My Oscar Ballot – 2020

The best thing about the 92nd Academy Awards is how early in the year everything is happening: from the Golden Globes on 5 January to the Oscars on 10 February, a five-week awards season is the shortest in living memory, and the most gratifying in an age where the Oscars clutch furiously with their Gollum-arms at a veneer of prestige and relevance.

The worst thing about the Academy Awards is to mistake their importance. They have practical significance, in boosting the careers of certain actors, craftspeople, and other working celebrities, but they no longer reflect what the rest of the world is interested in watching nor any kind of majority consensus in what constitutes the best being made in movies today.

Nieteenstaande, the Oscars present the chance of a yearly game: to predict winners and outsmart other prognosticators. You can see my selections of the best that movies had to offer South Africans in 2019 here; below are my guesses at who will be successful come Sunday night.

To offer a disclaimer, I haven’t seen many of the movies nominated, but that hasn’t proven a major hindrance in the past. Watching nominated movies’ trailers, combing the lists of winners at precursor awards, and measuring the popularity of those winners’ viral speeches online are usually all that’s required to make an educated guess.

Best Picture

It appears that Best Picture is a two-way race between Sam Mendes’s British World War I movie 1917 and Bong Joon-ho’s Korean-language quasi-socialist thriller Parasite. A number of years this decade have presented a choice between two frontrunners, one a highly admired technical achievement and one a more ardently adored idiosyncracy, usually with some amenable political slant (think Avatar vs The Hurt Locker, The Social Network vs The King’s Speech, Hugo vs The Artist, Life of Pi vs Argo, Gravity vs 12 Years a Slave, The Revenant vs Spotlight, and La La Land vs Moonlight). The technical marvel usually gets beaten out, its loss compensated by an armful of technical awards. This year, Parasite has been gaining attention, admiration, and adulation on its way through the awards season, and when it’s won something its winners have been fondly received.

My prediction: Parasite

My choice: Us

Best Director

What the Oscars have tended towards in this decade of a split Best Picture race is to award the Best Picture trophy to the more apparently noble movie, while honouring the director of the more dazzling technical achievement. The Academy awards quantity over quality, and the work of a director on a CGI monolith is a hell of a lot of quantity. Sam Mendes, who directed 1917, can also count in his favour the admirable historical subject of his movie, and the Academy’s previous affinity for his work. I haven’t seen 1917, but my memory of Mendes’s other work, and my anticipation of his vulgar high-tastefulness applied to a subject of supposed horror and historical gravity makes me think he’s 99% certain to win (and also that I’m 99% certain never to see it). Also, as a significant aside, I really had thought we’d put the days behind us of all-male Best Director races, especially when three of the five have already won Academy Awards and when so many women made so many good movies last year.

My prediction: Sam Mendes, 1917

My choice: Jordan Peele, Us (or, if Best Director has to go to another movie, James Gray, for Ad Astra)

Best Actress

The most-recalled memory of last year’s ceremony is when the certain winner, Glenn Close, lost at the very finishing post, and the last person who expected Olivia Colman to be up on the stage was Olivia Colman herself. I believe this was a symptom of candidate fatigue among voters — people got tired of hearing the same name over and over again, and tired of the certainty of her ordainment, and switched to another candidate for the hell of it. A much shorter awards season benefits this year’s frontrunner, Renée Zellweger. Five excellent actors are nominated in this category, but Zellweger’s win would be particularly gratifying, to draw another neat parallel between her own comeback and that of her beautiful character, Judy Garland.

My prediction: Renée Zellweger, Judy

My choice: Lupita Nyong’o, Us (though I’d be thrilled by Zellweger’s win as well)

Best Actor

On a strictly personal note, watching Joaquin Phoenix’s victory lap of awards show speeches has convinced me of his singular asshole-itutde. I haven’t seen Joker, but I’m surprised that not enough people were as exhausted as I was listening to all the controversies surrounding it, not to want to mention his name for another year. This winner seems pre-ordained as well, a typical Oscar choice for most acting rather than best acting, and the particular popularity of his speeches online seems to have cemented that.

My prediction: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

My choice: Brad Pitt, Ad Astra

Best Supporting Actress

I love Laura Dern, and I love the fact that she’s the best bet for this year’s winner. I like to think also that at least some Academy members are fondly remembering her performances in Big Little Lies, for which they were sadly barred from voting. Her character is a pleasingly surprising component in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, and her particular performance adds layers of suggestions regarding backstory, inner life, and life beyond the movie’s boundaries.

My prediction: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

My choice: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Best Supporting Actor

Four of the five nominated actors have already won Oscars, and so it’s pleasing that the frontrunner here is the one who has never won one before. I haven’t seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but I would have preferred it if Brad Pitt were winning his first Oscar in the leading category for Ad Astra instead.

My prediction: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

My choice: Bill Duke, High Flying Bird

Best Original Screenplay

Quentin Tarantino has always appeared just slightly too cool for the Oscars, which is why they throw baffled screenwriting awards his way. Bong Joon-ho is also a frontrunner here, and one that seems to bring a little freshness with him. Tarantino already has two Academy Awards, and I’d love to watch him scowl once more the way he did at the Baftas when Bong walked up to accept the award that Tarantino had expected to win.

My prediction: Bong Joon-ho, Parasite

My choice: Tarell Alvin McCraney, High Flying Bird

Best Adapted Screenplay

This is a category I feel particularly unsure of. I would say the race is between Jojo Rabbit (how the Academy loves to applaud offensives against Nazis, 80 years too late) and Little Women (a handsome consolation prize for Greta Gerwig’s egregious omission from the Best Director category). Having seen neither, I’ll go for the winner that I’m most eager to see onstage. (I also just realised that I saw virtually no movies with adapted screenplays that I particularly admired that were in the 2019 race, so I don’t have a choice of my own.)

My prediction: Greta Gerwig, Little Women

Best Animated Feature Film

Knowing none of the movies here, I’ll go with Pixar.

My prediction: Toy Story 4

Best International Feature Film

New category name, same old rules. Don’t bet against a multiple-category nominee.

My prediction: Parasite

My choice: Atlantics

Best Documentary Feature

I only know one movie here, and I know that it’s well-liked, and that it comes with a stamp of mutual appreciation between Hollywood and the Obamas.

My prediction: American Factory

My choice: American Factory

Best Documentary Short Subject

?

My prediction: Walk Run Cha-Cha

Best Live Action Short Film

???

My prediction: Brotherhood

Best Animated Short Film

I’ve only heard of one of these five.

My prediction: Hair Love

Best Original Score

Gone are the days when this award went to the best Erich Korngold imitation, and so John Williams (with his astonishing 52nd nomination) is out of the running here. Only one composer has been winning each major award for this work.

My prediction: Hildur Guðnadóttir, Joker

My choice: Max Richter, Ad Astra

Best Original Song

Randy Newman has been nominated over 20 times, and twice (seemingly randomly) he’s won. However, the Academy could never pass up a chance to bring a certified rock star on stage.

My prediction: Elton John and Bernie Taupin, “I’m Gonna Love Me Again”

Best Sound Editing

This award is for the best sound effects that are added into a movie.

My prediction: 1917

My choice: Ad Astra

Best Sound Mixing

This award is for the best overall mix of all sounds on the soundtrack.

My prediction: 1917

Best Production Design

My prediction: 1917

My choice: Harriet

Best Cinematography

My prediction: 1917

My choice: Ad Astra

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

My prediction: Bombshell

My choice: Us

Best Costume Design

My prediction: Joker

My choice: Harriet. Or maybe Us.

Best Film Editing

My prediction: The Irishman

My choice: High Flying Bird

Best Visual Effects

My prediction: Avengers: Endgame

My choice: Ad Astra

Comment with your predictions and choices.