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Of course, the Oscars are nothing if not a political game. Every week, new films are released, reviewed, and hyped by the Hollywood machine. And that means that every week, new frontrunners might emerge. The Oscar Grouch will be back every Wednesday to keep you updated on this year’s Oscar race.
The Academy Awards announced their nominees on Tuesday, and it’s a whole new world out there among Oscar followers. Now it’s no longer about who can get nominated but who can win. And “who can win” is increasingly seeming a lot like “anyone from La La Land and also Viola Davis.” With a whopping 14 nominations — enough to tie legendary Oscar champs All About Eve and Titanic — La La Land is poised to win big. HUGE. Here’s to the fools who dreamed that the guy who made Whiplash had a candy-colored original musical in him, because it’s about to pay off, big-time.
But while we have four whole weeks to debate the ins and outs of the Oscar races, it’s also important to recognize that other major event happening in the film business: the Sundance Film Festival played all this week. Last year at Sundance, there emerged a sure-fire Oscar contender that everybody thought had just begun its march to the Dolby Theater. Of course, that movie was The Birth of a Nation, which reaped exactly zero nominations on Tuesday. Also premiering at Sundance last year? Manchester by the Sea, which received rapturous critical appreciation of its own (though nothing near the avalanche of buzz that descended on Birth). So … which is it? Is Sundance buzz a hallucinogenic mountain haze, not to be trusted once at sea level? Or is it a bellwether of kudos yet to come?
To help us sort out these questions, we turned to veteran Oscar blogger, film writer, and proprietor of Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells, who dispatched to us from Utah itself for a quick chat.
Decider.com: Seeing as you’re at Sundance, I wanted to ask a bit about your thoughts on Oscar speculation at the festival. After the premiere of Mudbound [the new World War II-era film from Pariah director Dee Rees] the other night, some of the raves had an eye towards future Oscar success, while others expressed the idea that talking Oscar at Sundance was, in addition to being premature, actively harmful to the films in that it sets up too-big expectations. Where do you come down on that?
Jeffrey Wells: You can forget Mudbound. It has a heart and a soul, but it’s waaay too slow. Set in the murky, muddy Mississippi Delta in homes without plumbing, it makes you feel like you’re in a fucking penal colony. I’m stuck in this shit hole for two hours…??? Carey Mulligan is sublime as usual and Jason Mitchell is quite good, but Jason Clarke, who plays Mulligan’s husband, is too fat and dull-witted. (It made no sense that Mulligan would marry him.) And then at the end it suddenly turns into Mississippi Burning … please!
With all that being said, has there been anything at this year’s Sundance that had you thinking “yeah, that’ll be around come next year’s awards season”?
There is NO QUESTION that Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name will be a Best Picture contender. More than just a landmark gay film that transcends the term “gay film” — it’s a sensuous masterpiece with one of the greatest closing monologues ever. Will Sony Classics shell out for a serious Oscar campaign? Who knows, but this is WITHOUT QUESTION the first major film of 2017.
Which film or performance that wasn’t nominated on Tuesday was been most egregiously short-changed?
Hidden Figures‘ Kevin Costner should have collected a Best Supporting Actor nom, not Lion’s Dev Patel, whose performance is cloying and dewy-eyed. Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper was easily one of the most fascinating films of 2016 (and it included Kristen Stewart’s best performance ever), but IFC Films decided to give it a 3.10.17 release with a totally shitty poster. Ralph Fiennes gave a 21st Century career-best performance in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, and he wasn’t even paid attention to by the Gurus of Gold/Gold Derby gang.
That said, here are Decider’s current predictions for who we think will win in all six major categories — not who we think deserves to (ranked in order of “buzziness”). Enter “The Oscar Grouch“:
BEST PICTURE
Front Runner: La La Land
Potentially Interesting Spoiler: Moonlight
What’s The Buzz: With 14 nominations — tied for the most ever — La La Land is going to be VERY difficult to unseat. We’re putting Moonlight as the spoiler if only because it’s the only other Best Picture nominee with a narrative that might be able to compete. Meanwhile, we’re back to nine nominated Best Pictures after a couple years with eight, and a year after #OscarsSoWhite, it’s refreshing to see four Best Picture nominees (Moonight, Hidden Figures, Fences, Lion) telling stories about non-white protagonists (and actors from all four of those movies were nominated).
BEST DIRECTOR
Front Runner: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)
Potentially Interesting Spoiler: Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)
What’s The Buzz: These days, Best Picture and Best Director go to different films almost as often as they pair together. Last year, Spotlight took best picture while ceding Best Director to Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu for The Revenant (guys, remember how much we talked about The Revenant?). This year feels very much like a non-split year, especially since the trend in split years has been for the director of the big Hollywood flick with all the blow-line nominations to take Best Director and leave the smaller film for Best Picture. This year, the bigger film takes both.
BEST ACTOR
Front Runner: Casey Affleck (Manchester By the Sea)
Potentially Interesting Spoiler: Denzel Washington (Fences)
What’s The Buzz: While there’s still a chance that Affleck could be undone by his sexual harrassment scandal, the push that I expected Denzel Washington to get to win his third Oscar just hasn’t materialized. But congrats to second-time nominees Ryan Gosling and Viggo Mortensen and first-time nominee Andrew Garfield.
BEST ACTRESS
Front Runner: Emma Stone (La La Land)
Potentially Interesting Spoiler: Natalie Portman (Jackie)
What’s The Buzz: Last week, I referred to Ruth Negga as an “esoteric long shot” to get a nomination. How wrong I was. And regardless of worthy snubs Amy Adams and Annette Bening, I’m pretty happy to have been wrong, since Nega’s quiet, controlled performance is something that could have easily been overlooked. It still feels like Emma Stone is taking this pretty easily, but Portman’s Jackie managed a couple other side nominations (Score and Costumes), so her movie isn’t completely dead in the water.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Front Runner: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)
Potentially Interesting Spoiler: Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals)
What’s The Buzz: It’s important to remember that, aside from critics’ awards, Mahershala Ali hasn’t won anything yet. But it says a lot that the guy who beat him at the Globes, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, wasn’t even nominated. Could Michael Shannon pick up that Nocturnal Animals mantle and run with it? I mean, he could. But the Academy was not nearly as enamored of Tom Ford’s movie as the Hollywood Foreign Press was.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Front Runner: Viola Davis (Fences)
Potentially Interesting Spoiler: Michelle Williams (Manchester By the Sea)
What’s The Buzz: And the march to Viola Davis’s Oscar victory continues. With a Best Picture nomination (and an Adapted Screenplay nod for August Wilson), there’s nothing to suggest weakness for the Fences actress. These five nominees were the five we’ve been expecting since the Globes nominations, but let’s take a second to give Nicole Kidman some kudos that have been a long time coming:
You made it, Nicole!
