The Oscars are tonight. I’ve got to get my picks out asap. So, here they are [shocker: I’m predicting a big night for La La Land, aka, Academy voter catnip]:
ABOVE THE LINE CATEGORIES
Best Picture
Will Win: La La Land
Should Win: I haven’t really been sucked into the La La Land backlash. I am not someone who thinks history will judge Oscars 2017 harshly if La La Land beats Moonlight. La La Land, Moonlight, Manchester By the Sea – I’m fine with any one of those winning.
Should Have Been Nominated: Silence, Sing Street
Best Director
Will Win: Damien Chazelle
Should Win: Damien Chazelle. His camera is be a bit hyperactive for La La Land’s first third, like Paul Thomas Anderson circa Boogie Nights on speed, but the sheer logistical challenges he faced compared to his closest competition, Barry Jenkins for Moonlight, gives him the edge.
Should Have Been Nominated: Martin Scorsese for Silence
Best Actor
Will Win: Denzel Washington
Should Win: Casey Affleck
Should Have Been Nominated: Andrew Garfield for Silence instead of Hacksaw Ridge.
Best Actress
Will Win: Amy Adams. What’s that, you say? She’s not even nominated? Well, screw this category then.
No, Seriously. You Have to Pick Someone to Win: Fine. Emma Stone, and spare me your “Isabelle Huppert for the upset” picks. Look at how well that worked out for Charlotte Rampling (45 Years) last year (when she lost to Brie Larson) or for Emmanuelle Riva (Amor) in 2013 (when she lost to Jennifer Lawrence).
Should Win: Amy Adams.
Again With This? You Know She Wasn’t Nominated!: Fine. Among the actual nominees, I actually like Stone’s performance the best.
Should Have Been Nominated: Do I even have to say it? Amy Adams!
Best Supporting Actor
Will Win: Mahershala Ali
Should Win: Michael Shannon just because his acceptance speech would probably be so weirdly intense
Should Have Been Nominated: John Goodman for 10 Cloverfield Lane
Best Supporting Actress
Will Win: Viola Davis
Should Win: Viola Davis. This category is total bullshit. Again. Alicia Vikander had no business winning last year for what was a lead role (in The Danish Girl), not supporting, and history will repeat itself this year with Viola winning a supporting award for a (truly amazing) lead performance. It’s Oscar gerrymandering, I tells ya’.
Should Have Been Nominated: Gugu Mbatha-Raw for Black Mirror’s “San Junipero.”
[Wait. Did he just say “San Junipero”?]
Yes, I absolutely did. I know – it’s a 61-minute long episode of a sci-fi anthology series, not a movie. You know what’s also not really a movie? O.J.: Made in America, yet it’s probably going to win Best Documentary because ESPN gamed the system. So, screw it. If Netflix had put “San Junipero” into a couple of independent movie theaters before the premiere of Black Mirror season 3 I would be fine with pretending it was a little movie and nominate it for just about anything imaginable, particularly Mbatha-Raw’s mesmerizing performance. A couple of years from now I won’t remember half of the movies on this list, but I might never forget this:
Best Original Screenplay
Will Win: Manchester By the Sea
Should Win: Manchester By the Sea
Should Have Been Nominated: See what I said above about “San Junipero.”
Best Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: Moonlight
Should Win: Arrival
Should Have Been Nominated: Deadpool just because of the inherent humor of a movie with such juvenile jokes being nominated for Oscar. Also, seriously, the Academy could have used the hook of “Come see if Deadpool wins…anything. Like anything at all. Even just one nomination would give us something to work with here. We’re kind of desperate for ratings.”
Best Animated Film
Will Win: Zootopia
Should Win: Zootopia
Should Have Been Nominated: Norm of the North just so everyone could say, “What the hell is that?”
Best Documentary Feature
Will Win: O.J.: Made in America
Should Win: All of them. They’re all so good the Academy should declare a five-way tie and give each film’s producing team individual Oscars.
Should Have Been Nominated: Weiner, Zero Days and so many others
Best Foreign Language Film
Will Win: The Salesman
Should Win: I abstain. I haven’t seen all of the nominees.
BELOW THE LINE CATEGORIES
Best Cinematography
Will Win: La La Land
Should Win: Silence
Best Production Design
Will Win: La La Land
Should Win: Hail, Caesar
Best Visual Effects
Will Win: Jungle Book
Should Win: Jungle Book
Should Have Been Nominated: Fantastic Beasts. Less well publicized than Jungle Book is the fact that the majority of Fantastic Beasts was also just human actors on a blue screen set.
Best Costume Design
Will Win: Jackie
Should Win: Fantastic Beasts
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Will Win: Suicide Squad
Should Win: Literally anything else. Just pull the name of any 2016 blockbuster out of a hat and give the Oscar to that instead of Suicide Squad. I will not live in a world in which Suicide Squad is an Oscar-winning movie.
Best Original Score
Will Win: La La Land
Should Win: With all due respect to Arrival and Jackie (and the other two less-worthy nominees), La La Land truly does deserve to win
Best Original Song
Will Win: “City of Stars”
Should Win: “How Far I”ll Go” because Lin Manuel-Miranda will have his EGOT, dammit. Maybe not today, but some day.
Best Sound Editing
Will Win: La La Land
Should Win: Hacksaw Ridge
Best Sound Mixing
Will Win: La La Land
Should Win: La La Land
SHORT FILM CATEGORIES
Best Documentary Short
Will Win: The White Helmets
Should Win: The White Helmets
Best Animated Short
Will Win: Piper (aka, the Pixar one which played before Finding Dory)
Should Win: Piper (the other four nominees leave a lot to be desired)
Best Live Action Short
Will Win: “Ennemis Interieurs” (a chilling depiction of a French-Algerian man’s citizenship test quickly veering into New Age McCarthysim with Muslim in place of Communism)
Should Win: “La Femme et le TGV” (a light, but lovely story of an old French baker who finds a renewed purpose in her life after becoming pen pals with the man she believes to be the engineer of the train which passes her house two times a day)
Conclusion: I’m predicting La La Land will win 9 of its 14 nominations. Prove me wrong, Oscars. Prove me wrong.
We Minored in Film 
Great snarky post. I haven’t seen many of this year’s Oscar nominated films, so have refrained from making any predictions, except for the obvious which is that La La Land is going to take home almost everything. I agree that not nominating Amy Adams was a shock; I think it’s one of the best performances of her career (and in a year in which she gave two other not so great performances in the Batman Superman thing and Nocturnal Animals).