OSCAR TIPS
Predicting the big winners
>> As Thailand wakes up tomorrow, the biggest night of the year in Hollywood will get under way with the 89th Academy Awards.
At some point Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway will open an envelope and announce the winner of this year’s Oscar for best picture. Beatty and Dunaway, veteran actors and notoriously smart cookies, will know perfectly well that it isn’t the year’s best film.
That’s because there’s no such thing as a best movie. Films aren’t like sports — they don’t come with statistics for easy evaluation. They are works of art, and evaluating art is by definition subjective.
After spending months reporting on the awards season, here are my predictions:
BEST PICTURE
From its twinkle-toed premiere at the Venice Film Festival last summer, La La Land, the tale of starry-eyed strivers reaching for showbusiness glory, has charmed best picture wins out of prizegivers. It has it all — singing, dancing, Ryan Gosling, summer frocks that never wrinkle — along with a muted choir of dissenters who don’t understand all the fuss. Hidden Figures will certainly provide competition, as will indie favourite Moonlight.
ACTOR
Casey Affleck has been in the Oscar race before but didn’t win. His heart-rending turn in Manchester by the Sea pointed to Oscar gold. Then the Screen Actors Guild award for best actor went to Denzel Washington for Fences. Given that the actors’ branch is the academy’s largest, and that most SAG winners go on to nab Oscars, Washington seems well poised to win. But Washington has two Oscars, and only six actors in history have won more, so I’m betting on Affleck.
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Whether Barry Jenkins’ screenplay for Moonlight, a cinematic tone poem about growing up poor, black and gay, should be considered adapted or original is in the eye of the beholder. Moonlight ended up besting Manchester by the Sea for original screenplay at the Writers Guild Awards. Despite the confusion, that makes the movie the favourite here.
ACTRESS
You know it’s a tight race when Amy Adams and Annette Bening are shut out despite critically lauded performances in equally lauded films. But Emma Stone is the heavy favourite for her turn in La La Land, having snagged the Golden Globe, the Bafta and the Screen Actors Guild award. Fellow Oscar contenders Meryl Streep, Ruth Negga, Natalie Portman and Isabelle Huppert are likely to fall short.
SUPPORTING ACTOR
While there are indications of a possible upset — Dev Patel won the Bafta for
Lion — odds favour Mahershala Ali from
Moonlight. Though Ali spent far less time on screen than some of his fellow nominees — like Jeff Bridges, who dominated much of Hell or High Water — his performance as the tender-hearted drug dealer Juan was one of the season’s most talked about.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Viola Davis could have easily run for best actress for her performance in Fences — and arguably should have, given that she won the Tony for a lead role for the same part when Fences ran on Broadway. Few doubt it is high time that Davis won an Oscar.
DIRECTOR
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was released 21 years before Damien Chazelle was born, yet the homage he pays to it and other musicals of yore in his hit La La Land greatly endeared him to the academy. Although early chatter suggested Kenneth Lonergan and Barry Jenkins were strong bets, Chazelle has mopped up the big prizes.
ANIMATED FEATURE
Disney’s Zootopia, about a plucky rabbit police officer fighting prejudice and a fear-mongering lamb, should hold off strong competition from Kubo and the Two Strings, about a Japanese boy on a hero’s quest to defeat an evil spirit.
DOCUMENTARY
Though director Ezra Edelman and ESPN insist their virtuoso project OJ: Made in America is genuinely a theatrical film rather than one made for TV, the fact is it is both. And that has done nothing to stop Edelman from winning almost every major documentary award this season.
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM Momentum seemed to be behind Toni Erdmann, a German satire, but then came the White House travel ban, which drew attention to Iran’s much lauded entry, The Salesman, by Asghar Farhadi, who should have the edge.
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Manchester by the Sea brilliantly captures the idiosyncrasies, awkwardness and absurdities of everyday conversation and life.