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.
---
Previously:
Foreign FilmVisual Effects
Production Design
Supporting Actor
Supporting Actress
Original Score and Song
Original and Adapted Screenplay
Lead Actor
Lead Actress
Director
Glossary:
Eddie - American Cinema Editors
Award
PGA - Producers Guild of America Award
BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television
Arts Awards
Golden Globe - Presented by the Hollywood
Foreign Press Association Award
ACS - American Cinematographer Society
Award
SAG - Screen Actors Guild Award
DGA - Director's Guild of America
WGA - Writer's Guild of America
I can't wait any longer. It's time for the big one. I'm still cleaning
the pie off my face from last year, so you'll forgive me for for wanting to get
down to business right away.
Oscar History
Best
Picture is a broad category. It's the only category that shouldn't be voted on
in a vacuum. For instance, Sound Editing, is voted on based on the Sound
Editing in a film. The Production Design should have nothing to do with how
Sound Editing is decided. The Best Picture award should consider both of those
and more. The aim of the Best Picture award is to find the movie that is the
best when you take all its parts into consideration. After careful examination,
four broad categories give the best indication of what will win the Oscar.
The best
picture winner has also been nominated for...
...Directing 48 times in the last 50 years. The only exceptions
are the widely criticized snub of Argo in 2012 and the forgivable omission of Driving
Miss Daisy in 1989.
...Acting 46 times in the last 50 years. The only exceptions
are Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The Return of the King (2003), Braveheart
(1995), and The Last Emperor (1987).
...Writing 49 times in the last 50 years. The only exception
was the production behemoth Titanic (1997).
...Editing 46 times in the last 50 years. The four exceptions
being The Godfather Part II (1974), Annie Hall (1977), Ordinary People (1980), and the lazy omission of Birdman (2014).
I may be in the minority, but I'd say the screenplay nomination is the
most important one to get. Since there's a combined 10 screenplay nominations
handed out, even the weakest Best Picture hopeful should be able to get that
nomination. Titanic's failure to get nominated is weird but probably a
result of being such a large production that the screenplay almost doesn't
matter. Direction isn't far behind. Ben Affleck's lack of a nomination for Argo
is so ridiculous that it barely counts. Acting is pretty key, but failure
to get even one nomination can happen if it's an ensemble or a true spectacle
film. Editing is important, but I couldn't tell you why it's as highly
correlated with winning Best Picture as it is.
In the 50 years I went back, 39 of the Best Picture winners have a
nomination in all four of those category groups. All of the Best Picture winners have had at least
3, no matter how weak a winner it was. Chariots of Fire, Braveheart,
Crash. They all had three.
Let's see how this year's nominees break down:
Call Me By Your Name (Acting and Screenplay)
Darkest Hour (Acting)
Dunkirk (Directing and Editing)
Get Out (Directing, Acting, and Screenplay)
Lady Bird (Directing, Acting, and Screenplay)
Phantom Thread (Directing and Acting)
The Post (Acting)
The Shape of Water (Directing, Acting, Screenplay, and Editing)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Acting, Screenplay, and
Editing)
Based on that, Call Me By Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Phantom
Thread, and The Post are right out of considerations. The only one of those
that is at all a surprise is Dunkirk since it has the second most total Oscar
nominations this year and is likely to clean up in the technical categories.
Think of it as this year's Mad Max: Fury Road. Then add in the unlikelihood of
a summer release winning Best Picture and that crushes all hope there. Despite
the strong correlation, I simply cannot look at the lack of an Editing
nomination for Get Out or Lady Bird as a reason to count them out. The big
omission that I'm looking at is Three Billboards not getting Best Director. The
saving grace is that Martin McDounagh got Directing nominations from the DGA,
Golden Globes, and BAFTAs, so maybe it's a fluke. Something like Ben Affleck
for Argo. History is on The Shape of Water's side. 78% of the last 50 winners
had all four. Of course, that is not enough to decide things.
Precursor Awards
It's also
important to look outside the Oscars for guidance. There are dozens of guilds,
critic groups, and random film groups handing out awards leading up to the
Oscars. I've picked 8 groups with awards that either correspond closely with
the Best Picture winner or are broad enough to be worth discussing. Here's the
credentials of each:
BAFTA Award for Best Film: 19 of the last 20 Best Picture winners
were also nominated for the BAFTA. The lone miss was Million Dollar Baby, which
showed up late in the season that year. The winner has only matched the Best Picture
winner half of the last 20 years. A bigger cause for concern is that they've
differed from the Oscars the last three years. Given that Martin McDonagh
is a Brit, Three Billboards losing this would said a lot more than winning it.
Golden Globe for Best Film, Drama &
Comedy/Musical: Three
Billboards and Lady Bird shouldn't read too much into those Golden Globe wins.
Even with two categories to do it, the Golden Globes have only matched with the
Best Picture winner 12 of the last 20 years. It is worth noting that they have
nominated 19/20 winners. The only exception was having the good taste to pass
on Crash in 2005. All this tells us though is that Darkest Hour and Phantom
Thread aren't likely to win. I didn't need the Globes to tell you that.
Producers Guild of America Award for Best
Film: How the mighty
have fallen. It wasn't that long ago that the PGA Award was the single most
reliable Oscar indicator. The field of nominees is very similar and the
weighted ballot they use is the same as the Oscars (more on that later). They
had an 8 year streak going from 2007-2014 of picking the Best Picture Winner. Now they are on a two year losing
streak (picking The Big Short and La La Land instead of Spotlight and Moonlight). This, of course, leads me to the big question: am I about to over or
underestimate the value of the PGA? Are the last two years an unsustainable
statistical fluke or a confirmation of its unreliability? The PGA is slightly more useful than the
Golden Globe overall, matching the Oscar winner 13 of 20 times and has nominated all of the last
20 Best Picture winners. Again, that only tells us not to count on Darkest Hour
and Phantom Thread and that The Shape of Water vs. the field is only a somewhat
better than a coin flip.
Screen Actors Guild Award for Ensemble in
a Film: The SAG Ensemble
Award opens another potential question. All the last 20 Best Picture winners
had a SAG nomination. It took an historic upset last year to keep that streak
going since Moonlight but not La La Land was nominated by the SAG. The question
then is if La La Land losing is indicative of the power of the SAG Ensemble nomination
or if keeping the streak going is inflating its profile. After all, while the
acting branch of the Academy is by far the largest, it is only one of many
branches that vote for Best Picture. This does put Three Billboard, and to a
lesser extent, Get Out and Lady Bird, in an enviable position.
Directors Guild of America Award for Best
Director: Only somewhat
surprisingly, the DGA Award is the best indicator of the Best Picture winner
yet, matching winners 14/20 years. And, it's nominated the Best Picture all 20
years. It's in the same boat as the PGA though, missing the last two years.
Given that the DGA and PGA both picked The Shape of Water, that's a bit
alarming. Those should be seen as great signs. The only
theoretical contender hurt by a DGA snub is Call Me By Your Name. Any other
movie with a prayer got a nomination.
American Cinema Editors Award for
Editing, Drama & Comedy/Musical: The Eddie is no kingmaker, nor should it be dismissed outright. Of the last 20
Best Picture winners, only Spotlight wasn't nominated for an Eddie. It's had to
pull anything significant out of that exception. One of the two Eddies have
only gone to the Best Picture winner half of the last two decades. Again,
nothing about this year's Eddie nomination/winners should worry a film with a
reasonable chance of winning Best Picture.
American Society of Cinematographers
Award for Cinematography in a Film: The ASC award is the first cut I'd make if I narrowed the list of
precursors. I mainly keep it around to show how steeply things drop if I look
beyond these awards. The ACS nominees have only included 13 of the last 20 Best
Picture winners. Only 4/20 Best Picture winners have also won the ASC Award.
I'm not about to dismiss Get Out and Three Billboards for failing to pull in
this nomination. Neither were players for cinematography in the first place. Now, had The
Shape of Water or Dunkirk not been nominated, alarm bells would be going off.
Writer's Guild of America Award for Best
Screenplay, Adapted & Original: You may notice that I didn't include this award last year. That's
because the WGA can be difficult to assess. Their guild rules mean that nearly
every year, a couple Best Picture nominees aren't even eligible for the WGA Award. However, I shouldn't hold it against 12 Years a Slave for not winning the WGA if it
wasn't even nominated. It's hard to check what was and wasn't eligible in a
given year so the numbers can be a little deceptive. It might be the best
indicator of what will when the Best Picture award when eligible though. The
last 8 Best Picture winners (going back to Crash in 2005) that were nominated by the WGA also won
the award. That would've been massive to add to my consideration last year,
when Moonlight beat La La Land for the WGA Original Screenplay Award*. Alas,
Three Billboards wasn't eligible for the WGA. The Shape of Water lost anyway to
Get Out. If a film other than The Shape of Water wins Best Picture, look at
this as the most important indicator.
*Before anyone accuses me of revisionist history, I'll admit that I
still would've picked La La Land. This information would made it more of a
nail-biter though.
I'll break all this down even more when I get to my predictions below.
Here are the numbers you need to know. In the last 20 years, no movie has won
Best Picture without at least 1 win and 6 nominations.
So, how do things look among those 8 groups for this year's Best
Picture nominees?
Call Me By Your Name: 4 nominations, 1 win.
Darkest Hour: 2 nominations*, 0 wins.
Dunkirk: 6 nominations, 1 win.
Get Out: 6 nominations, 1 win.
Lady Bird: 6 nominations, 1 win.
Phantom Thread: 0 nominations, 0 wins.
The Post: 3 nominations, 0 wins.
The Shape of Water: 7 nominations, 2 wins.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: 6 nominations*, 3 wins.
*Indicates WGA ineligible movies.
I want to begin by pointing out how truly remarkable Phantom Thread is.
It's very hard to get none of the precursor awards and not only get a Best Picture nomination but clean up with 6, mostly major nominations. That's arguably the most unlikely thing I've seen in the five years I've been doing this.
Now that that's out of the way, what do these numbers tell us?
Remarkably, not much. Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, and
Three Billboards (also known as the only movies with even the remotest chance
of winning) all have the required minimums. What this all means is that this is
somehow even more wide open than the "roll of the dice" 2015 Best Picture race.
Other Considerations
Despite all the facts a figures I point to, there is no formula to
determine the Oscar winner. Last year was a great reminder of that. The whole
point of the numbers I put together is to find minimums, not maximums. My only mea culpa after
last year's Moonlight win is that I fell for the idea that a movie could have
an unattainable lead. If such a thing existed, La La Land would've had it. And,
it didn't. I looked back at my predictions from last year for lessons I could
learn. Every step of the way I acknowledged that Moonlight had all the minimum
requirements of a Best Picture winner. I even recognized the narrative that
would need to take hold for Moonlight to win. I just determined that it was too
little too late. Whoops.
The biggest lesson from 2016 is that looking outside Hollywood
matters. Last year, the big stories were race and Trump. Trump's travel ban
locked up a Foreign Film win for The Salesman and likely played a part in the
Documentary Short win for The White Helmets. Even bigger though was the
reaction to two years of #OscarSoWhite. Just look at the Documentary Feature
race last year if you want any evidence of that. O.J.: Made in America, I Am Not Your Negro, and 13th were all nominated*. Fair or not, the narrative took
hold that a vote for La La Land was regressive. You better believe that
#OscarSoWhite grated against Academy members, some of who looked at it like they were being called racists. I bet on Hollywood opting for escapism and the opposite happened. In hindsight, Moonlight seems so
obvious. With La La Land I was relying on the Oscar machine changing at a much
slower pace.
*And were excellent documentaries, by the way.
So, what are the issues going into this year? Sure, no one in Hollywood is
crazy about Trump. Race is still a hot button issue. That's what makes Get Out
such a threat to win. However, it doesn't get much bigger than #MeToo. Sadly,
there's no perfect flag-bearer for that movement among the nominees. The Shape of
Water has a female lead and is about the little guys fighting back. Three
Billboards is all about a woman who's tired of putting up with shit from all
the men in charge, however, it's got a tricky race problem to navigate which could set
it back if campaigned against correctly. Lady Bird checks a lot of boxes but doesn't
have any momentum behind it.
Then, there's always the consideration of the Oscar ballot itself. You
see, it's a weighted ballot, meaning everyone ranks their 9 picks. If a movie
doesn't have a majority on the first count, the ballots picking whatever movie
came in last get redistributed using the second pick, and so on and so forth
until one movie has a majority. If you ever feel like the Oscar winner is a
compromise, you're kind of right. This method is more favorable for generally
liked movies than ones that people run hot and cold on. For example, if The
Shape of Water has a lot of 1st and 9th place votes it will be harder for it to
win than if Get Our has mostly 3rd and 4th place votes, even if The Shape
of Water has more 1st place votes. In case you want to read more on how it
works, this is the best site I could find about it.
(Update: FiveThirtyEight also just posted
a good simplified explanation of how the weighted
ballot works)
Predictions
(From most
to least likely to win)
7 Oscar Nominations (including Acting,
Screenplay, and Editing)
BAFTA - Feature Film - Winner
Golden Globes - Drama Film - Winner
PGA - Feature Film - Nominee
DGA - Direction - Nominee
SAG - Ensemble - Winner
Eddie - Comedy/Musical Film Editing -
Nominee
WGA - Ineligible
Pros: Odds are, this is between Three Billboards and The Shape of
Water. Neither is a missing any major precursor awards or nominations. There are
no "kiss of death" exclusions. Three Billboards has the most
precursor wins and that's even without being WGA eligible (which would've been a win,
I'm certain). Frances McDormand's Mildred is a character people can really
rally around (Imagine putting Harvey Wienstein in a room with her!). Also, it's
an imperfect science, but when the choice is between a film that's a technical
achievement (The Shape of Water) and an acting/writing showcase (Three
Billboards), the latter almost always comes out ahead. Moonlight vs. La La
Land. 12 Years a Slave vs. Gravity. Spotlight vs. The Revenant ... Why does that
list look familiar? Oh yeah, it's because those are all years that my pick for
Best Picture was wrong. I'm going all in on the value of a screenplay this
year.
Cons: Having no Best Director nomination hurts the most. Before you
point out Argo, remember that Ben Affleck won the DGA, Golden Globe for
Directing, and BAFTA for Directing. That snub was an aberration. The snub of Three Billboards might
not be. A PGA win would've eased my concerns a lot.
13 Oscar Nominations (including
Directing, Acting, Screenplay, and Editing)
BAFTA - Feature Film - Nominee
Golden Globes - Drama Film - Nominee
PGA - Feature Film - Winner
DGA - Direction - Winner
ASC - Cinematography - Nominee
Eddie - Drama Film Editing - Nominee
WGA - Original Screenplay - Nominee
Pros: They got every nomination you could ask of them. It's the
greatest over-achiever of the class of 2017 and has no apparent weakness.
Despite the recent skid, the PGA and DGA wins are huge!
Cons: It got only the precursor wins it had to and none of the ones
that would've locked it up. The DGA win was expected. PGA wasn't a surprise. No
acting wins anywhere though. It couldn't even pick up a screenplay win with
Three Billboards out of the way for the WGA. What that tells me it that it
needs to win without the support of the writers or actors branches. That is not
a winning formula. And there's the fact that I just think The Shape of Water is
too weird. There's no metric to measure this, but voters haven't liked
"weird" in the past. Birdman was weird but about Hollywood. Lord of
the Rings was weird but gave the Academy three years to warm up to it. The Shape of Water is weird without anything to fall back on.
4 Oscar Nominations (including Directing,
Acting, and Screenplay)
Golden Globes - Comedy/Musical Film -
Nominee
PGA - Feature Film - Nominee
DGA - Direction - Nominee
SAG - Ensemble - Nominee
Eddie - Comedy/Musical Film Editing -
Nominee
WGA - Original Screenplay - Winner
Pros: The makeup of the Academy has changed significantly over the
last couple years, It's younger, more diverse, and more female. To some extent,
you can throw all the old "rules" out the window. Even still, Get Out
has all the minimum "requirements" to win Best Picture. I wouldn't
have to rewrite anything in the history books to accommodate a Get Out victory.
The fact that it's still hanging around in the race is quite remarkable.
Cons: The last February release to win Best Picture was The Silence of
the Lambs 26 years ago, and it had more across the board support. The only precursor
win Get Out got was from the WGA when Three Billboards wasn't eligible. Horror.
Comedy. Thriller. Whatever you call Get Out, it's not a genre with a long history of
Oscar success. Suggesting that a Moonlight win opens the door for a Get Out win
is reductive to both movies and I don't buy it. Get Out winning would be
exciting, but it still feels much more like a Critics Choice or People Choice
Award winner.
5 Oscar Nominations (including Directing,
Acting, and Screenplay)
Golden Globes - Comedy/Musical Film -
Winner
PGA - Feature Film - Nominee
DGA - Direction - Nominee
SAG - Ensemble - Nominee
Eddie - Comedy/Musical Film Editing -
Nominee
WGA - Original Screenplay - Nominee
Pros: I love this movie and I'll guarantee it gets the fewest last
place votes on the weighted Oscar ballot. It's such a likable movie. Getting
directing, acting, and screenplay nominations is a great haul. Like Get Out, it
has all the absolute minimum necessary requirements to think it could maybe win
Best Picture.
Cons: I mean this in the nicest way possible - Lady Bird is fighting
out of its weight class. Movies like this don't really win Oscars. You can't
convince me that this is markedly different from something like The Edge of Seventeen, which wouldn't get Oscar attention in a hundred years. I'm pleased
to see it get all this love, but Lady Bird is peaking with the nominations...I'm pretty
sure.
8 Oscar Nominations (including Directing
and Editing)
BAFTA - Feature Film - Nominee
Golden Globes - Drama Film - Nominee
PGA - Feature Film - Nominee
DGA - Direction - Nominee
ASC - Cinematography - Nominee
Eddie - Drama Film Editing - Winner
Pros: The Academy is still really old, really white, and really male.
The "steak eaters" are alive and well. Dunkirk appeals to the largest
Academy demographic and smaller branches
like the sound and film editors.
Cons: The Eddie win isn't enough. Missing a screenplay and any acting
nominations is a killer. If you think Dunkirk can win Best Picture, then you
probably though Mad Max: Fury Road could've won in 2015.
6 Oscar Nominations (including Directing
and Acting)
Pros: Despite no precursors, Phantom Thread managed to get six Oscar
nominations. Something about this movie struck a chord with the Academy in
particular. This low on the list, I shouldn't be approaching this logically.
Nothing about Phantom Thread's nomination love makes sense. Winning Best
Picture wouldn't make sense in the same kind of way.
Cons: But really, no precursor nominations? Not even one?
4 Oscar Nominations (including Acting and
Screenplay)
BAFTA - Feature Film - Nominee
Golden Globes - Drama Film - Nominee
PGA - Feature Film - Nominee
WGA - Adapted Screenplay - Winner
Pros: I've been talking up the value of a good screenplay. Pairing it
with great performances is like matching fancy cheese with a fine wine.
Cons: Simply put, where's the SAG Ensemble nomination? This movie
needs the acting branch.
6 Oscar Nominations (including Acting)
BAFTA - Feature Film - Nominee
ASC - Cinematography - Nominee
WGA - Ineligible
Pros: Gary Oldman.
Cons: No Golden Globe nomination. No DGA. No SAG. No PGA. Do I need to
explain this?
2 Oscar Nominations (including Acting)
Golden Globes - Drama Film - Nominee
PGA - Feature Film - Nominee
Eddie - Drama Film Editing - Nominee
Pros: Maybe this could be a covert way for Hollywood to affirm the
Free Press after all this "fake news" business.
Cons: They are truly just happy to be nominated.
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