Funny story — I forgot VES was handing out awards today. I was writing up my Best Visual Effects category breakdown and went to look up when VES would be announcing so I’d have an idea… turns out, it was tonight. So here’s your VES write-up.

This guild is a function of what your Oscar nominees are. Really they help only so far. You look to BAFTA to confirm where you think things are leaning, and the Oscar category is a mixture of that plus just looking at it, because a lot of the time the answer is obvious.

Here’s your Visual Effects Oscar category, to make things easier:

Avengers: Infinity War
Christopher Robin
First Man
Ready Player One
Solo: A Star Wars Story

There are seven major VES awards. Avengers: Infinity War won four of them, Best Effects, Animated Character, Composting and Effects Simulations. Ready Player One won two, Created Environment and Virtual Cinematography. First Man won for Supporting Effects. Also worth noting, Mortal Engines won for Models, and in Animated, Into the Spider-Verse swept everything, winning for Best Animated Effects, Animated Character, Created Environment and Effects Simulations.

So, on this alone, you might say Avengers is the frontrunner for the Oscar. I’m not going there just yet. I want to see what BAFTA does. Especially since the Oscar tends to go to the “classier” film with more of a pedigree, and that clearly seems like First Man in this case. If BAFTA goes Ready Player One then we have a decision on our hands. If Avengers manages to win BAFTA, then I may be swayed. And if First Man wins BAFTA, then you pretty much know exactly how this one’s gonna turn out.

I’m not calling this a huge win for Marvel just yet, only because they’ve yet to win the actual Oscar category. So let’s see where we’re at on Sunday once BAFTA announces and then regroup. I feel like, if anything, this might be a big Avengers red herring when First Man is staring us in the face all along as the probable winner of the category.

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So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Supporting Actress. Which we thought could be interesting, but seems pretty straightforward yet again.

It’s an acting category, so that means SAG first, questions later.

They’re 17/24 all, time, so just over 70%. Two of the seven misses, however, are category differences. Jennifer Connelly won SAG lead and the Oscar for Supporting, and then Kate Winslet won SAG Supporting in 2008 and then won Best Actress at the Oscars.

The other five misses are:

• 1995, Kate Winslet wins SAG and Mira Sorvino wins the Oscar
• 1996, Lauren Bacall wins SAG and Juliette Binoche wins the Oscar
• 1998, Kathy Bates wins SAG and Judi Dench wins the Oscar
• 2000, Judi Dench wins SAG and Marcia Gay Harden wins the Oscar
• 2007, Ruby Dee wins SAG and Tilda Swinton wins the Oscar.

They haven’t been wrong in a decade, if you count the Kate Winslet swap as being right. Most of their misses came early on in the SAG years, and pretty much since then they are solid. This year, however… things might be different. But, let’s look at how the other precursors did in those years:

BAFTA had Juliette Binoche in 1996, they had Judi Dench in 1998, they had Jennifer Connelly in 2001, they had Tilda Swinton in 2007, and they had Penelope Cruz in 2008. So they get the two category swaps right and the only two times they straight up missed were 1995, where they also had Kate Winslet over Sorvino, and 2000, where they had Julie Walters (but that’s the year everyone got it wrong and Harden won with no precursors). So usually, SAG and BAFTA, you’re set. (But again, this year…)

Oh, and BFCA, because we can: They had Mira Sorvino. So there’s that. Only one category unaccounted for. But outside of Jennifer Connelly in 2001 and the category swapped Kate Winslet, they also got every other one wrong. But that does mean your precursors are gonna help you.

The Globes meanwhile: The had Sorvino in ’95, missed the ’96 because they also had Bacall, missed Dench in ’98 (had Lynn Redgrave instead), missed 2000 along with everyone else (had Kate Hudson), had Jennifer Connelly in 2001, missed 2007 (had Cate Blanchett) and had Winslet in the category swap in 2008.

So yeah. Generally your winner will win some of the precursors. But this year, they’re not so helpful, are they?

Before we get into the category, let’s do my statistics thing. (Don’t worry, we’re almost done. It’s just Actor and Picture left.) In the Best Actress category, here’s how the positions have fared:

#1 – 13 times

#2 – 16 times

#3 – 19 times

#4 – 15 times

#5 – 17 times

This is the only category where the first position isn’t either first or tied for first. This first position is actually the worst to be.

• The last #1 to win was Viola Davis, Fences
• The last #2 to win was Allison Janney, I, Tonya
• The last #3 to win was Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
• The last #4 to win was Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
• The last #5 to win was Octavia Spencer, The Help

So it’s all recent. They’re all pretty bunched together. And according to this category, the order of likelihood to win is: 1) King, 2) Weisz, 3) de Tavira, 4) Stone, 5) Adams. Honestly, not so far off from the truth, is it.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, Vice

Maria de Tavira, Roma

Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Emma Stone, The Favourite

Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

This category was mostly decided all the way through, as were most of the acting categories. Adams, Stone and Weisz hit everything. King missed both SAG and BAFTA, but no one ever thought she would be left off. That last spot, however, was very open. Emily Blunt got a SAG nomination, Margot Robbie got SAG and BAFTA, Claire Foy got BAFTA… no one knew where it was gonna go. And it turns out, it’s because de Tavira isn’t SAG. So she couldn’t have been nominated. And they went all in on Roma. So here we are.

The interesting thing about this one was that it seemed very likely from the start that Regina King was the de facto winner here due to a vote split from Stone and Weisz. Adams never seemed like a winner and we never knew who the fifth person would be, so that didn’t seem like a possibility. But then King missed both SAG and BAFTA, which was interesting. That’s the only thing making this category notable right now, the fact that the person we all think will win missed the two biggest precursors. But then all the precursors pretty much are going off the board because of that. So it seems like it normally would most other years. It’s weird.

But yeah, King has BFCA and the Globe so far. SAG went to Emily Blunt, who wasn’t even nominated here. And there’s only BAFTA left, which will either decide between Stone or Weisz, or go off the board to Claire Foy or Margot Robbie. I guess Amy Adams theoretically could win BAFTA, but I don’t think anyone really sees that happening.

In the end… we have an exact mirror of 2000, don’t we? Maria de Tavira is Marcia Gay Harden in this scenario, isn’t she? Getting on with no precursors, and then the precursors are all over the place, with double nominees from the same film like that other time.

2000 had Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand from Almost Famous, Judi Dench in Chocolat, Julie Walters in Billy Elliott, and Harden. And in that year, Hudson won the Globes over Dench, McDormand and Walters; Frances McDormand won BFCA; Julie Walters won BAFTA over Dench and McDormand; and Dench won SAG over Hudson, McDormand and Walters. Everyone was split on people and then the fifth person got in and won the category.

Here, it’s slightly different, since King has the two lesser precursors and SAG went off the board. They could have easily rallied around one of the nominees here. So BAFTA is gonna tell the tale. If they also go off the board, then we probably know how this voting will turn out. If not, maybe we’ll see who can win it.

Rankings:

5. Amy Adams, Vice — She’s in every category and hasn’t won yet. Why does it seem like she’s always the last person in line for a vote in her films? It’s weird. She always gets nominated but never has a chance at a win. The Master, American Hustle, Doubt, The Fighter, Junebug. None of them. Also twice she was the second of a double nomination. Melissa Leo won over her in 2010, and Viola Davis had the showier role in Doubt, not that either had a chance. Junebug was her first and was the “welcome to the club” nomination. American Hustle, she had no shot. And The Master, she was along for the ride with Hoffman. Feels like she’s along for the ride with Bale here. Can’t see this amounting to anything.

4. Maria de Tavira, Roma — I don’t know if she’s not a stronger nominee. But I want to see what BAFTA does before I start talking myself into that. I know the next two have the vote split going on, but I don’t know if her not being on any of the precursor lists doesn’t help her. Then again, I think the fact that Regina King wasn’t on the two big precursor lists is clouding the fact that she probably would have swept all or most of them had she been on them. So I don’t know if de Tavira is a real contender in actuality. So I’ll leave her fourth for now, since you’d think if anyone really loved the performance enough for i to win that they’d have had it one another precursor.

3. Rachel Weisz, The Favourite — How do you figure out a vote split? It’s not like The Fighter where it was clearly Melissa Leo. Or The Help, where it was clearly Octavia Spencer. These two are 50/50 in every regard. How do you even pick who was better if not for personal preference? So the only way I split this vote save a BAFTA win for one of them is that Emma Stone has an Oscar more recently and might be more liked by more people. That’s it. That’s all I got.

2. Emma Stone, The Favourite — So yeah, the two of them are second and third until I talk myself into de Tavira being a second choice in this one due to overall category freshness on her part. But again, Weisz hasn’t been nominated since she last won and Stone has three nominations in five years and won two years ago. So I’m thinking more people would vote for her between the two. This is one of those situations where the vote split works against them because there is no pecking order.

1. Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk — She’s the only one with precursors and will pretty much remain the only one with precursors. If BAFTA goes off the board the way SAG did, then it’ll literally be her with BFCA and the Globe and no one else with anything. So, for the moment, she’s the first choice on precursors and the fact that she makes the most sense as a winner. The role is such that she will get that ancillary support she needs in a category like this to take it down. And people will conveniently forget that she doesn’t really have the screen time you think she does and the role is pretty slight, all things considered. (Maybe that’s why she missed SAG and BAFTA. Dunno.) Still, the weird thing about the Oscars is that a lot of times the win isn’t necessarily about strength of performance so much as it is likability and logistics. This seems like a case of logistics. No one seems excited about Adams, the other two will siphon votes from one another and de Tavira is a foreign actress which makes her automatically less likely to get votes. King seems like she’ll take this just by default.

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http://bplusmovieblog.com

So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Actress. The only major category that has a chance to surprise. Right? Maybe? For once?

SAG is the precursor here. They’re 17/23 all-time. Here are the six misses:

• 1994, Jodie Foster won SAG, Jessica Lange won the Oscar.
• 1999, Annette Bening won SAG, Hilary Swank won the Oscar.
• 2002, Renée Zellweger won SAG, Nicole Kidman won the Oscar.
• 2007, Julie Christie won SAG, Marion Cotillard won the Oscar.
• 2008, Meryl won SAG, Kate Winslet won the Oscar. (Though she also won SAG Supporting for that same performance.)
• 2011, Viola Davis won SAG, Meryl won the Oscar.

So, five real misses. Generally, you listen to them, unless there’s a clear duel going on, in which case you give them preference but still go with what makes sense.

This year, we don’t really need much of the complexity, since every precursor to this point went to Frances McDormand. BAFTA is announcing on Sunday, but I think we all assume that’s going her way as well. And until (and even if) it doesn’t, we can parse this one fully at this point.

#1 – 18 times

#2 – 24 times

#3 – 15 times

#4 – 16 times

#5 – 16 times

#6 – 1 time

The #6 was Mary Pickford, the one time there were six nominees. Outside of that, #2 wins the most.

The last #1 to win was Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

The last #2 to win was Frances McDormand

The last #3 to win was Brie Larson, Room

The last #4 to win was Emma Stone

The last #5 to win was Kate Winslet, The Reader

Best Actress

This was the only category that made sense throughout the season. Other people got precursors — namely Jessica Chastain. Judi Dench got SAG, but no one took that seriously. Other people got minor precursors, but in the end, there were six real choices, and one of the two fighting for the fifth spot was Meryl, who they will nominate for literally anything. So no real surprises here.

This was also one of those years where, pretty much as soon as they announced nominations, you saw the clear path for the winner mapped out. Kinda like last year, only much more certain. Last year, the minute the category was locked, you saw that lane for Emma Stone to use to slide into a win. And once the early precursors landed, you saw it all playing out. This year, the minute you saw that list, you knew — “Frances McDormand.” At least, I did. Unless things started going wildly differently early on, it just felt all downhill. And it has been. Once the Globes happened, it felt locked. And then BFCA four days later. Since then, no one’s been able to make up any ground. And here we are.

Rankings:

5. Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me? — I’ve made the decision to put McCarthy fifth. Because why was she even fourth in the first place? Here’s someone who hit every precursor and lost every precursor to someone else on this list. They clearly like her and the performance, but no one seems to care enough to vote for it. And her film doesn’t have 8+ nominations. So she’s fifth. Who thinks she’s got any shot at this?

4. Yalitza Aparicio, Roma — Her film has 10 nominations and will win a bunch of them. She might get votes. Some people might love this enough to take her too. Of course, she missed the only precursor she was nominated for. But hey, she’s got more category freshness than Melissa McCarthy does, so I’ll put her fourth. No one thinks either of these bottom two has a chance, so who cares?

3. Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born — She’s at least got a BFCA tie under her belt. No one really thinks she can win BAFTA. The buzz for her film has died down and now it’s more of a “good job out of you” feeling for her. This role has never won the Oscar, and it doesn’t look like that’s gonna continue here. She’ll get votes. That’s for sure. But missing SAG was a big deal. That would have kept her in it. Now she’ll need BAFTA to seem like a legitimate contender. And I don’t think she’s getting it. So she’s going in a third choice. Theoretically it could happen, but it’s seeming like a much longer shot. Especially if Glenn Close also wins the BAFTA.

2. Olivia Colman, The Favourite — Here’s the deal, if she wins the BAFTA, she’s the second choice. If not, she’s pretty much out of it. All she has right now is the Globe for Musical/Comedy. I’m putting her here because I know the history behind the Gaga nomination/role and Colman seems like she’s gonna win BAFTA. But if not, then this one’s pretty much a wrap.

1. Glenn Close, The Wife — If she doesn’t win the Oscar, let me say here and now that I will make a “Close but no cigar” joke. But right now, she has the Globe, she won BFCA, even in a tie, and she won SAG. So she’s the favorite and she’s probably gonna win the Oscar. If she wins BAFTA, then it’s locked. If either Colman or Gaga wins the BAFTA, then it’s more open than we thought. Gaga would really make it a race again. Colman would just make her the second choice with Close a probable winner anyway. Still, until BAFTA and even until Oscar night, she is your most likely winner of the award. This one seems pretty cut and dry right now. SAG shut this one down pretty tightly.

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http://bplusmovieblog.com

So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Animated Short. Truly one of my favorite categories this year, because just about everything in it is great and worth seeing.

All the shorts categories are specific to their year. They really don’t have any outside influences outside of, “Which one is Pixar?” So we just look at what we have and go from there.

Best Animated Short

Animal Behaviour

Bao

Late Afternoon

One Small Step

Weekends

This was the first year all ten shorts were available online before nominations. Many have since been pulled, because apparently they don’t understand the internet is pretty much the only way the public gets to see most of these, but I think at least two of these are still available (the best two, anyway).

I think, of the other shortlisted films, I’m surprised Lost & Found didn’t make it, since it was beautifully animated and stop-motion, but otherwise nothing was too much of a shocker to me. Animal Behaviour was the only short I didn’t really care for, so of course they nominated it. Grandpa Walrus was one that was just kind of okay. Bird Karma looked nice but didn’t amount to much. Bilby was nice, but I’m glad they didn’t nominate it just because it felt kind of standard CGI animation, whereas most of these are at least hand-drawn. And Age of Sail I really liked but also didn’t think they needed to nominate. I don’t think it did as much, narratively, as Pearl did a few years ago, even though this one did have more of a structured narrative. Personally, I think Lost & Found should have made it on instead of Animal Behaviour, but outside of that, I think we got the best version of this category that we could have gotten, and I rarely feel like I can say that. So I’m very happy with how this turned out.

That said… Pixar is pretty much running away with this one again, aren’t they?

Rankings:

5. Animal Behaviour — I don’t think this is gonna resonate with voters. Look at the last bunch of winners. If it wasn’t Pixar, Disney or Kobe Bryant (i.e., something with a lot of exposure), it was the one that told the most emotional story. And this ain’t that. So I have to consider it the fifth choice. Where’s the emotion here? It’s mostly just cute. Animals in therapy and their natural behaviors become their major issues. I don’t see this having any support in the way of a vote. You have to figure how many people are even gonna watch all five shorts and vote, and then figure how many of them are gonna vote for this one specifically. Can’t see it.

4. Late Afternoon — It’s really well done, and the animation is gorgeous. It might get some votes. Not sure it’ll have the legs to win. Feels like a fourth choice. This is a category where I can’t really support my feelings with any concrete evidence. You guys have all the evidence I do, though maybe you all haven’t seen the nominees as I have. Still, I think you can diagnose this one just on looking at what you have, and I think most of us would have this at #3 or #4 in this race. Doesn’t feel like a winner.

3. Weekends — This one has won some bigger festivals and just won the Annie Award for Best Short. Which is not insignificant. Since 2010, the Annie Short category is 4/8. Granted, the four times the winner didn’t win the Oscar, the Oscar winner in this category wasn’t nominated, and this was the only Oscar nominee up at the Annies, but it’s something. It at least means the animators saw it and liked it and that’s a measure of support that I will take in a category like this. That said… it’s not Disney or Pixar, so I can only go so far in my support. Can this win? Sure. Do I think I can call this a favorite at the moment? Not a chance. It doesn’t have what all previous winners had, which is the studio pedigree or the emotional story core. There’s emotion there, but it’s not what usually wins. Anyone who sees this knows that immediately. I think it’s a contender, but I’m not looking at this as a major player for the win just yet.

2. One Small Step — The only thing that is putting this over Weekends for me is the fact that you watch it and it has that emotional core that tends to do really well in this category. And the fact that this was openly on the internet from like September. So it gave more people a chance to just come across it along the way. At this point, I’m looking for anything that can beat Pixar, which has the total package this year in a way that I haven’t seen them have in a while. Lou didn’t have it. Piper didn’t have it. Sanjay’s Super Team didn’t have it. La Luna… ehh. Day & Night was technical, but didn’t have it. It’s been a while. So yeah, this is the second choice. But this is my personal favorite short in the category and it absolutely destroyed me when I saw it for the first time. And I think that will be the case for a lot of people who see it. It’s a very uplifting, life-affirming kind of a short, and is exactly what voters in this category respond to. So I think if you’re looking to what can possibly take down Pixar in this category, it’s this or Weekends.

1. Bao — The rule is that if Pixar is nominated in this category, it’s automatically the frontrunner until it loses. That’s just how that works. And this is the most complete Pixar short I’ve seen in a while. Last year, Lou wasn’t anything special. Piper looked great but was just kind of ehh, even though it managed a win. Sanjay’s Super Team I wasn’t a huge fan of. Lava — no thank you. The Blue Umbrella looked incredible, and probably came close, but they didn’t nominate it. La Luna looked nice, but otherwise didn’t have the total package. Day & Night had no narrative really, but looked spectacular, and could have won it on that alone (but didn’t). It’s been a while since Pixar had a short that was truly emotionally resonant. And this one should walk away with the category really easily. They look for what the most emotionally affecting shorts are in this category, and it’s hard to say this isn’t the one. I think it’s an easy winner and will be your frontrunner until it loses.

– – – – – – – – – –

http://bplusmovieblog.com

So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Documentary Short. Possibly the second least interesting category in the entire show. Get hyped!

There are no precursors for this one. All we really have is knowing what has won previously and what they go for.

Here are your last ten winners of the category:

• 2017 — Mentally ill artist overcomes her illness to create art
• 2016 —  Men who save people from the rubble of buildings in Syria
• 2015 — Honor killing in the Middle East.
• 2014 — Hotline for veterans having PTSD problems.
• 2013 — Holocaust survivor plays music every day and used music to overcome the horrors she’s encountered in her life
• 2012 — Homeless girl paints in order to overcome her situation and surroundings.
• 2011 — Doctor who performs surgeries on Iranian women who have had acid thrown in their faces
• 2010 — School in Israel has kids from 30 different countries and all different backgrounds coming together to learn
• 2009 — A girl with a deformity overcomes the prejudice against people with her condition (in her country, people with her deformity are usually left for dead or cast aside) to make music
• 2008 — A little girl in India is given surgery to fix a cleft palate.

They definitely have a type.

Best Documentary Short

Black Sheep

End Game

Lifeboat

A Night at the Garden

Period. End of Sentence.

So there was a shortlist of ten, and I’m not overly surprised at what was nominated. Of the five they didn’t nominate — Los Comandos sounded up their alley, but I wasn’t able to see it, so I can’t say why they didn’t go there. Women of the Gulag sounded like a nominee, but the production values looked subpar based on the brief clip I saw. Maybe that had something to do with it. Zion didn’t feel like a fully formed documentary (and I hate that my saying that sounds like me making a horrible joke, but I’m not. It just doesn’t feel like they’re telling a story so much as presenting a subject and leaving it at that). My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes would have been the best nominee ever on title alone, but that’s another one that didn’t really amount to much past the title. It didn’t go anywhere or reveal anything, even though it could have been great. ’63 Boycott is the one that surprised me in that they didn’t go for it. A Night at the Garden is kind of the same deal, using past events to connect them to present-day, but that one is much more at the forefront of today’s issues. So that omission is the only one that surprised me.

Otherwise — A Night at the Garden is the only surprise for me that it got on. It’s just old Nazi footage and nothing else. But hey, they went for it. So sure. And Lifeboat… I thought they were “over” the whole refugee crisis (they tend to move on from topics once they’ve “addressed” them with an award, thereby, in their mind, helping solve them), so that was one I wasn’t really expecting. But hey, I guess not. The other ones make different degrees of sense.

Quick breakdown of what they’re all about:

• Black Sheep — Cornelius’ mother, scared for her son’s safety, moved their family out of London. Cornelius suddenly found himself living on a white estate run by racists. Rather than fight back, Cornelius decided to become more like the people who hated him. But as the violence and racism against other black people continued, Cornelius struggled to marry his real identity with the one he had acquired.
• End Game — Facing an inevitable outcome, terminally ill patients meet extraordinary medical practitioners seeking to change our approach to life and death.
• Lifeboat — Volunteers from a German non-profit risk the waves of the Mediterranean to pluck refugees from sinking rafts pushing off from Libya in the middle of the night. LIFEBOAT puts a human face on one of the world’s greatest contemporary, global crises and provides a spark of hope surrounding how civil society can intervene in the refugee crisis in a meaningful way.
• A Night at the Garden — Archival footage of an American Nazi rally that attracted 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War 2.
• Period. End of Sentence — In an effort to improve feminine hygiene, a machine that creates low-cost biodegradable sanitary pads is installed in a rural village in Northern India. Using the machine, a group of local women is employed to produce and sell pads, offering them newfound independence and helping to de-stigmatize menstruation for all.

Kind of an interesting year. Not a whole lot in the way of what they normally go for. Makes it seem pretty simple, honestly. I’ve seen all but Lifeboat, so I can speak relatively intelligently about what I’ve seen, if that even matters. Here’s what I’m seeing so far on this one:

Rankings:

5. A Night at the Garden — You can watch the entire short here. Does this seem like something they’re gonna vote for? I feel like voters are gonna look at it and go, “Where’s the rest of it?” And I get it. It’s both a document of historical record to say, “Look, this wasn’t just happening in Germany. The Nazis held a rally right here in the most famous arena in the country and people attended,” and also a clear comparison to the current president and the rallies he holds (and the general ideology of the administration and all that). Totally get it, and that may work for some voters. I just don’t see how this can be an Oscar winner over a Criterion remaster release. Can’t see this being anything other than a fifth choice, because I can’t see how anyone actually votes for this as a winner. MAYBE I make it fourth to not get caught not having it in case it wins, but I can’t see how anyone sees this as a potential frontrunner in any way.

4. Lifeboat — It’s Aleppo. They’ve moved on. They have. Analysis is about objectively seeing where the Academy is at on their decision-making, and this is not the topic du jour. The White Helmets was two years ago. They put an Aleppo documentary on the Feature list last year, but it’s basically just there to be a nominee. This feels like more of the same. It’s the only nominee I haven’t seen, which is what’s preventing me from putting it fifth at the moment. I gotta see it to truly know what it is and what I feel its chances are. That said, I can’t see this winning. Maybe it’s great. We’ll see. Right now, I don’t see it any higher than fourth. Right now, the top two are very clearly spelled out and everything else is battling for third at best.

3. Black Sheep — It’s about race, and that’s a huge topic nowadays. Not sure the whole short fully comes together enough for them to want to vote for it, but at least on the topic, it has sort of what they go for. Basically, “We moved out of a city because of racial violence, but surprise, racists are everywhere!” It’s interesting in that it has a narrative of sorts that could easily be turned into a movie (they like that). You see how the kid was changed by this attitude and almost became a different person because of it. So maybe it’ll get votes. My history with this category tells me it probably won’t win, but none of us know anything. (By the way, this is on Prime, so you can easily see this should you want to.) It’s never going higher than third for me just because the other two have more compelling reasons to list them as frontrunners. Maybe it could win. It has half the criteria going for it.

2. End Game — It’s Netflix. Therefore more people had the opportunity to see it and more people might vote for it because of that. It’s looking more and more that people won’t be swayed by Netflix just throwing money at this category. They got nominated in this category the past two years for similar documentaries and both lost. (Though granted, one of those lost to The White Helmets, which was also Netflix.) One of them, Extremis, is like, the exact same documentary as this one. That one was about emergency room situations and this is about end of life situations. Not much different and no real emotional hook other than, “Yes, I understand how this is hard from personal experience with (this relative).” So because it’s Netflix I have to put it second, but I can’t see this being the winner because it generally doesn’t fit with what they go for. And I’m starting to have enough of a track record in this to see that people don’t necessarily care how much money Netflix has — they’re gonna vote for what they liked best. So I’ll put it second, but I’m not sure this has the legs to win.

1. Period. End of Sentence. — So Netflix sent End Game out as a screener to Academy members once it was nominated. However, they sent it with this short as well. Which means this is going to be on Netflix, even though it is not yet at the moment. So it’s both Netflix and exactly the kind of thing they go for in this category. Look at the past ten winners. And now if I randomly added in there “about Indian women trying to make menstruation pads and overcome the stigma about menstruation in their country,” would that not immediately fit in as a winner? And, I don’t feel like this is an insignificant detail — the publicist who runs Netflix’s entire Oscar campaign (that is across the board campaign, from Roma to this), who also used to run Harvey’s campaigns back in the day (oh, and also ran the campaigns for both La La Land and Moonlight)… is a producer on this film. Really hard to not consider this the frontrunner. And that’s before I gave you that piece of information. At this point, I’d be surprised if this lost. Not gonna call it a lock, because you can never really call something a lock in a shorts category, but come on, now. This is a clear favorite in this category.

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The ASC Awards were handed out last night.

Cold War won.

I’m not overly surprised, since the major competition was Alfonso Cuaron, who is by and large a director, and not a pure cinematographer. And ASC is not exactly perfect when it comes to being an Oscar prognosticator. So this doesn’t really change where the Oscar map lies just yet, but it does confirm that Cold War is the likely second choice behind Roma, barring what the BAFTAs do later on.

I don’t really think A Star Is Born, Never Look Away or The Favourite really has a huge shot at the moment. So it seems like it’s still Roma’s to lose, unless BAFTA goes a different way. So we’ll see.

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So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Live Action Short. You know, that category you never pay attention to, that not even the ceremony will pay attention to this year, because they’re probably gonna announce it over a commercial break.

Here’s how this category works: They nominate five shorts. You maybe see them all or see some of them. You guess which one you think is gonna win. One of them wins. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not.

That’s it.

Best Live-Action Short

Detainment

Fauve

Marguerite

Mother

Skin

I never know what the hell they’re gonna pick. This year, they went all serious. No idea what to make of this, but as of last night, I’ve seen all five of these. So I’m just gonna guess wildly and hopefully be slightly more confident come Oscar night.

Rankings:

5. Skin — I have no reason to really put this fifth other than it’s the one that didn’t really move me any way. The premise is never really capitalized on and it’s slightly ridiculous. Basically — it’s from the point of view of a child who is raised around racist rednecks. It’s all normal to him, but he’s like, five. Meanwhile, at the supermarket, a black guy smiles at the kid and the dad takes it upon himself to beat the shit out of the dude in the parking lot with his racist buddies. Then later, the guy’s friends abduct the dad, drug him, and tattoo him from head to toe so he looks like a black person. Then when they release him back to go home, his wife thinks it’s a black person breaking into the house and his son shoots him dead in the doorway. So yeah. That’s the short. Doesn’t really do much of anything. I know the fact that it’s becoming a feature (or is a feature… it played at Toronto) may lead you to think it’s more of a contender. But I tend to look at this as, “What’s gonna move the voters emotionally?” And that’s any direction. Serious or cute. And this isn’t that. So I’m treating it as fifth for now until I see something that makes me feel otherwise.

4. Mother — The best premise, I’d say. But also the one that does the least with it. A woman gets ready to go out when she gets a call from her young son, who is out on a trip with his father. He says he’s out on a beach, alone, and the father left a while ago and hasn’t come back. The kid has no idea where he is, only that they walked a long through trees and he can’t see any sign of people or anything other than sand and rocks. Oh, and his battery is dying. So of course the mother freaks out, tries to get a hold of anyone and calls the police. And you see this stressful situation in real time. Oh, and then the kid sees a man, who starts approaching. So the idea is that it’s truly the worst situation you could be in as a parent. But it just ends. The battery dies right as the man approaches the boy and the mother rushes out to start driving to find out where the hell he is. And then the camera tracks in on the grandmother with this almost cartoonishly ominous music as it just kind of cuts out. Feels way too heavy-handed and light on execution of the premise to win. I could be wrong, but unless they’re going all in on just the premise, I’m not sure this will do enough for them for a vote. I guess we’ll see.

3. Fauve — This well could win. It looks the best of the three. I’m not sure it’s a complete short, but it gets the job done on most levels. It’s about two boys playing in the middle of nowhere. On an abandoned train and in a quarry. They’re having some sort of game, which I guess the objective is who comes across as stronger or something. They keep giving and taking points. Then eventually they get to a big open area, where one of the boys gets stuck in quicksand. And basically he drowns. The other boy tries to figure out how to help, but when there’s no one and he comes back, the other boy has completely gone under and is gone. So the boy walks all the way back to the road, alone and traumatized. And then he gets picked up and driven back by a woman, totally changed from the experience. And it just kind of ends. There’s an image of a fox, which is a callback to something that happened earlier, but otherwise it just ends. It feels like it could almost be a complete short, but I don’t know if it’ll add up for voters. I’ll give it a slight edge over Mother, but it’s also in that realm of “I wish there were a bit more to grasp onto here.”

2. Detainment — This is the most complete of the shorts. It’s the longest, and is definitely emotional. The two lead performances are very strong. The two boys do a lot. But it’s somewhat of a problematic short in that it’s based on a real murder in the UK from the 90s. The James Bulger case. Basically two ten year old boys picked up this two year old at the mall, kidnapped him, tortured him and murdered him. And they left him on the train tracks where his body was later run over by a train. The short is built around police transcripts of the interviews with the boys. People in the UK are upset because it humanizes these boys, by showing them as ten year olds. Which I kind of get. It shows them as scared children and doesn’t fully get into all the fucked up stuff they did. But also, did you want to see the stuff they did (which apparently consisted of sticking batteries in the kid’s ass and also throwing bricks at him)? It’s emotional enough to where it could get votes. Not sure it makes it a distinct favorite over Fauve or Mother, but it at least feels more like a total package than anything else here.

1. Marguerite — This is the only thing resembling an “uplifting” short, which is why I’m giving it the edge. They seem to grasp onto anything uplifting here, unless it’s something like The Phone Call, which ends tragically, but is a complete short with great performances and makes you feel something along the way. So I’ll give this the edge on emotion, even if, like most of the other shorts, it feels incomplete. It’s about a female caretaker of an old woman. The old woman is just kind of accepting of death and waiting for her time to come. One day, she finds out her caretaker is a lesbian. It brings back old memories of hers, which involve her having a crush on a friend of hers but being unable to do anything about it because of the era. So she married a man and moved on. But she never forgot her feelings. So one night, she admits this to her caretaker and asks what it’s like to make love to a woman. The caretaker, as she puts the woman in bed, gives her a kiss and gets in bed with her. That’s really it. It just kind of ends. There’s no real emotion there, but you could read into something. Mostly I was wondering if she was giving her some sort of medication overdose as she did it, but it wasn’t set up in any way so I don’t think that’s the case. But I don’t know. Some people might see this as life-affirming or something, so I’ll make it the frontrunner. Honestly, I have no clue with this one and I think it can go four or even five deep. I truly don’t know what to make of this crop that they gave us this year. I’m sure I’ll be just as stumped on Oscar night as I am now. The good news is I always expect to get this category dead wrong, so it’s not like it’s anything outside the norm.

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All right. BAFTAs just got given out. This is the last major puzzle we have left for the Oscars. There are still five guilds left to announce. One of them is pretty important, two of them I can use but probably don’t need, one I definitely don’t need because the winner is obvious and the fifth is irrelevant. This is the one where the winners are gonna influence how I see certain races playing out.

I’ve got nothing else in the way of an introduction. So let’s just see how they voted.

Here are your 2018 BAFTA winners:

Best Film

BlacKkKlansman

The Favourite

Green Book

Roma

A Star Is Born

Winner: Roma

Whoa. I thought for sure this would go Favourite. And then Bohemian for British Film. This must mean The Favourite won British film.

And this also tells me what I figured the Best Picture play would be. Roma seems your likely winner and then Green Book having won the PGA just means the Producers still don’t take Netflix seriously as a distributor and refused to vote for Roma. Could be wrong, but at this point, those are the only two films that have any precursors, and Bohemian Rhapsody has the Globe for Drama, but that’s because Roma couldn’t be nominated there. So yeah, that eliminates my thought that The Favourite had a chance at it. This looks like Roma’s to lose.

Best British Film

Beast

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

McQueen

Stan & Ollie

You Were Never Really Here

Winner: The Favourite

There it is. Makes me think people do really like it, and it’ll get votes, but hard to see it as anything more than like, a third choice for Best Picture. It’s won nothing so far. It should end up with at least two wins on the night, so it won’t be completely empty-handed, but I can’t see it being a major Best Picture contender based on the haul so far.

Also this does mean that despite the Bohemian Rhapsody love, it’s not a major contender to win Best Picture. So that’s good, I guess.

Best Director

Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born

Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman

Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War

Winner: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

That’s a clean sweep for him. He’s pretty much guaranteed this category no matter how Best Picture turns out. Mostly I’m just curious how many he actually wins on Oscar night. He’s set up for four out of five. Not sure he wins Screenplay, but Director, Cinematography, Foreign Language and Picture all seem pretty likely. Big night for Alfonso.

Best Actor

Christian Bale, Vice

Steve Coogan, Stan & Ollie

Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born

Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Viggo Mortensen, Green Book

Winner: Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

And that’s completely turned that tide. Truly didn’t see that one happening, but hey, here we are. He is now the decided favorite for Best Actor. SAG and BAFTA and the Globe for Drama. Bale has BFCA and the Globe for Comedy, so he’s not out, but at this point you have to put Malek as the most likely winner and Bale as the alternate. I guess the comedy of Bale’s film really did mean something. Or maybe I’m just wrong. Maybe the American actor playing the quintessentially British character was stronger than the British actor playing the (arguably quintessential, based on the damage he’s done throughout the world) American character.

I wonder if Bale doesn’t still take this. But at this point, you have to consider Malek the most likely winner based on what we’ve seen. I like that it’s a toss up. Usually the acting categories are automatic and easy.

Best Actress

Glenn Close, The Wife

Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Viola Davis, Widows

Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born

Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Winner: Olivia Colman, The Favourite

That was expected. That was the only thing left that could make this one interesting. Colman now has the Globe and BAFTA, Close has SAG, BFCA and the Globe, and Gaga has a BFCA tie. So still looking like Glenn Close, but Colman still is firmly in the conversation. You could definitely make a potential case for her. This one seems more 75/25 and not 50/50, but it’s definitely up for discussion. So that’s nice.

Best Supporting Actor

Mahershala Ali, Green Book

Timothee Chalamet, Beautiful Boy

Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman

Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Sam Rockwell, Vice

Winner: Mahershala Ali, Green Book

That’s a clean sweep for him, and I don’t think we expected much of anything different. Richard E. Grant I thought had a shot at this because of the fact that he’s British. But they went all in on Mahershala, so that about sews up this category. Sam Elliott is the only one with a small chance, and that’s just because he didn’t have to face Mahershala at SAG and because he’s a veteran. Still don’t see it happening, though.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, Vice

Claire Foy, First Man

Margot Robbie, Mary, Queen of Scots

Emma Stone, The Favourite

Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Winner: Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

This was the only outcome. They didn’t go off the board like SAG did. Weisz now becomes a second choice behind Regina King, and the only reason the race seems slightly closer than it should is because King wasn’t nominated at SAG or BAFTA. I feel like she should still be the Oscar frontrunner, somehow. Probably the vote split. But Weisz is still there. I like that we only have one locked acting category this year.

Best Original Screenplay

Cold War

The Favourite

Green Book

Roma

Vice

Winner: The Favourite

Not surprising at all. It’s Green Book vs. The Favourite at the Oscars, and the WGA won’t help us since The Favourite was ineligible. So we’re left with seeing if Green Book wins there and just sort of guessing after that.

Best Adapted Screenplay

BlacKkKlansman

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

First Man

If Beale Street Could Talk

A Star Is Born

Winner: BlacKkKlansman

Nice. Makes sense, since Beale Street didn’t register with them. Spike is the only major contender here outside of Jenkins. I’m starting to get the sense that they’re gonna reward Spike after all the years of ignoring him. But I still think Jenkins could take it. It’s curious to me that the USC Scripter went off the board for the first time in 20 years, which tells me that this one is pretty wide open. I wanna see where the WGA goes. They have almost the exact same Oscar category, so that should tell us where the writers are leaning, which will help sort of guide us from there. I’m thinking it might be Spike or Barry who wins.

Best Editing

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

First Man

Roma

Vice

Winner: Vice

Yeah, that makes sense. That Big Short editing. It’s sneaky Oscar contender too. This is gonna be a 2011-type category. Roma is out, so we’re left with Vice winning BAFTA, Green Book and The Favourite winning ACE and BFCA going off the board. Bohemian Rhapsody and BlacKkKlansman are also both there, and one if not both of those could also be contenders. This will be a very interesting year. This is one I’m gonna have to think long and hard about.

Best Cinematography

Bohemian Rhapsody

Cold War

The Favourite

First Man

Roma

Winner: Roma

Yeah, that’s what I expected. I thought they might go Cold War like ACS did, but it’s clear the guild went for the cinematographer over the director. Roma should win the Oscar category pretty handily.

Best Music

BlacKkKlansman

If Beale Street Could Talk

Isle of Dogs

Mary Poppins Returns

A Star Is Born

Winner: A Star Is Born

Thanks, guys. Way to also go completely off the board.

First Man won the Globe and BFCA and now this. So now we’re left with an Oscar category in which nobody won any precursors. Fun stuff, guys.

Best Production Design

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

The Favourite

First Man

Mary Poppins Returns

Roma

Winner: The Favourite

That might be a clean sweep for them. Oh no. It won the guild and BAFTA, and Black Panther won BFCA and also the guild. So it’s 50/50 going into Oscar night with the edge probably going to the film with the most overall nominations. Black Panther not being nominated here probably also is another reason the edge should be going to The Favourite. Still, a 50/50 going into Oscar night helps. Makes it easier to make a decision and then leave the hard thinking for stuff like Editing.

Best Costume Design

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

Mary Poppins Returns

Mary, Queen of Scots

Winner: The Favourite

I mean, yeah. CDG announces in the next ten days, and I can’t imagine we’re expecting anything other than this winning in Period. Black Panther probably still remains a contender with a BFCA win and probably also an eventual guild win, but it’s frills and a Best Picture contender. What more do you need?

Best Makeup & Hairstyling

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

Mary, Queen of Scots

Stan & Ollie

Vice

Winner: The Favourite

And of course they went off the board.

Shouldn’t matter. Who doesn’t think Vice is winning this category cold?

Best Sound

Bohemian Rhapsody

First Man

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

A Quiet Place

A Star Is Born

Winner: Bohemian Rhapsody

Interesting. I’ll have to plug that into my Sound calculations and see if that matters. I don’t know offhand how BAFTA Sound winners do at the Oscars. The guilds always announce right toward the end, so we’re pretty much in the dark until we get those.

I still don’t see how First Man isn’t the presumed winner in at least one of them, but I can definitely see some sort of insane scenario where that doesn’t happen, and it’ll have something to do with Bohemian Rhapsody and/or A Star Is Born. But we’ll see. The guilds still have to announce, and there are two categories and not one like there is here.

Best Visual Effects

Avengers: Infinity War

Black Panther

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

First Man

Ready Player One

Winner: Black Panther

No surprise. This is how they get to show support. Thank god it wasn’t nominated at the Oscars so I didn’t have to think about how a film with subpar effects was probably going to win the entire category.

Though now we are left wondering where the category will end up going, since Avengers won the guild and both other precursors went off the board. Interesting, interesting,, interesting.

Best Animated Film

Incredibles 2

Isle of Dogs

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Winner: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Clean sweep. That about wraps that one up.

Best Foreign Language Film

Capernaum

Cold War

Dogman

Roma

Shoplifters

Winner: Roma

Yeah, that’s how that one will go. People may vote against it in Picture and take it here thinking that’s where it gets the vote, but that only enhances its chances here. This is one where you’re just gonna have to let Cold War beat you because there’s no way you can go against Roma.

Best Documentary

Free Solo

McQueen

RBG

They Shall Not Grow Old

Three Identical Strangers

Winner: Free Solo

Yeah, that’s cool. Figured they’d go Peter Jackson, because that is the best documentary on this list, but they went Solo. Works for me. It’s RBG vs. this at the Oscars. I assume RBG didn’t win because it’s an American political documentary. Still think it’s a clear 50/50 for the Oscars. Either could win. No fucking clue where it goes, though.

Best British Short

73 Cows

Bachelow

The Blue Door

The Field

Wale

Winner: 73 Cows

That’s a lot of cows.

Best British Animated Short

I’m Ok

Marfa

Roughhouse

Winner: Roughhouse

Marfa. I wonder if it’s about the city or the name of a person.

Best Debut Film

Apostasy

Beast

A Cambodian Spring

Pili

Ray & Liz

Winner: Beast

I heard good things about it.

Rising Star Award

Barry Keoghan

Cynthia Erivo

Jessie Buckley

Lakeith Stanfield

Letitia Wright

Winner: Letitia Wright

Sure. No real surprise. Plus at least two of these already broke and were rising like a year or two ago. Cynthia Erivo is gonna break this year, even though she half-broke last year (meaning 2018). Letitia Wright makes sense, especially since it’s all fan voting.

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So yeah, there you have it. BAFTAs. That wasn’t as helpful as you’d have thought. There are gonna be at least four or five wide open categories come Oscar night. And that’s exciting. I hope everybody’s ballots get savaged.

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So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Visual Effects. So you know, Best CGI. And occasionally the classy stuff too.

The Wizard of Oz and Kong: Skull Island… nominated in the same category at the Academy Awards.

So Visual Effects is one… you don’t necessarily need the precursors, but they help. Mostly it’s intuitive, but you do wanna look at the precursors to make sure you’re on the right track. There was only one year in the past like, ten, where the precursors just completely got blown up, and it’s one of the most shocking decisions I’ve seen the Academy make since I’ve been doing this. So generally you have a pretty good idea about this one.

But if you are gonna look at the precursors, you start with the actual visual effects guild, VES. They’ve got a bunch of categories, but the main one is basically “Best Effects.” The winner of Best Effects went on to win the Oscar category in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2016. Which is 10/16 years. Not so bad. They have a Supporting Visual Effects category as well, which produced the 2011 winner (of note, no film has lost Supporting Effects and then gone on to win the Oscar for Visual Effects). So 11/16 years your winner won one of the two big categories at VES.

Of the five years the Oscar winner didn’t come from VES:

• 2004 — the Oscar winner lost Best Effects to another nominee.
• 2007 — the Oscar winner lost Best Effects to another nominee.
• 2014 — the Oscar winner lost Best Effects to another nominee.
• 2015 — the Oscar winner wasn’t nominated for Best Effects (or anywhere at VES for that matter).
• 2017 — the Oscar winner lost Best Effects to another nominee.

Got that? It was nominated but lost, outside of that Ex Machina year, which is still one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen at the Oscars in all my years of covering it.

Also, 2017, Blade Runner lost to War for the Planet of the Apes and 2014, Interstellar lost to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Neither Apes movie was ever the favorite to win the Oscar, and we knew where that was going pretty easily. Which leaves 2007, where Transformers lost to The Golden Compass, and 2004, where Azkaban lost to Spider-Man 2. Both of which are now over a decade ago. It means you generally listen to what wins Best Effects.

But also, let’s look at BAFTA now.

BAFTA, going back to 2002 when VES started, has only been wrong three times! They are

• 2004: They had The Day After Tomorrow. Both Spider-Man 2 and Azkaban were nominated and lost.
• 2011: They had Deathly Hallows Part 2. Hugo was nominated and lost.
• 2015: They had The Force Awakens. Ex Machina was nominated and lost.

That means BAFTA had the winner every other time. And that includes The Golden Compass. So yeah. Between those two, you’re usually golden.

Oh, and you know what? We also have BFCA. Might as well look at them if we can. They’ve only given out awards since 2009. They’re 50/50 in all. 5/10. Technically the tenth category is this year, but they gave it to Black Panther this year and are gonna be wrong because Black Panther wasn’t nominated. Also, three of their misses are them giving it to the Planet of the Apes movies, which all lost at the Oscars. And the other one is the Ex Machina year. But other than that, they’re pretty much on point.

So yeah, generally VES Best Effects/Supporting Effects and BAFTA are gonna get you to where you need to go.

Best Visual Effects

Avengers: Infinity War

Christopher Robin

First Man

Ready Player One

Solo: A Star Wars Story

They had a shortlist of ten this year, and I’m not overly surprised about this. The Black Panther omission is somewhat surprising, given how much people are all over that film’s jockstrap this year. But I didn’t think its effects were all that great, so I’m glad if it got left off anywhere, this was one of the categories. And they put on Christopher Robin, which, you know what? Had some nice effects. So good for that. Otherwise, the other four here were pretty obvious choices. Star Wars always makes it, Ready Player One is all effects, First Man is space, and they love space, and Avengers… obviously. Disney is 3/5 of this category, by the way.

Outside of Black Panther, the other four shortlisted films to not make the final cut were Ant-Man and the Wasp, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Mary Poppins Returns and Welcome to Marwen. So yeah, nothing shocking there, even though a lot of us would have liked to see Mary Poppins maybe make it on over Christopher Robin. Still, nothing egregious.

BFCA and BAFTA both went off the board, giving Black Panther a win. So we’re pretty much just using VES and experience. That’s really all we have.

Your VES winners were as such:

• Avengers: Infinity War — Best Effects, Animated Character, Composting and Effects Simulations.
• Ready Player One — Created Environment and Virtual Cinematography.
• First Man — Supporting Effects

Those were gonna be my top three regardless, so that’s not a huge help. Just gonna go with my gut on this one.

Rankings:

5. Christopher Robin — So I’ll start by saying… having this fifth feels like an Ex Machina type mistake. So I don’t think I’ll leave it fifth come Oscar night, but I also don’t think this can win. At least Ex Machina was nominated at BAFTA, which this was not. That also was a very broadly liked movie. This… not really. No movie has won Visual Effects and not been nominated at BAFTA since… 1998. So yeah. That’s before the era of visual effects as we know them now. I feel comfortable calling this a fifth choice currently. I’ll probably say put it fourth on Oscar night just in case it comes in and you don’t get caught with your pants down. But without any kind of major win anywhere, I can’t see it happening.

4. Solo: A Star Wars Story — Right now it’s fourth because it’s Star Wars, and maybe that gets it votes, but honestly, I don’t see any way in which this could win. Force Awakens couldn’t win this, and that was the one. You know? Last Jedi even did nothing last year. Rogue One was an afterthought, and this will also be an afterthought. It’ll probably be #5 come Oscar night, but for now, the fact that it’s Star Wars at least gives it a little bit of cache. But also, no BAFTA nomination… can’t consider it a legitimate contender. So it doesn’t really matter if it’s fourth or fifth, does it?

3. Avengers: Infinity War — Nominated everywhere and lost everywhere. Marvel’s never won this category either. Can’t see it being anything other than a third choice. The first Avengers couldn’t win over Life of Pi. Iron Man lost to Benjamin Button. I can keep going. Iron Man 2 lost to Inception. Iron Man 3 lost to Gravity. Winter Soldier and Guardians lost to Interstellar. Doctor Strange lost to Jungle Book. Guardians 2 lost to Blade Runner. See a trend? Outside of the Jungle Book year, where Jungle Book was just the film that was considered to be all about the visual effects, Marvel has lost to either a Best Picture contender or just a film with a really classy pedigree. Hard to see this not being more of the same. Who takes Marvel seriously within the Academy? Hard to see this just getting votes on principle. They don’t give a fuck about anything the internet cares about. So why would I see this as anything other than a third choice? VES? That’s a guild. That’s not an open vote. Where are the votes coming from? Sure, it could win, but I’m not betting anything on that happening. I’ll probably leave it the third choice and wait and see if I’m wrong.

2. Ready Player One — It’s Spielberg, and it’s a fairly classy film. That should get it a few votes. Not sure that really puts it above Infinity War, but it might, right? If people saw it maybe they’d vote for it. But honestly I think when you look at this category from the perspective of the average Academy voter (older, not really watching stuff like everything we saw already), it’s pretty clear which film on this list should be considered the favorite at the moment. That doesn’t mean it will happen, but it does show you how things should be looked at going into Oscar night. I think this has a shot, but this isn’t anything higher than a second choice that could maybe come in.

1. First Man — It’s the only movie that is almost in the Best Picture conversation. That, to me, made it the automatic frontrunner from the jump. Think about it. Who’s still the majority of the Academy? Older, white voters. These are the people who won’t have seen Infinity War or Ready Player One. They’ll have at least seen First Man. Maybe they don’t know where the effects came from. I don’t know. But what I do know is that it worked for Interstellar in 2014, so I’m sticking with that path for now. Sure, Interstellar won the BAFTA for Visual Effects, so that had something this does not have. Still, when you’ve got a film with four overall nominations and the rest of the category only being nominated here with no clear frontrunner, I’ll call this the frontrunner. I think it still goes three deep, but I think this seems like the most likely winner right now. It also does have the Supporting Effects win at VES, which is what Hugo had, despite having lost everything else precursor-wise in its year. Sure looks like a winner to me from here.

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http://bplusmovieblog.com

So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Actor, which I thought was locked one way at the start of the season. Turns out it may be locked another way instead.

So historically, SAG is the voting body that matters most in terms of acting awards. SAG is 19/24 all-time in picking this category. Only five times did someone win SAG and not win the Oscar. Though one of those five includes Benicio Del Toro, who won SAG for Best Actor and then won the Oscar for Supporting Actor. So they’re not really wrong there.

The other four, though — 2001, Russell Crowe won SAG and Denzel won the Oscar; 2002, Daniel Day-Lewis won SAG and Adrien Brody won the Oscar; 2003, Johnny Depp won SAG and Sean Penn won the Oscar; and 2016, Denzel won SAG and Casey Affleck won the Oscar. So yeah, a group of three in a row in the early 2000s and then once in the past 15 years. Not a bad run.

Another thing I like to do that I didn’t do last year because it doesn’t really deserve an article (it’s stupid, but I enjoy it) — I do this dumb thing where I look at what positions on the nominations ballot (for the big categories only) win most of the time. It’s totally meaningless. It’s a function of spelling and who’s nominated. But I like it. So I’m gonna talk about it because I can. If you don’t think it’s interesting, skip ahead. For me, this is where I can get it out because it doesn’t matter.

So in the history of the Best Actor, here’s how the positions have fared:

#1 – 24 times

#2 – 22 times

#3 – 19 times

#4 – 10 times

#5 – 16 times

The person listed first has statistically won the most and the fourth position averages one win just about every decade. See what I mean? Pointless.

• The last #1 to win was Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
• The last #2 to win was Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
• The last #3 to win was Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
• The last #4 to win was Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
• The last #5 to win was Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

This year’s category is:

Best Actor

Christian Bale, Vice

Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born

Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate

Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Viggo Mortensen, Green Book

So based on that stupid statistics game up here, the way the category should end up is: 1) Bale, 2) Cooper, 3) Dafoe, 4) Mortensen, 5) Malek. And that’s not how this is gonna go.

Anyway, this category was pretty much locked all the way through. There wasn’t a whole lot in the way of surprise here. Bale, Cooper, Malek and Mortensen hit all the major precursors and there was no surprise for their nominations the entire way. That fifth spot, though, that was up for discussion. John David Washington got a SAG nomination and a Globes nomination. Willem Dafoe and Ethan Hawke both got BFCA nominations. Steve Coogan got a BAFTA nomination, but no one thought that was gonna happen. And then everyone else only managed a Globe nomination, which is about as good as raffle ticket at a baseball game. Good luck assuming that’s automatically gonna come in. So really, it was Washington, Dafoe or Hawke. I assumed based on stature Dafoe was the favorite, since SAG is kinda broad and tends to go populist. Hawke didn’t catch anything, so I didn’t see that happening. It seemed like either Dafoe or Washington, and Dafoe made the most sense. But Washington had the movie with a lot of overall support and another actor nominated. So it was tight, but in the end the actor who made the most sense got on.

So at the start of the season, you thought, “Christian Bale has this one easy.” He won the Globe for Comedy, but then Rami Malek won for Drama. Which was unexpected. But you thought, “Okay, sure.” Then Bale won BFCA, and things seemed back on track. But now… SAG and BAFTA both go to Rami Malek. It’s definitely shaping up to be an interesting Oscar night.

Rankings:

5. Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate — He is his film’s only nomination, and does anyone think he’s gonna get any real support in the end? Could you make a case for him over anyone else here? I can’t. So he’s going fifth, even though I love that he got nominated for this performance and has been nominated two years running. But that’s all he’s going home with, sadly.

4. Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born — It’s funny how this role is always an Oscar magnet. Guaranteed to get its actor nominated most of the time (sorry, Kris Kristofferson. But you also gave yours in perhaps the Best Actor year ever, so shit happens), but not really anything more. None of the Star Is Born films won any acting awards. Of course the big one is that Judy Garland/Grace Kelly year, but otherwise, they’ve never won. And the guys always take a backseat to the women, because that’s the story. The female lead is the glamorous part, even though the male one is the showy acting role. Still, Cooper missed out on the Globe, which was looked at as his one “given” throughout the season. And he’s never recovered. Looks like he’s gonna end up going home empty-handed when all is said and done. Star Is Born has eight nominations, and the only two it looks on solid ground for are Original Song and maybe Sound Mixing. Actress is up in the air (and looking less likely as time goes on). Picture seems extremely unlikely. Screenplay seems unlikely. Supporting Actor is extremely unlikely. Cinematography also seems nearly impossible. And they left him off Director, which is also a shame. You’d think that snub would funnel more votes for him here, but I don’t know if anyone feels the urge to vote for him. I feel like he gets the applause and the respect, but none of the votes. Look at everyone who’s left. I feel like they make stronger cases for themselves. I mean, maybe you can put him third. Maybe. Because only two people are gonna have precursors when all is said and done. But he’s lost to Bale and Malek every step of the way, and he lost to Malek in the one category you thought was his. That’s not a very good case for me for any higher than fourth.

3. Viggo Mortensen, Green Book — There’s really no case for him over Bradley Cooper except overall film support. He’s lost to Bale and Malek every step of the way too. What he has going for him is a PGA win for his film (meaning it’s in play for Picture), Mahershala Ali likely winning Supporting Actor, and a possible Screenplay win. It’ll probably lose Editing, unless they go all in on it. But without a Director nomination, that seems unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. I can’t see him somehow winning without any precursors. And since these rankings are all about where things are at the moment, who sees him any higher than third at the highest? He only even gets this high on tiebreaker.

2. Christian Bale, Vice — He’s got the Globe for Comedy and BFCA. He lost the big two to Malek, so there’s nothing on paper that says he should be anything other than a second choice here. He’s great in the role and the film has more overall support than Malek’s, so I’m not gonna rule out him winning. But while the Casey Affleck/Denzel year had me going, “Casey’s gonna win,” I could make an argument for that on paper. Affleck had BAFTA and BFCA and Denzel had the Globe and SAG. And SAG is a much bigger, more broad voting body. Here, SAG and BAFTA went Malek’s way. You know the last time we had that exact combination of precursors? 2014. Eddie Redmayne vs. Michael Keaton. And Bale is currently the Michael Keaton. Hard to see him as anything other than the second choice.

1. Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody — SAG win (19/24 all time), BAFTA win, Globes win in Drama. So all Bale really has on him is BFCA. He’s the favorite. Right now this is his category to lose. Hell, SAG and BAFTA, that shit is usually automatic. I guess the case for Bale to still be a contender is the fact that you could say BAFTA voted for Freddie Mercury and SAG is broad. But that doesn’t answer everything. I think this is 75/25 at best, with Malek seeming like the probable winner. Either way, he’s currently the clubhouse leader, and we’re almost at the end of regulation.

– – – – – – – – – –

http://bplusmovieblog.com

So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Production Design. Probably one of the few categories with any real intrigue in for me this year.