittersweet or downright tragic.  Moonlight had a happy ending, so did The Shape of Water and Green Book. Parasite didn’t.

It was bittersweet but trending downward. This is a potential area where a film could upset in Best Picture but at the moment I don’t personally see it that way.  We might be heading into a phase of the Oscar race where happy endings take a backseat to more bittersweet, even darker endings. It’s too soon to make that call but if Nomadland does win, it will be two in a row with not exactly uplifting endings.

So here we go.

Best Picture
1. Nomadland (Globe/Critics Choice/Scripter/PGA winner)
2. The Trial of the Chicago 7
3. Minari
4. Promising Young Woman
5. Mank
6. Judas and the Black Messiah
7. Sound of Metal
8. The Father

Best Director
1. Chloe Zhao, Nomadland (DGA)
2. David Fincher, Mank (DGA)
3. Lee Isaac Chung, Minari (DGA)
4. Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman (DGA)
5. Thomas Vinterberg, Another Round

Best Actor
1. Chadwick Boseman (Globe/Critics Choice Winner)
2. Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal
3. Anthony Hopkins, The Father
4. Steven Yeun, Minari
5. Gary Oldman, Mank

Best Actress
1. Andra Day, The United States v. Billie Holiday (Globe Winner) or Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman*
3. Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
4. Frances McDormand, Nomadland
5. Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman

*I know it’s a cop-out to have two at the top but at the moment I just don’t know. I suspect Mulligan has the advantage.

Best Supporting Actor
1. Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
2. Lakeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah
3. Leslie Odom Jr., One Night in Miami
4. Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7
5. Paul Raci, Sound of Metal

Best Supporting Actress
1. Youn Yuh-jung, Minari
2. Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy
3. Maria Bakalova, ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
4. Amanda Seyfried, Mank
5. Olivia Colman, The Father

Best Adapted Screenplay
1. Nomadland
2. One Night in Miami
3. The White Tiger
4. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
5. The Father

Best Original Screenplay
1. Promising Young Woman
2. The Trial of the Chicago 7
3. Minari
4. Judas and the Black Messiah
5. Sound of Metal

Best Costume Design
1. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Ann Roth
2. Mank, Trish Summerville
3. Emma, Alexandra Byrne
4. Mulan, Bina Daigeler
5. Pinocchio, Massimo Cantini Parrini

Best Original Score
1. Soul, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Jon Batiste
2. Mank, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
3. Minari, Emile Mosseri
4. Da 5 Bloods, Terence Blanchard
5. News of the World, James Newton Howard

Best Sound
1. Sound of Metal
2. Soul
3. Greyhound
4. Mank
5. News of the World

Best Film Editing
1. The Trial of the Chicago 7
2. Nomadland
3. Sound of Metal
4. Promising Young Woman
5. The Father

Best Cinematography
1. Mank
2. Nomadland
3. Judas and the Black Messiah
4. News of the World
5. The Trial of the Chicago 7

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
1. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom*
2. Mank
3. Hillbilly Elegy
4. Emma
5. Pinocchio

*Please note that if Ma Rainey wins in this category they will make history with the first black female nominees and winners with Jamika Wilson and Mia Neal.

Best Production Design
1. Mank
2. Tenet
3. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
4. News of the World
5. The Father

Best Visual Effects*
1. Tenet
2. Love and Monsters
3. The Midnight Sky
4. Mulan, Sean Faden,
5. The One and Only Ivan

*No clue. No Best Picture nominees. But Tenet is the only one with both Prod and VFX.

Best Documentary Feature
1. My Octopus Teacher
2. Crip Camp
3. Collective
4. Time
5. The Mole Agent

Best Animated Feature Film
1. Soul
2. Wolfwalkers
3. Onward
4. Over the Moon
5. Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

Best International Feature Film
1. Another Round, Denmark
2. Better Days, Hong Kong
3. Collective, Romania
4. The Man Who Sold His Skin, Tunisia
5. Quo Vadis, Aida?(Bosnia and Herzegovina

Best Documentary Short Subject
1. A Love Song for Latasha
2. Colette
3. A Concerto Is a Conversation
4. Do Not Split
5. Hunger Ward

Best Animated Short Film
1. If Anything Happens I Love You
2. Burrow
3. Opera
4. Genius Loci
5. Yes-People

Best Live Action Short Film
1. Feeling Through
2. The Letter Room
3. The Present
4. Two Distant Strangers
5. White Eye

Best Original Song
1. Speak Now, One Night in Miami
2. Fight for You, Judas and the Black Messiah
3. Hear My Voice, The Trial of the Chicago 7
4. Húsavík, Eurovision Song Contest
5. Io Si, Seen, The Life Ahead