2016-17

It's a Wonderful Night for Oscar! Oscar, Oscar! Who Will Win?

Last year my prediction accuracy took a bit of a dip (albeit an expected one in that super tight year), but I imagine a regression to the mean this year with La La Land looking like an easy call in many categories. I'll be disappointed with anything less than eighteen, but I won't take it for granted... Anything can happen.

Best Picture ❌

Will win: La La Land

Could/Should win: Moonlight is a distant spoiler

Should be nominated: 20th Century Women

Best Director ✅

Will/Should win: Damien Chazelle, La La Land

Could win: Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

Should be nominated: Ava DuVernay, 13th

Both these top categories feel pretty locked and loaded.

Best Actor ❌

Will win: Denzel Washington, Fences

Could/Should win: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea (Flip a coin between these two; Gonna be a photo finish)

Should be nominated: Trevante Rhodes, Moonlight

Here's the tightest major category of the year. When it comes down to photo finishes like this, my bad habit is simply to predict the outcome I'd less prefer to see. It's not that I dislike Denzel's work in Fences, or that I feel Affleck is a giant of cinema whose career deserves an Oscar, but just look at the five performances in the category it's clear that his is leagues ahead of the others.

Best Actress ✅

Will win: Emma Stone, La La Land

Could win: Natalie Portman, Jackie

Should win: Isabelle Huppert, Elle

Should be nominated: Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen

Huppert has her fans, and it'd be a super delightful surprise for a deserving contender, but I suspect that's wishful thinking at this point.

Best Supporting Actor ✅

Will/Should win: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight

Could win: Dev Patel, Lion (Always beware the lead role masquerading as a supporting one)

Should be nominated: Alden Ehrenreich, Hail Caesar!

Lion is lurking. Will Weinstein's manipulative campaign tricks turn the tide either here or in adapted Screenplay?

Best Supporting Actress ✅

Will win: Viola Davis, Moonlight

Could win: None; She’s as locked as one could possibly be.

Should win: Naomie Harris, Moonlight

Should be nominated: Greta Gerwig, 20th Century Women

Best Original Screenplay ❌

Will win: La La Land

Could win: Manchester by the Sea (A dead heat between these two, and Manchester is the safer bet)

Should win: Hell or High Water

Should be nominated: Jackie

It's hard for me to be truly invested in a category where the two possible winners are the two I don't even think should be there. While I certainly like La La Land better, I think I'd prefer to see Lonergan win here since Chazelle is so obviously winning Best Director.

Best Adapted Screenplay ✅

Will win: Moonlight

Could win: Lion or Arrival (Very unpredictable, since most precursor awards mistook Moonlight for an original screenplay)

Should be nominated: Love & Friendship

Even Arrival feels like it could pop up as a pleasant semi-surprise.

Best Animated Feature ✅

Will win: Zootopia

Could/Should win: Kubo and the Two Strings

Should be nominated: Trolls (Didn’t see many others this year)

Kubo's BAFTA win feeling more and more like a cruel tease.

Best Foreign Language Film ❌

Will win: A Man Called Ove (This is not a safe bet, but it’s such a close race and I’m more comfortable in picking the outcome I’d least prefer to see happen)

Could/Should win: The Salesman, with Toni Erdmann in the hunt as well

Should be nominated: The Handmaiden or Elle

Now here's a nail-biter. With no help coming from the Critics Choice, Golden Globes or BAFTAs -- who all opted for three different films that either weren't eligible or didn't make the shortlist -- we're left to our own devices in anticipating voters' tastes. Will anti-Trump sentiment push The Salesman (admittedly the best of the field) over the top? Or will they regress to their old habits by rewarding the easiest one to sit through? Or will they go purely on critical reputation, making Toni Erdmann the weirdest winner in recent memory? As usual, I'm forcing myself to predict what I'd least want to see.

Best Documentary, Feature ✅

Will win: O.J.: Made in America

Could/Should win: 13th

Should be nominated: Weiner

Dangerous precedent about to be set here with a TV miniseries winning an award that should be reserved for movies. I wouldn't be shocked if they opted for 13th or even the late-breaking and terrific I Am Not Your Negro.

Best Cinematography ✅

Will/Should win: La La Land

Could win: Lion

Should be nominated: The Light Between Oceans

Part of me wishes this category felt more up in the air. All five are beautiful, richly deserving achievements.

Best Editing ❌

Will win: La La Land

Could win: Hacksaw Ridge or Arrival

Should win: Arrival

Should be nominated: 20th Century Women

I'm not sure La La Land is as locked here as many think. Hacksaw took the BAFTA and Arrival (my pick of the litter) the ACE Drama. Moonlight or Hell or High Water would make inspired winners too.

Best Production Design ✅

Will win: La La Land

Could win: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (The most unpredictable craft category this year, bar none. La La Land is gorgeous, but contemporary films never win for their design elements.)

Should win: Hail, Caesar!

Should be nominated: The Handmaiden

In recent Oscar history, this is the category in which the Academy is most likely to deviate from precursors. It would normally be nice to see see Stuart Craig get some Oscar love for his Potter-verse, but for this one? I'll be kicking myself if he pulls it off.

Best Costume Design ❌

Will win: Jackie

Could win: La La Land

Should win: Allied

Should be nominated: Live by Night

Ironically, Jackie -- which many critics felt got shafted in Best Picture -- has a better shot at going home with an Oscar than most of the Best Picture nominated films! But a win for a contemporary film here would be so satisfying, so I'm rooting for Zophres, knowing well that the true best costumes in the category (Allied) are unlikely to triumph.

[Did win]: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Best Original Score ✅

Will win: La La Land

Could/Should win: Lion

Should be nominated: Arrival or Nocturnal Animals

Best Original Song ✅

Will win: “City of Stars”, La La Land

Could win: “How Far I’ll Go”, Moana

Should win: “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)”, La La Land

Should be nominated: “Drive It Like You Stole It”, Sing Street

The only uncertainty in the music categories is if La La Land's two songs end up splitting the vote.

Best Sound Mixing ❌

Will win: La La Land

Could win: Hacksaw Ridge or Arrival

Should win: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Should be nominated: Lion

Best Sound Editing ❌

Will win: Hacksaw Ridge

Could/Should win: Arrival

Should be nominated: The Shallows

The uncertainty in the sound categories is more varied in nature. Whatever wins Mixing almost always wins Editing if it's nominated there, but no musical has ever won here (or even been nominated with the exception of the animated Aladdin). And if La La Land isn't so strong here, who's the beneficiary? BAFTA got its sound category right, if you ask me. Arrival would be such a swell choice.

Best Visual Effects ✅

Will win: The Jungle Book

Could win: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Should win: Kubo and the Two Strings

Should be nominated: None. This is one category that it 100% perfect.

Is the animation stigma too strong to ever overcome, or is there an outside chance that voters will discover that Kubo's special effects are by far the most 'special' in this group. That said, all five nominees are excellent, matching my own ballot five-for-five.

Best Makeup and Hair Styling ❌

Will/Should win: Star Trek Beyond

Could win: Suicide Squad (But honestly, who knows?)

Should be nominated: Hacksaw Ridge

I could just roll a three-sided die, but the broad recognition of the Star Trek brand is just logical enough to sway me. Also, its makeup is pretty ballin'.

Best Animated Short ✅

Will win: Piper

Could/Should win: Pearl

Should be nominated: Sous tes doigts

It's been fifteen years since Pixar won this, but that was also a short about adorable birds...

Best Live-Action Short ❌

Will win: Ennemis Interieurs

Could win: La Femme et le TGV or Sing or Silent Nights (impossible to handicap this category)

Should win: Timecode

"Emotional payoff" have been the magic words in this category of late, but they may be preempted by "zeitgeist" and "topicality" in this politically charged year. I should probably extend that logic to Best Foreign Language Film and pick The Salesman, but I want to see that one win too much to put my faith in it.

Best Documentary, Short Subject ❌

Will win: Joe’s Violin

Could win: The White Helmets or Watani: My Homeland

Should win: 4.1 Miles

I still say Watani: My Homeland is being underestimated, but I haven't got the balls to predict it, or even make it my alternate. Anyways, Joe's Violin is comfortably my least favourite of the lot, so guessing this impossible category wrong won't upset me that much.

Post-Oscars Analysis

No words. Should've sent a poet.

Final score: I could devote an entire piece to dissecting my predictions, but why even bother this year? With so many categories defying the patterns on which most pundits have come to rely (especially in the crafts), I wound up with an unexpected and historic low of 13/24 (uck), and in what I foolishly assumed would be a bounce back from last year's lacklustre 16/24.

But it all seems so irrelevant compared to the one thing everybody's going to remember about this Oscar year. You know what I'm talking about.

Even a day after the fact, I don't have the words to communicate the emotional jambalaya it felt like I swallowed all at once during those 120 seconds of horrifying and glorious chaos following the botched Best Picture announcement. I can remember feeling some combination of ecstasy and rage, and truth be told, I still haven't settled.

It's hard to fully reconcile the thrill of seeing the actual best movie of the year win Best Picture (a true rarity) with the sympathy I feel towards the producers of La La Land. No one deserves that, even if you prescribe to no publicity being bad publicity. How ironic that Jordon Horowitz has become the most unlikely folk hero of the 89th Oscars -- gaining more notoriety and goodwill in losing than winning ever could have brought him -- by simply being the nice, gracious, classy guy that he reportedly is.

When all is said and done, I think what registers the most with me is what a miracle it is for a movie like Moonlight -- small, quiet, specific yet universal -- to win the Academy's top prize. Are these the seeds of Cheryl Boone Isaac's inclusion initiative bearing first fruit, or a lucky coincidence of timing? We may have to wait the decade out to know.

Change is a gradual thing, but Moonlight's victory feels bigger and more symbolic than a mere accolade for its cinematic craft. We can only hope that more movies as sensitive, insightful and moving as this continue to be made, and that the face of cinema in America continues to diversify.

Somewhat forgotten amidst the flurry of reactions regarding Moonlight's unprecedented victory is the Oscars telecast itself, which -- besides that historic blunder which seems to have superseded all that came before it -- was mostly a breezy and passable affair as far as awards shows go.

Justin Timberlake's interactive crowd-pleaser "Can't Stop the Feeling" was a smart, engaging way kick things off, segueing into Jimmy Kimmel's opening monologue. The routine, while not the most memorable stand-up we've seen open the show in recent years, was probably the most successful. Besides leaning a bit too often on easy pickings about movies having not been seen, Kimmel batted a pretty high percentage with his jokes, most of them landing well and earning deserved laughs on cue.

His interstitial material was mostly tame but palatable, only straying off-colour once or twice, such as with his dig at incarcerated O.J. Simpson which made even Mel Gibson cringe. Some may quibble that Kimmel's frequent allusions to his feud with Matt Damon smacked too much of inside jokery that most viewers wouldn't get (possibly true), but it was certainly the most successfully protracted of the night's numerous running gags. It culminated in a precious parody of the evening's theme segment (actors describing films that inspired them) with Kimmel heaping ironic praise on Damon's performance in We Bought a Zoo, followed by Kimmel playing Damon offstage while presenting Best Original Screenplay. Belly laughs from me.

Other recurring bits yielded diminishing returns. While the gimmick of parachuting snacks provided some cute reaction shots the first time, it got exponentially less funny every time they returned to the well. Worse yet was the condescending tour bus prank that dragged on forever and wasn't even all that funny in concept. In the time that was eaten up by that nonsense, the producers could have put together actually substantial clip packages for the craft categories, or at least tightened the show up to end before midnight.

As far as Oscar's ubiquitous montages and filler footage, there are ups and downs. The mini-montages of previous Oscar winning actors is nothing we haven't seen before. The aforementioned motif of actors describing the films that inspire them and then proceeding to present an award with the star of that film, however, was nice invention for this year's show, and led to some charming presenter pairings.

Best in show among the presenters? Tough call, as there were some good ones. Kate McKinnon and Jason Bateman's amusing banter made the bitterness of Suicide Squad and Fantastic Beasts' Oscar wins easier to swollow. Lesley Mann and John Cho's adorkable chemistry made the Sci-Tech clip reel more enjoyable than it has any business being (give 'em a rom-com!). But my vote for best patter goes to the gleeful Seth Rogen coercing his childhood hero Michael J. Fox to join in with his Hamilton moment.

In the sombre reveal of Gene Wilder's death last summer, I had my armchair-producer's heart set on a bittersweet rendition of "Pure Imagination" as the only acceptable selection for this year's In Memoriam segment, which was already overpopulated with departed geniuses by the halfway point of 2016. But what we got instead was far and away the musical moment of the night. Perhaps the emotional nature of the segment has as much to with it, but the gorgeous melancholy of Bareilles' cover of Joni Mitchell is enough to put a lump in my throat on even second and third listens. Everything about this is perfect: Bareilles' strong but delicate vocals, the lighting, the arrangement (oh God, the arrangement!), and even this fade-out shot before the station break -- Perfect.