This last year sucked for everyone. Even the movies, which had to delay all sorts of big releases because of the global pandemic.
As the world starts to get vaccinated, it’s time to start thinking happy thoughts. Look what happened to Peter Pan when happy thoughts entered his mind: maybe we’ll start flying.
Yes that’s wishful thinking, but it would be nice for the awards season to throw the deserving a bone for delivering quality stories in a year they were hard to come by. Here are my Oscar happy thoughts…
| Category | The Favorite | The Peter Pan Happy Thought |
| Best Actor | Gone too soon. Chadwick Boseman left behind a legacy that every kid will remember forever, and he will very likely win for his stellar performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. | Boseman winning would make me very happy, as would Anthony Hopkins and his amazing performance in The Father. |
| Best Actress | A toss up between Viola Davis and Carey Mulligan at the moment. Maybe a slight edge to Mulligan, who’s Promising Young Woman has best picture chances meaning more viewers will see her performance. | All good choices here, but my heart goes to Vanessa Kirby, carrying a baby onscreen and carrying a mediocre film with her amazing performance. |
| Best Supporting Actor | Judas and the Black Messiah will have a winner here, and probably Daniel Kaluuya, playing the larger than life Fred Hampton with all kinds of charisma. | If Kaluuya doesn’t win, then I hope his PIC Lakeith Stanfield does; it’s time for one of the pair to get their Oscar. |
| Best Supporting Actress | Yuh-Jung Youn injected Minari with a bolt of electricity that made a good movie great, and has come on as of late as the front runner. | Youn winning would make me happy, although Maria Bakalova winning for Borat 2 would be hysterical seeing the presenter read the whole name of the film. |
| Best Cinematography | Nomadland gets elevated by Joshua James Richards time and location scouting, painting a gorgeous, haunting picture of a life lived in the American Frontier. | Mank’s cinematography is great & all, but Richards work is seared into my brain and heart. |
| Best Visual Effects | Tenet‘s visual effects save the movie from falling into sheer incomprehensible sci-fi babble. | Tenet, or Mulan, which looked lovely with the flowing robes and the conversion of birds into humans and back, etc. |
| Best Sound | The Sound of Metal ascends beyond the obvious pun, because of how the sound design puts us into the mindset of a person going deaf. | Rarely do films use sound so perfectly to service their story as it does in The Sound of Metal. |
| Best Musical Score | Soul has been the juggernaut here, with Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste winning most of the awards. | But that’s because Soul‘s soundtrack sweeps you up in Batiste‘s jazzy feelings of warmth. |
| Best Original Song | Speak Now from One Night in Miami is that serious Oscar Bait that’s been winning a lot recently. | Nothing made my heart swell during the depths of pandemic movie watching more than Husavik from Eurovision. WHERE THE MOUNTAINS SING THROUGH THE SCREAMS OF SEAGULLS… |
| Best Costume Design | The Ann Roth costumes from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom look pretty great, and deservedly have been picking up wins all over the place. | A great British period piece works usually because the costumes look amazing, and Alexandra Byrne did her Jane Austen homework and made some great looking dresses and suits for lots of formal dancing in Emma. |
| Best Makeup & Hairstyling | Ditto above, but for hair and makeup. | Ditto above, but for hair and makeup. |
| Best Film Editing | The frontrunner is unclear here, so when in doubt, pick Chloe Zhao editing her own film, Nomadland, as most people will watch that one. | My vote would go to the two movies that succeed in immersing you into someone’s head space: Mikkel Nielsen making you understand deafness in Sound of Metal or Yorgos Lamprinos haunting you with a dementia ridden mind in The Father. |
| Best Production Design | Mank recreated Hearst Castle, and is about the writer of Citizen Kane; it’s not winning anywhere else, so here it’s probably gonna win some gold. | I like all 5 of the nominees, but I was especially impressed with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and The Father for how they help capture the feelings of their characters. |
| Best Live Action Short | The most polished one wins here a lot or one with a star; The Letter Room stars Oscar Isaac, and Two Distant Strangers is produced by Kevin Durant about the George Floyd protests. Zeitgeisty! | I’m a sucker for a single take, and White Eye has a 20 minute unbroken sequence. Nice! |
| Best Documentary Short | A Concerto is a Coversation is described as uplifting tearjerker. That usually works for Documentary Short. | China supposedly banned the Oscars because they nominated Do Not Split about the Hong Kong protests. That kind of truth to power is deserving of a win. |
| Best Documentary | Time has been the front runner for a while, but My Octopus Teacher is fast on its heels. | The best documentaries were neither of those films. Crip Camp would be a fine choice, but I’m HARD pulling for the best movie of the year, Collective, about investigative journalism and the harrowing nature of deep seeded corruption. |
| Best Animated Short | Disney is a powerhouse usually, and here they have Burrow, about a rabbit digging the perfect hole for itself. | The prescient If Anything Happens, I Love You is a gut punch of a short about the cascading effect of gun violence. Tough stuff, but totally worthy. |
| Best Animated Film | Soul is Pixar’s best movie in a while, and has earned its frontrunner status. | I haven’t seen it, but word on the street is Wolfwalkers is something truly special, so much so I considered an Apple TV subscription. |
| Best International Feature Film | When the director of a Foreign Language film gets nominated for Best Director, that means good things for Another Round. | Did I not make it clear Collective was by far the best movie of the year? No? Well it should win here too. |
| Best Original Screenplay | Emerald Fennell has taken Hollywood by storm with her MeToo revenge film, Promising Young Woman. | There are better screenplays out there to choose from. Personally, I’d pick Lee Isaac Chung‘s beautiful Minari screenplay, and ode to the “nation of immigrants” America has become. |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Chloe Zhao‘s powerhouse Nomadland has been cleaning up everywhere. | With so little speaking in Nomadland, my vote would go towards the surprise nominee The White Tiger, a fascinating tale about India’s caste system. Also, watching the improvised Borat send 8 writers up onstage would be hilarious in general. |
| Best Director | Of all the Nomadland love, the movie does not work without the amazing direction of Chloe Zhao, who has been cleaning up this awards season for a reason. | Zhao takes the sweeping vistas of a Terrence Malick film and puts them to real, purposeful use to the storytelling. She’s something special, and deserves the recognition she’s getting. |
| Best Picture | Nomadland is the juggernaut of this race, dethroning it will be tough. | Nomadland is a fine winner, but if either The Father, or Minari wins, that’s totally fine by me. |