The State of the Race: All Over but the Shouting – Awardsdaily – The Oscars, the Films and everything in between. - Awards Daily

The longest Oscar race in history has finally come to a close. As the BAFTA, DGA and ADG have rung in over the weekend there doesn’t seem to be much shaking of the tree, so to speak, even given the long season.

Yes, Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor at the BAFTAs against Chadwick Boseman. And I suppose love for The Father might drive Hopkins towards his second Best Actor win, but I would never bet against the winner of the Globe and SAG in this case, especially given how different the Academy’s demographics are compared to BAFTA’s.

What is worth noting, however, is that the BAFTA voters ignored the jury’s picks outside of the Oscar picks and stuck to only those that had Oscar nominations. This was especially painful in the Best Actress category, where there were four women of color up for the award. The problem was that the awards race is about consensus. A consensus is built up over time and the votes tend to gravitate towards it. Names tossed in at the last part of the race don’t have a good of a shot. We like to think that winning awards is about who is best – but really it isn’t. It is about perception and building a consensus around one name.

That said, they did step out of the consensus with Best Actor. It is not THAT surprising – and our own Clarence Moye predicted The Father in Best Actor and Adapted Screenplay – considering the BAFTA voters have never really been able to connect to films about racism in America. That has been almost always the case unless there is a prominent British person in the mix (Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Daniel Kaluuya). Thus, the sentimental attachment to Chadwick Boseman’s posthumous win could be called an American thing. But there still no doubt it is an American THING. It is a big thing. Still, where once I didn’t think the Academy voters had it in their heart to deny Glenn Close the win for The Wife they did exactly that. You never really know, ultimately, what they’ll do in the privacy of their own ballot space. But I’ll stick with Boseman for two reasons:

1. The Academy demographic is much different from BAFTA by design. They have invited a large number – thousands – of new members who are not white. And young. The Academy has almost 10,000 voters where BAFTA has around 6,000.
2. Boseman has won the SAG already – and with Viola Davis also winning the SAG and Ma Rainey earning an ensemble nomination, and with actors ruling the Academy it seems to follow that at least Boseman will win.

Best Actress is tricky because it looks like we have three different winners in three significant groups for the first time since 2001, when Halle Berry won the SAG award and then won the Oscar. I remember that year and the majority were predicting it to go to either Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball or Denzel Washington for Training Day – not both. I was one of the few who predicted both and cashed in big. But Russell Crowe and Sissy Spacek were the general consensus picks to win.

Halle Berry made history that night, as would Viola Davis (SAG winner) if she were to win or Andra Day (Globe winner) if she were to win. The problem there is which one will get the consensus to rally around them. It seems that Carey Mulligan will have a consensus built in since Promising Young Woman is such an iron clad Best Picture contender. Some believe that makes Frances McDormand, who just won the BAFTA, also as a potential winner. Neither Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom nor The United States vs. Billie Holiday have Best Picture nominations. They don’t really have a consensus walking in the door.

Best Actress is all over the place and might start World War III in our comment sections.

Chloe Zhao, as expected, won the Directors Guild Award and it felt good to watch her win, which is what you want when you have someone who is winning everything already heading into the Oscars. What can sometimes lead to an upset is if enthusiasm has dampened slightly in the weeks heading into voting. But for Nomadland, if anything, it seems to only be solidifying.

The consensus has settled itself into the following, with only a handful of categories still open:

Picture – Nomadland
Director – Chloe Zhao, Nomadland
Actor – Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Actress — ???
Supporting Actor – Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Supporting Actress – Juh-Jung Youn, Minari
Original Screenplay – Promising Young Woman
Adapted Screenplay – Nomadland (or The Father)
Editing – Sound of Metal (or Chicago 7)
Sound – Sound of Metal
Cinematography – Nomadland (or Mank)
Production Design – Mank
Visual Effects – Tenet (or Midnight Sky)
Costume – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (or Mank)
Makeup and Hair – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (or Mank)
Doc Feature – My Octopus Teacher (or Truffle Hunters)
International Feature – Another Round
Score – Soul
Song – Speak Now
Animated Feature – Soul
The Shorts — still open

If it went this way, all of the Best Picture nominees except Chicago 7 would be awarded with at least one Oscar. We will have to wait for the Editors Guild to see which film they like best before figuring out if Chicago 7 can win there.

The Oscars are still two weeks away but much of the race feels like it’s already been decided.

We will be posting our Oscar Prediction Contest later today.

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April 12, 2021 at 05:48AM
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The State of the Race: All Over but the Shouting – Awardsdaily – The Oscars, the Films and everything in between. - Awards Daily
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