Hey Kids! Funtime 2021 Oscar® Predictions!

On Sunday night, April 25, the 93rd Academy Awards will be held at the Dolby Theatre and Union Station in Los Angeles, but, you know, mostly on Zoom. Obviously this ceremony was delayed until much later in the year than usual because of the pandemic, and that same factor is what may mean even a smaller audience. The ratings for last year’s Oscars, which took place on February 9, 2020, hit an all-time low, and it seems like fewer people are even aware of the upcoming event.

There’s also the factor that a lot of folks haven’t seen or even know about many of the nominees. Sometimes the quarantine binge-watching of some show on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu, to name but a few streaming platforms is more appealing than watching some possibly depressing indie film. Still, there were some fine films that were released in the last year, and some of them got nominations.

Here are my predictions for the winners, a few of which I feel confident with, but most are definitive examples of “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

1. BEST PICTURE: NOMADLAND

2. BEST DIRECTOR: Chloé Zhao for NOMADLAND

3. BEST ACTOR: Chadwick Boseman (MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM) Looks like everyone is in agreement on this one.

4. BEST ACTRESS: Carey Mulligan (PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN) There’s buzz aplenty that Frances McDormand is going to win for NOMADLAND, but she’s won twice before, and I have a feeling that Mulligan’s stunning performance in PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN will get more votes. Consider it this year’s wild card.

5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Daniel Kaluuya (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Yuh-Jung Youn (MINARI)

7. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale for MANK

8. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Joshua James Richards for NOMADLAND

9. COSTUME DESIGN: Ann Roth for MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: MY OCTOPUS TEACHER

11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT:   A CONCERTO IS A CONVERSATION (Kris Bowers, Ben Proudfoot)

12. FILM EDITING:  SOUND OF METAL

13. MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM (Mia Neal, Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Jamika Wilson)

14. VISUAL EFFECTS: TENET (Andrew Jackson, David Lee, Andrew Lockley, Santiago Colomo Martinez)

15. ORIGINAL SCORE: SOUL (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste)

16. ORIGINAL SONG: “Speak Now” from ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI (Leslie Odom Jr.)

17. ANIMATED SHORT:  IF ANYTHING HAPPENS I LOVE YOU

18. LIVE ACTION SHORT: TWO DISTANT STRANGERS

19. SOUND: SOUND OF METAL – I’m so happy that they combined the BEST SOUND EDITING and SOUND MIXES categories into this one, as I hated trying to figure what deserved what, and also the same film would often win both awards.

20. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Emerald Fennell for PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

21. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller for THE FATHER

22. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: SOUL

23. BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: ANOTHER ROUND

As I always say, tune in Monday to see how many I got wrong.

More later...