98th Academy Awards Recap
What a year.
We kinda knew where this one was going early, with two films getting 13 and 16 nominations. It also seemed very early on that it was gonna be a relative One Battle After Another sweep. And for anyone holding out hope it was gonna end up about even, that Casting win sure put to bed any possibilities of a change in that. And other than that, we got mostly chalk. No real major surprises. A tie, but even those two were the two choices most people were figuring. Nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Brief notes on the ceremony — Conan was great. That opening was fantastic and he landed a couple of really great jokes throughout. The performances were great too. Probably not the best idea to put “Golden” on so late. There’s nothing that says Song can’t be given out early. It’s a TV show. If you cared about the flow of the show, you’d have made wholesale changes years ago. Also, Javier Bardem is a real one. Respect to him forever.
Otherwise, I think the right film won, and most of the right stuff won. There’s nothing that happened that made me upset. It’s rare you get through an awards season like that. (more…)
The B+ Oscar Ballot: Guide to the 98th Academy Awards
We broke a lot of barriers this year — multiple foreign Best Picture nominees, the overall nominations mark, a brand new category for casting, the highest concentration of nominations among top films. This year has six films with 8+ nominations. I don’t even have to look to know that’s the most there’s ever been.
Which tells me that, ultimately, we’re probably gonna settle into what’s been happening the past few years, which is sweeps at the top, and then a couple of categories that could go in surprising ways near the bottom of the ballot. So… mostly the same as always.
Though this year feels more fun because it feels like at least two acting categories (if not three) can legitimately go multiple ways. Normally we have three locked acting categories and one that feels open. There’s only one locked acting category at the moment. But then, below the line looks fairly locked. So it balances.
This is a year where I revel in focusing on a scorecard than straight winners and losers, because it’s pretty clear what the contenders are. So I don’t really have a horse in the race for what’s gonna win. I’m just gonna let them do what they do and see if I can figure it out. I’m also fortunate that a lot of things I like are going to win, so there’s very little room for disappointment and mostly I’ll just be happy for what wins. (more…)
97th Academy Awards Recap
Another one down.
This was an interesting year because in the end, there was a consensus, even if it didn’t feel (to me) like there necessarily was one throughout the process. But they got there.
Also another year absent any major surprises. The biggest surprise was, “Oh, so they went all in on Anora.”
Otherwise — not a whole lot of note for me about the awards or the show. Felt like it went crazy long again, even with the earlier time slot. Conan did exactly what Conan does. They went for a more classical ‘movies are magic’ feel. Definitely doesn’t feel as innovative as last year’s ceremony, though they did a few things that felt like they were trying to be innovative (having one presenter talk about all the nominees — though notice they distinctly didn’t do that for the lead acting categories — or having the filmmakers discuss aspects of the film during the video packages).
Mostly this is just a ho hum kind of ceremony to cap a ho hum kind of year. (more…)
The B+ Oscar Ballot: Guide to the 97th Academy Awards
It’s that time again.
This is such an interesting year because it feels like we’ve had such a wild swing throughout the season. We’ve had a general consensus of films throughout the race, but unlike most years, we usually start down the path with the likely winners winning from the jump and then it’s just jockeying for position or shoring up the lead. Here, we had two films win at the top, and then proceeded to see very different films pull through the rest of the way. It makes things feel like we’ve got a fairly wide open Best Picture race on our hands, the likes of which I haven’t seen in a decade.
Most times on these ballots, you’ve got a lot of automatic winners at the top, and that allows you to play around and take chances with the handful in the middle that could go one of a few ways (and then hope for the best on the ones that always can go one of a few ways). Here, all the open categories seem to be the ones at the top. That’s gonna be high risk for the people who only measure their ballots on how many they got right. But, good luck. Let’s see how we can do and let’s see what chaos 2024 hath wrought.
As I always say, if I can get the analysis right and be on track with how things play out, even if I personally guess wrong, I’ll be happy. Plus I do the Scorecard now anyway and that’s my measuring stick. Still, my goal here is to lay the foundation for other people to do well on their ballots. I’m just here to have fun. (more…)
96th Academy Awards Recap
Okay, another year in the books. We are somehow creeping ever closer to the eventual 100th Oscars, and I’m sure they’re gonna go all out for those. But for these — pretty much everyone saw what was gonna happen ahead of time and there weren’t any real surprises. Most years, a ‘surprise’ is something winning out of nowhere. This year, it’s ‘oh, this alternate beat the other nominee we figured was probably going to win’. The biggest surprise was “oh wow, Zone of Interest won Sound.” Or, for me, “They went with Emma Stone over Lily Gladstone” and “Boy and the Heron beat Spider-Verse.” Both things that seemed very likely, but neither of which seemed like something that was guaranteed to happen. Otherwise, pretty straightforward all the way through and nothing really to mention from a winners standpoint.
But I will say — the production this year of the actual telecast was superb. They finished early. 3 1/2 hours is the norm, and they nailed it. They were moving, they found ways to make things interesting. The bits in between categories worked. They did a fantastic job with the actual show portion this year (and bumping it an hour earlier was also a tremendously smart choice. I hope that continues in the future).
So yeah. That’s that. Let’s recap how it all went. (more…)
The B+ Oscar Ballot: Guide to the 96th Academy Awards
Here we are again. Another year, another Oscars.
One thing I really liked about this year is that there’s a consensus about the nominees. Most people seem to generally feel like the Academy got it right. You can quibble about a few specific categories and nominations and omissions, but overall, the films that got the majority of the nominations are largely ones everyone agrees are very good films. And it’s rare to have that kind of unanimity for an Oscar year.
The downside to that unanimity is that it typically leads to a feast or famine type of year, with films being either wholly embraced or wholly rejected. I don’t know if we’re gonna get that smorgasbord of films winning like we have in recent years. But that’s why we do the analysis, to see what’s actually gonna happen.
I will say the thing I say every year — I’m not doing this anymore to see how well I can guess. I, of course, want to get everything right, but the end goal for me is more to see how accurately I can pick apart each category to predict how well things are going to go. To me, having the film I chose as the secondary choice beating the first choice is almost as good as getting it right. I’m okay if the analysis is correct and I just got beat. I’m just here to try to help everyone else do as well on their ballots as they possibly can.
Now let’s see how well we can do this year. (more…)
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