I haven’t been Film Babbling lately because I’ve been deep into working on a big book project (more on that later), but I felt like I just had to weigh in on the 96th Academy Awards®, which is going down this Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles with Jimmy Kimmel returning to host for his fourth time.
As I said in my Favorite Films of 2023 post, this last year was a much better one for film than the last several so there are a number of nominations that I’m seriously rooting for, but as we know with these predictions, one shouldn’t play favorites.
So here are my highly anticipated, not-thrown-together-at-all predictions:
1. BEST PICTURE: OPPENHEIMER
2. BEST DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan, OPPENHEIMER
3. BEST ACTOR: Cillian Murphy, OPPENHEIMER
Yeah, an OPPENHEIMER sweep seems to be incredibly imminent. It will be surprising (but maybe more fun) if there are some upsets. Still don’t think BARBIE will win anything but best song though.
4. BEST ACTRESS: Lily Gladstone, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Robert Downey Jr., OPPENHEIMER
6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, THE HOLDOVERS
7. PRODUCTION DESIGN: James Price, Shona Heath, Zsuzsa Mihalek,
POOR THINGSThe upset could be BARBIE, but this should really go to the vivid imagery in Yorgos Lanthimos’ weird ass erotic black comedy.
9. COSTUME DESIGN: Holly Waddington, POOR THINGS Again, take that BARBIE! (Kidding, I might’ve actually enjoyed BARBIE more than POOR THINGS).
10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL (Dirs. Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, and Raney Aronson-Rath)
11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT: THE ABCS OF BOOK BANNING (Dirs. Sheila Nevins and Trish Adlesic)
12. FILM EDITING: Jennifer Lame, OPPENHEIMER
13. MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou and Lori McCoy-Bell, MAESTRO
Yeah, I’m predicting that 5-time Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper won’t win, and his MAESTRO will only win this category. That’s right.
14. VISUAL EFFECTS: Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, and Tatsuji Nojima, GODZILLA MINUS ONE
15. ORIGINAL SCORE: Robbie Robertson, OPPENHEIMER
16. ORIGINAL SONG: “What Was I Made For?”, Billie Eilish (The one bone the Academy will throw to BARBIE)
19. SOUND: Jonathan Glazer, OPPENHEIMER
20. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, ANATOMY OF A FALL
22. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE (Dir.
23. BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Dir. Jonathan Glazer)
As I usually say, tune in Monday morning to see how many I got wrong.
More later…