FBC co-founder/editor-in-chief Brandon Andreasen is a football expert, and I love asking him questions about the NFL. He manages to be smart and funny and insightful while nerd-ing out on the gridiron. Today, as the Oscar nominations come out, he turns the tables on me and asks some questions about what happened this morning. Let’s get fancy!!!
Brandon: Its fun to be on this side of the questions! Anyway, Academy Award nominations are out. The most hype around any movie this year has been One Battle After Another. Yet, Sinners ended up with the most nominations with 16, which is an all time record for most nominations for a movie. How many, if any, do you believe Sinners will be the favorite for?
Matt: I was thrilled to see Sinners have a record-setting sixteen nominations, and the one I am the happiest about is Delroy Lindo getting a Best Supporting Actor nomination. He has had a career of being the best part of every movie and creating supporting performances that get wildly overlooked by the Academy, most recently in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, where he gave my favorite supporting performance of that year. While I’m not sure he is even the frontrunner in this category, I’m thrilled he is getting his due in an illustrious career. Now let’s work on getting John Goodman his first nomination.
It feels, to me, like AMPAS gave Sinners this record amount of nominations because it feels like it is just not their year to win any of them. In almost every category, they are going against One Battle After Another, which just seems to have all the momentum this year. Now, as I said earlier this week, sometimes being the favorite can work against a movie and all the hype can cause a movie to peter out by the time Oscar voting starts in a few weeks (we saw this a few years ago when The Power Of The Dog had the wheels absolutely fall off). And because so many of the guild awards happen before voting even starts, the favorites and who looks like they will be the winner can be very fluid. However, in this moment, there are only two categories I see Sinners being the frontrunner, and one of those is even iffy. I see Ludwig Goransson taking home an Oscar for Best Score being an almost certainty. Where the film could also grab a win is in the brand new category of Best Casting. I could see a scenario, especially if Teyana Taylor and Benicio Del Toro win the supporting categories, where AMPAS essentially tells Sinners, “You were a great movie whose box office helped save the theatrical experience… we give an award to your cast as a whole.”
Brandon: One Battle After Another ended up with 13 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor.
The hype around the movie has been so immense that even I have seen it. It is the heavy betting favorite currently for Best Picture. How many wins would be needed for the night to be considered a success, and which categories do you expect the movie to win in?
Matt: In looking at the thirteen, there are a few we can say right away that One Battle is not the favorite for. Best Actor seems to be a lock for Timothee Chalamet and Marty Supreme (more on that later) and Best Score seems to be swinging towards Sinners. I think the first big category to be watching on Oscar night to see how well One Battle will fare will be editing, which is usually a very good precursor for the kind of night an Oscar favorite will have (as we saw last year with Anora). Of the big awards, I think the movie needs to win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing for Warner Brothers (soon to be owned by Ted Sarandos and Netflix) to be able to hold PTA’s latest masterpiece up along with some of the best films to ever win. Currently, I do think it wins those four, as well as Cinematography.
As for the supporting acting categories, those feel like the most fluid categories of the Oscars so far. Teyana Taylor is certainly in the hunt, but I think her chance are hurt by the fact that she isn’t in the second half of the movie. And while I could easily see Penn or Del Toro winning, it’s possible that the two of them split the field and allow someone like Lindo or Stellan Skarsgard. Sorry, Jacob Elordi, this is not your year. I don’t think One Battle needs to win either of the supporting categories to keep it’s status as Oscar front-runner, but supporting acting categories are the first awards given in the evening. If Taylor and Penn or Del Toro take those home, we could be easily seeing a night where One Battle is taking home double-digit awards.
Brandon: Marty Supreme, which judging by the name, is a feel good 80s movie about a robot that befriends a lonely child, is all over the nominations as well, including Timothee Chalamet being the current favorite for Best Actor. What is the movie, and make me care about it, Matt!
Matt: Let me ask you a question, my friend: Are you ready for a movie about the rough-and-tumble world of post-WWII table tennis? Because, if so, then I have the movie for you…
Is Marty Supreme about that? I mean, technically, yes it is. But, like all movies by Josh Safdie (working apart from his brother Benny), this is a film about a man’s ambition and how a singular goal can become an obsession and affect everything and everyone around him. Safdie creates templates that allow great actors to give transcendent performances, notably with Robert Pattinson in Good Time and Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. Chalamet absolutely fits this mold and he dives in with a manic and energetic performance, which has matched the Oscar campaign he is currently going on, as there appears to be no podcast or youtube show he will not be a guest on. This feels like Chalamet’s year, especially because you could see that the entire Oscar voting block seems to have regretted not voting for him last year (when Adrien Brody won his second Oscar for The Brutalist and bored everyone with his speech).
You cannot talk about Marty Supreme without talking about its leading man, and you should see the film to see the only person who seems to actively be trying to be a movie star under the age of 40. Young Timmy (though, let’s be honest, he’s 30) seems to one of the few people whose name alone can get seats in the theater (helped by doing things like Dune) and he always seems to make smart and interesting choices. As of right now, it’s gonna pay off when he wins Best Actor in March.
Brandon: Dude, Where’s My Car? was never nominated for an Academy Award. Does this, along with the omissions of Anchorman 2, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the White Men Cant Jump remake, and everything Rob Schneider has ever been in show that Hollywood is biased against remarkably dumb cash grabs. And what was your favorite bad movie of the past year?
Matt: I know this isn’t exactly the question you were asking, but I want to take a moment and talk about the long-standing criticism that people have of the Oscars: that they choose to nominate artsy crap that no one watches over massive blockbusters that people actually go and see. AMPAS heard that criticism which is why, in 2009, they expanded the Best Picture category to ten films. And it would be easy to look at a Best Picture category without Avatar: Fire And Ash and Wicked: For Good and think, “Here we go again… massive blockbusters getting shut out again.” But that would be a bad way to look at it, especially because we saw F1 get nominated for Best Picture and Best Editing. Like the new Avatar and Wicked films, F1 was a box office hit. However, Joseph Kosinski’s (Top Gun: Maverick) latest film is much better than the two films which missed out, showing that if you make a good movie that also makes money, AMPAS wants to recognize you. I don’t think anyone was expecting The Minecraft Movie or the Lilo & Stitch remake to get any nominations, but they’re not supposed to. They made money, showing people still want to go to the movies. But movies like F1 and Sinners and One Battle showed that people still want to go to the theater to see good movies that aren’t about superheroes or dumb cash grabs.
There will always be bad movies every year, but few were as remarkably terrible as the War Of The Worlds remake. If a movie is going to be this bad, it should have a laughable moment of product placement, and this film (which went straight to Prime) had one as an Amazon Drone delivered a flash drive to Ice Cube. I’m not sure how that movie got even the 4% rating it got from Rotten Tomatoes. It makes me wonder what was Amazon Drone-delivered to certain critics.
Brandon: Most people who pay attention to awards shows only care about the few biggest awards, but generally the competition is much heavier and less predictable for some of the “early in the night” awards. What are some potential upsets you are keeping an eye on, now that we know who is nominated for each category?
Matt: If I may go on another quick tangent, I think that what you are saying is exactly why the Oscars going to YouTube in 2 years (right in time for it’s 100th ceremony) is a good thing. Where the Oscars used to be watched by a much wider audience (back when most people had very limited options of what to watch on live television), we are now in an era where the Oscars are now watched, mostly, but people who care about all of the awards. Moving the ceremony online means that YouTube can have a longer ceremony and let people have their speeches. We will no longer have to worry about a situation like we had a couple of years ago, where the Oscars had briefly considered not airing certain categories in order to make the broadcast shorter. I’m all in favor of a longer show and think YouTube can allow that.
To me, the most exciting below the line category comes in Best International Feature. I was a little stunned that No Other Choice, the latest film from Park Chan-wook, was not nominated, but that speaks to how strong this year’s category is. In previous years, you would expect Sentimental Value or The Secret Agent to be the front-runners because they were also nominated for Best Picture, but ignoring Jafar Panahi and It Was Just An Accident would be a mistake, as he is a person who the Academy voters have really resonated towards.
I think the other category to lock in on will be Best Song, where the Oscars have a really interesting decision to make. I find it downright criminal that “Golden” was the only song nominated from KPop Demon Hunters. Not only was it the only nominee from the hit film, it was the only song on the short list (the list to come out a month ago of the available entries to nominate). That film should have had 3-4 songs nominated, especially with how it resonated with America (and because the songs were all cool as hell). But the biggest competition to “Golden” will come from Diane Warren, nominated for the documentary made about… Diane Warren (Relentless). Warren has been nominated sixteen times for Best Original Song and has won a grand total of zero times. Every year feels like the year that AMPAS will break down and give Warren her first award and if it happens this year, it will come at the expense of the most popular song of 2025.
Brandon: Prediction time! Who do you have for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, and most importantly, Animated Short Film?
Matt: Well, here are the interesting questions. Let’s start where the locks are, in my opinion, and that comes from both lead acting categories. I spoke earlier about Chalamet and Marty Supreme and as much of a lock as he seems right now is how I also feel about Jessie Buckley in Hamnet. While Hamnet seems to have lost a little momentum in some of the other big races (Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Director), Buckley has only seemed to have picked up steam in the weepy melodrama. I couldn’t be happier about this as she has become one of my favorite actresses to watch in the past half-decade. She does not have a moment onscreen that isn’t absolutely captivating and I think she has also made really smart decisions in her campaigning. She has basically shown up to every awards show and given thoughtful and gracious speeches and it has allowed Oscar voters to see her in an important role: as a glamorous Best Actress winner.
My rule in Animated Short is to pick a movie whose name resonates with you. Because of this, I’m going with The Girl Who Cried Pearls.
We talked about One Battle After Another for Best Picture and Best Director earlier in these questions, and it’s no surprise that is what I’m picking. Paul Thomas Anderson has been always a bridesmaid and never an Oscar-winner, and I think that changes this year. Anderson always seems to have gotten unlucky by always releasing great movies against slightly greater movies, but the Academy loves him and I don’t think it hurts that his latest movie grossed $204 million dollars (compared to his eight other films, which combined, grossed about $300 million). PTA is currently the leader to win the whole thing, and the way he held the Golden Globe like a baby showed that he also looks like a winner. Right now, he’s the safe bet.
But, voting hasn’t even begun yet… so a lot can happen between now and March.
Fancy Boys Club 