As I look over my final predictions for tomorrow night’s Oscar ceremony, I notice that I’ve made only one change — in the Best Live Action Short category — since taking my initial stab the day of the nominations. And I haven’t made a single change since I started the Oscar Guide series.
Am I that confidant in my picks? Not really. It’s a very unpredictable year all of a sudden (the AP chimes in on that here), even if conventional wisdom would have us believe much of this is a foregone conclusion. But nothing has really moved the needle during the bulk of phase two and the one controversy that popped up may not be as detrimental as some suspect. Regardless, I’m frankly bracing myself for having an off year.
And it kinda sucks because I set a pretty high bar for myself last year, a personal best, as I nailed down a web-leading 21 of the 24 categories (23 of 24 if you count alternates). That included a call for “Departures” that left me exposed to plenty of “You’re just trying to be different” heckling. Ahem.
If I even approach those numbers this time around, I’ll certainly be surprised. I frankly don’t expect to hit 21 ever again, but who knows? Many areas of this race are coming right down to the wire.
Much like the live action and animated short fields, in order for voters to cast their ballots for the documentary short category, they have to attend screenings of all the nominees. This tends to make these categories a bit tougher to predict, because they are frequently immune to noise in the media. You screen, you vote.
These appeared at Movie City News’s