2017 Oscar Noms: Thoughts And Predictions

Milo, here.

Oh boy, chabois and chaladies of The Academy of Motion Pictures and Other Cool Stuff Like That (official title) have chosen their picks for the cream of the crop in 2016 movies. There were a couple of snubs and couple of shoe-ins throughout the year, but that’s to be expected. Plus, with Fences and Moonlight grabbing themselves a couple of noms, seems like #OscarsSoWhite isn’t too much of an issue. But that’s coming from the brightest white in England, so I better check my privilege. Questionable comments aside, I’m just here to take a look at the noms, give me thoughts and have a little predict as well.

First things first, La La Land. As soon as it came out and everyone swooned over it, we all knew it was an absolute shoe-in for Best Picture and, what a surprise, it’s an absolute shoe-in for Best Picture. To be honest, though, Damien Chazelle’s love letter to old-school Hollywood, as I said in my review, deserves all the praise it gets and, if that praise comes in the form of Best Picture, then so be it. On top of that, it also landed 11 other nominations, including Best Lead Actor and Actress, Best Original Music and Best Original Screenplay, all of which I could see it winning. The one I better see it win, though, is Best Cinematography because Linus Sandgren’s work on that film is absolutely stunning.

On the road to Oscartown *toot* *toot*…

Now then, considering that La La Land is the only film on the noms list that I’ve actually seen, the following predictions will be mainly founded on hype and reception alone, so we’ll just have to see. While I said I could see Ryan Gosling & Emma Stone winning Lead Oscars, in terms of proper predictions, with the amount of buzz surrounding Casey Affleck (Manchester By The Sea) and Natalie Portman (Jackie), it’s pretty hard not to see them coming home carrying gold. Moreover, with Portman playing the lead in a biopic, it’s basically her’s anyway. In the Supporting Actor/ress category, though I know even less about my picks, I reckon Dev Patel might be having a good night for his role in Lion and Viola Davis looks set to win for Fences.

Finally, for best director, though Damien Chazelle does look pretty good for La La Land, I think Barry Jenkins is very set to win for Moonlight, with its 98 on Metacritic being an indication of just how much that has won people over, and Jenkins being praised across the board for his direction of the film. Though I haven’t yet seen it, it was one of the films that I wish I hadn’t missed in 2016 and will be straight on when I can.

Oh, and The Nice Guys got totally robbed, that should’ve been up for Best Screenplay, Lead Actor and Director at the least.

Apart from that, though, those were my thoughts on the Oscar picks, I’ll be checkin’ the awards out when the broadcast over to the UK and will be ready to see just how wrong I am.

Lots of hugs, kisses and lacerations

Milo.