Tag Archives: Oscar nominations

2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Visual Effects

The visual effects category at the Academy Awards can be a tough category to call some years. Ex Machina winning last year was a big surprise to me, especially given Mad Max being in contention. The year before that you have Interstellar winning over Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, where either of those films could have taken the prize.

This year’s shortlist has a number of quality effects work on it. So…let’s get to it.

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Best Visual Effects

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Animated Feature

2016 yielded a flat dichotomy of animated features. There was the good and there was the bad, which makes my job a lot easier here. Four out of five of the Best Animated Feature slots are no brainers. The fifth slot is where the interesting conversation lies.

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Best Animated Feature

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Foreign Film

The shortlist for the Academy Awards Foreign Language Film category surprised me for one particular reason, and that was the omission of Paul Verhoeven’s Elle. Incidentally, it is also the only film in the running that I had the opportunity to see before writing this article. So….we’re just gonna do the best we can.

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Best Foreign Language Film

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2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Documentary

I have always grappled with reviewing documentaries. The cinematic elements are often time more muted than in fiction films, although there are exceptions to this of course. Documentaries are defined by formula. It is nice, then, to see documentaries that go above and beyond the simple formula.

Here are my picks for the Best Documentary nominations.

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Best Documentary

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions

On the morning of January 24, the 2017 Academy Award nominations will be announced. Now that 2017 is finally upon us and Oscar season is in full swing, it is as good a time as any to discuss the potential nominees in all 24 categories.

Yes, I do have no life.

Click the links below for predictions.

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Original Song

Best Original Song: the Grammy award of Academy Awards. I always am fascinated by what the Academy does with this category. Films yield very different styles of song, so much so that it often feels inappropriate to compare them to each other in an awards category. But that is exactly what we are here to do.

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Best Original Song

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Production Design

Production Design is essentially set design. It is the mise-en-scene vision of what will be filmed, whether it be on a sound stage or on location. This said, there were a lot of stellar production design schemes in film in 2016. There is a wide field to pick from, but I’m going to try.

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Best Production Design

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Original Score

The song and score categories feel like foregone conclusions this year, with one film playing right to what the sound categories are looking for. The real question is what will fill the other four nominee slots.

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Best Original Score

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Film Editing

The idea of a Best Film Editing award is strange. While editing is an arduous task that certainly deserves to be rewarded, the concept of judging a film’s editing is counter intuitive. The success of an edit is determined by the editor’s ability to hide the fact that cuts are occurring. A seamless experience is what marks a good editing job.

How do you judge a film by its editing, then? Part of it is a rhythm, a pulse in the cuts that contribute to the overall effect of a scene. In the case of a film like La La Land, it is an edit that has musicality and adds energy to a musical number. Another part of it is the editor’s ability to create that seamless experience.

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Best Film Editing

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2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies

2017 Academy Awards Nomination Predictions – Best Costume Design

There is a general formula to the Academy’s taste for costume design, and it generally involves period pieces. This year will be no different, although La La Land is not a period piece, per se, it merely feels like it is coming from a classical Hollywood time.

Let’s get into Best Costume Design nominations.

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Best Costume Design

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