2019 Oscars Preview

This weekend, the 91st annual Academy Awards or more commonly called, The Oscars will be broadcasted live on ABC. Now I know there has been a tremendous amount of attention focused on the Kevin Hart scandal, and how the show has no replacement host, but the show must go on. Honestly, the Academy usually sucks, but they kinda dealt with this no host thing pretty perfectly by absolutely stacking the list of award presenters for the show, including Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Chadwick Boseman, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Sam L Jackson, Tina Fey, Brie Larson, Michael B, Jordan, Jason Momoa, Barbara Streisand, John Mulaney, Michael Keaton, Jennifer Lopez and many more. So no host, no problem. Anyhow, lets dive into a few of the biggest awards and how I believe they should shake out. (Full disclosure this blog is LONG. Fun, but long.)

The first award I wanna talk about is Best Visual Effects. Now I know this isn’t the biggest award and you may be here just to learn about actor/actress and picture, so if that’s the case just skip right by this. Personally, this year this is an award i’m feeling really passionate about, the nominees are: Christopher Robin, Avengers: Infinity War, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ready Player One, and First Man. My pick to win this award is Avengers: Infinity War, because how can it not be?! For pete’s sake the goddamn villain is completely CGI based and they spend two thirds of the movie on various space planets! (the scenes with Stark and Spidey on Titan plus the Guardians / Thor storyline). Thanos looks so good that you almost forget he’s CGI, the visuals of the battles on Titan and in Wakanda are amazing, and other CGI characters like Rocket Racoon, Hulk, and Groot look fantastic as always (besides that one brutal shot at the end of Bruce’s head coming out of the Hulk Buster armor). The only two movies I could see having a chance to play spoiler in this award are First Man because as I stated before The Academy sucks and has constantly been weird about giving comic book movies Oscars (lets remember the lack of Nolan Batman Oscars), or my personal dark-horse, Ready Player One where the great Stephen Spielberg literally used CGI to create an entire freaking video game universe on screen AND a futuristic dystopian Columbus Ohio. But honestly, Avengers did everything all these movies did, and did it better, so for me it’s an easy choice.

Next up is the award for Best Score and the award for Best Original Song. This year was LOADED with good music in movies. First off, Black Panther came out and killed it with a Kendrick Lamar produced original album featuring many radio hits and a classic great Marvel Studios score. After that we got musicals like A Star Is Born and Mary Poppins, a great 70’s mo town score in BlacKkKlansman, and we went full circle to end the year with another hit filled soundtrack in Sony’s Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse (how did this movie only get one nomination?). I’m gonna keep this relatively quick, the nominees for best score are: Black Panther, Isle Of Dogs, BlacKkKlansman, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Mary Poppins Returns, and my winner, although it was super hard to decide has to be Mary Poppins Returns. This was close one, so don’t be surprised if Black Panther pulls it out, but honestly I think it was Black Panthers soundtrack rather than it’s in movie score that was so amazing. Mary Poppins had a delightful and fun score throughout the entire two hour runtime. For Best Original Song the nominees are: When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings, Shallow, The Place Where Lost Things Go, I’ll Fight, and All Of The Stars. This has gotta be the easiest award of the year, it’s obviously Shallow by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. They’re great. The movie is great. You love this song. I love this song. Your mom loves this song. We want them together in real life. It’s amazing. If this fucking song doesn’t win I will be furious Sunday night, it’s that good.

The next award I want to talk about is the award for Best Supporting Actor. The nominees for Best Supporting Actor are: Adam Driver for BlacKkKlansman, Mahershala Ali for The Green Book, Sam Rockwell for Vice, Sam Elliot for A Star Is Born, and Richard E. Grant for Can You Ever Forgive Me. For me this is tough, there’s definitely a divide between who I think will win and who I am pulling for to win. The pick though has to be Mahershala Ali for Green Book. Ali has won all the big awards leading up to the Oscars including the Golden Globe, the SAG, the BFCA, and the BAFTA, he’s essentially just cleaning up at every award show. This would be Ali’s second Oscar in three years (Moonlight) and it feels like it’s already essentially a done deal. However my dark horse, who I am rooting for and I don’t think has been getting enough buzz is Adam Driver for BlacKkKlansman. Driver’s work playing an undercover Jewish detective face to face with KKK killers was nothing short of spectacular, and his visual acting helped add even more layers of thrilling suspense to already edge of your seat dangerous encounters. Signs point to Ali, but I really am pulling for my boy Kylo Ren to shock the world.

Unlike the last award, the award for Best Supporting Actress is 100% up in the air still. I honestly can’t figure it out. The nominees are: Amy Adams for Vice, Emma Stone for The Favourite, Regina King for If Beale Street Could Talk, Rachel Weisz for The Favourite, and Marina de Tavira for Roma. The one thing I think I can say for sure is that Stone and Weisz will cancel each other out. They’re both previous winners and both coming from the same film and I think their performances will cancel each other out for stealing the movie. Now between Adams, King, and Tavira. I love Amy Adams. Alway have, always will. I think it’s absolutely crazy she has been nominated now six times and has no wins, I think she is a fantastic Lois Lane, and I think she was amazing in Vice. However all that being said, sadly she really isn’t getting the buzz right now despite her fantastic performance, so I wouldn’t count on her winning. This leaves the two Golden Globe winners, Regina King and Marina de Tavira, and my pick has to be Regina King for If Beale Street Could Talk. Weirdly this film didn’t get the amount of nominations I thought it deserved, and hasn’t really gotten any love at the award shows, besides Kings performance. Although Roma may be the darling of the Oscars this year I think King pulls this out and gets If Beale Street Could Talk at least one Oscar to hang their hat on.

I think Best Animated Picture is pretty straight forward this year. The nominees are: Incredibles 2, Isle Of Dogs, Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse, Mirai, and Ralph Breaks The Internet. This was a ridiculously easy pick and it is Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse. This movie is GOOD, like it could’ve been nominated for Best Picture never mind Best Animated Picture good. It feels like a freaking real life walking and talking comic book, I literally don’t think I have seen an animated film edited so carefully as this one. It’s funny, inspiring, filled with action, and has a fantastic soundtrack and was honestly in my opinion a top 5 movie of the year, never mind animated movie. Also Jake Johnson from New Girl is hilarious as the voice of Peter Parker and is in general people forget how funny he is.

Okay now onto the big four awards. Starting with Best Director. To be honest, I don’t even want to talk about this award. It’s absolute bullshit that Bradley Cooper THE PRE NOMINATION FAVORITE TO WIN THE AWARD wasn’t even NOMINATED. Absolute bullshit! Coop killed it and even said to Oprah Winfrey he was “embarrassed” when he wasn’t nominated. But it is what it is and going forward the nominees are: Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman, Adam McKay for Vice, Pawel Pawilkowski for Cold War, Alfonso Cuarón for Roma, and Yorgos Lanthimos for The Favourite. There’s a few ways I could see this one going. First off, let’s talk about the fact that Adam McKay is nominated for this award. Adam McKay! Again! The same guy who used to direct and write almost every single Will Ferrell classic has now over the past three years has gotten two Best Director nods! What a freaking guy! One of my favorite directors, I mean Step Brothers? The Anchorman? Talladega Nights? All classic comedies, and now The Big Short and Vice have gotten him five Oscar nominations over three years, absolutley bonkers and I love it. Also I think his casting choices for this movie were fantastic and it shows with Bale, Rockwell and Adams all getting Oscar noms. However as much as I love McKay, the easy choice is to say front runner Cuarón will get another Best Director for Roma (previously won for Gravity), and I wouldn’t mind that happening. What he did with a cast of primarily non professional actors was amazing and Roma is obviously the Academies sweetheart with 10 nominations this year. However my pick for best director, is the man, the myth, the legend, Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman. It’s absurd that Spike has never been nominated for Best Director before, not even for Do The Right Thing or Malcom X, but I think his patience will pay off and Lee’s ability to tie the 70’s history piece to events that we see in our country today will be enough to land him his first statue.

Now for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The nominees are Lady Gaga for A Star Is Born, Glenn Close for The Wife, Olivia Colman for The Favourite, Melissa McCarthy for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, and Yalitza Aparicio for Roma. So the pick on who I THINK will win is Glenn Close for The Wife. It’s like a DiCaprio situation again, Close has been snubbed in the past and is now on her seventh time through without any Oscars to show for it. She’s been marching through this award season though taking home virtually every award, and the complexity of her role makes this success make sense. However, you can’t count out Lady Gaga who I loved the performance of in A Star Is Born, I mean people will say it’s a remake of a remake and that should hurt her chances but I don’t buy that, I think Gaga was amazing and her on screen chemistry with Bradley Cooper might have been the best on screen romance I have ever seen. Also a darkhorse outside the top two to look out for is Melissa McCarthy for Can You Ever Forgive Me? McCarthy completely transforms herself in this role and acts the shit out of it. It’s almost crazy to think this is the same actress who put out The Happytime Murders earlier in the year and other cheesy comedy movies like Tammy, The Heat, and that godawful female Ghostbusters remake. McCarthy honestly may have given the best performance, but look for Gaga or Close to win the award with the momentum they have had at shows and in the media.

The award for Best Actor in a Leading Role has been swinging momentum throughout the past month. The nominees are: Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody, Christian Bale for Vice, Bradley Cooper for A Star Is Born, Willem Dafoe for At Eternity’s Gate, and Viggo Mortensen for Green Book. Before awards season started it felt like Cooper had it in the bag, his performance was fucking amazing! Then the Golden Globes came about and Christian Bale’s amazing transformation into Dick Cheney got him some momentum and it felt like we’d have a close one! But no… out of nowhere Rami Malek went in and essentially took almost every major award throughout award show season and now it almost feels like it’s his to lose. First off I just want to say, for the amount of heat I am about to give Bohemian Rhapsody in the next section of this blog, I actually liked Malek’s portrayal of Freddie Mercury and would not be THAT upset if he won for best actor. That being said, my pick is Bradley Cooper. Cooper played the lead role of Jackson Maine so fantastically and flawlessly, making us all feel his on screen love with Lady Gaga and even more so feeling his pain dealing with his depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction throughout the movie. Cooper did fantastic showing his characters emotional complexity and really making the audience feel with him as much as they felt for him.

Finally, the big one, Best Picture. The nominees are: Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book, BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther, The Favourite, Roma, A Star Is Born, and Vice. I honestly have no idea what to think of this award this year. Remember when I said the Academy sucks? Well the way this award is shaking out is exactly why. First off, they changed the rules so that there could be ten nominees a few years back to include more great films, and then only nominated eight this year? That literally makes zero fucking sense. Great films like Mary Poppins Returns, If Beale Street Could Talk and Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse all not even getting a chance to be on the BALLOT, while Bohemian Rhapsody which got a 61% score on Rotten Tomatoes and almost entirely mediocore at best reviews gets not only a nomination but is now becoming a front runner for Best Picture?? Don’t get me wrong it was a “fun” movie but considering that a movie about Freddie Mercury fucked up portraying his sexuality in a super accurate way worthy of a best picture nod. There was too much Queen to call it a Freddie movie, and too much just Freddie to call it a Queen movie. However moving on, Green Book is fun and a great feel good story however there’s a lot of controversy surrounding people involved in the movie and that’s really killed it’s momentum, BlacKkKlansman was one of the most powerful movies I have seen recently and John David Washington and Adam Driver were great, any other year I think this could be a major front runner, but in this stacked field I would currently place it as my dark horse. Black Panther was more than a movie, it was a movement. The cultural impact it had was huge, and being a comic book movie fan words literally can’t describe how giddy it makes me to finally see one of my movies be nominated for best picture, and although I think the CGI was sub par and there were a lot of underdeveloped characters, Killmonger was awesome and if BP won, I would be happy for Ryan Coogler and Kevin Feige. I think The Favourite is a long shot especially with no hype in the media, and it hasn’t really been cleaning up around the award shows either. Vice is fun and with a great director, and cast, and with the political ties I won’t say it is dead in the water but I don’t think it really has a chance either. Now my top two… First up, the clear academy favorite, Roma. Roma has 10 nominations, including best picture, actress, director, supporting actress, cinematography, foreign film, and screenplay. This movie is a goddamn wagon. If you are gonna bet on a movie to win it would be smart to bet on this movie. However, I’m not smart. My pick for best picture is A Star Is Born. I think Bradley Cooper is the best actor, best director, and is the best adapted screenplay writer, and I think Gaga was amazing as well. This movie made you laugh, love, hurt, and had kick ass music. For how good Roma is I think A Star Is Born is better, and although it may be the underdog to Roma (and even Bohemian Rhapsody, but fuck that movie) I think the Academy will give the award to A Star Is Born come Sunday night.

Well that’s it folks, thanks for reading this behemoth of a blog. Hope you all enjoyed and feel better prepared for Sunday night!