Our last, best guess in the indications

Oscar’s endless (or, depending on your perspective, without beginning) season finally peaks on Monday: After a two-month extension to the eligibility window, March 15 will bring nominations for the 93rd Oscar. It has been a long and difficult path, full of elegies and monologues, and everything has changed in the last week. When voting for the nomination began, industry groups containing true Oscar voters made their favorites known – first the PGA and DGA, and then the BAFTAs, who threw everything into disarray. For the first time, the British acting and directing categories were voted on by juries of 10 to 12 people, which means that, as far as precursors are concerned, we should accept these nominations with a whole fry of salt. Meanwhile, the Critics Choice Awards launched a last-minute spotlight on some worthy candidates.

So, after all this, who are we going to choose? Our choices in the six main categories are below:

The father
Black Bottom by Ma Rainey
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
One night in miami
Promising young woman
Metal sound
The Chicago Trial 7

Producers Guild nominations are for the Best Picture field what chopping an onion is for most recipes – the foundation you start with before adding your own seasoning. The PGAs nominate ten films each year, and we can usually expect seven or eight of them to break the Oscar list, and perhaps one or two who lost the PGA to sneak back. Of this year’s nominees, Mank, Minari, Nomadland, Promising young woman, and The Chicago Trial 7 feel like our first-rate competitors and performance vehicles Ma Rainey and One night in miami you will receive thanks to the love of the largest branch of the Academy. This brings us to seven. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm it is an obvious choice as the first PGA nominee to go, but who takes your place? PGA is more populist than Oscar, so Soul and World News both absent ones probably exclude them. But last minute The father he recovered from his contempt for producers ‘and publishers’ associations by clearing BAFTA nominations, which seems to indicate sufficient international support to become our eighth.

In the interest of spreading the wealth, let’s assume that we will have nine nominees this year, with the race reaching the remaining two PGA titles: Judas and the Black Messiah, and Metal sound. While Judas the pair is more likely to get an acting trophy, Metal has been accumulating nominations for guilds all week, which gives me an advantage.

Lee Isaac Chung, Minari
Emerald Fennell, Promising young woman
David Fincher, Mank
Aaron Sorkin, The Chicago Trial 7
Chloé Zhao, Nomadland

I chose the same five that the DGA chose, which is hardly automatic: the guild and the Academy rarely overlap exactly in their choices. But these are our top five candidates for the Best Picture, and while there is a chance that Sorkin will be scorned by a bunch of directors who tend to prefer an author to a solid, impassive film production, the three newcomers are most likely to replace him. – One night in miamiRegina King, Metal soundis Darius Marder, and The fatherFlorian Zeller – share the same disadvantage. If you want an underdog, consider Another roundThomas Vinterberg, a celebrated European who could appeal to a subsidiary that is more global than most.

Riz Ahmed, Metal sound
Chadwick Boseman, Black Bottom by Ma Rainey
Anthony Hopkins, The father
Tahar Rahim, The Mauritanian
Steven Yeun, Minari

Ahmed, Boseman and Hopkins arrived everywhere, but the other two Actor seats are up for grabs. MankGary Oldman was nominated for a Globe and SAG, but Herman Mankiewicz’s biopic has lost some important nominations recently, and considering that the Academy has given Oldman his Oscar a few years ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if he were our unexpected scorn on the morning of appointment. I’m optimistic Minari, then Yeun gets one of the free seats to lead his team, and the last place goes to Rahim’s turn as a prisoner of Gitmo in The Mauritanian, who followed his success at Globes with a shocking performance in the BAFTA categories without juries.

Andra Day, United States x Billie Holiday
Viola Davis, Black Bottom by Ma Rainey
Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of woman
Frances McDormand, Nomadland
Carey Mulligan, Promising young woman

Throughout the season, we wondered which wild card artist would take fifth place in the Best Actress category. Andra Day’s surprise Globes beat the other women listed above arrested her in that place, and as competitors like Amy Adams and Zendaya have seen their films disappear, I don’t think any of the top four are in danger either. (I wouldn’t much believe Mulligan’s criticism of BAFTAs, which looks like the kind of random results you occasionally get with a jury system.)

Sacha Baron Cohen, The Chicago Trial 7
Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Alan Kim, Minari
Leslie Odom Jr., One night in miami
Paul Raci, Metal sound

Nobody got a bigger boost during the Oscar vote than Alan Kim, 8, who ended a series of charming media appearances with a tearful acceptance speech at the Critics Choice Awards last week. Then he got a BAFTA nomination, which, jury or not, may have influenced members of the Academy who were hesitant to join his team. Was it enough to help you break out of a category where Jacob Tremblay literally fell short? I bet so, since Minari has more heat from Best Picture than Bedroom did, and Kim was, in many ways, the face of his campaign. (Call it the Tavira Marina rule.) He joins our trio of locks – Cohen, Kaluuya and Odom Jr. – but with Da 5 Bloods stumbling and Chadwick Boseman sure to win the main category, I suspect that the late actor will not be among them here. Instead, voters will recognize Raci, a favorite of critics who has been excluded from the main forerunners, but is finally paid due when the Academy fails to name Jared Leto for saying strange “tacos”.

Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy
Olivia Colman, The father
Jodie Foster, The Mauritanian
Youn Yuh-jung, Minari

She’s back! I was suspicious in recent weeks about Bakalova’s chances of pulling a Melissa McCarthy, so what has changed? Borat getting a PGA nomination helped, as did his choice of critic and BAFTA nomination, which may have reassured voters that the Bulgarian newcomer was in fact “Oscar-y” enough. Furthermore, Mankin blank in the BAFTA Best Picture category made me lose the forefront of the experts’ first season, Amanda Seyfried, as I am increasingly convinced that the Academy will consider this a purely technical achievement. And Colman and Foster enter, thus stimulating vivid memories of past traumas for fellow nominee Glenn Close.