Well, we’ve done it! The Oscars are just a few days away. and we only have two categories left to go. Let’s get predicating!
Best Director
THE NOMINEES:
Todd Field, Tár
Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All At Once
Martin McDonagh, The Banshees Of Inisherin
Ruben Östlund, Triangle Of Sadness
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
WHO WILL WIN?: The team known as Daniels (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) have shown that they made an unstoppable indie juggernaut that has just mowed down every single bit of competition. They’ve won all the precursors, they brought A24 their most profitable film of the young studio’s career, and they made the best movie of 2022. If they do not win, I will be absolutely floored.
WHO SHOULD WIN?: Look, I’m just gonna lay it out there… if I were a voting member of the Academy, I would absolutely give it to Steven Spielberg who showed he is just as emotionally powerful and technically skilled and as invested as he has ever been in his career. If you cannot award him for The Fabelmans, then when the fuck are you supposed to give this man his second Oscar?
UPSET SPECIAL: Maybe, and this is the biggest maybe, it becomes so apparent to the voters that EEAAO is going to run away with so much that they give the oft-nominated Martin McDonagh his first Oscar. But that is the longest stretch and maybe the only possibility of an upset.
WHO GOT SNUBBED?: I think that Tár and Banshees and Triangle Of Sadness are all much better written than they are directed. So I’m tossing them and adding three directors who really put their stamp on their films: Charlotte Wells for Aftersun, Joseph Kosinski for Top Gun: Maverick, and S.S. Rajamouli for RRR.
Best Picture
THE NOMINEES:
All Quiet On The Western Front
Avatar: The Way Of Water
The Banshees Of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Fabelmans
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick
Triangle Of Sadness
Women Talking
WHO WILL (AND WHO SHOULD) WIN?: The answer to both is the same- Everything Everywhere All At Once. For the second time since my Fancy Boys Oscar coverage has began, the film I have called the best film of the year will also win Best Picture. Does this mean the Oscars are becoming more like me? Or am I becoming more like them? Great… I’m gonna be up all night thinking about this shit.
UPSET SPECIAL: Not to get all sexy on you, but there is a chance EEAAO misses out and it involves the most erotic of all topics: ranked voting.
For Best Picture, all voting members have to rank their choices from 1-10. After round 1, if a film has over 50% of the total vote for the #1 spot, that is the Best Picture. If not, the film with the lowest amount of #1 votes has all of those votes removed and those ballots #2 votes become their new #1 votes. Repeat the process. Here’s why this matters.
There is a contingent of people who do not enjoy Everything the way a lot of people have. And I don’t think it helps that the film has been very dominant in early awards and that Oscars voting only started last week. If this group made an effort to place EEAAO low on their ballots (say the 8 or 9 spot), it would then allow the possibility for a lot of #2 and #3 votes from Academy members to carry a lot of weight. However, there’s a problem with this Thunderdome-esque scenario: there’s not really a consensus second film. So what could play the role of spoiler?
Of this moment, it only feels like All Quiet On The Western Front, Tár, and Top Gun: Maverick have any real chance of being high enough on enough ballots to make a real run at this. I want to say that the odds of this happening are very slim. They are, however, not zero.
WHO GOT SNUBBED?: Honestly, so many films. So I’m just gonna include the two I thought had a real chance to be on there. I would have put RRR and Aftersun on and taken off Avatar: The Way Of Water and Triangle Of Sadness.
Ok! That’s all the pre-coverage. Let’s see how drunk I get when all of the choices fail me on Sunday night.
Fancy Boys Club 