Our Best Picture lineup is starting to take shape, and so are the acting races. We should not think we’ve totally got the races locked and loaded. There can always be surprises on down the line, as we’ve seen since 2019 when Parasite unseated 1917, CODA unseated The Power of the Dog, etc. You just never know. We’ve adopted many catchphrases over the years, and they are every bit as true today as they’ve always been, like “the trick is not minding” and “the heart wants what it wants.”
Reading or predicting the Oscar race requires both the macro and the micro view. The macro looks at broader themes, driving narratives, sensing the general vibe around town. This is where whisper campaigns can come into effect if people want to take down the frontrunner and help the “scrappy underdog that could” (please don’t). Driving narratives might be Donald Trump won the election so La La Land can’t win Best Picture. Or voters deciding this is the moment to make history, to move the needle, to change things in Hollywood.
Micro level are things like stats, which are fun but can sometimes be misleading. If the heart wants what it wants, no stat is going to stop a win — like CODA. I try to look at both things to figure out where the race is heading and this year, I’ve been feeling the Barbenheimer thing for a while, a need for the industry to get into the life rafts, or, as the case may be, position themselves on top of a wooden plank leaving no room for Leo DiCaprio. Either way. survival is key.
But there is another way to survive and thrive that isn’t just about box office. If Oscar voters hate anything it’s being told what to vote for. I could make a pretty good argument for The Holdovers pulling in the win based on the long lament that no one can tell good stories anymore or make good movies like they used to. I could see them wanting to return to the days of well made nuts and bolts filmmaking. Some people just vote with their hearts and that might push a movie like The Holdovers to upset.
But we’re not really there yet. We’re still in the nominations phase and slowly heading into the winners phase. The Critics Choice will announce their winners this weekend. And that will shift things ever so slightly. Then, we go through each of the big guild wins and wait to see where the consensus is going. I liked the way the Oppenheimer team won at the Globes. They made it emotional, and not “dry.” That helps them keep the momentum going. I thought, anyway.
Here are the charts, updated to reflect today’s news.
Picture:
The first question people want to know is which name will be left off for Best Director. There is always one! If I knew of a good way to figure that out I would tell you. The BAFTA seem to have some influence. The international voters will have some influence. Mainly, the DGA has 19,500 members, and the Academy directors have, according to Steve Pond, 573 members. That’s a big difference. Can a movie win without that DGA nom? Well, CODA did. Anything can happen now.
All in all, I’d say these were somewhat surprising, especially with the SAG nominations. Whether all will go on to earn Oscar noms is also one of those things we can only guess at. But the BAFTA will likely have an impact. All of Us Strangers and Saltburn are more popular across the pond so that might mean nominations show up somewhere.
We’ll check back in with our predictions on Friday. In the meanwhile, you can enter our PGA predictions contest here.