Oscars betting tips
Best Picture – Top Gun: Maverick
Best Director – Daniel Kwang & Daniel Scheinert
Best Actor – Austin Butler
Best Actress – Cate Blanchett
Best Original Screenplay – The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)
Best Adapted Screenplay – All Quiet on the Western Front
Ever wondered what it would be like to be so full of financial investment and ego that you’re totally disconnected from reality? And you meet once a year to show just how much elegance you have to others around you who feel the exact same way – that you’re simply better than everyone else?
Well, that’s enough about the BBC’s AGM – the Oscars are on tonight. Or the Academy Awards, if we’re sinking to their level. What can we expect? Another Ricky Gervais-level wind-up? Will Smith to announce a Queensbury Rules match with Jake Paul? People to accidentally on purpose stoop to Irish tropes when Barry Keoghan speaks?
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The fun thing about the Oscars is that there’s no real criteria and they can simply make it up as they go along. There are guides of course – generally they won’t diverge from certain indicators like the Guild awards because, remember, this is a circle of self-importance, but this is a typically narrow view.
Instead, some things are more important. For example, Best Director used to be locked alongside Best Picture and the two typically aligned, but lately that’s not been the case. Argo, Green Book and CODA all won Best Picture without even a directorial nomination.
However, only twice in the lasty forty years has a film been selected as Best Picture without a Best Editing nod. Science, innit. Let’s have a scan through and pick the most-likely winners of the big six, based on historical trends but also realising that the diversification of the Academy year-on-year really can provide a shock.
Best Picture – Top Gun: Maverick
While Everything, Everywhere All At Once is a nod to the multiverse meeting traditional material and therefore giving an inside nod to the real money-maker in Hollywood these days, I can’t help but feel it’s just too weird to win a Best Picture award.
It’s essentially a sci-fi film and, while A24 are the best in the business at producing thought-provoking content now, I really can’t look past Top Gun: Maverick as a theatre’s last stand against streaming and a slice of value against a long odds-on shot.
While Netflix-produced movies are now seeping into the nominations – looking at you All Quiet on the Western Front – there’s a long-held view in the Academy that cinemas are their heritage and no movie in the last decade has done more to get older bums back on seats than this one.
Best Director – Daniel Kwang & Daniel Scheinert
I’m not even going to offer up an alternative to Daniel Kwang & Daniel Scheinert winning this award because even if my outside poke wins Best Picture, I think that only reinforces the Daniels taking this one home.
It’s probably at this point that I’ll offer two thoughts – both pessimistic. The Academy have done wonders in branching out and genuinely being diverse over the last while. If they revert to type and somehow manage to hand Steven Spielberg an Oscar tonight, then you may as well call the lot off. And a final note – Todd Field should win this award because Tár is by far and a away the best film made for this award cycle.
Best Actor – Austin Butler
Remember, you kind of have to please everyone at these things. And while Everything, Everywhere All At Once is a short-priced favourite to win both of the above, handing A24 both awards, it’s primarily because everyone else has done the same across the guilds to date.
When there’s been divergence, the Academy will look to pacify. Brendan Fraser’s performance in The Whale is strong and he’s been an antepost favourite for this for a long time, but that seriously undermines Austin Butler’s showing in Elvis which is a considerably better display of acting.
It was another big win for the money-drawing biopic genre and these films will continue to get made once the studios get both money and prestige. This is a handout.
Best Actress – Cate Blanchett
I just cannot see a situation where Everything, Everywhere All At Once lands both Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress – how is it remotely possible?
Cate Blanchett has been as short as anything for the last four months and while the award wave has shifted in one direction, Michelle Yeoh is now gaining traction in this market, too.
Forget it – it won’t happen. Tár is a traditional performance carried out by an Academy darling who’s long towed the line of the traditional panel members. Blanchett should be the favourite in here.
Best Original Screenplay – The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)
One thing to note here is that Best Original Screenplay doesn’t necessarily correspond to the overall picture. For example if Kwan and Scheinert did win this, Best Picture and Best Director, they’d be just the ninth to have ever achieved the feat. It’s setting a very high precedent and I just can’t see it transpiring.
If Hollywood does need diversity, like we’ve seen with wins given to Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ in recent years, then I think this award goes to The Banshees of Inisherin and Martin McDonagh, who’s landed both Golden Globe and BAFTA which usually indicates success here.
Best Adapted Screenplay – All Quiet on the Western Front
While original lends a nod to the originality of a piece, this speaks directly to how well an already-existing work has been adapted for the screen. In this instance, you could be coerced into taking Women Talking because of the book it came from, but I think this is a chance for the Academy to look directly in the eyes of a previous great.
All Quiet on the Western Front is technically an adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel from the 1920s but in the minds of cinema-goers and Netflix pacifiers, this can be handed out for almost being a remake. No, Netflix – you’ve not done well here this year, but look, at least you can have an award for essentially coping a previously-well-done production from 1930.
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