Skip to main content

Oscars 2016: Who Will Win?

Image
By

2016 Oscars Predictions

The Oscars are approaching fast and that means it's time to predict the winners. Here's how I think the major races will turn out.



Best Supporting Actor:

The winner should be Mark Rylance.  The great stage actor delivered one of the best performances of the year in Bridge of Spies, understated and subtle, it was completely unexpected from an actor who collected numerous Tony Awards for his over-the-top stage performances. With that being said, he's going to lose to Sylvester Stallone for playing Rocky again.
Predicted winner: Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Best Supporting Actress:

This is a tricky category because two of the nominees (Alicia Vikander and Rooney Mara) are lead actresses. This sometimes works, as lead actresses have won in this category in the past (Jennifer Connelly, Catherine Zeta Jones, etc.), so it seems likely that Alicia Vikander will take this one for her role in The Danish Girl. There's a small possibility that Steve Jobs' Kate Winslet may upset. 
Predicted Winner: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Best Actor:

It's going to be Leonardo DiCaprio. The grueling production of The Revenant seems like enough for the Academy to reward him. Whether or not it's a good performance seems irrelevant at this point. 
Predicted Winner: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Best Actress:

This year's true Best Actress would be Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn. If the audience didn't care about the main character, Brooklyn would be tedious, but it's one of the best movies of the year, and that's largely due to Ronan. But the Oscar will probably go to Brie Larson for her heartbreaking performance in Room. She's been delivering great performances for years, so it's nice to see her get some recognition. 
Predicted Winner: Brie Larson, Room

Best Director:

Alejandro G. Iñárritu will likely become the third director in Oscar history to win Best Director back-to-back, after John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The much-discussed troubled shoot of The Revenant is probably going to be seen by voters as making the finished film all the more of an achievement. 
Predicted Winner: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, The Revenant

Best Picture:

The three major predictors (The SAG, DGA, and PGA) all went to different films, so this category is harder to predict than in past years. The films that have a chance of winning are The Revenant, Spotlight, and The Big Short. 

 The Revenant has the most nominations of any film this year, with 12. Spotlight and The Big Short only have 6 and 5, respectively. The last time a film won with less than 7 nominations was The Departed almost a decade ago. But, The Revenant does not have a screenplay nomination. The last time a film won without a screenplay nomination was Titanic in 1998 (and before that was The Sound of Music in 1966). 

Aside from Best Picture, The Revenant will most likely win Actor, Director, and Cinematography, maybe others. Spotlight and Big Short will win their screenplay categories, but probably nothing else. The last time a film won Best Picture and only one other Oscar was in 1953 with The Greatest Show on Earth (perhaps the worst film to ever win Best Picture).

 So does all this mean The Revenant's going to win? Maybe, but when was the last time a film as gory and brutal as The Revenant won? Certainly not recently. The other two feel more like past winners in this sense, and also have "important" subjects, and that never hurts either.

 Also never has a director directed consecutive Best Pictures, and Iñárritu directed Birdman (a film I didn't even like that much), so Revenant winning would be a first. 

 What also must be considered is the bizarre voting system used by the Academy for this category. They use a preferential ballot, where voters have to rank the films first, second, third, etc. This could work against Revenant, as it is a very divisive film. A film like that is either your favorite or your least favorite, so it won't get many second and third place votes. Spotlight and Big Short have been generally well-liked by most, so either film could presumably win by having the most second place votes.

 Ultimately, there are things working for and against each film, I'll say Revenant, but wouldn't be surprised by Big Short, or maybe Spotlight.
Predicted Winner: The Revenant

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a comment!

Popular posts from this blog

"My Mind Turns Your Life Into Folklore": Why Taylor Swift's "Gold Rush" Is a Song About Songwriting

By
"My mind turns your life into folklore." That line, from the song "Gold Rush," is the only time the word "folklore" is spoken on either of Taylor Swift's 2020 records, Folklore and Evermore , the latter of which is where the song appears. The presence of the line indicates that "Gold Rush" is a pivotal song not only in Swift's lockdown duology, but in her maturation as a songwriter.  Swift's early albums often drew heavily from her own experiences, with fans and the media scouring her lyrics for clues as to which ex-boyfriend her numerous breakup songs referred. Her tumultuous dating life made as many headlines as her music, in part because it informed so much of the music. The discourse was often ridiculous and reductive, and thankfully, that period of her career is over (Swift has been in a relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn since 2016).  Both of her 2020 albums have their fair share of autobiographical songs, but they also see ...
2 comments
Read more

New "Beauty and the Beast" Fails to Put New Spin on the Tale as Old as Time: Review

By
Film Review: Beauty and the Beast The new live action version of Beauty and the Beast is not very good. The film's best moments come directly from the 1991 animated version, which I once named the  best animated Disney film of all time . It seems so preoccupied with recapturing what made that movie so great that it forgets to make this one unique or different in any way. At every possible chance director Bill Condon has to establish an interesting visual look for the film, he defers to the animated film and copies its look. What is the point of making a live action version of an animated movie only to make it look like its animated? Beauty and the Beast never answers that question, and the result is an uninspired retread of a classic story.
1 comment
Read more

Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen are Excellent in Timely Comedy "Ingrid Goes West": Review

By
Film Review: Ingrid Goes West I was worried based on the trailers and marketing for Ingrid Goes West that it was going to be a cautionary tale about the perils of social media. One of those condescending 'lessons' about how much better the world would be if we still used rotary phones and things like that. You know, stuff like this . Thankfully, Ingrid Goes West is not that, it's not even about social media despite being set in the Instagram Age. Written by Matt Spicer and David Branson Smith and directed by Spicer, the movie is about Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza), who has recently been released from a mental hospital and following the death of her mother decides to reinvent herself in Los Angeles, inspired by the Instagram feed of a seemingly perfect influencer named Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). Using clues from her Instagram, Ingrid tracks Taylor down and befriends her. Yes, Instagram plays a large part in the story, but it's one that could be (and has been) told i...
Post a Comment
Read more