OPINION: The Oscars should go down easy this year, but the gayest categories promise excitement<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being the homosexual I am, I spend my year chasing the Oscars. In the spring, I track what Sundance releases have been acquired by big studios; in the summer, I study what\u2019s popping at the Cannes Film Festival, which generally launches the most lauded and visible global films; in the fall, I spend a week and a half at the Toronto International Film Festival catching anything with awards buzz and in the winter, I analyze the Oscar precursors. I do all this because I love the horse race, and I love pop culture and I love actors who aren\u2019t men. Most of all, I cherish great movies. I believe in the institution of the Academy Awards because they lend elevated, auteurish cinema from across the world an unparalleled platform in a movie market otherwise obsessed with the lowest common denominator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But this year-long pursuit of mine can be a stressful one. Naturally, I have favourites, and in most years, a categorically bad movie pops up and threatens to steal precious Oscars from the movies that I, in all my perfect taste, have decided are more deserving of recognition. (I still have nightmares about Green Book<\/em><\/a>.) It is with a great sigh of relief that I can report that this will not be one of those years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Oscars take place this Sunday, and precursor awards have clarified most of the races. Some have narrowed down to just two potential horses, while others appear to be completely locked up. In Best Picture, the most anticipated and difficult to predict category, the sex worker dramedy Anora<\/em> has all but secured a win because of its performance in the precursors. To those nervous that Conclave<\/em>, the winner of the BAFTA Best Film prize and the Screen Actors Guild Best Ensemble award, may steal the win, allow me to assuage your concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best way to predict a Best Picture winner is by taking a careful look at the precursor awards, like the BAFTAs<\/a> and SAGs<\/a>, and judging a film\u2019s precursor wins against those of Best Picture winners past. The most correlative awards to Best Picture are those given by the four major industry guilds: Screen Actors, Directors, Producers, and Writers. It is commonly accepted that a movie must win at least one of these guilds in order to win Best Picture, and for good reason: since the founding of the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Awards in 1990, no movie has won Best Picture without winning at least a DGA, PGA or WGA award. Anora<\/em> has won all three, meaning that if something else were to steal Best Picture, it would be the result of an historic and catastrophic break with precedent. With this in mind, predicting another movie to win would be based almost entirely on vibes and contrarianism. The Academy is not known for doling out gold because of vibes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Anora<\/em> won the PGA after winning the WGA and DGA, and, in my mind, locked itself in for the win, the overwhelming feeling I felt was relief. Relief that the disastrous Emilia P\u00e9rez<\/em><\/a> would not steal a win, and lest we forget that scary moment where its strength seemed insurmountable. Relief that the incredible filmmaker Sean Baker, who directed and wrote and casted and edited Anora<\/em> and who has been a champion of the indie movie and of the poorest of the working class throughout his career would at long last receive his well-earned flowers. (I recently watched and was floored by Tangerine<\/em>, his phenomenal 2015 film about two Black trans sex workers and their misadventures in Hollywood.) And relief that a plainly great movie, one that\u2019s dazzling and hilarious and has something important to say about sex, money, power and the American dream, will secure an eternal spot in cinematic history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are interesting races beyond Best Picture. Let\u2019s start with the gayest one: Best Actress. Demi Moore is a firm frontrunner for her turn as the aging fitness star Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance<\/em>. She\u2019s been cleaning up this awards season, collecting the SAG and Critics Choice Awards and, crucially, defeating her primary opponent, Anora<\/em>\u2019s Mikey Madison, at the Golden Globes. Moore is the best bet to win: her comeback narrative makes her easy to vote for (as it was for recent winners Michelle Yeoh, Brendan Fraser and Robert Downey Jr.), and her movie is likely to win Best Makeup, which often coincides with a lead acting win (in the last three years: Poor Things<\/em>\/Emma Stone, The Whale<\/em>\/Fraser and The Eyes of Tammy Faye<\/em>\/Jessica Chastain). Personally, I\u2019m partial to Madison\u2019s turn in Anora<\/em>\u2014she embodied this character, adopting a new accent and physicality and sense of humour. Madison doesn\u2019t waste a second of screen time\u2014every look and curl of the lip and profanity hurled adds to the richness of her film\u2019s titular character. That being said, Moore is impeccable in The Substance<\/em>. Her movie is batshit, and if she wins, it would be a victory for my favourite genre\u2014horror\u2014and the fierce performances it has always produced, but which have rarely received their rightful plaudits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Madison triumphed over Moore at the BAFTAs and the Indie Spirits, stymying Moore\u2019s runaway lead. BAFTA Best Actress winners are known for stealing Oscars from frontrunners\u2014recent examples include Olivia Colman for The Favourite<\/em> and Frances McDormand for Nomadland<\/em>. And if we are assuming that Anora<\/em> is winning Picture, that gives Madison another edge: Best Picture winners generally secure acting wins, although Parasite<\/em>, The Shape of Water<\/em> and Spotlight<\/em> won the top prize without any actors coming along. I\u2019d give Moore the edge, but don\u2019t be shocked if Madison clinches the win. Either would be highly deserving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s going to be a theme of this year\u2019s Oscars: if the winners pan out as I expect, they will be agreeable and deserving. Kieran Culkin and Zoe Salda\u00f1a, both revered actors who turned in excellent performances in their respective films, have swept the awards season in the supporting categories and will clinch their first Oscars (though their movies are quite disparate in quality). In the Best Actor category, it seems that Adrien Brody will win a second Oscar for his titanic performance in the three-and-a-half-hour epic The Brutalist<\/em>, though Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet could spoil for his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown<\/em> (and if that does pan out, Chalamet would become the youngest Best Actor, beating the record Brody himself set when he won for The Pianist<\/em>). I can\u2019t say I\u2019m excited about any of these people winning (I\u2019d personally go for Sebastian Stan in Actor, Ariana Grande in Supporting Actress and Jeremy Strong in Supporting Actor), but when they collect their awards, I will nod and politely applaud and then never think about them again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My favourite thing about Oscars night isn\u2019t the polite nodding\u2014it\u2019s the upsets. Know that if any of these predictions don\u2019t pan out, I\u2019ll be screaming at the top of my lungs in one of my friends\u2019 living rooms. There\u2019s a thrilling prospect this year, an upset that could topple this year\u2019s Oscar villain, Emilia P\u00e9rez<\/em>, which has been sufficiently derided both in this publication<\/a> and others for its reliance on bigoted tropes and its baffling and obtuse plotline. Though the controversies circling both the movie and its star Karla Sof\u00eda Gasc\u00f3n<\/a> have tanked its chances in the screenplay, director, picture and actress categories, it does seem poised to take home three Oscars: Supporting Actress, Song and International Feature. I\u2019d say Salda\u00f1a and her number \u201cEl Mal\u201d will almost certainly win, but it\u2019s competing in International Feature with fellow Best Picture nominee I\u2019m Still Here<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the first time in Oscar history that two movies have been nominated for both Best International Feature and Best Picture in the same year. This is a great stride forward\u2014the Academy has long overlooked global cinema in its nominations, and while Emilia P\u00e9rez<\/em> has felt like an unstoppable Oscar juggernaut since it stormed Cannes back in the summer, the Brazilian docudrama I\u2019m Still Here<\/em> rode a last-minute wave of online support and ravenous critical acclaim to a Best Picture and Best Actress nomination. Where Emilia P\u00e9rez<\/em> is loathed, I\u2019m Still Here<\/em> is beloved. Historically, if there\u2019s a Picture nominee in International Feature, that movie has triumphed. If I\u2019m Still Here <\/em>can rob Emilia P\u00e9rez<\/em> of a trophy, I\u2019d emit a gay noise loud enough to reach the Dolby Theatre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OPINION: The Oscars should go down easy this year, but the gayest categories promise excitement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1217,"featured_media":271406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editorial_slug":"10","_editorial_slug":"","exclude_from_latest_block":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"contributors":[827],"topic":[70],"clients":[],"series":[],"timeliness":[64],"editorial_format":[25],"type-of-work":[2533],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271442"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271458,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271442\/revisions\/271458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271442"},{"taxonomy":"contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributors?post=271442"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=271442"},{"taxonomy":"clients","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/clients?post=271442"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=271442"},{"taxonomy":"timeliness","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/timeliness?post=271442"},{"taxonomy":"editorial_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/editorial_format?post=271442"},{"taxonomy":"type-of-work","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-of-work?post=271442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Don\u2019t worry about Best Picture<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Upsets and victory laps<\/h3>\n\n\n\n