Oscars 2021: The Shortlists

They announced these shortlists last month, but, you know me, I like being prepared. So I spent the past few weeks trying watching as many of the films on here as I could so I could at least be educated when I talked about this stuff.

The shortlists we’re gonna cover are Song, Score, Visual Effects, (the newly included) Sound, Makeup & Hairstyling, International Feature, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, Live Action Short and Animated Short. And I’ll talk about all the Animated Feature eligibles as well because I can and I like to. It’s all just groundwork for me eventually guessing nominations come… honestly I don’t even know when they are. Probably within three weeks at this point.

And, at this point, I’ve managed to see all but 5 Animated Feature eligibles, 3 from the Documentary Feature shortlist, 2 from the Live Action Short shortlist and 1 from the International Feature shortlist. Which, honestly not that bad, all things considered.

Anyway, here are your shortlists.

We’ll start with a fun one, just to keep the casual people from immediately tuning out and make the people looking for the more specific categories work a little harder and guess where they have to scroll.

Animated Feature. 26 eligibles this year, which feels about par for the course. Honestly I’m surprised the number is even that high. But regardless, I’m certain that, like every other year, we’ll be able to immediately boil this list down to about 8 that have any kind of a shot at being nominated. And then we’ll spend the rest of the time going, “Okay, so Pixar or Disney is going to win, but are they gonna nominate all three of their movies this year?” It’s tradition at this point. It’s part of this category’s DNA. Which, you might call… cel-ular. (Still got it.)

Best Animated Feature

The Addams Family 2
The Ape Star
Back to the Outback
Belle
Bob Spit – We Do Not Like People
The Boss Baby: Family Business
Cryptozoo
Encanto
Flee
Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko
Josee, the Tiger and the Fish
The Laws of the Universe – The Age of Elohim
Luca
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
My Sunny Maad
Paw Patrol The Movie
Pompo the Cinephile
Poupelle of Chimney Town
Raya and the Last Dragon
Ron’s Gone Wrong
Sing 2
The Spine of Night
Spirit Untamed
The Summit of the Gods
Vivo
Wish Dragon

So currently I have seen 21/26. The five I haven’t seen are Bob Spit: We Do Not Like People, Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko, The Laws of the Universe: Age of Elohim, My Sunny Maad and Poupelle of Chimney Town. If anyone has any leads as to where I can see any of these, feel free to let me know. But it’s really only for my own completionism, since I doubt any of these except maybe My Sunny Maad have any kind of realistic chance at being nominated.

My personal rankings:

1. Encanto
2. Raya and the Last Dragon
3. Luca
4. The Summit of the Gods
5. Josee, the Tiger and the Fish
6. The Spine of Night
7. The Mitchells vs. the Machines
8. Vivo
9. Pompo the Cinephile
10. Belle
11. Cryptozoo
12. Flee
13. The Boss Baby: Family Business
14. Ron’s Gone Wrong
15. Sing 2
16. The Addams Family 2
17. Back to the Outback
18. Spirit Untamed
19. The Ape Star
20. Wish Dragon
21. Paw Patrol: The Movie

To try to, as quickly as I can (which you all know is never quick), run down how I’m looking at this list in terms of ‘what’s likely to get nominated’, it’s important to always remember the Rotten Tomatoes rule (only 4 times ever has a film rated below 70% been nominated, 3/4 being pre-2005). I’ll break it all down in tiers:

Don’t guess:

• The Addams Family 2 — first one wasn’t nominated, sequels rarely make it on, let alone without the first one nominated. 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. Never gonna happen.
• The Ape Star — Every year I watch at least one or two films exactly like this one that no one ever hears about that never make it. This won’t happen.
• Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko — Standard anime fare. They ignore five movies just like this every year. Mirai is the only non-Ghibli anime to ever be nominated to this point. And if stuff like Your Name and Weathering with You couldn’t make it, I can’t see this one happening.
• Josee, the Tiger and the Fish — Another straight anime. Just lump this in as part of the five.
• The Laws of the Universe – The Age of Elohim — This is hardcore anime and they don’t go for this at all. Plus the first one got ignored. Treat it as a blank and move on. It won’t contend.
• Pompo the Cinephile — Again, straight anime. Until they go for something like this, I can’t delude myself into thinking they might.
• Spirit Untamed — Straight to VOD, virtually unknown, 49% on Rotten Tomatoes. Hard to make any kind of a case for this even as a long shot.
• Wish Dragon — Lower grade animation, no visibility, no pedigree. These never make it. Sure, 65% on Rotten Tomatoes, but without a single precursor it’s hard to take seriously.

Doubtful:

• Back to the Outback — 88% on Rotten Tomatoes is really the only thing keeping me from tossing it out immediately. Otherwise, I doubt anyone’s heard of this and without any precursors to speak of, it’s hard to think this has any kind of a shot whatsoever.
• Bob Spit: We Do Not Like People — The animation and narrative look off-the-wall in the best possible way and I’m sure, based on trailer I saw, people will compare it to Charlie Kaufman. Which makes me want to see it. Unfortunately it doesn’t do much for its chances to be nominated, especially with no precursor support.
• The Boss Baby: Family Business — The first one was a surprise inclusion and was the only post-2004 film with a sub-60% Rotten Tomatoes score (53%) to get nominated. This has an even lower score (46%) and doesn’t have the precursor support the first one had. I say let it beat you. This would be a major, major surprise if it got on.
• Cryptozoo — It looks great, but it’s weird and esoteric and very independent. Historically that isn’t their cup of tea. 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, but no precursors to speak of. Hard to make a case for it.
• Paw Patrol: The Movie — The 79% on Rotten Tomatoes is what put it here. Otherwise, I’d tell you this had less than zero shot. But also, no precursors, so don’t bother.
• Poupelle of Chimney Town — Okay, so this is probably part of those five animes I talked about that have no chance. But I looked at the visuals and thought, “…Maybe?” I mean, sure, give it two seconds of thought and I’ll go, “Never gonna happen” But the two seconds was enough for me to put it here instead of in the lower tier. I still say it doesn’t happen.
• Sing 2 — Illumination has only been nominated once, for Despicable Me 2 back in 2013. The first Sing wasn’t nominated, so I don’t know why they’d bother with this one. 70% on Rotten Tomatoes is stretching the bounds of what they’d go for. Leave it and let it beat you.
• The Spine of Night — It’s hard fantasy and very much an ‘adult’ animated film, in the vein of a Heavy Metal. They haven’t really faced many of these in the history of the category, so this could be a bit of a litmus test for them. Though I guess that’s only if I believe enough people will have even seen this to consider it. The lack of precursors on top of the subject matter tells me everything I need to know (76% though, so it’s not a ‘definitely not’).

Possible:

• Belle — Currently at 95% and it’s from the director of Mirai, so on that alone you have to respect it. Narratively this feels way too anime for them, even though it looks stunning. It did well at the Annie Awards (5 nominations), but that’s the only precursor support it’s gonna get. I’m gonna go with my gut and say that narratively this isn’t for them and it won’t get enough voters to make the final five even though I do think support for it will be out there. Again, if Your Name missed out, why would I assume this would make it on?
• My Sunny Maad — Narratively this isn’t usually what they go for (and I know this sounds shitty, but we already have Flee this year and it’s tough enough to get one of these types of movies on, let alone two), but with a Globe nomination (something, but not everything) it’s hard to dismiss it entirely. Though no Annie nominations, which is telling. This feels like the Globes trying to be less racist more than anything and I don’t see how it truly contends.
• Ron’s Gone Wrong — I don’t buy it as a nominee. Otherwise I’d have put it in the top tier. 80% on Rotten Tomatoes tells me it could happen, but the lack of precursors and no real word of mouth for it tells me it’s probably best to just let it beat me. Though, in a year as weak as this, it is possible.
• The Summit of the Gods — Gorgeously animated and could easily sneak on the way something like I Lost My Body snuck on. Or even Klaus. Though this sort of exists narratively between those two. Still, with currently 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (though not enough reviews for me to think enough people will ever see this), you gotta respect it. Without a BAFTA shortlist though… chances feel real slim.

Most likely:

• Encanto — Disney. Disney and Pixar play by different rules than the rest of this category. With them, the only thing ever keeping them out is themselves. Voters rarely like to double up. This year, Disney’s got two films and Pixar has one. So the conversation about that is going to have to happen, but not now. For now we always assume every Disney/Pixar movie is likely to make it.
• Flee — It has a shot at being nominated across three separate categories. It’s shortlisted in International Feature and Documentary Feature. 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and a very highly-respected film. Easily a top contender for a spot.
• Luca — As I said, always assume Disney/Pixar is a likely nominee and then figure it out later.
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines — Lord and Miller-produced, 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, and probably the consensus mainstream American animated movie to not come from Disney or Pixar this year. Precursors galore already. Hard to leave this off your top tier (or guess list, probably).
• Raya and the Last Dragon — Again, always assume Disney gets on. Will they go for all three? Hard to say. It’s easier now more than ever for them to get three on, but whether or not they will is a discussion for a later date. For now you’d be a fool to automatically assume any one of the three isn’t a top tier contender.
• Vivo — It’s colorful, it’s Sony, it’s got 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Lin-Manuel did the music. People will know about it. Do I believe it will be nominated? Probably not. But you gotta respect it. What do I say every year in this category? There’s always like 8-9 top tier contenders and really only like 7 that legitimately can happen. This is one of those extra two. You wouldn’t be surprised, but it’s not something that immediately jumps at you as a ‘gonna happen’. Respect it for now.

So where does that leave us? 10 movies as actual contenders (being generous). Here’s how I’d rank them based on what I know currently:

10. Ron’s Gone Wrong
9. Belle
8. My Sunny Maad
7. The Summit of the Gods
6. Vivo
5. Flee
4. The Mitchells vs. the Machines
3. Raya and the Last Dragon
2. Encanto
1. Luca

At this point, it really feels like Disney’s gonna get 2, if not 3, films on, and Mitchells vs. the Machines and Flee are gonna be the final two. And then Vivo and maybe Summit of the Gods or My Sunny Maad are there in case they leave one of the Disney/Pixar films off (though it’s hard to think either will). For now, we wait on BAFTA, and unless they do something crazy, I’m thinking those top five are your final category:

Encanto

Flee

Luca

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Raya and the Last Dragon

Alternate: Vivo

Dark Horse: My Sunny Maad

Surprise: Belle, The Summit of the Gods, Ron’s Gone Wrong

Shocker: The Spine of Night, Sing 2, The Boss Baby: Family Business

Don’t Guess: Anything else (or anything below the surprise tier, probably)

I almost don’t see how you can guess anything other than these five. Unless you’re dead certain which Disney film is gonna get off and are sure which is the film that’ll get on instead, you might as well just guess the five and take your one wrong if it happens. Historically, it’s been pretty easy to guess this category. Whenever you’re wrong, you always know where it’s most likely to be and it was just a matter of whether or not it was gonna happen.

Also, nothing ever gets on the final category without some precursor support. Not anymore. The last time it happened was 2015, before they changed the voting process for this category. Also, since they expanded this category to a set 5 nominees in 2011, only those two shocker 2011 films got nominated with no precursors and fewer than 3 Annie Award nominations. So everything up through 2015 got 3 or more Annie nominations and/or a major precursor. And you know what the list of films this year with either a precursor or 3+ Annie nominations? Encanto, Flee, Luca, Raya, Mitchells, My Sunny Maad, Vivo, Belle. Remember how I said this category could always be boiled down to 8 movies?

– – – – –

Guess we’ll get into Animated Short next. Keep the animation theme going.

Best Animated Short

Affairs of the Art
Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman’s Apprentice
Bad Seeds
Bestia
Boxballet
Flowing Home
Mum Is Pouring Rain
The Musician
Namoo
Only a Child
Robin Robin
Souvenir Souvenir
Step into the River
Us Again
The Windshield Wiper

There were 84 eligible shorts this year, of which I was only able to find about 30. I’m gonna watch the rest of the ones I found by the time I have to put out my Nominations Ballot, since while I theoretically could only ‘nominate’ from this list of 15, I can at least shout out some of the other ones I managed to see and like along the way.

My personal rankings:

1. Namoo
2. Bestia
3. The Windshield Wiper
4. Mum Is Pouring Rain
5. Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman’s Apprentice
6. Bad Seeds
7. Boxballet
8. The Musician
9. Flowing Home
10. Us Again
11. Step into the River
12. Souvenir Souvenir
13. Only a Child
14. Robin Robin
15. Affairs of the Art

The two heavy hitters here are Us Again and Robin Robin. One’s Disney and one’s Aardman. You almost have to guess them both by default. Aardman especially. Disney… you can make a case against them, since normally it’s Pixar getting nominated here. Disney had a run this past decade with Paperman, Get a Horse and Feast, but Inner Workings got left off and they haven’t made any shorts since. Plus Us Again is a very slight movie (despite being visually very nice to look at). So I’m actually leaning toward probably leaving it off (even though it’s a stupid thing to do, since when it does get nominated it’ll be the biggest ‘of course’ in the world). I’m also not the biggest fan of Robin Robin, but I feel like with Aardman’s general track record, you almost have to guess it (even though I do think there’s a reasonable chance that gets left off too).

Next, to me, the purest bits of animation left are Namoo and Bestia. Namoo is by Erick Oh, who did Opera last year (which was brilliant). I see no reason why this wouldn’t be considered a favorite to be nominated. And Bestia… while it is a more serious film, it’s hard to argue with the animation quality. And for a branch that’s all about artistry, this feels like something that would greatly appeal to them and is something where I can’t in good conscience not guess it. Because to me, not nominating it goes against what the very essence of this category is about.

Bad Seeds is also something where — I can’t tell. It’s very much one of those cutesy, clever little shorts, which you see one of every year or two. Very simple, very fun. However, looking at what actually has been nominated the past handful of years, I’m now realizing that stuff like this only gets shortlisted and not nominated. So perhaps this might not be the best call and might be something I should let beat me. But I will say, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if I saw this get nominated. It fits the category.

There are two films that deal with personal stories: The Musician and Flowing Home. Both gorgeously animated, both very emotional. Hard to know whether or not they’ll go for them. Honestly, I feel like both fit what I’d normally see nominated. But there are only so many spots. So stuff will get squeezed in the end.

Mum Is Pouring Rain I thought was very well-made and had a nice bit of emotion at the end, but I’m not sure the whole thing ties together as well as they’d like, plus it’s a bit long for them. They don’t usually go for stuff that hits the 30-minute mark, unless it’s one of those British storybook kinda shorts.

The Shaman’s Apprentice just feels like the kind of short that would be nominated that most years that I’d have left off my list. And I feel like I’m just gonna keep this as part of my guesses all the way through (only for them to leave it off, naturally) knowing how likely it probably is to get on. It is also really well made though. So it would be a nice inclusion.

Boxballet and Souvenir Souvenir — both are not the type of animation I normally see them vote for. Souvenir Souvenir especially would be a very bold choice for them. Boxballet at least has the romance angle going for it, plus it seems to be the story of the filmmaker’s parents or someone like that. It doesn’t feel like an automatic choice, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see it. Souvenir Souvenir… I just don’t see it happening and until they go there, I’m not sure I can guess it.

Step into the River looks nice, but it feels like the kind of short that’s easy to leave off. I’m not sure I see it getting the votes to hit the final five. Oh, and Only a Child. Another one. It feels more like a Super Bowl ad than a short. The message is great and the animation is terrific. They animate a child’s speech to the UN about climate change (the kicker being that it was almost 30 years ago and feels like it could have been given yesterday). It’s short, only about three minutes, and looks great. But unless they’re voting for the message, I can’t imagine this gets on.

What’s left? Oh, Affairs of the Art. This one’s tough. The director was nominated 25 years ago and has made a series of shorts about this same character. The animation is stunning, and if I’m being honest, probably is the kind of thing that would get on and leave me going, “I thought they could have picked something better.” But, there’s almost always one of those every year, so who’s to say it isn’t this? I can’t tell if this is there because they respect the filmmaker or because they legitimately like it enough to vote for it. I feel like I’m gonna be comfortable enough to let it beat me, but I don’t know yet. This is all preliminary anyway.

Here’s what I’m looking at so far for what makes the most sense to me:

Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman’s Apprentice

Bestia

Namoo

Robin Robin

The Windshield Wiper

Alternate: Us Again

Dark Horse: Bad Seeds

Surprise: The Musician, Affairs of the Art

Shocker: Flowing Home, Mum Is Pouring Rain, Boxballet

Don’t Guess: Only a Child, Souvenir Souvenir, Step into the River

Keep in mind, almost nothing is a shocker here. Though I would be pretty surprised if any of the three in the ‘don’t guess’ section get on. Honestly, I can go ten deep with what I’d feel legitimately could make this category. What’s more — the most interesting version of a final category here — doesn’t include either Disney or Aardman. And I kinda hope that happens. As much as it would be insane to guess that.

– – – – –

Now we’ll move into the documentaries. I don’t remember the exact number, but there are usually like 120-150 documentaries eligible each year, which they boil down to a list of 15. I usually only glance at the full eligibles list before shortlist time just to see if anything there piques my interest that I don’t already know about, but this year was not that kinda year. So really all I did was see what was shortlisted, see what I recognized and then went, “So I guess they weren’t into these other ones I saw.”

Best Documentary Feature

Ascension
Attica
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry
Faya Dayi
The First Wave
Flee
In the Same Breath
Julia
President
Procession
The Rescue
Simple as Water
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
The Velvet Underground
Writing with Fire

The Val Kilmer doc wasn’t shortlisted, which wasn’t wholly surprising to me, but I thought maybe out of respect for him it might get votes. Also, no Sparks Brothers, which does surprise me a little. I thought for sure they’d shortlist it and I’d get to be certain they’d never nominate it. Guess I only get to be right on that second part. Sucks for Edgar Wright. The Billie Eilish inclusion surprises me a little. But they’re probably about to give her an Oscar for Song this year, so I guess it makes sense, but it’s not like the documentary was anything different from all those other music docs they’ve put out over the years. The Velvet Underground one is also slightly curious to me, but I can rationalize that by saying it’s because they love Todd Haynes.

Of course the big thing we’re watching for here is for them to inevitably leave off Summer of Soul the way they leave off the consensus best documentary nearly every year. Though this year will make that doubly interesting because doing so will also include charges of racism. Good luck, assholes.

I’ve managed to see 12/15 here. The three I still need to see are Julia, President and Writing with Fire. Again, any leads, send ’em my way.

My Personal Rankings:

1. Summer of Soul
2. Ascension
3. The Rescue
4. The Velvet Underground
5. Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry
6. Attica
7. Faya Dayi
8. The First Wave
9. Flee
10. In the Same Breath
11. Simple as Water
12. Procession

So, to start, you don’t wanna not guess Flee or Summer of Soul. Just let them leave them off. Honestly I’m probably gonna have to guess Flee in three separate categories because I’m not sure which one it’s most likely to get left off in. I figure it’s gotta be either here or International Feature, but how can you know for sure? Probably have to just take the L. But yeah, those basically have to be on. And The Rescue almost definitely has to be on as well. It’s lauded, it’s really well made, and it’s by the team that made Free Solo. So that’s three.

I truly cannot imagine Velvet Underground or the Billie Eilish doc getting nominated and am just gonna let both beat me. Also, the Julia Child doc… seems random, seems really unlike them, so I’ll also just let it beat me. Those are the three I feel most confident about not being nominated (which amounts to jack shit, but you gotta make these choices somewhere).

Attica — solid doc about the riot… not sure why they care. They rarely go for docs about past events unless they’re about a very particular theme they’re into. It’s not like they can tie it into systemic racism and police brutality. This one’s more, “The prison conditions were shit here, and this is what happened.” It’s very contained to the event and doesn’t really expand broader, which makes me leery that they’re gonna go for it. Unlike, for example, Simple as Water. Which is about the refugee crisis, told through the lens of a couple of families looking for asylum. Nice issue. Not sure the doc is all there, so I’m not certain they’ll go for it, but at least the issue is there enough for me to make sense of them choosing it.

Now we have to deal with COVID. There are two major COVID docs here. One is In the Same Breath, which deals specifically with China and how its government covered up the severity of the virus and turned it into propaganda for the Communist government. So two issues in one. Makes sense as something they might go for… but is it something they’ll really take? A lot of these people are looking to get funding from China and it’s not really the kind of hot button issue people are jumping all over. Feels unlikely to me, personally. The other COVID doc is The First Wave, which is directed by the guy who did Cartel Land. So very much in contention on that alone. For me… it’s an on-the-ground doc with no narration and just showing you the events as they unfold. Personally I liked this doc better when it was called 76 Days and came out last year, but that’s just me. The question you’re gonna have to ask yourself is… after two-plus years of a global pandemic, do people really want to vote for a doc about the awful shit happening? Feels like kind of a bummer to me. Maybe the filmmaker is enough to overcome that. I think I’m gonna bank on people just not wanting to deal with it yet. Because it’s not like it’s dealing with a major investigative issue. It’s just watching doctors and nurses combat horrible shit during the initial stages of the pandemic. They got this shit on the news. Why would they want to vote for it here?

Procession is an interesting doc, since it’s basically The Act of Killing meets Spotlight. Glib, but not wrong. It’s several people who were molested by priests who, as a form of therapy, make a film about their experiences, turning their trauma into fiction as a way to get payback. And while I love the idea of this and I hope it absolutely worked (and am always okay with any film that talks about all the awful shit the church has done and still does without almost any repercussions)… the doc itself feels cinematic in a bad way and feels overproduced (and yes, I know some of that is the point). I don’t know. Maybe voters will feel differently, but I’m not sure this is something they’re gonna nominate. Maybe I’m cynical, but aside from the personal aspect, this just felt like a bad American adaptation of what The Act of Killing did.

Faya Dayi… it’s the most artistic doc on this list. This is one of those docs where I feel like your reaction is either gonna be, “They’ll never nominate this,” or “They are absolutely gonna nominate this.” I was immediately in the second camp. I thought it was great filmmaking, even though I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of the doc actually is. I… I don’t know. I could just as easily see this getting on as I could it being left off. I think it’s one where, if it makes the final list, cool, and if not, okay then we’ll see what happens.

Ascension is a doc that I loved, but I’m not sure if it’s something they’re gonna go for. There’s no narration or overt narrative (a style I’ve really started to gravitate toward the past few years), and is just scenes of Chinese workers in various factories making loads of goods that will be shipped all over the world. And through that, you get a beautiful slice of life that really says a lot without ever saying any of it out loud. It’s one of the most lauded docs of the year and I think this is just one where, for my own sake, I’m gonna guess it all the way through and hope it gets on.

Last are the two I have not seen: Writing with Fire and President. And maybe it’s the lack of seeing them, but part of me feels like both have a great shot to get on. For some reason, President just felt like the one that was gonna make it. Every year there’s one I don’t see where I’m like, “I don’t know.” And then it gets on. That felt like the one for me. Plus it’s about a young political idealist taking on a corrupt party in power… I mean, they love that kind of shit. The parallels. I could easily see this getting nominated. And Writing with Fire… it’s about female journalists breaking traditions in India and running a newspaper in a field (and country) predominantly run by men. I mean, clearly. If that were a doc short, it would have already won that category. But, having not seen either, I’m forced to go in blind.

Ascension

Flee

The Rescue

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Writing with Fire

Alternate: Faya Dayi

Dark Horse: President

Surprise: The First Wave, Simple as Water

Shocker: Attica, In the Same Breath, Procession

Don’t Guess: Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, Julia, The Velvet Underground

I don’t know why, but I feel really confident about those top seven this year. This category is one where I routinely get a 2/5 and some shit that I never figured on gets nominated. But this year I feel really confident about where we’re at. I think I might swap Ascension or Writing with Fire for either of the two main alternates, but I do feel confident that that’s really the only amount of concern I’m gonna have about this one. I feel like I’ve got it down (which is just begging for a complete disaster, I know).

– – – – –

Now Documentary Short, which is historically not the hardest thing to guess nominations for, but also not entirely easy. Because they have a type and you know what they normally vote for. So as long as you stick to that, you’re usually okay. It’s been tougher in recent years because places like Netflix have loads of money to dump into promoting things and that could lean people toward them, plus the shortlist is now 15 and not 10, which is obviously a bit harder to guess. But it has always been a crap shoot, so it’s really no different from any other year in the end.

Best Documentary Short

Águilas
Audible
A Broken House
Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis
Coded: The Hidden Love of J. C. Leyendecker
Day of Rage
The Facility
Lead Me Home
Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day
The Queen of Basketball
Sophie & the Baron
Takeover
Terror Contagion
Three Songs for Benazir
When We Were Bullies

My personal rankings:

1. Takeover
2. The Facility
3. Day of Rage
4. Terror Contagion
5. Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day
6. A Broken House
7. Coded: The Hidden Love of J. C. Leyendecker
8. Lead Me Home
9. Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis
10. The Queen of Basketball
11. Aguilas
12. Three Songs for Benazir
13. Audible
14. Sophie and the Baron
15. When We Were Bullies

We’ve got four docs from Netflix (Audible, Camp Confidential, Lead Me Home, Three Songs for Benazir), three from the New York Times (Day of Rage, Queen of Basketball, Takeover), two from the New Yorker (Aguilas, Broken House), two from MTV (Coded, Lynching Postcards), one from Field of Vision (The Facility) and one from Disney (Sophie and the Baron). Oh, and one of the two other docs was made by the director of CitizenFour. So yeah, there’s pedigree all around. Not sure how any of that affects voting (clearly Netflix and Disney can dump money into campaigns and get votes from people who may not have even watched other shorts), but it is something you have to consider. I’m gonna focus on the issues, since that does seem to be what drives this category.

The first one we need to deal with is Disney — because Disney being what it is, the cynical position is that it’s gonna get the doc on regardless of its subject matter or quality. And that’s something I’ve mentioned or straight up said a couple of times in recent years. There was one last year where I said, “I’m not sure it fits, but look who produced it. It’s probably gonna get on.” And it did. This is that doc this year. The story — it’s about a millennial painter who blind contours (paints without looking at the canvas) and befriends a Rolling Stone photographer who’s taken some of the most famous images in rock history and turns some of his photos into her art. It feels super manufactured and I’m not really sure what the point of it all is, but because it’s Disney, I assume it has a more than reasonable shot to get nominated just because they have the money to promote it and people who vote in categories like this generally don’t care and are willing to give votes to their friends or easily because they don’t really watch most stuff. So, if you’re being truly cynical, you’d just guess this and assume they’re gonna go there. Me, I think I’m taking the opposite track — let them nominate it. I refuse to guess it. It doesn’t fit and it’s barely a documentary, even if it has triple the budget almost every other doc in this category has. There’s a lot to be cynical about this year, but it can’t all be proven true, can it?

Next, Audible. It’s a sports doc about a deaf football team. On the surface you’d think, “Oh, they love that shit.” BUT… there have been a few docs like this in recent years (the Rubiks Cube solvers and the high school wrestler without legs) that just don’t make it. When you look at the past five years of this category, there’s no doc like that that’s gotten nominated. So to me, don’t guess it and just let them do it. Because at this point, it does generally feel like they nominate the issues more than the entertainment quality of the docs.

When We Were Bullies left a majorly bad taste in my mouth, as it felt more like the bullies finding a way to feel better about their actions rather than actually truly apologize (it literally ends with the guy saying ‘I didn’t bother to seek out the kid we bullied, I just wrote an imaginary letter instead that I’m gonna read’, and then goes through this whole “I lost my brother when I was 4, so I understand how you must feel” thing and even says “I feel like, in us reliving this for the film, we were bullying you all over again” before saying he was sorry), and I can’t imagine enough voters are gonna take the complete wrong interpretation of this and vote for it. I can’t bring myself to think this will be nominated. I know guessing this stuff is about being objective, but in a category like this, you never truly know, and now that it’s 15 instead of 10 on the shortlist, you have to make your stands somewhere. I just can’t see this happening.

Past those three, I feel like it’s all fair game. Anything else gets nominated and it would fit what they usually go for and it’s just a matter of what they were feeling most this year.

Three Songs for Benazir is Netflix and on the surface I do like the idea — it’s a simple love story set in Afghanistan and the idea was to show something set there that isn’t war and awful stuff. Only about halfway through they jump cut to four years later and it’s all just kinda depressing. Hollywood likes a doc they can envision as a movie, but all the cute love stuff… they go away from it and make you realize, “Oh right… Afghanistan… awful shit.” So I’m leery about it being a slam dunk. It feels like something that can easily make it on (plus Netflix is probably gonna get something on, with four horses in the race), so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it, but it’s gonna come down to what voters (if they actually watch stuff and aren’t being swayed by publicists) are moved by. This one — I can’t tell. My gut says ‘possible but probably not’, but who knows.

Terror Contagion — it’s by the director of CitizenFour, so you have to respect it on that alone. And the subject matter is very much what they like: surveillance on journalists and activists that directly leads to attacks and/or assassinations. It fits completely. HOWEVER… the software was created by an Israeli cyberweapons manufacture, and from what I know about Hollywood… they love them some Israel. And I have a hard time thinking they’re gonna vote this on. I’d love them to, because I think it’s one of the best of the category, but I don’t know. I think I’m gonna leave this one off and see what they do. But based on what I know about Hollywood and the majority voters of this Academy… I don’t see it happening. And maybe they’ll overlook the Israel part and focus on the fact that this software is clearly being advertised for the increasingly-fascist police forces in America, which is something we should be talking about. But I don’t trust them to do that.

Aguilas — the subject matter works… people who search the border for people who went missing during border crossings. But I’m not sure it’s all there. It could easily happen, but it feels slight compared to some of the other choices they could be voting for.

Takeover I loved, and I love how it uses an event that most people don’t remember or even know about and uses it to make comparisons to issues still going on today. But I don’t trust them to vote for it. Every year there’s a doc like this that feels like a slam dunk for them that gets left off. Plus, the logline and title don’t really clue you in to what the issue is really about. It just looks like them talking about an event from 50 years ago. And I worry that’s what will keep it from getting those extra few votes it’ll need to get nominated. So I’m leaning toward not guessing it just to not be disappointed when they leave it off.

Day of Rage is the biggest lightning rod in the category. It’s about the January 6th Capitol insurrection and uses all the myriad of footage that exists to break down all the things that happened during that day and give you a clear timeline of what transpired and when. On subject matter alone, it fits. It’s also a very well-made doc. However… we all lived through this and saw it happen in real time. We’ve been inundated with stuff like this for the past four years (and it was only heightened in the past two). It’s like the pandemic… do people really wanna deal with this again? They deal with it every day, do they want it here too? I feel like they might just wanna move on from it, as important as it is to talk about how awful all of these people are and how awful it was that certain people helped make it happen and then tried to cover it up. I’m 50/50 on them nominating this and right now I’m leaning toward no just because of a residual PTSD from having lived through all of it so recently. But obviously it makes more sense than almost anything as a nominee.

Camp Confidential I think can probably get nominated on its title alone. Even if people don’t watch it or fully know what it’s about, the title tells you all you need to know. The doc itself — German scientists were held in a POW camp (but POW in the sense that it was like Goodfellas prison) after the war to try to convince them to help the US with weapons and the space race rather than help the Soviet Union. I kinda wish there was more, but I could also absolutely see them nominating it. It’s one of those things where you never really know until they do it. But it’s absolutely something I can see making it.

A Broken House is something that I probably should guess. It’s got shades of what they love — overcoming circumstances to create art. And it’s got the Syrian Civil War as a backdrop. Basically, dude’s an architect and creates models. But he can’t go home, and he misses it. So he, to humanize the plight of the people stuck in the middle of all of this war, creates these models of Damascus using broken pieces of materials he sources and makes these lifelike models of all the broken buildings and rubble from all the destruction. Based on how they normally vote, I can’t imagine not having this in your top six, if not top five, for a nomination.

Coded I think gets on not only for its title but also because it’s about an artist who was kinda known but maybe not fully appreciated during his time. And Hollywood loves feeling like they ‘discovered’ someone or ‘brought them back’. Remember the Vivian Maier doc? Sugar Man? This is right up their alley and it’s got the LBGTQIA+ angle as well, as he overcame the general intolerance toward gay people during his time to create art that contained hidden messages targeted at the gay community. I’d be surprised if they didn’t nominate this.

The Facility is Field of Vision, who are incredible and have gotten at least one nominee on the past few years (they had Do Not Split last year and In the Absence two years ago). Their docs are always so well-put-together and engrossing even if you’re not sure you’re into what they’re about going in. This is about detainees in an ICE facility at the top of the pandemic who are being held in awful living conditions and are basically ignored the way actual incarcerated people are. And we see them through video calls talking about what their living conditions are like as they try to fight for better conditions and for their freedom as ICE punishes them for speaking out and tries to cover it up. It’s everything they want to see in this category and it’s truly one of the best, if not the best, documentaries on this shortlist. It’ll honestly be a travesty if this isn’t nominated.

Lead Me Home is a tough one for me. It’s Netflix, and Netflix as gotten at least one doc on the final list for the past five years. And while I’ll probably move over to Camp Confidential in the end, I currently don’t think Audible or Three Songs for Benazir won’t be nominated and I had to pick one. You have to have at least one Netflix doc on your list, it’s just a matter of picking which one you think is most likely. This one, though… I don’t know how they’re gonna respond to it. Clearly the homelessness epidemic is a huge and very current issue (especially in LA, where a lot of these voters live), but I don’t know how they view it. They could very easily be in the group that thinks it’s an eyesore and a problem and not the byproduct of a broken system that needs to be changed. So while I do have it in my guesses now, I don’t know if it’s gonna stay there. We’ll see. But it fits.

Lynching Postcards I think gets in on title alone. I think that’s self-explanatory. And Queen of Basketball is the most known entity on this entire list and I think that gets it on alone. It hit the mainstream, its subject just died… I think you have to guess it until they leave it off.

Coded: The Hidden Love of J. C. Leyendecker

The Facility

Lead Me Home

Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day

The Queen of Basketball

Alternate: A Broken House

Dark Horse: Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis

Surprise: Day of Rage, Takeover

Shocker: Aguilas, Sophie & the Baron, Three Songs for Benazir

Don’t Guess: Audible, Terror Contagion, When We Were Bullies

This is one of the only categories I’ll need to put serious thought into when guessing, so this is all preliminary. It’s the category with the biggest balance of, “You gotta put more thought into it but you can only put so much because it’s impossible to truly know without any guidance.” So I’ll wait until the last minute, spend a bunch of time thinking about it and then use my lack of time to say, “Okay, I’m fine with this,” and then pick something and hope for the best. It’s really all you can do in a category like this.

– – – – –

Live Action Short. The biggest crap shoot of them all. It’s pure guesswork every year.

Best Live Action Short

Ala Kachuu – Take and Run
Censor of Dreams
The Criminals
Distances
The Dress
Frimas
Les Grandes Claques
The Long Goodbye
On My Mind
Please Hold
Stenofonen
Tala’vision
Under the Heavens
When the Sun Sets
You’re Dead Helen

I’ve seen 13/15 here. All except Distances and On My Mind.

My personal rankings:

1. Please Hold
2. You’re Dead, Helen
3. Frimas
4. Tala-vision
5. Ala Kachuu (Take and Run)
6. The Criminals
7. Censor of Dreams
8. Les Grandes Claques
9. The Dress
10. Under the Heavens
11. When the Sun Sets
12. Stenofonen
13. The Long Goodbye

My immediate takeaway from all of these is how goddamn depressing they all are. There’s not one uplifting one in the bunch. There’s a fun one, but by and large everything on here is such a downer. I don’t know if that’s just what they had to choose from this year or a reflection of how they were feeling due to the state of the world. But man, it’s bleak.

I guess we’ll run down them in alphabetical order…

Ala Kachuu is about a Kyrgyz woman from a small village who dreams of going to university rather than getting married (as is expected of her). She wants to take an entrance exam that might earn her a scholarship, but her parents don’t want her to go (as another girl from her village did this and is thought of as a harlot and her mother has been shunned ever since). She runs away to take the test, goes into the city and stays with the other girl from the village as she awaits the results. Meanwhile she gets a job and starts to fashion a life for herself. And then one day some guys come into the shop where she works, asking where the other girl who works there is. She lies (since they seem super shady) and says she’ll be away for a few days. Then, later, when she leaves, the guys kidnap her, take her to a rural village with the intent of marrying her to one of them. She’s kidnapped into marriage. And the rest of the short is her there, trying to escape (though also kinda not… it’s weird and I’m assuming it’s a cultural thing), until eventually she does with the help of the elder granny of the village. It’s a really solid short (even if it infuriated me. I kept going, “They’re not gonna kill you. Punch them. POISON them. Just fucking leave!”) and well-made with a great lead performance. I can easily see this being nominated and I suspect most people will think this is something likely to get on.

Censor of Dreams fits the mold of the ‘high concept’ contender. The premise is that a guy works in a Michel Gondry-esque reality where every night, when a woman goes to sleep, his task is taking all of the bad thoughts and dreams she has and making them less bad. So we see a pool come through (something she associates with a bad memory) and he and his colleague have to sort through all the previous times this has happened (and what good things happened to her that day) and figure out what they can change it into. And the whole thing is like a movie. They make a choice and then set designers and wardrobe come in and quickly try to alter it until the timer runs out and the dream goes ‘live’. People who make movies will appreciate that aspect of it. And then, by the end, when the guy gets fed up about how every day she’s running from the same bad dream, he goes ‘upstairs’ to confront her about it, and basically we find out that her son drowned during a birthday party and she’s been avoiding facing that reality. I think that part of the short (the last five minutes) go a bit too abstract and don’t fully wrap the short up in a meaningful way, but the first half is really clever and the kind of thing I can see them wanting to turn into a feature (possibly). It feels like something that would get on, even though part of me thinks it might be left off.

The Criminals is a short about two Turkish college students who want to rent a hotel so they can have sex. Of course, it being Turkey, they’re super strict about that sort of thing. They require marriage licenses and the whole deal if they want to be in the same room. So they go to a place and get separate rooms with the intention of him sneaking into her room to do the deed later on. And so they do, and just as they’re about to have sex, the phone rings and security shows up at the door. And then the rest of the short is a tense encounter between them and a threatening (and seemingly perverted) security guard and the manager who threaten to arrest them until another couple show up (which allows them to demand their IDs back so they can escape). And then there’s the punchline of the manager telling the other couple that they were trying to have sex and the other couple going, “Actually we’re not gonna stay here” because clearly they were gonna do the same thing. It’s solid. I can easily see this getting on as much as I can it being left off. There’s 15 to choose from here, so stuff is gonna be left off. It’s gonna come down to what you think the most likely five are. This could easily be in that final five.

Distances is one of the two I haven’t been able to see, but from the look of it, it seems solid. It’s about a mentally ill man who enters a subway car and all of a sudden everyone (insert title here) themselves from him. I don’t know where it goes, so I can’t really say whether or not I think it’ll be nominated. If it has something to say, then maybe. Or maybe the concept is making me think too much of its chances. A lot of voters are New York-based, so many of them have encountered this exact same scenario. So depending on what the film does with it, that might determine how likely they are to vote for it.

The Dress is a nice little short that could also go both ways. It’s about a Polish dwarf who works as a cleaner in a dead end motel off the highway where pretty much only truckers stop. She lives in a guest room and her existence is basically working and then going to a local bar and playing slot machines alone. Then one day a trucker comes and talks to her and asks her out on a date the next time he drives through. And suddenly life seems a little brighter for her. She wants to get a dress so she can look nice for her date. Of course (since it’s a short, and you kinda know where it’s gonna go), she goes out with the trucker, has sex with him and then immediately you realize he only did it just to have sex with a dwarf to see what it was like and he doesn’t really care about her whatsoever. But it’s still a well-made short. You really feel for the main character as she confronts her existence, desperately wishing she were ‘normal’, and as she feels ‘things might finally be different for once’. This could so easily make it on but also so easily not. I can’t really tell. It’s 15 instead of 10, so I can probably go about 12 deep on what could make it. 50/50.

Frimas is from the director of Marguerite, which was nominated a few years ago in the category. I can’t tell if this is here because of respect for her or because they legitimately like it. It’s set in a country (left vague, as is the time period during which it’s set. There are different languages spoken casually and it has a near-future kinda vibe to it) where abortion is illegal. So we follow a woman who has back-channeled a way to get one, which involves her being picked up by a semi-truck hauling meat and taken to the back where she’ll be given her abortion during a stretch of road where it’s safe to do it. So you watch her go in the back of this meat truck and go up on a table to get this procedure that should not be this harrowing to have to get. And you find out she lied to the doctor because she’s way further along than they’d have allowed, which causes complications that almost end up killing her (and getting them thrown in prison), and then the police stop the truck and search it, which adds an element of danger to it. It’s really well-paced. And then it ends with her being sent home with a bag containing the fetus that she’s then meant to drop in the toilet so she can pretend she had a miscarriage and having to mentally prepare herself (after everything she’s been through) to go through this and lie and essentially break her husband’s heart. It’s pretty powerful. I loved it as a short and I think the message is important and I hope it gets nominated. I don’t know if they will though. This feels kind of in the vein of things that are always on the shortlist, so I don’t know if this in particular will strike a chord with them or not. But all I can say is, I hope this gets nominated.

Les Grandes Claques is a short I thought was (for a change) gonna be uplifting, but nope. It’s set on Christmas Eve, when a guy shows up at his ex-mother-in-law’s house to pick up his children. So he’s gotta deal with the awkwardness of seeing the family he’s no longer a part of while also seeing one of his kids start screaming because he doesn’t wanna leave. And you’re sitting there during this absolutely terrible moment for this guy (his younger kid says it’s boring at his house, his wife is basically forcing this kid to get dressed and leave anyway as he screams, the rest of the family has awkward conversation with him and makes him play piano for them, even his older kid doesn’t really wanna go, and he’s forced to stand there and think about how sad his life is right now, after what was probably a two hour there and is about to be one back home, alone, to spend Christmas alone), until finally he bails out the bathroom window to just get out of there. And then finally his daughter comes outside as an act of kindness and says she changed her mind and wants to come. And then the car won’t start and the rest of the family has to push them out. There’s not really a resolution here, even if it has that nice moment with the daughter. My gut tells me, with all the options there are here that this probably won’t make it, but I’ve seen stranger things than this make it on. So who the hell knows.

The Long Goodbye is a short from Riz Ahmed, and just based on that alone I assumed it was just gonna get nominated. Star power tends to work in this category unless it’s overqualified star power, like the Almodovar short with Tilda Swinton last year. There, I think they figured, “Okay, they’ll just vote for it because it’s him if we let it on” and Pixar’d it out. The other one last year, with Oscar Isaac… his presence wasn’t enough to make it win but was enough to get people to watch it. Point is, the cynical version says it’ll get nominated because Riz Ahmed is in it. But, having watched it… I mean, it’s balls to nominate this. It goes against what they go for entirely. The short is ten minutes long and is basically a day at Riz’s house. He and his relatives are all just hanging around like any normal family would. And on the TV you see them watching the news, where a fascist rally is happening (like so many news stories of the past few years). Then, eventually, the rally enters the neighborhood and the fascists break into the house and round everyone up. They start taking one of the kids away in a van and as Riz runs toward them to stop them, he’s shot. Then he sees the rest of his family get executed while the police stand there and do nothing (seemingly working with the fascists). And then, as he lays there dying, he then gets up and starts freestyling (kind of like the end of Blindspotting when he confronts the cop) into the camera about what it’s like being an immigrant. I appreciate the effort. It’s a bold short. It didn’t really do a whole lot for me personally, but I guess they could go for this. There’s enough there for me to think that maybe they could. Based on their usual voting patterns though I’d say absolutely not.

On My Mind is the other short I’ve not seen, so I can’t really say one way or another about its chances. But it seems to be about a guy who walks into a bar and pays $500 to sing karaoke. And seemingly someone else at the bar (or its owner) don’t want him to, and keep trying to stop him, even though he’s determined to sing this song. And based on the trailer, it seems like the song was something he sang for his wife, who either has died or is in the hospital dying, and this is his way of either honoring her or coping with her situation. It’s gonna come down to how well they nail the emotional angle of it. Everything here is so bleak that if this has that cutesy/uplifting feel, they might just go for it as refuge from everything else. But, as I said, I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know.

Please Hold is, to me, probably the best short in the category and is the one that should probably win. It’s in the vein of Two Distant Strangers last year, the high concept short that tackles a major social justice issue going on today. It takes place in the future and starts with a Latinx guy on his way to work when he suddenly receives an automated call that he’s about to be arrested. Which he thinks is a joke. And then a police drone shows up (there are no other humans who physically appear on camera in the short, which I assume is part because it was shot during the pandemic and part to increase his isolation) and makes him put his own handcuffs on and takes him down to the station. There he asks for a human, but is basically just processed and sent to a jail cell to await trial. He tries to make a call, which costs money, but is put on hold for so long that eventually his bank account is drained of all of its funds. The automated TV in the room (a real Idiocracy vibe, but if it actually happened and weren’t a comedy) explains that he is 89% likely to be found guilty and will probably be sentenced to 40-something years in prison (he’s never once told what he did or allowed to speak to someone who explains his situation to him). Or, he could plead guilty and accept a plea bargain for about 4 years (but still serve four years for something he knows he didn’t do and be known as a criminal the rest of his life). Meanwhile, an actual attorney costs $10,000 (which he can’t afford). So we see him, through a prison work program, start to learn how to sew and begin making little hats and designs and things (all for like, 20 cents a piece, because that’s what convicts actually get paid) in order to make enough money to call his parents and beg for the money. And eventually, just as he’s about to give up and plead guilty, his parents wire the money, so just when it asks him if he wants to plead guilty, he, seeing the bank transfer, shouts, “Yes! Yes!” Which is how you know it’s a good short. Because everyone watching immediately goes, “Oh fuck.” Because the TV is like talking to the automated customer service robots. You think it’s gonna register the plea as guilty. But then finally he gets the lawyer on the phone, and the lawyer, after only looking at a piece of paper, finally looks up sees him and goes, “Hold on,” and hangs up. And then before you know it, his cell opens and he gets released. And it’s never explained what he did or anything (the assumption is that it was a case of mistaken identity). And so as he leaves and gets all his stuff back, we find out that he’s been fired and evicted and now is basically reentering the world with the stamp of a convict on his back as well. It’s a really powerful short, and one that perfectly highlights how fucked up the criminal justice system is, especially when you’re not white. This, among all the shorts in all three shorts categories, if this isn’t nominated, it’ll be the biggest travesty of all.

Stenofonen is probably the one live action short I least related to or liked, so of course that means it’s the one that’ll for sure be nominated. It’s about a kid who plays violin and has a love of music but has a cold and domineering father who tells him he’s not good enough to play because he’ll only ever be average and will be an embarrassment if he plays in public. Meanwhile he’s about to go to camp and wants to play for the kids. But his father forbids him. So then, at camp, he’s bored and lonely and, while running away to the beach, he finds a bunch of rocks that, if he hits them, create musical notes. So he starts playing the rocks like a xylophone and ends up going on TV with his new ‘invention’ (which his father still disapproves of). And the whole short is framed around him as an older man (played by Jesper Christensen, who you’ll know as Mr. White from the Bond movies) coming to terms with his childhood and using the music to free himself of those memories. It’s… okay. Didn’t fully work for me. It had those ‘Shine’ vibes to it but never really went that hard on it. And there wasn’t that uplifting feeling at the end. I don’t know. It just didn’t do it for me. But it’s clearly a very personal story for the director and that might be enough to get it through to a nomination. They like those father/son stories and like people creating art through adversity. There is routinely at least one short per year that I dismiss entirely that they nominate. And I never know where it’s gonna come but I always know it’s gonna come. This might be that one.

Tala’vision, just at the outset, is something I’d have automatically told you to guess because it was gonna be nominated. The title is catchy (and trust me, that’s not nothing in these shorts categories), and it’s about a young girl in Syria who finds solace through watching soccer on TV, but then ISIS forces everyone to get rid of their TVs. So it’s about her finding a secret TV and hiding it so she can still watch. So, just on the surface, this is everything they like. However, unlike something like, say, The Present, from last year (which has that transcendental moment they love), this ends on the biggest fucking downer note of all. Because throughout the short her father keeps going off to work and is gone most of the time, so she’s left alone or in the company of her best friend’s father, who comes to cook for her during the day (her friend is in the hospital, presumably injured in some sort of attack or bombing). And then, at the end, the kid’s father comes in and says his son is dying and he needs money. He says that if her father refuses him, he’ll tell ISIS that he has a TV. The father refuses and sends him away. And then the girl tells the father about her hidden TV. At which point he rushes her outside to his car (which won’t start) and then tells her to ‘run like Messi’ (her favorite player), which she does. And so she runs for a while and then turns around and calls for her father. And then it ends. So we have no idea what happens (but presumably the father was just murdered). So I don’t know. Are they gonna go for that? Won’t know until we get there. But the name is enough that maybe it gets on.

Under the Heavens is about a Venezuelan woman fleeing her country, trying to get to Brazil. She hitches a ride with a bunch of other people, which include a young couple with a newborn. She, able to breastfeed (because, as we later find out, she just had a baby and left it with her mother in Venezuela), begins to nurse the child to keep it from screaming. And she sort of tags along with the other couple (even paying for them to continue to ride with her when they cannot pay). And the film is sort of about the struggle that refugees face, especially women, who are doubly at risk because there are always men looking to take advantage of them. I’m not fully sure the last half fully worked for me (there’s a confrontation where the woman with the baby’s husband tries to rape her and the two women run away from him, and then they get on a boat together and it’s visually implied that maybe the other woman left the baby alone with main character for good. Or maybe it’s trying to show that the couple was actually her at one point, I don’t fully know), but it’s a decent enough short. I’d be surprised if they nominated it just because I feel like there are a bunch of others that work better than it does. But you never know with them.

When the Sun Sets is a short set in Apartheid Africa about a woman working as a nurse whose younger brother is an activist. One day, he doesn’t come home from school and she’s concerned something happened to him. When she goes to the school she finds the classroom ransacked and several people missing. Eventually after seeing the body of a student come into her hospital (not her brother), she ends up finding him in the back of a police wagon and almost gets herself killed trying to get him out. Eventually after she’s brutally beaten (while refusing to let go of one of the policemen) they let her brother go free. It’s… it’s a powerful short, but I’m not sure the narrative is all there for me to think they’ll nominate it over most of the other stuff they have to choose from here. The cynical part of me says ‘oh, Apartheid, of course they’ll nominate it’. I don’t know. Feels slight to me, ultimately, and feels like one of those I’ll just let them nominate if they’re gonna go there.

You’re Dead Helen is the most entertaining short in the lot and probably the one I’d most expect to do well, if not win the category entirely. It’s the only one that leaves you smiling at the end (that I’ve seen, anyway). And even then, it’s still kinda bittersweet. But it’s about a guy whose girlfriend is dead but is still with him. So he can see and hear her, but no one else can. And so they’re still going on dates and things, but she’s a ghost. And the short is about him deciding he wants to break up with her (because… well, insert title here). She does not take the news well and then, after realizing he’s going on a date with someone else, decides to make his life a living hell. It’s… a lot of fun. A true horror comedy with a great premise and a great lead performance by the actress who plays Helen. I know they’re already working on making this in English. It’s made for it. You can’t watch this and not immediately think, “Aubrey Plaza was made for this role.” And the short goes off in some horror territory for a minute while ultimately ending in a really sweet way (I don’t even wanna spoil it. Just go watch it. It’s worth it). I can so easily see them leaving this off, because that fits exactly the kind of shit they do, but I don’t see how you aren’t charmed by this. The filmmaking is great, the short has a lot of heart and it’s honestly the most out and out entertaining of the bunch. Maybe it doesn’t win (because, like I said, Please Hold is really good), but how could you not expect to see it nominated?

So yeah, this is what I’ve got so far, and I’m not even gonna explain it further. This will all change, I’m sure. The whole thing is guesswork.

Ala Kachuu (Take and Run)

Censor of Dreams

Please Hold

Tala’Vision

You’re Dead, Helen

Alternate: Frimas

Dark Horse: Distances

Surprise: The Criminals, The Dress

Shocker: On My Mind, Stenofonen, When the Sun Sets

Don’t Guess: Les Grandes Claques, The Long Goodbye, Under the Heavens

– – – – –

And now International Feature. A much easier category to deal with. The shortlist is 15 and not 10 and it’s very top heavy. You can get more than a full category based solely around the ‘known’ films, either based on the directors or ones that are just generally known outside of the international film bubble. It’s gonna be an interesting one. Because they’re almost certainly gonna have to leave something off. But considering who most of these directors are (or what the films are)… none of it is stuff they normally leave off. So either this is gonna be the easiest category to guess or something nuclear is gonna happen. And I for one can’t wait to see which it is.

Best International Feature

Great Freedom (Austria)
Playground (Belgium)
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (Bhutan)
Flee (Denmark)
Compartment No. 6 (Finland)
I’m Your Man (Germany)
Lamb (Iceland)
A Hero (Iran)
The Hand of God (Italy)
Drive My Car (Japan)
Hive (Kosovo)
Prayers for the Stolen (Mexico)
The Worst Person in the World (Norway)
Plaza Catedral (Panama)
The Good Boss (Spain)

No Titane, otherwise all the films I’ve heard of from the eligibles list are on here. And Titane being what it is, I’m not remotely surprised it was left off.

The only film of these I haven’t seen is Great Freedom, so I’m actually pretty well-versed in this one.

I’m gonna do a rundown of each country and how they’ve historically fared in the category, since I do think it’s helpful:

• Austria — 4 nominations in 45 submissions (1986, 2007 (won), 2008 and 2012 (won). Every time they’ve been shortlisted since 2006, they’ve been nominated.
• Belgium — 7 nominations in 46 submissions (1970, 1988, 1992, 1994, 2000, 2011, 2013), and they were also shortlisted in 2015.
• Bhutan — Only their third submission (hough their second was this same film last year and it was disqualified). They love getting new countries in there. Normally I’d say this was a save, but they eliminated those. This legit got the votes to be here.
• Denmark — 13 nominations, 4 wins (including last year) in 59 submissions. Since shortlists began in 2006, this is their tenth appearance, and they’ve been nominated 7 of the 9 times, with 6 coming since 2010.
• Finland — 34 submissions, 1 nomination (2002). This is only their second shortlist (after 2015).
• Germany — 20 nominations in 65 submissions, but have only won twice since 2000 (2002, 2006). They’ve been shortlisted 10 times since 2006 and nominated 5 (with 1 win). However, all of their nominations (Baader Meinhof Complex, White Ribbon, Toni Erdmann, Never Look Away) were high profile films from known directors.
• Iceland — Nominated once (1991) in 42 submissions, and their only other shortlist was 2012.
• Iran — They’ve been nominated 3 times in 27 submissions, with 2 wins, both for other Farhadi films this past decade (A Separation, The Salesman).
• Italy — 68 submissions, 31 nominations, 14 wins (3 honorary). This is only their third shortlist since 2006, with only one nomination (The Great Beauty, also Sorrentino, which won).
• Japan — 68 submissions, 16 nominations, 4 wins (3 honorary). This is their fourth shortlist, and they’ve got 2 nominations and 1 win (Departures). Their other nomination was Shoplifters.
• Kosovo — This is their 8th submission and first shortlist.
• Mexico — 54 submissions. 9 nominations, 1 win (Roma). This is their sixth shortlist. They’ve been nominated 3/5 times, but the three were Pan’s Labyrinth, Biutiful and Roma.
• Norway — 43 submissions, 5 nominations. They’ve been shortlisted three times, with one nomination (Kon-Tiki). The other shortlists were 2016 and last year.
• Panama — This is their 8th submission and first shortlist.
• Spain — 64 submissions, 20 nominations, 4 wins (Begin the Beguine, Belle Epoque, All About My Mother, The Sea Inside). This is their fourth shortlist (two of the previous three being Almodovar films) and their only nomination was Pain and Glory.

My personal rankings:

1. Drive My Car
2. The Worst Person in the World
3. Playground
4. A Hero
5. The Hand of God
6. Compartment No. 6
7. I’m Your Man
8. Prayers for the Stolen
9. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
10. Plaza Catedral
11. The Good Boss
12. Lamb
13. Flee
14. Hive

The obvious category here is Drive My Car, A Hero, Hand of God, Flee and The Worst Person in the World. And that’s before you factor in Compartment No. 6. Could it really be that easy? Maybe Flee gets left off because it’s clearly gonna factor into two other categories? Something’s gonna give. Plus, they love throwing that random entry on, so you know A Yak in the Classroom is somehow gonna make it on.

Here’s where I shake out with this: You have to guess Drive My Car. You have to guess Flee. You have to guess A Hero and The Hand of God. You just do. Unless you’re dead certain they’re gonna leave any of them off, you have to guess them and just take your lumps. That leaves one spot. The obvious two are Compartment No. 6 and The Worst Person in the World. I feel like Worst Person in the World is somehow gonna get left off and almost don’t wanna guess it to not be disappointed. But we’re still waiting on BAFTA and it hit a couple of shortlists. So maybe it’s still got a good shot. I don’t know. Maybe we just hit a good year and all the obvious stuff will get nominated because there just happened to be a lot of great stuff in the same category. But it’s my job to look at everything else and see what could get on that isn’t so obvious.

I don’t think Lamb has a shot. Too weird, too A24. And I’m honestly surprised it made it and Titane didn’t. Maybe they knew Titane would catch votes if they put it on and didn’t want it monopolizing the category since it’s not really the kind of thing they want taking attention away from what’s actually a pretty solid shortlist. But Lamb… aside from being able to talk about the lamb child, I’m not really sure why it would or should be nominated. So I’m gonna assume that has no chance until they go there.

The Good Boss feels like a solid Spanish comedy, and I feel like it’s there partly because Javier Bardem is so good in it and because the shortlist was expanded to 15. Doesn’t feel like the kind of thing they nominate and seems like an easy thing to leave off knowing it’ll almost never happen. Solid movie, doesn’t fit what they nominate.

Hive — Kosovo is new, so maybe they force it on, but the film didn’t really do all that much to me and normally you can get a bit of a sense when that’s gonna happen. Like The Man Who Sold His Skin last year. The message is nice — woman whose husband went missing (and is pressured dead by everyone but her) is trying to make her own business and actually do something even though society is not built for women and she keeps having to fight back against men who feel threatened by her exhibiting power. It’s fine, but I’d be surprised if they put it on at the expense of so many other good choices.

Prayers for the Stolen — I mean, Mexico, unless it’s Cuaron, Inarritu or Guillermo, never gets nominated. The film is good (as was last year’s shortlisted film), but just playing the numbers and looking at how stacked the shortlist is, how can you imagine they’re gonna go here? This is one of those where the history basically tells you why you shouldn’t guess it. And if they do go there, oh well, I’m wrong.

I’m Your Man is a really solid little rom com (I got about 40 minutes in before I realized, “Wait, that’s Dan Stevens?” Because it looked like him but I just assumed it wasn’t because why would he be in a German-language movie. And then I realized… dude speaks fluent German. Who knew). It’s very cute and works really well. In another year I might think it has a legitimate shot. Doesn’t really fit how they normally vote, plus with the year as stacked as it is… if they watched everything, I could see it having a shot. Plus Germany historically always does well here. But I don’t know. I feel like it would be a bit of a surprise more than anything (then again, with the crop we have, most things would be a surprise just because it means they left more than one big name off).

Playground is a film I loved. I’ve always been a fan of films that shoot from a child’s perspective, low to the ground, and keep you firmly in their world (all the way back to Skippy in 1931). I love how they did that, with only two adults in the movie ever kneeling down enough to enter into the girl’s frame. And I love how it starts one way — her crying and not wanting to be dropped off at school — and becomes something completely different by the end. It’s only like 75 minutes, too, but accomplishes a lot along the way. I’d admittedly be surprised if they nominated it, but it is a really strong film that deserves consideration. But again, considering what’s there already, they’d be going out of their way to nominate this and I just don’t really see that happening.

Great Freedom I haven’t seen, but considering it’s got a bit of a Kiss of the Spider Woman-type plot tells me it’s firmly in contention and, in another year, is something I might out and out guess. This year I almost have to let them put it on (and that might even be the case even if I do end up seeing it before nominations). But I do think it’s very much in that conversation if something gets left off.

Plaza Catedral is a film that snuck up on me. I wasn’t sure if I was into it but it gradually won me over. It’s a shame that the film is about violence against young kids and the (incredibly charming) young lead was actually shot to death before the film came out. But I do think the film generally works. I wouldn’t expect them to nominate it, even in a weaker year than this, but I also wouldn’t be shocked if it were. It, like Kosovo, feels like they snuck it on because they like getting other countries in there (I don’t know specifically how the voting works now, since they eliminated the whole ‘save’ situation, but it does sure feel like there’s some sort of manipulation at work to make sure it’s not just the obvious handful of countries making it on. It can’t just be pure quality. I’ve been around this group enough to know nothing is ever pure with them). It could happen, but I’m thinking no. It’s too strong a year.

Lunana is a really charming little movie, and in any other year I’d automatically have it on my list. I still think there’s a reasonable chance it manages to make it on in the end anyway. If you’re looking for a spoiler anywhere, that’s the one. That and then probably Great Freedom. Those would be my guesses. But also — “A Yak in the Classroom” stands out as a title. And since I think anyone can vote on the category so lng as they watch a certain number of the shortlist, it’s possible some people are gonna vote for the 2-3 films they saw and liked and will just vote for that because the title stands out so much. I’m telling you that’s how some people vote. This for sure has a legitimate chance to make it. A very large part of me wants to swap Flee for it on my final list.

But either way, we’ve got six very high profile choices (five for sure and then Compartment No. 6 is more ‘international’ high profile. Since it is something I’ve seen talked about throughout this process, whereas everything else is more ‘known’ by the casual film people), plus at least two other obvious potential spoilers. So you’ve got options. It’s gonna come down to how you think it’s all gonna shake out.

This is where I’m at right now, and aside from three pure locks (though watch them leave Drive My Car off. I can’t be the only one feeling that coming on, can I?), I can see some minor changes and tweaks happening to this list by next week, especially considering what BAFTA does.

Compartment No. 6 (Finland)

Drive My Car (Japan)

Flee (Denmark)

The Hand of God (Italy)

A Hero (Iran)

Alternate: The Worst Person in the World (Norway)

Dark Horse: Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (Bhutan)

Surprise: Plaza Catedral (Panama), Great Freedom (Austria)

Shocker: Playground (Belgium), I’m Your Man (Germany), Prayers for the Stolen (Mexico)

Don’t Guess: Lamb (Iceland), Hive (Kosovo), The Good Boss (Spain)

– – – – –

Okay, and now for the categories most people can at least be aware of and have opinions on because the majority of the nominees are gonna come from the pool of things you know.

We’ll start with Makeup and Hairstyling, since, why not.

Best Makeup & Hairstyling

Coming 2 America
Cruella
Cyrano
Dune
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
House of Gucci
Nightmare Alley
No Time to Die
The Suicide Squad
West Side Story

These, unlike a lot of the doc and foreign shortlists, have a lot of measurables attached, so by the time we get all our precursors, we’ll have a real good idea of what’s gonna get nominated (on top of, you know, the obvious).

Currently, all we have are BFCA nominations, and what was nominated there was Cruella, Dune, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, House of Gucci and Nightmare Alley. And the guild nominated Coming 2 America, Tammy Faye, Gucci and Suicide Squad 3 times, Cruella, Dune and No Time to Die twice, West Side Story once, and didn’t nominate Cyrano and Nightmare Alley at all. BAFTA still has to announce, so just based off what I know right now, this would be my guess for the category:

Coming 2 America

Cruella

Dune

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

House of Gucci

Alternate: West Side Story

Dark Horse: The Suicide Squad

Surprise: Cyrano, Nightmare Alley

Shocker: No Time to Die

No Time to Die would be the only real surprise here, just because it’s contemporary, and Bond films don’t ever get on here. Cyrano… mostly hairstyling, but also a lot of pancake makeup. Without BAFTA, I wouldn’t expect it. The film doesn’t figure to do all that well overall. Suicide Squad… I know the first one won, but that was a category of three and had both Harley and the Joker. I’m not sure I’m feeling this one (plus it and Nightmare Alley are the only two to not even get longlisted at BAFTA). Nightmare Alley… it’s not gonna have any precursors outside of BFCA (which is ‘ehh’ at best) and when you think about that movie no makeup or hair immediately comes to mind the way it does for almost all the other choices. That factors in. It’s not like Guillermo had monsters made for this one.

For me it comes down to six choice for five spots, and really you’re just guessing what they’re gonna leave off. Cruella, Dune, Tammy Faye and Gucci have hit basically everything they could hit to this point so you almost have to guess them. And for the last spot… right now I’m gonna bank on all the different character makeup of Coming 2 America winning out, especially since West Side Story is just hair and doesn’t immediately jump out at you as something for this category necessarily. And if I’m being honest, I might even have Suicide Squad as the alternate come guess time. Though I do also have some reservations about the overall perceived quality of Coming 2 America hurting its chances. So I’ll need to think on this one a bit. Fortunately BAFTA’s still to come so I’ll get more help.

– – – – –

And now, our first Sound shortlist. They consolidated Sound into a singular category last year (something the Sound branch asked for, since people stopped being able to tell the difference between the two categories, even though it’s something they’ve done for like 40 years now, even if both categories have only have five nominees apiece for 15), so it makes sense that they’d throw a shortlist out there. At least then the branch has some control over what makes it that far and they can try to put forward the best examples. I’m not opposed to it, honestly, even if it does feel like it’s gonna make it even easier to guess than it already was.

Best Sound

Belfast
Dune
Last Night in Soho
The Matrix Resurrections
No Time to Die
The Power of the Dog
A Quiet Place Part II
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Tick… Tick… Boom!
West Side Story

Naturally, as we know from years past, a lot of this category is about Best Picture stuff and not always about pure sound design, so don’t be tempted by some of these just because they’re loud.

We’ve got MPSE and CAS nominations to this point, with BAFTA announcing next week. All ten shortlisted films hit MPSE in some form, while Dune, No Time to Die, Power of the Dog, Spider-Man and West Side Story hit CAS. So based on that, and broadly where I expect BAFTA to go, here’s how I’m expecting this to shape up at this moment:

Dune

The Matrix Resurrections

No Time to Die

The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

Alternate: Belfast

Dark Horse: A Quiet Place Part II

Surprise: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Shocker: Last Night in Soho, Tick… Tick… Boom!

Dune and West Side Story… there’s no universe where I don’t guess both of those. There just isn’t. And Power of the Dog being what it is (major Best Picture contender and a western, which they love in this category), I’m probably guessing that as well. BAFTA could maybe talk me down from it, but I doubt it. So that’s three. No Time to Die I assume will hit BAFTA and at that point, with CAS and 2/3 MPSE nominations, how can you not guess it (especially with Skyfall getting 2 Sound nominations and winning one of them)?

That leaves that last spot. Tick Tick Boom doesn’t feel like it has any shot. A BAFTA nom would change things, but I don’t see that happening. It’s not the kind of movie, unless it’s heavily in play for Best Picture (which it doesn’t feel like it is), that needs a Sound nomination. Last Night in Soho… even if it does get a BAFTA nomination (which it probably will), I’m not sure I can consider it anything more than a surprise, given what’s around it. If it doesn’t get nominated at BAFTA, then toss it off and don’t worry about it. But we’ll deal with that when the time comes.

That leaves four movies: Matrix, Quiet Place, Spider-Man and Belfast. I’ll start with the easiest:

Belfast is heavily in play for Best Picture. Does that guarantee it a Sound nomination? Not at all. But those types of movies (Moneyball, Lincoln, Argo, Birdman, Bridge of Spies, Roma, Joker) do tend to get nominated for Sound, even without obvious Sound design (and by that I mean: Ford v Ferrari, 1917, La La Land, Dunkirk, Mad Max, Gravity. You see my point?). So it’s very much in conversation all the way through. Though, if BAFTA leaves it off their Sound list… that’s a red flag and a sign that you probably shouldn’t guess it (but also won’t fully eliminate it, because, as I said… that shit gets on).

Quiet Place II — the first one got nominated in Editing after hitting every precursor (MPSE x3, CAS, BAFTA). This one got MPSE x3, but no CAS. I was ready to leave it off before MPSE, then was ready to nominate it until CAS, and now I’m keeping it as an in-play alternate until I see what BAFTA does. My gut says, it’s not the phenomenon the first movie was, MPSE, while important, nominates a bunch of films in each category, so if it only hits MPSE, I’d probably feel okay not guessing it even though it could still happen.

And now Spider-Man, which is gonna remain the biggest question mark in the category. It isn’t eligible for BAFTA, so all we’ll have to go on is one MPSE nomination and a CAS nomination. My gut has always said it won’t happen. I know it made money and it’s the film people are using for clicks to say ‘will it get nominated?’ (they did it with Force Awakens, they did it with Wonder Woman, they did it with Black Panther, they did it with Joker. Notice how there was evidence with two of those and the other two were clearly horse shit), but Marvel is not Star Wars or Middle Earth. Only two Marvel movies have, to this point, been nominated for Sound: the first Iron Man (only in Editing) and Black Panther (in both). The single MPSE nomination feels telling, especially since when I look at CAS’ history, I see Iron Man, Iron Man 3, Guardians, Doctor Strange and Wonder Woman (D.C. but still notable) nominated, none of which got nominated for Sound. Sure, we’ll never fully know until it happens or doesn’t because of the BAFTA situation, but historically these films don’t get nominated. And I just don’t buy that it’s gonna snag these major nominations. I’ve weathered bigger storms than this and I’m gonna hold my ground on this until I see legitimate evidence that it might happen.

The Matrix, on paper, makes the most sense in the fifth spot for the time being. Sure, it missed CAS, but that’s okay. Three MPSE nominations means the Editors loved it, and it’s more their type of film. BAFTA is the one that’s gonna tell the tale. If it gets on BAFTA, that should tell you it’s a sure thing. If it doesn’t, then we have the talk about what’s gonna make that fifth spot, but it’ll almost certainly have to do with what made the BAFTA list instead. So, for now, I’ll lean toward Matrix for the fifth spot but we’ll see what happens in the next week.

– – – – –

And now, Visual Effects. Which we’ve always gotten a shortlist for. Used to be a longlist of 20, then a shortlist of 10 and then the category. Now we just get the 10. Which is fine. You can usually figure it out from that anyway.

Best Visual Effects

Black Widow
Dune
Eternals
Free Guy
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Godzilla vs. Kong
The Matrix Resurrections
No Time to Die
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Spider-Man: No Way Home

I mean, most of this is self-explanatory, no?

Dune

Godzilla vs. Kong

The Matrix Resurrections

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Alternate: No Time to Die

Dark Horse: Black Widow

Surprise: Eternals

Shocker: Free Guy, Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Eternals, Free Guy and Ghostbusters have next to no support anywhere, and until they get nominated by BAFTA (if), it’s hard to guess any of them. Black Widow… it missed the big VES nomination, so unless BAFTA nominates it, it’s hard to see that happening (especially since it’s not a very effects-heavy film comparative to the others, and they usually like the CGI monstrosities here, like Godzilla vs. Kong). No Time to Die… Bond never gets nominated for Effects, so even if BAFTA nominates it, I don’t know if I fully buy it as a nominee. Obviously it could happen, but I still see it as more than likely not happening. It’ll be interesting, though, since Quantum of Solace was the last Bond film to get nominated for Effects (along with Casino), and the past decade is really when the CGI stuff and superhero stuff has taken over. So I wanna see if they go back to it or leave it off like they have been.

Either way, Dune is gonna win the whole thing, so none of that matters. Spider-Man is ineligible at BAFTA but I still expect them to nominate it. Shang-Chi, given the shortlist, is an absolute gimme, and The Matrix should get on through reflex memory alone. And Godzilla vs. Kong… if they nominated Skull Island, why wouldn’t they nominate that?

Mostly I wanna see what BAFTA does, since Spider-Man is ineligible and they normally don’t go for shit like Godzilla vs. Kong. So, if that does hit BAFTA, then for sure guess it because it’s gonna get nominated. If not, then I wanna see where else they go instead. They’re usually the harbinger of stuff getting on even if you might not think it will (Christopher Robin, The Only and Only Ivan). So if you see Eternals get on, that’s the sign that it might happen. But wait and see. I think this is a pretty easy year, so unless BAFTA throws you any major curveballs, I expect this to be a 5-from-6 situation with no major surprises.

– – – – –

And we’ll end with the two music ones. I’m pissed they stopped giving us the full list of Songs. That was one of my favorite articles to do each year. Score I can live with. I listen to enough scores anyway. But Song — they’re really fucking up by not showing us the full list.

Best Original Score

Being the Ricardos (Daniel Pemberton)
Candyman (Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe)
Don’t Look Up (Nicholas Britell)
Dune (Hans Zimmer)
Encanto (Germaine Franco)
The French Dispatch (Alexandre Desplat)
The Green Knight (Daniel Hart)
The Harder They Fall (Jeymes Samuel)
King Richard (Kris Bowers)
The Last Duel (Harry Gregson-Williams)
No Time to Die (Hans Zimmer)
Parallel Mothers (Alberto Iglesias)
The Power of the Dog (Jonny Greenwood)
Spencer (Jonny Greenwood)
The Tragedy of Macbeth (Carter Burwell)

I posted my favorite scores list here, so you can use that to get an idea of my feelings on each of them. I listened to 130 scores on my own, which I imagine was a majority of what was eligible. But I’m gonna do what I’ve started doing in recent years and going over each of the composers on the shortlist, because like with International Feature I do think seeing the stature of each person does help you figure out the likelihood of certain scores being nominated.

The shortlists only began in 2018, so when I say people have never been shortlisted, that’s what I mean.

• Daniel Pemberton still has yet to be nominated in this category (he was nominated for Song last year, his first nomination). He’s been shortlisted each of the past two years (Motherless Brooklyn and Chicago 7) and got a lot of kudos for his Steve Jobs and Into the Spider-Verse scores. It’s only a mater of time before he gets his first Score nomination.
• Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Germaine Franco, Jeymes Samuel and Daniel Hart are all newcomers. Hart and Franco have scored films before (Franco is the first latina to be invited into the music branch), while the other two are shortlisted for their first major piece of work.
• Nicholas Britell has been nominated twice, for Moonlight and for If Beale Street Could Talk. He was also shortlisted for The King and Vice. He’s a respected composer (who also wrote the Succession theme) and feels like he should always be a threat to get nominated.
• Hans Zimmer, as we all know, is a stalwart in this category, and he’s got two shortlisted scores this year. He’s got 11 previous nominations and 1 win (Lion King). His last three nominated scores were all for Christopher Nolan films (Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk). He also has yet to be shortlisted before now.
• Alexandre Desplat, as we all know, is a mainstay. He’s got 11 nominations and 2 wins, and two of his previous four nominations were for Wes Anderson scores. His been shortlisted ever year thus far and is always a threat.
• Kris Bowers is technically a newcomer, since his only nomination was in Documentary Short last year. He came to prominence scoring Green Book and playing the piano parts in the film. He’s got four film scores this year and was nominated for the most high profile of the lot.
• Harry Gregson-Williams has never been nominated before and has only made one other shortlist (last year, for Mulan).
• Alberto Iglesias has been nominated 3 times (Constant Gardener, Kite Runner, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). He was also shortlisted for his previous Almodovar score for Pain and Glory.
• Jonny Greenwood for years was the darling who never got nominated because the Music branch didn’t respect his Radiohead roots. Then finally they nominated him for Phantom Thread and now look. His next two film scores got shortlisted. Go figure.
• Carter Burwell is no stranger to this category. He’s been scoring Coen brothers films for years. Though sadly he only has two Oscar nominations to show for it: Carol and Three Billboards (neither of which are Coen brothers films). He was shortlisted for Buster Scruggs but was ultimately left off. Here he is again for a Coen brother (singular this time) film.

In terms of the precursors, Dune and Power of the Dog were nominated by both BFC and the Globes (Dune also won the Globe), and then the Globes also nominated Enanto, Parallel Mothers and The French Dispatch, while BFCA nominated Spencer, Don’t Look Up, and Nightmare Alley (which wasn’t even shortlisted and it’s kinda bullshit that it wasn’t. Or that Knives Out didn’t get nominated last year for the same composer. The music branch is weird and tribal and I hate it).

My personal rankings:

1. Don’t Look Up
2. The French Dispatch
3. Spencer
4. The Last Duel
5. Dune
6. Encanto
7. No Time to Die
8. The Power of the Dog
9. King Richard
10. Parallel Mothers
11. The Harder They Fall
12. Being the Ricardos
13. The Green Knight
14. The Tragedy of Macbeth
15. Candyman

Based on the two sets of precursors, I’m just gonna throw this one together. BAFTA is what I need to see before I make any proclamations. So here’s a random category and I’ll adjust all of this based on BAFTA.

Dune

The French Dispatch

The Power of the Dog

Spencer

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Alternate: Don’t Look Up

Dark Horse: Encanto

Surprise: The Last Duel, Being the Ricardos

Shocker: King Richard The Harder They Fall, No Time to Die

Don’t Guess: Candyman, The Green Knight, Parallel Mothers

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And finally, my favorite shortlist. Still super pissed we didn’t get the full list of eligible songs put out this year. I don’t know why the Academy bothers doing these shortlists if they’re not gonna give the people who care all the information and let us try to guess ourselves.

But anyway, we got this list of 15, and now I don’t even really know what could have made it instead (though trust me, I’ve compiled my own unofficial list from what I could gather and will be attempting to listen to them all by the time I come up with my Nominations Ballot). So we’ll just listen to all of these and just guess.

Best Original Song

“The Anonymous Ones,” from Dear Evan Hansen
“Automatic Woman,” from Bruised
“Be Alive,” from King Richard
“Beyond the Shore,” from CODA
“Dos Oruguitas,” from Encanto
“Down to Joy,” from Belfast
“Dream Girl,” from Cinderella
“Guns Go Bang,” from The Harder They Fall
“Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” from Respect
“Just Look Up,” from Don’t Look Up
“No Time to Die,” from No Time to Die
“Right Where I Belong,” from Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road
“So May We Start?” from Annette
“Somehow You Do,” from Four Good Days
“Your Song Saved My Life,” from Sing 2

Pretty much all of these make sense, broadly speaking. Oh, and the one you don’t know, Four Good Days — yeah, that’s the Diane Warren entry for this year.

Personally, here’s how I’d rank the songs:

1. “No Time to Die,” from No Time to Die
2. “Down to Joy,” from Belfast
3. “Dos Oruguitas,” from Encanto
4. “So May We Start?” from Annette
5. “Guns Go Bang,” from The Harder They Fall
6. “Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” from Respect
7. “Your Song Saved My Life,” from Sing 2
8. “Automatic Woman,” from Bruised
9. “Be Alive,” from King Richard
10. “Beyond the Shore,” from CODA
11. “Just Look Up,” from Don’t Look Up
12. “Right Where I Belong,” from Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road
13. “Somehow You Do,” from Four Good Days
14. “The Anonymous Ones,” from Dear Evan Hansen
15. “Dream Girl,” from Cinderella

(Hilarious that they forced the one Encanto song on here by only submitting that, and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” became a Billboard hit. Bet you feel pretty shitty about that one, guys. Guess that EGOT will have to wait another year.)

We only ever get two precursor lists for this. The rest is just knowing what they normally vote for (and what they don’t normally vote for), what the songs sound like and who wrote them.

To begin with the precursors: “Be Alive,” “Dos Oruguitas” and “No Time to Die” were the only three songs to hit both precursor lists, so those should probably songs you guess automatically (even if they’ve shown an aversion to Beyoncé songs to this point). “Guns Go Bang” and “Just Look Up” both got BFCA nominations and “Down to Joy” and “Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” got Globe nominations.

We’ve had shortlists for Song since 2018. So, three years of history with this. And in 2018 and 2019, 4/5 songs from the precursor lists ended up getting nominated, while last year the precursors were 5/5. So chances are most of what’s been already nominated will make it. It’s just a matter of gauging where tastes are gonna go with them.

My guess is that you gotta automatically guess the three that hit both lists, and you gotta automatically put Diane Warren on. Which leaves one extra spot. Van Morrison feels like a solid bet, just because you know they’re gonna love Belfast. U2 has been nominated before, but the film is just ehh. It’s hard to know how they’re gonna respond to Sparks in general. They’re a sneaky good guess who are also just as likely to not make it on. I assume if “Just Look Up” gets on it’s because they like Daniel Pemberton (who just got his first nomination last year for a song…. but that was for Chicago 7, which was a much bigger profile movie and a more ‘traditional’ song).

H.E.R. won last year, so I’m not totally ruling out “Automatic Woman,” even though the song itself doesn’t really feel like them (and Bruised is not Judas and the Black Messiah). CODA’s song getting on would surprise me a bit. “Guns Go Bang” doesn’t feel like them at all. “The Anonymous Ones” getting on would be them purely voting for the songwriters and ignoring everything else about that movie… which hasn’t really been something they’ve done lately. They’ll throw Diane Warren on, but those movies are always things nobody knows or cares about. It’s rare for them to go all in on a ‘bomb’ like that. Cinderella I’d rather just let beat me and then have to rationalize if somehow it gets on. And Brian Wilson, I get why he’s here, but I can’t see them actually nominating him. The song doesn’t have the pathos that the Glen Campbell song did. Oh, and the Respect song… Jennifer Hudson co-wrote that with Carole King, and it’s for the Aretha movie. No one would ever look twice about that getting nominated even if that movie wasn’t very good. Kinda hard for me to not think that gets on.

“Be Alive,” from King Richard

“Dos Oruguitas,” from Encanto

“Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” from Respect

“No Time to Die,” from No Time to Die

“Somehow You Do,” from Four Good Days

Alternate: “Down to Joy,” from Belfast

Dark Horse: “So May We Start?” from Annette

Surprise: “Your Song Saved My Life,” from Sing 2, “Just Look Up,” from Don’t Look Up

Shocker: “Beyond the Shore,” from CODA, “Guns Go Bang,” from The Harder They Fall, “Automatic Woman,” from Bruised

Don’t Guess: “The Anonymous Ones,” from Dear Evan Hansen, “Dream Girl,” from Cinderella, “Right Where I Belong,” from Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road

Based on what I know about this branch (which is admittedly possibly slowly changing, but I need a few more years to know for certain), this feels like the best possible breakdown of the category. I’m not convinced “Be Alive” actually makes it on and could easily see one of those other two making it on instead. But in terms of how I’d react to the nominees, this is the tier breakdown (though admittedly the term ‘shocker’ is a bit strong for how I’d react. I’d only be legitimately surprised if one of those bottom three got nominated, whereas if anything from the ‘shocker’ tier got on, it would be more of a category context situation and more of a ‘hmm, so they went there’).

Either way, I think we all figure Billie Eilish is winning this pretty handily. The only other alternative is Lin-Manuel, and as I already joked… probably would have been a better case if they’d submitted “We Need to Talk About Bruno.”

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So yeah, those are your shortlists. I finally managed to get it all done. Just in time, too. Because tomorrow is a major day for precursors and then it’ll all be getting ready to actually guess stuff.

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