They announced the ACE and ADG awards last night. We’ll start with the Eddies, since they announced first.
King Richard won Best Editing – Drama, Tick, Tick… Boom! won Best Editing – Comedy/Musical, and also Summer of Soul won Documentary and Encanto won Animated Feature. The first two are the only two that matter in Editing, but it’s worth noting about the other two since it’s very clear how much support there is across the board for them and it makes them both relative locks in their respective categories.
But… Tick Tick Boom had a pretty easy go of it in its category. Don’t Look Up was the only other nominated film in the category and… it makes sense they went the way they did. Only 14 films ever have won Editing without being nominated for Best Picture and half of those came before 1950 (and 10 before 1990). It’s only happened 4 times in the past 30 years (The Matrix, Black Hawk Down, The Bourne Ultimatum and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Seems really unlikely that it’s gonna win, especially since all those previous four winners had 3-5 nominations and all included Sound nominations. Tick Tick Boom’s only other nomination is in Actor. Based on what I know, I can’t see it happening. But stranger things have happened, so you can’t fully rule it out.
King Richard, meanwhile… doesn’t traditionally fit the bill of what wins Editing, but this is a big win for it. And theoretically it could happen. Dune still feels like the most likely winner to me (since people typically default to the ‘obvious’ choice most of the time), but we’ll wait and see what BAFTA has to say, since they’ve felt like the most accurate Editing precursor the past couple of years, plus Dune is the only Oscar-nominated film on their ballot. So if it doesn’t win there, then we’ve got a real interesting scenario on our hands. (Also interesting that the Best Picture favorite, Power of the Dog, lost the guild and wasn’t even nominated at BAFTA. You always have to respect the Picture favorite in Editing (even though a Picture winner hasn’t won Editing since 2012), but it sure feels almost assured to not happen this year.
I’m not sure this changes my thinking for the category, overall, but it does make me take King Richard more seriously as a potential winner in the category, which is something.
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And now onto ADG.
Nightmare Alley won for Period Film (beating fellow nominees The Tragedy of Macbeth and West Side Story), Dune won for Fantasy Film and No Time to Die won for Contemporary Film. Oh, and Encanto won for Animated Film.
Considering Dune is the only nominated film to win at SDSA as well, I’d wager it’s a pretty heavy favorite to take down the Oscar as well. Nightmare Alley seems like a solid contender but not something I’m expecting to fare particularly well in an open vote. I’m also not at all discounting West Side Story, since I still very much remember Production Design 2012, when all the precursors were split between Anna Karenina, Les Mis and Life of Pi and then Lincoln won the Oscar. I wanna see what BAFTA does, but given that the only crossovers in their category are the major three (Dune, Nightmare Alley and West Side Story), I’m thinking this is probably Dune’s category to lose.
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This week’s a precursor heavy week, with VES on Tuesday, CDG on Wednesday, the DGA and the Annies on Saturday and then the BAFTAs, BFCA and MPSE all on Sunday. That’s the bulk of it all, happening in like a four day span. After that it’s only PGA (which we almost certainly won’t even need), WGA (which we probably won’t need, but will be helpful) and ASC (which we’ll probably need just because of how stacked Cinematography is this year). But after this coming week, you should be able to lock 80-90% of a ballot based on what happens.
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