#This is actually admittedly unabashed salt

[sweetcloverheart]

Unpopular Opinion Time (Yes it’s another ML post)

Alright. I’m exposing myself to clowning here, but if I don’t rant about this, it’s going to bother me forever and the salt build up will clog my arteries...

The issue (or at least my personal issue) with the claim that Chloe’s “arc” was meant to end with her staying a villain isn’t “How dare the villain remain the villain” - It’s that it even if you view it from that lens or as a condemnation arc like Thomas claims was planned from the start, it still comes off as incredibly lazily and sloppily handled to the point that you have to question why the writers did it in the first place if they were going to be so halfhearted with it.

Even if becoming a hero was not actually on the table in the first place, It’s not like I can blame people for thinking Chloe was getting a redemption - They made hints about Chloe getting a miraculous despite stating them only being for “good people”, they made the effort to give Chloe focus and to showcase that she’s actually capable of being decent when motivated, they started involving her more with the main cast, they gave her a maincast level backstory reveal (which is more than we can say about the other temp heroes outside of Luka and Juleka) alongside explaining how it was the cause of her horrible personality. They did all of that with the implication of wanting to show that Chloe, for all her awfulness, could genuinely be heroic, and got people all excited for Queen Bee and potential Ally!Chloe before promptly pulling the proverbial rug from under them in the form of season 3 and Miracle Queen.

“But Clover!” You say, “All that was likely just the writers way of giving her more depth as a antagonist. They did the same thing with Gabriel and Felix, and they’re still villains too! Chloe was likely always meant to be a mean bully and never change and her becoming a hero was a set up for that twist. You’re just being too critical!”

And I would totally agree with you on that front (ML isn’t the first to pull the “Badguy tries being good for a day (or season in this case) but ultimately returns to being bad” trope after all) - if they actually did anything with that depth. If the writers had Chloe start working for Hawkmoth post (or even pre) Miracle Queen after getting Akumatized again and almost taking over Paris because of it, I’d agree. If the writers had properly used the build up of her constantly being denied becoming QB again throughout Season 3 with Chloe implying to now hate Ladybug in Season 4 and have her own Lila-esque arc where she becomes antagonistic to Marinette in and out the mask and actually becomes a genuine obstacle in her superheroing, I’d agree. If the writers actually showed hints throughout Chloe’s stint as Queen Bee minus the train incident that implied she wanted the other Miraculouses/more power instead of some borderline OOC line in the season finale that came out of nowhere, I’d agree. If the writers showed actual consequences to Chloe’s misbehavior (The almost-train crash, Miracle Queen, her revealing herself as Queen Bee, etc.) outside of not getting to use her Miraculous anymore, I’d agree. If the writers had her becoming Miracle Queen solely to get back at Ladybug/for the power of being an Akuma and hadn’t included that bit with her asking Hawkmoth to free her parents first in “Heart Hunter” (which I feel a lot of people skip over when discussing the lead up to MQ) or Hawkmoth setting it up for her to get Akumatized (only to resist) in the first place, I’d agree. If they had Marinette (or anyone really) at the end of “Style Queen” encourage Chloe to stop trying to take after her mother (instead of having our heroine and Chloe’s main target of harassment tell her to continue the bullying by acting like Audrey even more for some reason because that’s definitely something Marinette would say to the girl who’s been bullying her all year revealing why), only for her not to listen/ignore the advice, I’d agree tenfold.

But they didn’t.

If the writers had done literally anything else than what was done with Chloe throughout S3 and after, I‘d be more than willing to agree that maybe I’m reading more than I should into things and that Thomas and Co. had a completely different plan for her than I was hoping for/expecting - but they didn’t. Nothing is ever done with any of the “depth” they gave Chloe to either redeem or condemn her. Nada. Zip. Zilch. A big fat zero exploration in either direction in her development. They don’t try and have her realize she’s become a terrible person and push to better herself, but they also don’t attempt to go further with her bullying and misbehavior outside of basic cookie-cutter pigtail pulling and insults she usually does, and the two times we actually see her being “worse than usual” is to a)be the background prop to her surprise half-sister’s own intro/hero origin (which barely gets touched upon ever again anyways because after those two episode, she and Zoe never ever interact with one another directly except that one scene in “Optigami” that was basically put in/made to “protect” Zoe by tricking Hawkmoth into thinking Chloe was still the bee holder) and b)as the MOTW in what was basically a filler episode meant to let the creator check off the last of the Miraculouses that hadn’t been used/assigned (which ended up being worthless considering Hawkmoth stole them all two episodes later). The only genuinely “evil” thing I can think of her doing in S4 is trying to get Adrien put back into homeschooling/locked in his house to “have him to herself” in “Gabriel Agreste”, and it still ends up doing nothing to further/expand her apparent “villain arc” other than generating LoveSquare drama (and still ends up putting her in the bottom rung of villainy in the show consider what Felix does in that episode and the finale). Adrien doesn’t even find out what she almost did in the end and proceeds to continue treating her as normal (despite this being post Queen Banana where they’re not supposed to be friends anymore), so the subplot might as well not have happened anyway.

The thing about condemnation arcs in that they need actual hints that the character is going to be condemned in the first place, small showings of them slipping into worse and worse habits as their moral compass tilts until the villain shows up to offer them a free membership to the darkside. Even if you excuse it with “avoiding spoilers”, the fact that the ML team promoted and hyped up Chloe getting a Miraculous while “planning” to have her fall from grace comes off as deceitful because they never hint at her becoming a villain in the first place. Chloe entire stint as Queen Bee has her actually using her powers to help Ladybug with little to no use for personal gain except when revealing her identity publicly in a bid to get her mom to love her (and of the train scene - which never gets brought up again or used in-series as part of Hawkmoth’s bid to get her allegiance or why she’s actually totes evil guys BTWs), and most of her “I’m still Queen Bee/Queen Bee could solve this easily!” scenes in S3 come off more like silly jokes made at Chloe’s expense than subtle nudges from the plot that she’s slowly edging towards darkness. And when she does finally take the plunge, it ends up completely irrelevant to the story because the things she does (exposing the identities of the other chosen temp heroes of that season and taking over Paris) have so little impact on the following season or her role in-there-of that she might as well not have done them in the first place - hell, you could probably remove the episode and attach Fu’s sacrifice to the end of “Heart Hunter”, and not notice the difference come “Truth”.

And because I mentioned them, I will explain why they’re different from Chloe - the reason the “villain(or anti-villain in Felix’s case) with hidden depths” reveal worked for Gabriel and Felix is because they were established as hard, permanent-antagonists in the first place, and retained enough plot relevance in the story that the reveal of their motives/backstories added to their development, especially since said developments actually impacted the plot once revealed; Gabriel’s obsession with Emilie and reviving her is what prompts him to become Hawkmoth and explains his neglect Adrien as well, and this heavily impacted the second ID reveal in Ephemeral (even if they walked back on it in the end), while Felix clearly loves his mother dearly despite being so caustic but seems to detest both him and Adrien for reasons that go beyond missing his dad’s funeral, and spurs him into stealing Gabriel’s ring, screwing with Adrien twice under the guise of “helping” (”Felix” and “Risk”) and stealing the other Miraculouses to bargain with Gabriel at the end of “Strikeback”, heavily reducing Marinette’s arsenal and team size while hurting her emotionally since she had thought it was Adrien whom she gave the dog to.

Meanwhile, Chloe’s own reveals have done little to effect her (or anyone else’s) character progression post S3 while her role has been reduced to “occasional minor annoyance” that only gets brought out to remind the audience that she still exists and they need to dislike her - And once that’s over and done, they toss her off to the wayside (alongside Lila and Felix and now Luka) until it’s time to rinse and repeat. As stated in my post on her Antag Status, Chloe has little to no role in the story anymore now that the plot’s mostly moved on from most of the slice-of-life stuff and she herself hasn’t be “upgraded” to match the new stakes despite the show acting like she has, and it’s been nothing but a detriment to the episodes she’s in because the writers seem insistent on not either sending her out to pasture or properly ramping up her villain status to actually match the current circumstances of the storyline. It’s like they're too scared to make Chloe be a genuine threat to the status quo to help move the plot forward, so they make her retain her ineffectual bully role (to the point of harming Chloe’s actual role in story and the justification of) for the sake of comedy and helping prop up the Adrienette progress while treating it with the former’s severity. It’s no wonder most of the fandom’s confused on what direction the writers actually planned to take Chloe when they come off like they don’t seem to know either.

So when all’s said and done, the “meant to stay evil” interpretation of Chloe’s arc has it come off as just lazy and halfheartedly done. I understand that ML as a show is limited by genre (being a “Romcom kids show”) and episode amounts, but you’d think they’d make an effort to ensure their supposed “villain” properly debut as one if they had been “planning” it for so long. Even if her arc as a “hero” (temporary as it was supposed to apparently be) was admittedly messy with the constant back and forth they had between her learning a lesson on being good during her Queen Bee missions and then rolling back on that so she could continue to be a brat as Chloe, there was at least consistency with it that you could follow to make the argument they’re trying to make her good. With her “villain arc”, she’s basically all over the place and doing so very little to effect the plot to the point you can’t tell what they’re actually wanting to do with her.

It’s not that I don’t get/understand “Sometimes people are bad and will stay bad, even if you give them all the chances in the world to stop being so” as a lesson. It’s a very good lesson to have for kids and in general - but Chloe’s version of it is just...very poorly done no matter how you slice it. If having her be “the villain” was their plan in earnest, they would have been better off just nixing her tragic backstory reveal and just having her team up with Hawkmoth alongside Lila (or better yet, make Chloe turn out to be a spy for Hawkmoth via Gab having revealed his plans to her and “convincing” her to help for Adrien’s sake), or just not giving her a miraculous in the first place and not feeding her genuine fans and people interested in a potential redemption arc false hope. I have no clue what they’ll do with her in the coming season 5, but I’m honestly not optimistic

TLDR: ML stop making characters villains and then regulating them to the background for a million years.

#Miraculous Ladybug #Unpopular Opinion Time #ML Salt #This is actually admittedly unabashed salt #I'm mostly just frustrated #Clover Rants Miraculously

[husid]

Uncle Huey’s 2019 Oscars Post!

A confession: I love the Oscars. 

A confession, extrapolated: I am an unabashed Oscars fanboy, who legitimately looks forward to the Academy Awards all year long. I love the opening montage where the host skewers self-righteous Hollywood stars, I love the cringeworthy banter of presenters pretending to have a non-scripted conversation (as if they were actual actors!), I love the montages reminding us why we should keep liking movies, I love seeing which recently deceased actors (it’s always the actors) cause people to break the “no-clapping-until-the-end” rule during the In Memoriam clip (Hollywood’s version of “you can only bring Valentine’s Day Cards to class if you give one to everybody”), I love the wildly reactionary vitriol thrown towards the Academy every time they make a decision about anything, I love the Academy reacting one-year too late to everything, I love the politics, I love the self-seriousness, I love the acceptance speeches in which you can tell the actor deeply resents his or her family, I love seeing the loser shots and trying to decide whether they’re legitimately happy for the winner (spoiler: they’re not), and I love seeing the same tired, rehashed Twitter jokes about how long the Oscars telecast is. 

Reading back through that paragraph, I realize how disingenuous my love for the Oscars sounds, but I do love the Oscars, if for no other reason than I really fucking love movies. And while I’m no critic, I do fancy myself a semi-educated film buff, and with that, as well as an uncredited extras role in The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas! that I ask that you indulge me in the first annual Hu’s the Boss Oscar Preview!

In the interest of full disclosure, this is where I tell you that I’ve only seen 11 of the movies nominated (Avengers: Infinity War, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Isle of Dogs, Roma, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, A Star Is Born), but whether it’s the utter predictability of some films (Green Book), or familiarity with a director’s work (Vice), I feel reasonably confident in my admittedly underinformed predictions.

You might have heard that the Oscars will not have a host this year, for the first time since 1989, and we all remember how that went! (I was 2 years old, I definitely don’t remember how that went, but the internet does, and yikes, it wasn’t good. Side note: I’d sooner tell my own grandmother that her matzo ball soup was overseasoned than do anything horrible enough to warrant Julie Andrews calling me an embarrassment in an open letter).  How did we find ourselves in this predicament? Blame the Academy. Well, also the internet. Maybe Kevin Hart too. President Obama as well. Let me explain. 

While in office, Obama had the opportunity to sign an executive order mandating that Amy Poehler and Tina Fey host every major awards show, but failed to do so. Given President Trump’s current feelings towards S&L, it feels like that window has closed. The Oscars are generally hosted by a mainstream comedian, and this year was shaping up to be no different, with Kevin Hart signed on to host. But then the unthinkable happened. The internet internetted, and found that Hart had performed some homophobic material back in 2009 and 2010. The backlash got real loud, real quick, and the court of public opinion sentenced the Academy to 10 years without Kevin Hart as host, with the possibility of parole once we realize that every comic who started writing before 2010 has included something homophobic in one of their sets. So you can blame Kevin Hart, whose jokes were clearly offensive; you can blame the Academy for either not vetting their host, underestimating the research capabilities of internet denizens, underestimating the outrage of the general public (hard to imagine, given the public reception of most of the Academy’s decisions of late), or, depending on your viewpoint, bowing too easily to internet outrage; or you can blame the outraged, for not understanding the evolution of standup comedy, or for making a stand when one may not be warranted.

I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions on who’s to blame for Hart not hosting, but I can tell you who’s to blame for there the absence of a host, period: Critics. Not since Billy Crystal hosted the Oscars for a 73rd consecutive time has any host be universally lauded. The host isn’t funny, the host is too mean, the host is too sophomoric, the host disappears for extended periods of time, etc. It’s been a thankless job for years now, and that was before a dissection of your extended comedy catalog became a prerequisite. Personally, I’d love to see the hosting job go to an up-and-coming comic and let them roast Hollywood for a bit. It would be a way to take the self-reverential mask off of Hollywood for a couple hours, and provide a massive opportunity for an up-and-comer. But ratings dictate that stars and stars alone must host, so I’m not holding my breath.

Ok. That sound you just heard is me jumping off my soap box. Back to movies.

“The field is wide open this year” is a great way to build up buzz for an awards show, but when it comes to Best Picture, it’s also a euphemism sugarcoating the fact that there were truly no great movies this year. Personally, I think nearly every contender has at least one seriously fatal flaw, and that, coupled with the rare lack of a huge late PR push for one movie above the others (a la The King’s Speech, The Artist, Argo, Birdman, etc.) mean that “wide-open field” isn’t just lip service, it’s true. Just not for the best reasons. Still, it makes for an exciting awards show, if you’re into that sort of thing, and probably means that the Academy won’t be on the hook for buying into one film’s hype and looking terrible for it down the line (Shakespeare In Love over Saving Private Ryan, The King’s Speech over The Social Network, Birdman over Boyhood, etc.). But these things aren’t always predictable, and maybe in ten years we’ll be talking about what an underappreciated movie Vice was in 2018.

Now on to the awards, where I’ll give my two cents on each nominee for Best Picture, then a brief thought on each subsequent category declaring my best guess for the actual winner and my personal favorite. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve watched the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards, and usually pay a lot of attention to movie/Oscars buzz, but I’ve generally tried to avoid Oscar prediction articles for the sake of this post. Again, I don’t claim to be a film critic, but I do have lots of opinions on movies, so take everything with a grain of salt. To further highlight any conscious or subconscious biases I have,  I’ve put the films I have seen in bold in each set of nominees.

THE OSCAR GOES TO

Best Picture

Nominees:

Black Panther – A wildly entertaining and legitimately good movie, but it’s not even the best Marvel movie ever. This feels more like an acknowledgment from the Academy that it respects superhero movies, than a legitimate contender for best picture.

BlacKkKlansman – Given the wild true story the movie is based on, it probably didn’t even need Spike Lee’s direction to shine, and yet I left somewhat underwhelmed. Everything was solid, but very little really stood out, aside from costume design and a few warranted but ham-handed references to our current political climate.  Spike is one of the most provocative filmmakers of the last quarter-century, but with a story that I expected he’d be able to knock out of the park, I didn’t fell like I gained an interesting perspective or was shocked by anything; a rarity for one of his films. Maybe that’s more reflective of the times we live in, or maybe I just set unfair expectations for Spike, given the subject matter. Either way, despite enormous potential, this had all the trappings of a good-but-not-great movie.

Bohemian Rhapsody – Rami Malek’s performance and the final Live Aid scene alone catapult Bohemian Rhapsody into this year’s contenders. Unfortunately, that was all that was Oscar-worthy about this movie. The rest was a by-the-numbers music biopic that tried to pack way too much into 133 minutes. It’s no wonder this movie took so long to get made and so many writers/producers/directors/actors were involved and uninvolved at one point or another (Sacha Baron Cohen was originally slated to play Freddie Mercury), because there’s a lot to untangle between  the rise and “fall” of the band, Mercury’s sexual awakening, and his HIV diagnosis, all while the real-life remaining members of the band did their best to ensure that we got a PG-13 version of Queen history devoid of any real dirty laundry. The final result was a watered down, factually dubious mishmash that doesn’t go deep enough in any direction to have a true lasting impact. Those music scenes though, still make it one of the best music biopics ever filmed.

The Favourite – Of all the Best Picture nominees, the Favourite and Roma were easily the least digestable for mass market audiences. Period pieces aren’t for everyone, especially ones that have little in the way of plot, and take place exclusively on the grounds of an 18th century British palace. But the Favourite managed to be thoroughly entertaining thanks to top-notch set design, Oscar-worthy performances by Olivia Coleman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, sexual intrigue and two hours of steady, if a bit slow, mischievousness. 

Green Book – I have not seen it. Obviously the reviews are positive, but no one has yet convinced me that this movie isn’t entirely formulaic. I haven’t seen this movie, but I’ve seen this movie, and I’m pretty sure it’s fine.

Roma – A beautiful movie about an underrepresented social class in an underrepresented era in an underrepresented country. It’s shot well and acted well, and the camerawork makes up for a meandering plotline. It probably is the class of this category, but I can’t help but think that it might be 15% worse if it wasn’t shot in black and white. That was clearly a conscious choice by writer and director Alfonso Cuaron, who, between Gravity and Children of Men, among others, has more than proven he knows how to make a film beautiful, regardless of subject matter. But the Artist won Best Picture for its two-part gimmick of being black and white and silent, and I’m not entirely sure that Roma’s colorless palette shouldn’t be considered gimmicky as well.

A Star Is Born – The most classic Best Picture fodder on this list, by leaps and bounds, and not just because previous versions of this movie have been nominated for Best Picture, among a host of other awards. But Hollywood loves a movie about the entertainment business, not to mention a story about underdogs and redemption. This was a really well done movie across the board, and while I thought the Grammys scene was a little over the top, I now realize that was an integral scene to the previous three versions of the movie, so its inclusion is a lot easier to justify here. Aside from the acting, which was exceptional across the board (Andrew Dice Clay!), I think the most impressive part about this movie was that it was a big-budget film about superstardom, yet managed to feel very intimate, and resisted using tired crutches of story narration/plot forwarding by way of TV/radio news reports or newspaper headlines – something Bohemian Rhapsody was unable to pull off.

Vice – I have not seen it, which is odd, because of every movie nominated, it’s probably the most up my proverbial alley. The initial mixed reviews were a part of my missing it, though I imagine my love for Adam Mckay’s masterful balance between humor and the depression of irresponsibly-wielded power in the Big Short and Succession (to say nothing of his comedy genius displayed in Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers et al.) would make me a more likely candidate than most to appreciate Vice. Alas, that’s all I’m able to really opine on.

Will Be: If there wasn’t a strong anti-Netflix bias in the Academy, as has been reported, I would go with Roma, but I fear that the safest choice here is Green Book, and in the absence of anything truly groundbreaking, that’s going to be the pick.

Should Be: I’m on the fence between Roma and A Star is Born. To me, Roma’s lack of plot and failure to explore its main character in depth separate it from A Star is Born, which really has no obvious flaws.

Actor in a Leading Role

Christian Bale – Vice

Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born

Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate

Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody

Viggo Mortensen – Green Book

Will Be: Having only seen two of these movies, it’s hard for me to make a real educated guess, but it’s also hard to imagine that Rami Malek won’t be rewarded for flawlessly playing one of the most eccentric entertainers in music history. All I know for sure is that Willem Dafoe will not be winning.

Should Be: Malek. Malek’s apparent real-life persona is shy and understated –essentially the exact opposite of Freddie Mercury’s – making his transformative performance that much more jaw-dropping.

Actress in a Leading Role

Yalitza Aparicio – Roma

Glenn Close – The Wife

Olivia Colman – The Favourite

Lady Gaga – A Star Is Born

Melissa McCarthy – Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Will Be: Glenn Close. When an actress from a movie you’ve never heard of keeps racking up awards, it’s a pretty safe bet the Academy will follow suit.

Should Be: I’m going to stick with Close, given how much consensus this pick seems to have. Of the movies I saw, I think Colman and Gaga are both very worthy. I can’t quite figure out Aparicio’s nomination. Given that she had never acted before, she was incredible, but the lack of dialogue and depth that the script afforded her puts her performance in stark comparison to the other women on this list. Close is the biggest lock in any of the acting categories.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Amy Adams – Vice

Marina de Tavira – Roma

Regina King – If Beale Street Could Talk

Emma Stone – The Favourite

Rachel Weisz – The Favourite

Will Be: Amy Adams. This is a really tight race that could legitimately go to anyone. With five very deserving nominees, the biggest differentiator is the fact that Adams has been nominated for an Oscar five times before, with no hardware to show for it. In situations like this, the Academy has shown it’s not above the unofficial lifetime achievement award.

Should Be: I’m a huge fan of every actress in this category, though my two favorites – Adams and King – are nominated for movies I haven’t seen. Given that, my pick would be Emma Stone, who portrayed innocence, quirkiness, resourcefulness, wittiness, ruthlessness and helplessness in one winkingly dry performance. Weisz was just as game from an acting perspective, but the script gave Stone a lot more to work with, making her performance more memorable.

Actor in a Supporting Role

Mahershala Ali – Green Book

Adam Driver – BlacKkKlansman

Sam Elliott – A Star Is Born

Richard E. Grant – Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Sam Rockwell – Vice

Will Be: Mahershala Ali. The Academy loves him, and with good reason. In a tight race, the fact that Rockwell deservedly won this award last year for Three Billboards probably disqualifies him. Elliott was exceptional in A Star Is Born, but had a considerably smaller role than the other actors on this list. I thought Driver was good, but not Oscars-good, and obviously I haven’t seen Grant’s performance, but the buzz is very positive, despite being in a movie that not a ton of people saw. There’s definitely a cynical side of me that thinks Ali is the most justifiable selection among all the minority Oscar acting nominees, and its hard to imagine there aren’t at least some voters who are still trying to erase the scars of #oscarssowhite (to say nothing of minority representation over the course of film history) by essentially casting a vote for inclusion. But ultimately he may just be the best choice in a tight category.

Should Be: Ali. I’ll be rooting hard for Elliott, both because he tends to be my favorite part of any movie or show he’s in, and because it’s nice to see the older guys finally win one. Since Ali and Rockwell already have a statue, there may be some sentimentality votes going his way, and his career in mainstream American cinema spans much longer than fellow elder statesman Grant. Again, I haven’t seen Green Book, but I know Ali is as game as any of the actors in this category, and had the biggest role of anyone in the category. That’s good enough for me.

Directing

Spike Lee – BlacKkKlansman 

Pawel Pawlikowski – The Cold War

Yorgos Lanthimos – The Favourite

Alfonso Cuaron  - Roma

Adam McKay – Vice

Will Be: Alfonso Cuaron. There’s talk of this going to Spike as a “my bad” award from the Academy for never having even nominated him for best director (not giving him even a nomination for Do the Right Thing borders on criminal). But he did receive an honorary Oscar from the Academy in 2015, and that, coupled with BlacKkKlansman being just a good movie make me feel like this isn’t Spike’s year. Vice is a very hype-typical movie that isn’t getting much hype, and Cold War is the only movie on this list not nominated for Best Picture. That leaves Roma and the Favourite, and the Academy has proven it loves Cuaron’s work, not to mention Roma is the most unique, visually stunning film on this list, which are usually two of the major criteria for this award.

Should Be: Cuaron, for all of the reasons listed above, but I wouldn’t be upset with Lanthimos taking it.

Adapted Screenplay

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

BlacKkKlansman

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

If Beale Street Could Talk

A Star Is Born

Will Be: I really have no clue on this one, but I’m confident that The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and If Beale Street Could Talk are the first two out. The remaining three are all unlikely to win in the other major categories so voters might simply choose their favorite of those three to ensure they win something. If that’s the case, my guess is the most popular among them is A Star Is Born.

Should Be: I won’t rehash my thoughts on BlacKkKlansman again, and I haven’t seen Beale Street or CYEFM, but when considering adapted screenplays, I like to vote based on degree of difficulty jumping from the source material to the screen. That’s why A Star Is Born falls short for me, given that it was adapted from three previous versions of ultimately the same movie. To me, that makes the writer’s job easier, not harder. I definitely have a Coen Brothers bias, so my vote goes to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which managed to take a collection of short stories written over the course of 25 years and transform them into a series of visually stunning, dialogue-rich (aside from Tom Waits’ story) vignettes that somehow formed a (great) movie.

Original Screenplay

The Favourite

First Reformed

Green Book

Roma

Vice

Will Be: First Reformed is getting buzz for this award, and it might be a way for voters to give some gold to a movie than many felt was snubbed in other categories. My take is that if voters loved the screenplay so much, it would have been nominated for those other categories. So the most likely pick here is Roma, a movie about an upper-middle-class family in Mexico City with a relative dearth of dialogue or plot lines that somehow ends up being as captivating as any other movie this year.

Should Be: I thought The Big Short’s screenplay was incredible, so if Vice is comparable in both style and quality, I’m sure I’d love it. But critics are saying otherwise, so I’m going to go with The Favourite, whose screenplay managed to make a thoroughly beguiling and darkly humorous film out of what could easily have been just another dry period piece.

Foreign Language Film

Capernaum – Lebanon

Cold War – Poland

Never Look Away – Germany

Roma – Mexico

Shoplifters – Japan

Will Be: We can pretend Cold War has a chance, but the award has all but been handed to Roma already. If it’s the only movie on this list that managed to be worthy of a Best Picture nominee, logic would dictate that it’s the only movie worthy of winning Best Foreign Language Film

Should Be: Having only seen Roma, I don’t have any great insights to add here, but I’m still confident in saying it deserves this one.

Best Animated Feature

Incredibles 2

Isle of Dogs

Mirai

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Will Be: Despite winning two of the last three years, Pixar doesn’t have the stranglehold over this category that it once did. In most years, Incredibles 2, Isle of Dogs or Ralph Breaks the Internet would have a great shot to win, but this is simply Spider-Man’s year.

Should Be: I liked Isle of Dogs, but Spider-Man was probably my favorite movie of the year, and quite possibly the best. Sorry Pixar.

Cinematography

Cold War

The Favourite

Never Look Away

Roma

A Star Is Born

Will Be: Roma. Sweeping cityscapes, countryscapes and beachscapes (are those things?) + historical time period + black and white = Oscar.

Should Be: Roma. Sweeping cityscapes, countryscapes and beachscapes (are those things?) + historical time period + black and white = Oscar.

QUICK HITTERS

Production Design

Black Panther

The Favourite

First Man

Mary Poppins Returns

Roma

Will Be: Roma

Should Be: The Favourite

Costume Design

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Black Panther

The Favourite

Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Queen of Scots

Will Be: The Favourite

Should Be: The Favourite

Death, taxes, and a Victorian(ish)-era drama winning Best Costume Design are the only certainties in life.

Visual Effects

Avengers: Infinity War

Christopher Robin

First Man

Ready Player One

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Will Be: Avengers: Infinity War

Should Be: Ready Player One

This pick is based entirely on the trailer and my 1980s and 90s nostalgia.

Original Song

All the Stars – Black Panther

I’ll Fight – RBG

The Place Where Lost Things Go – Mary Poppins Returns

Shallow – A Star Is Born

When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings – The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Will Be: Shallow

Should Be: Shallow

Along with Roma winning for best Foreign Film, this is easily the biggest lock of the night. It’s also a really good song.

I don’t really have anything of substance to add for the rest of the categories, and if you’re somehow still reading, you’re probably not anxiously awaiting my take on all the documentary shorts I haven’t watched.

Happy Oscars Night, everyone! Looking forward to seeing you again next year, when we’ll get to predict the winners of the Academy’s new categories:

Worst Performance By A Best Actor/Actress Loser At Time of Award Announcement

Most Terrifying-Looking Live-Action Genie

Best Performance By People Trying to Bring Matt Damon Home

The Wes Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to Whimsy

Worst Acting Performance by a Musician Who Now Thinks He/She Can Act Because of Lady Gaga

Worst Singing Performance by an Actor Who Now Thinks He/She Can Sing Because of Bradley Cooper

Best Use of “That Guy” (Andrew Dice Clay!)