I'm going to go through each of the
Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order
the nominees from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night.
That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me
luck.
---
Before I get to that though, I want to
explain my methodology a bit. There are many, many awards given out before the
Oscars. I don't use them all for my predictions. Some precursors are better
than others. I don't bother with the ones that aren't very indicative.
Some the other awards I don't use:
Critics Awards - Critics are essentially
useless. There's too many different critics groups giving out awards. They vary
wildly in winners and nominees, if they even bother to announce nominees. The
Critics Choice Awards tries to combine all the citric groups into a single
event. That ceremony has been far too inconsistent over the years. Categories
change, split, or disappear far often. Bigger picture though, critical
consensus doesn't match the industry consensus very often. A movie (say,
Boyhood) gobbling up critical
awards gives the false impression that it's an Oscar favorite, when it often
can be something else (Birdman,
in this example), that takes home the Oscar.
The National Board of Review - This
group only hands out wins, not nominations, which also isn't very helpful for
how I do my examinations.
Satellite Awards - I spent a lot of time
last year trying to determine if I could pull any useful information from the
Satellite Awards. Ultimately, they weren't consistent enough as predictors nor
popular enough to be considered influencers.
Gotham and Independent Spirit Awards
- While the profile of these awards has
gone up, they only look at a subset of the eligible films (independent or
low-budget films). The only value to them is in the negative (i.e. if a movie
is nominated for but doesn't win the Gotham award, it has no hope at the
Oscar). That information can be inferred from other sources though, making the
indie awards redundant.
What awards do I trust then? I'm glad
you asked. For each category, I'll be including a glossary of all the precursor
awards that matter to it, but it's basically the Golden Globes, the BAFTA
Awards, and the assorted guild awards. The Golden Globes are too visible to ignore.
They aren't greatly predictive, but their influence is hard to ignore (Many
would argue that Meryl Streep's speech at the Globes for the 2016 awards
powered her to an Oscar nomination a few weeks later for Florence Foster Jenkins). The BAFTA Awards are
about as thorough as the Oscars in terms of matching categories and have,
especially in recent years, taken steps that match the Oscar results more often.
The guilds are a great reflection of how the branches will vote. For example,
who knows Sound Mixing better than the Sound Mixers guild? Many voters belong
to both the guilds and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, so
that's helpful. Also, all these awards list their nominees, not just the
winners. That's useful, because you know what a movie won against. If a film wins
the BAFTA for Costume Design but none of the other nominees are nominated for
the Oscar, it doesn't tell me very much about
what will win the Oscar. None of these awards are perfect. Nothing
couldn've predicted the Ex Machina
win for Visual Effects two years ago. However, you'll get more right than wrong
by reading the award tea leaves beforehand.
I only look back 20 years for most
awards. So much change happens in the Oscar voting and membership over time
that the returns diminish the further back you go. 20 seems like a good
place to stop.
Finally, you should be able to figure
this out on your own, but when I refer to a year, I am speaking of the year
being awarded, not necessarily when the ceremony took place. The films being awarded this year are films released in 2017. In
my book, that makes this the 2017 Oscars despite it currently being 2018. I
find it easier to talk like this because it's the films that matter the most.
---
Glossary:
Eddie -
American Cinema Editors Award
PGA - Producers
Guild of America Award
BAFTA - British
Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
DGA - Director's
Guild of America
Well, it was a good run. For years, there weren't any good
precursors for the Documentary Feature Oscar. Choices were limited and overlap
was minimal. Then, in 2009 The Cove ran away with all the awards at the time
(ACE, DGA, PGA) to become the obvious Oscar winner. Most years since then,
there's been a lot of information to use to pick the winner. Not this year. The
four precursor awards had three different winners and none of them were
documentaries also nominated for the Oscar. Some of the Oscar nominees at least
got nominated for some precursors. The information is limited though. Worst of
all, none of the nominees this year have a musical tie-in. Three of the last
five winners have been about music (Amy, Twenty Feet From Stardom, Searching
for Sugarman). All this means I'll have to follow my gut more than I'd like.
Icarus
DGA - Directed Documentary - Nominee
BAFTA - Documentary Feature - Nominee
Everything is pointing to Icarus. It's the only Oscar
nominee with more than one precursor nomination. It's a doc about Russian
Olympic doping. Both Russia and the Olympics have been in the news for the
lion's share of the Oscar voting window.
Faces Places
This is a big hunch. Director Agnes Varda is a legend in
the documentary field, with a career going back over 50 years. This is her
first nomination ever and it comes the same year that she's also winning an
honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. That kind of visibility is enough to
sway voters who aren't paying much attention otherwise.
Strong Island
Voters love documentaries about social issues, especially
in absence of a musical choice. Strong Island is about race in a way that shows
its teeth without ever biting. That's perfect. It lets voters think they are
watching something hard-hitting without ever making them uncomfortable.
Last Men in Aleppo
Put bluntly, international affairs were much bigger last
year. I don't think Oscar voters are looking for a story about first responders in
Syria as much in 2018. Besides, last year's documentary short winner, The White
Helmets, was about the same thing. Voters who actually put in the time to watch
things are likely to find this too familiar.
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
DGA - Directed Documentary - Nominee
This is the only other documentary with a precursor
nomination. I don't think the 2008 financial crisis is an issue that's likely
to fire voters up though. Also, I'd be surprised to see the Academy warming to a
documentary about a bank, even if it is a small bank run by minorities.
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