Pummeled by accusations about its racial myopia, the Academy of Motion Picture Farts and Biases* will make redress by conferring its trophy to Green Book, a historical nightmare from which Americans still won’t awaken. If it had given the damn trophy to Black Panther, at least it would have aligned itself with the new mood, but voters want to Teach Us Something too.
Below are my predictions. Gonna be a long night. I’ll hug my new bottle of Italicus.
Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams – Vice
Marina De Tavira – Roma
Regina King – If Beale Street Could Talk
Emma Stone – The Favourite
Rachel Weisz – The Favourite
Thanks to one of the more egregious cases of category fraud in Academy history, Stone and Weisz will cancel each other out, while from the sideline Adams will offer Gorgon-tinged wifely support. Regina King has won practically every precursor for her mother in Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk; it’s a fine one scene performance.
WILL WIN: Regina King
SHOULD WIN: Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, Regina King.
Best Supporting Actor
Mahershala Ali – Green Book
Adam Driver – BlacKkKlansman
Sam Elliott – A Star is Born
Richard E. Grant – Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Sam Rockwell – Vice
Mahershala Ali has accumulated so much goodwill since his turn in House of Cards that he will cruise to his second consecutive nominated win for another silly example of category fraud, although maybe the producers of the horror show Green Book wanted to distinguish it from Driving Miss Daisy where at least the latter’s handlers got Morgan Freeman a Best Actor nomination. Adam Driver’s quiet work in BlacKkKlansman is official recognition for another actor with lots of good will (and he should’ve gotten noticed for 2016’s Paterson). So too Sam Elliott, beloved for his warm unforced masculinity and bourbon-thick voice for decades. If only Richard E. Grant’s turn as the caustic alcoholic swish in Can You Forgive Me? stirred up enough memories of how many men like this Academy voters know. Still, don’t count out Elliott, who may pull a James Coburn (Affliction, 1998) in this category.
WILL WIN: Mahershala Ali or Sam Elliott
SHOULD WIN: Richard E. Grant, Adam Driver, Sam Elliott
Best Actress
Yalitza Aparicio – Roma,
Glenn Close – The Wife
Olivia Colman – The Favourite
Lady Gaga – A Star Is Born
Melissa McCarthy – Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Unconvinced by the magnificence of Glenn Close, Dangerous Liaisons aside, I found her work in The Wife exactly what that hokey, meretricious film needed: a fiction of authenticity. At least Melissa McCarthy’s character in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, my favorite performance in this category, plays a fraud who whoops it up as a fraud and is a better writer for being a fraud. I’d have no problem if Gaga or Olivia Colman won, though.
WILL WIN: Glenn Close
SHOULD WIN: Melissa McCarthy, Olivia Colman.
Best Actor
Christian Bale – Vice
Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born
Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate
Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody
Viggo Mortensen – Green Book
In his first lead and fourth nomination overall, dWillem Dafoe plays a grave, quietly tormented Vincent Van Gogh. It’s the best performance of the five, and in another year we’d say he’s due and give it to him. But two other imitations of real people stand in front of the line, only one of which was part of a box office smash. Increasingly it looks like the Academy, as usual, will defy logic and go for the easiest imitation. I’d prefer if voters went for the movie star part (Bradley Cooper’s).
WILL WIN: Rami Malek
SHOULD WIN: Willem Dafoe, Bradley Cooper.
Best Original Screenplay
The Favourite – Deborah Davis Tony McNamara
First Reformed – Paul Schrader
Green Book – Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, and Peter Farrelly
Roma – Alfonso Cuaron
Vice – Adam McKay
To think of Green Book as “original,” let alone “a screenplay”! Recyling the gauziest bits of The Defiant Ones, In the Heat of the Night, and Driving Miss Daisy, maybe Midnight Run too, Green Book stops at nothing in its effort to rip your bleeding innards from your body. This might be The Favourite‘s only shot a trophy, and I’m going for it here. Should Roma win, it might augur a sweep of the major categories. If Green Book wins, take a blanket and pillow and hide under the bed. Who knows, though? The Academy may atone for omitting First Reformed‘s Ethan Hawke in Best Actor and reward director-screenwriter for, unbelievably his first nomination.
WILL WIN: The Favourite
SHOULD WIN: First Reformed, The Favourite
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – Joel and Ethan Coen
BlacKKKlansman – Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee
Can You Ever Forgive Me? – Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty
If Beale Street Could Talk – Barry Jenkins
A Star is Born – Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper, Will Fetters
There’s a sense in which this race is down to a pair of two worthwhile films that’ll get shafted elsewhere. Awarded the top prize by the Writer’s Guild of America, Can You Ever Forgive Me? upset what looked like a win for BlacKkKlansman. This might be the Academy’s only chance to do right by co-writer Spike Lee.
WILL WIN: BlacKkKlansman
SHOULD WIN: BlacKkKlansman, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Best Original Score
Black Panther
Black KKKlansman
If Beale Street Could Talk
Isle of Dogs
Mary Poppins Returns
I’d say it’s impossible to ignore Nicholas Britell’s work in If Beale Street…, but these are Academy voters.
WILL WIN: If Beale Street Could Talk
SHOULD WIN: If Beale Street Could Talk, Black Panther
Best Animated Feature
Incredibles 2
Isle of Dogs
Mirai
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
In another year, critical hit Isle of Dogs and popular hit Incredibles 2 might win. 2018 was the year of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a phenomenon that will change how comic books get conceived and written. Don’t be surprised if Oscar fucks up here, too.
WILL WIN: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
SHOULD WIN: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best Original Song
“All The Stars” from Black Panther by Kendrick Lamar, SZA
“I’ll Fight” from RBG by Diane Warren, Jennifer Hudson
“The Place Where Lost Things Go” from Mary Poppins Returns by Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman
“Shallow” from A Star Is Born by Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, Andrew Wyatt and Benjamin Rice
When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by Willie Watson, Tim Blake Nelson
I can’t say a word in defense or against the other nominees, and Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, and their co-writers will slug it out as the only two songs that (a) became hits in their own right (b) advance plot points or reflect their film’s world so thoroughly.
WILL WIN: “Shallow”
SHOULD WIN: “Shallow,” I guess.
Best Foreign Language Film
Capernaum
Cold War
Never Look Away
Roma
Shoplifters
As the eleventh film in this category to also be nominated for Best Picture, Roma may get its recognition here should Academy voters succumb to their dubious liberalism and vote Green Book. Cold War also has a cinematography nod and may win that one as consolation (see below); I should also note that by foreign film standards Cold War is a hit. However, Oscar likes Holocaust films.
WILL WIN: Roma
SHOULD WIN: Shoplifters, of course.
Best Documentary Feature
Free Solo
Hale County, This Morning, This Evening
Minding the Gap
Of Fathers and Sons
RBG
Because the Academy ignored closest competitor Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and because of the Supreme Court justice’s tatichardia-inducing health scares, I don’t see how voters don’t choose the cozy encomium RBG. We’ve known since last spring.
WILL WIN: RBG
SHOULD WIN: Free Solo, Hale County, This Morning, This Evening
Best Cinematography
Cold War Lukasz Zal
The Favourite – Robbie Ryan
Never Look Away – Caleb Deschanel
Roma – Alfonso Cuarón
A Star Is Born – Matthew Libatique
Well, whaddya know, Alfonso Cuaron shot this thing too? Boy, he can do everything! Like Best Foreign Language Film, though, this race comes down to Lukasz Zal’s creamy black and white work in Cold War and Caleb Deschanel for Never Look Away. Seeing that Zal won American Society of Cinematographers’ top prize three weeks ago, I’d say Cold War stands its best shot here. Robbie Ryan’s clever, wicked work in The Favourite will of course lose to suffusing Soviet bloc Europe in the warm glow of nostalgia.
WILL WIN: Cold War
SHOULD WIN: The Favourite.
Best Director
Alfonso Cuarón – Roma
Spike Lee – BlacKKKlansman
Yorgos Lanthimos – The Favourite
Adam McKay – Vice
Paweł Pawlikowski – Cold War
With a win for 2014’s Ida and several major nominations for Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski looks like a director whom the Academy will honor as soon as he writes and directs an English language film — so long as he keeps to his ninety-minute lengths and chooses any approach but to aestheticize despair into poses borrowed from film history. No, this trophy has had Alfonso Cuarón’s name on it since Netflix announced it would air Roma, especially since the voters, with unexpected generosity, omitted Peter Farrelly.
WILL WIN: Alfonso Cuarón
SHOULD WIN: Spike Lee, Yorgos Lanthimos.
Best Picture
Black Panther
BlacKKKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star is Born
Vice
So bizarre — predictably so — is the Academy’s cognitive dissonance that it could place into competition Spike Lee’s uneven but ferocious condemnation of the persistence of white supremacy and Peter Farrelly’s fable about race relations improving with car rides across the Deep South. Meanwhile The Favourite‘s jaundiced view of sexual politics in the royal court must content itself with being outside looking in, preferably through a fish eye lens (plus, a win for it would make up for Oscar not recognizing The Scarlet Empress. A shame A Star is Born, a wet towel of a picture with fucked up gender politics, lost its allure to Oscar voters. Perhaps a win would have retired this concept.
WILL WIN: Green Book
SHOULD WIN: The Favourite, BlacKKKlansman.
* Peter Travers was the first person I read who used the moniker. If he borrowed it too, let me know. I want nothing more to do with him.
Humanizing The Vacuum 
Agree with all and the shutout to Driver and the “Paterson” snub! Anyway, I’m not watching. It’ll be PAINFUL to see. I’ll read your thoughts afterwards.
Sorry I’m off topic (again), but I think I found the correct words to finally tell about what I think of “Beale Street” and why bothers me that much. I was angry the first time around. I couldn’t articulate how that well-meaning and loving film went so wrong with me. Well, here it is ( I read yours, too) And here’s also a shutout to “Green Book”‘s Shirley depiction and how I see the same problem with Jenkins’s overall “blackwashed” style in this film, and how his influences don’t necessay apply to whatever material he puts his hands on.
https://letterboxd.com/moviegoergeek/film/if-beale-street-could-talk/
“neccesarily”
You’re right about Jenkins’ approach hardening into mannerism. Three pictures into his career I know what he’s going to do next. But I’l still watch him keenly. We get so few pictures in America about his subjects.
“Peter Travers was the first person I read who used the moniker. If he borrowed it too, let me know. I want nothing more to do with him”
Yoo DO NOT!! Firstly, because you know what you’re talking about. Secondly, you’re not a Hollywood pimp like he is. Bastardizing the selections HE ALWAYS HELPS to promote. Not a fucking Top 10 he does since the 90s were NOT matching the actual selections.
Meaning, we know his game and he’s always been an asshole.
I prefer Armond White’s puritanism and boneheaded but coherent contrarianisms. (BTW, I’m writing a short about a film critic that is Black, Poor, Catholic, Gay and Conservative) It’s called “Oxymoronic” and I want Kaufman to direct:)-
“But I’l still watch him keenly. We get so few pictures in America about his subjects.”
I do, too. But I would like he puts aside his “European” sensibilities on those subjects because I don’t see how they match with America. It’s like a wrong couple (My Blueberry Nights!!) I think the MOONLIGHT Award came too soon, for it would have been interesting he explores another approach on staging his films. Now, he seem like he owns it. And that’s the place my “anger” comes from. His topic selections are original. His vision, otherwise. And it’s baffling because he knows good films!!