Oscar may look like a dapper gentleman, standing quietly in a golden suit. But in truth, he is capricious, unpredictable and intemperate. Picking winners at Hollywood’s annual lottery of glory, the Academy Awards, can be a little like betting on racehorses.
But getting it right isn’t as complicated as it might seem. The so-called “awards season”, more than a dozen pre-Oscar award ceremonies held by various industry groups, runs like a racetrack form guide. It’s a pre-season peppered with winners and losers. Follow it enough, and you start to see the trends.
The envelope please ... getting ready for Monday’s Academy Awards.Credit: Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP
For keen industry observers, Hollywood’s awards season falls between November and March. The first half is composed of journalist and expert-voted awards, such as the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics Circle awards, the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Movie awards.
Things heat up in the second half, with the guild-voted awards, such as the Directors, Producers, Screen Actors and Writers Guild, and the International AACTA and BAFTA awards. These carry more weight as predictors because their voting memberships more closely mirror the Academy’s Oscar voters.
Some years, the trends are tough to spot. It is also tough to create buzz when smaller art films dominate the Oscars. The declining TV audience for the awards’ telecast is proof of that. This year, however, the Oscar race enters the final length with a crowded field of big-ticket releases: The Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, The Fablemans, Tár, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun and Avatar: The Way of Water.
Australia is also well represented, with 12 people nominated across nine categories, including two-time Oscar winner Blanchett for Tár and first-time Oscar nominee Lachlan Pendragon for the animated short film, An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It.
Nominated for an Oscar: Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár.Credit: Focus Features
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is carrying the lion’s share of our Oscar hopes, with a best picture nomination (for producers Luhrmann, Catherine Martin and Schuyler Weiss), and nominations for cinematography (Mandy Walker), film editing (Matt Villa), production design (Martin, Karen Murphy and Bev Dunn), costume design (Martin), make-up and hairstyling (Jason Baird) and sound (Wayne Pashley, David Lee).
Which is not to say there are no controversial inclusions or exclusions either. A campaign to secure a nomination for To Leslie actress Andrea Riseborough, for example, was seen as skidding uncomfortably close to the edge of what is permitted under the Academy’s rules, and left many Academy members irritated.
James Cameron (Avatar) and Baz Luhrmann (Elvis) are conspicuously absent from the director category. There’s no sign of Tom Cruise in best actor, despite Top Gun: Maverick winning almost universal acclaim. And Jordan Peele’s Nope, and The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring Viola Davis, were completely shut out in a breathtaking oversight.
So, who is going to win? Well, at face value, the best actor category was shaping up as a dead heat between Colin Farrell and Austin Butler, who have both scored three apiece from the key pre-Oscar awards, including the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice, BAFTAs and National Board of Review awards.
But Brendan Fraser’s win at the Screen Actor’s Guild awards last week for his brilliant turn in The Whale splits that race into a three-way sprint. It’s just one pre-Oscar win, but it’s the most critical one: of all the pre-Oscar awards for actors, the SAG voting base closely hems to the Oscars. Which gives the win weight.
In the past decade, the Academy’s voting membership has lifted almost 65 per cent in size, to a total of about 9500 eligible voters, largely due to an aggressive campaign by the Academy to recruit women, people of diverse backgrounds and international filmmakers onto its books.
Leading the Oscar race: Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis at last week’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.Credit: Chris Pizzello/AP
Despite those shifts, however, the Oscar ballot still seems dominated by the Hollywood establishment – as Fraser’s chances suggest (though his campaign is also boosted by a strong comeback narrative). Though there is competition in the best director category, Steven Spielberg remains a rock-solid contender because Hollywood has a history of favouring its most prominent sons.
Swinging across to best actress, Australia’s Cate Blanchett faces the same challenge as Farrell and Butler: across awards season, she had secured six wins to Michelle Yeoh’s four, but Yeoh gained a critical advantage in the Oscar race when she won the SAG award last weekend.
Yeoh’s win, plus a win for Everything Everywhere All at Once directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert at last month’s Directors Guild awards, also points to a potential “clean sweep” for the film at the Oscars. It goes into the night with 11 nominations, more than any other film.
The night’s biggest prize, the best picture Oscar, might be the easiest to predict: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once is, by a healthy margin, the awards season favourite. Plus, having won best picture at the Producers Guild awards, there’s a 70 per cent chance, based on history, that Oscar will follow suit.
Returning host Jimmy Kimmel on the Oscar stage in 2018.Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
Unsurprisingly, most pundits are anticipating the clean sweep. Beating it, warned Deadline’s respected industry analyst Pete Hammond this week, would involve having “to defy all statistical odds in the entire history, at least recent history, of the 95 years of the Academy Awards.”
The 95th annual Academy Awards air Monday, March 13, on Channel 7 and 7plus.
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