Final Oscars Predictions & Dinner Party Poll

Last call for awards picks, what guests at my Oscars dinner thought of the nominees, and short words on short films.

Happy Oscars Sunday everyone! This post will be short and sweet, unlike this year’s awards season. I was getting pretty tired of the whole thing but I woke up this morning really excited for tonight!

I’m hosting a watch party and I’m making some movie-themed snacks:

• Pão de queijo (The Secret Agent)

• Black hummus & muhammara with pita chips & crudité (Avatar: Fire and Ash)

• Tortilla chips & salsa verde (One Battle After Another)

• Popcorn (obviously)

Haven't plated these yet but last night I made the black hummus and muhammara.

Some friends and I also concocted some custom movie-themed cocktails, which I’m excited to serve. For mains, I’ll be ordering Domino’s. (I think we can tie this one to If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, especially if I rip the layer of cheese off the pie.)

It’s probably a little late, but this is my big list of food & drink ideas if you need inspo for tonight:

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Final Oscars Predictions

Unsurprisingly I’ve changed some of my picks and adjusted confidence ratings since nominations were announced January 22. I think this table should be easy to parse:

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What My Dinner Party Guests Thought of This Year’s Contenders

As I introduced each dish during my ten-course Oscars dinner, I polled everyone at the table about their thoughts on Best Picture race.

First, here’s what was the most watched:

So this was a decently well-informed crew! I asked people to see at least five of the nominees in advance of the dinner. But like the real Academy, there was no way to truly enforce this and a couple people were really just there to enjoy the food. (Which is very nice!)

I also asked everyone to go around and name what they think will win, their favorite, and their villain. Here are those results:

A couple people offered bonus villains, including but not limited to:

• Timothée Chalamet’s press tour

• Gracie Abrams, for taking Paul Mescal off the market

• Diane Warren

• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for not giving any nominations to No Other Choice

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Short Words on the Shorts

I had planned to do a full review of the Oscar-nominated short films but it fell by the wayside. So here are my quick hits. If you haven’t seen them yet, you got some time to squeeze them in! Links take you to the film if they’re freely available on YouTube/Vimeo.

In terms of predictions, I believe it was the Times’s Kyle Buchanan who said that he just imagines what the most basic Academy voter would choose in these categories, and predict that.

Animated

Pretty typical mix of nominees, with old-school styles staking out a contrast to 3D animation. The ascendance of French animation has been apparent to anyone following this category: Butterfly is generally considered to be the “best” of this year’s bunch, with impressionistic painting telling the story of an Algerian Jewish swimmer whose life takes him from contending at the Olympics to surviving Auschwitz.

(Canada and Ireland have also invested in independent animation, and it shows here. Meanwhile, Disney/Pixar have been MIA since the 2020 film year.)

But it’s the simplest film, Retirement Plan, that tugged at my heartstrings the most. Domhnall Gleeson narrates a “when I retire, I will…” essay that will hit home for anyone whose plans for life have been postponed by an obligation to work. And that’s why I think it’ll win.

Live Action

This crop of nominees breaks a recent precedent: not a single one involves a child in peril. We’ve come a long way from 2019. I remember seeing that package in a theater and it was so funny to witness the audience (myself included) become openly hostile to what we were seeing on screen. We even have an SNL-style comedy sketch, Jane Austen’s Period Drama, in the mix!

Commonalities emerge between various pairs of the live action short contenders: performing arts as a vital form of personal expression, chafing under societal repression, and punny titles.

Two People Exchanging Saliva seems to be the fan favorite, at least on the internet, and for good reason. In a dystopic world where physical intimacy is outlawed, a saleswoman at a Paris magasin forms an illicit connection with one of her customers. Black and white, French, sapphic—this is a So Sad So Sexy vibe. The maid from Portrait of a Lady on Fire stars in it and the dystopic world is fully realized.

The Singers, A Friend of Dorothy

I liked that one a lot, but my personal favorite has to be The Singers (on Netflix). In a gruff dive bar, an impromptu singing competition breaks out, with $100 and a case of beer on the line. As someone who advocates for the life changing magic of pouring your heart and soul into karaoke, this was firmly made for me. Knowing the background of its making makes it even easier to appreciate. That guy who went viral for singing “Unchained Melody” at the subway station? He stars in this, as do similar male singers who were briefly famous on the internet. And the music supervision... how the heck did they get the rights to all these songs??

Hewing to the “basic means best” heuristic, I think the winner tonight will be A Friend of Dorothy, which I found to be treacly. Won’t hurt that it has the British star power of Miriam Margolyes (the titular Dorothy) and Stephen Fry (a friend of Dorothy, to be sure, but not the friend referred to in the title).

Documentary Short Subject

The Documentary Branch of the Academy has a type. They prefer works that highlight social issues around the world while demonstrating little tolerance for experimental fare. Of the three short film categories, this was the biggest slog to get through.

The Devil is Busy, All the Empty Rooms

I don’t really have a favorite in this category. To that end, the most tolerable were The Devil is Busy (on HBO Max) and All the Empty Rooms (on Netflix) because their artistic simplicity is outweighed by topical salience. (They are about an abortion clinic in Georgia and the victims of school shootings, respectively.) I think All the Empty Rooms will win tonight, given the combination of Netflix backing, the subject being a well-known CBS News anchor, and the inarguable activism on display. But Geeta Gandbhir has the potential to win two Oscars tonight: one for her feature The Perfect Neighbor and another for co-directing The Devil is Busy.

Throughout the past few years, there has been a nominee in this category that can also be described as an avant-garde nature documentary (One such short, Nuisance Bear, was expanded to feature length. It just premiered at this year’s Sundance.) Perfectly a Strangeness (on The Criterion Channel) gets points just for being different from the other four nominees: it’s a wordless, plotless story that follows a trio of donkeys in the Atacama Desert. Think EO except nothing bad happens. (Thankfully!) Beautiful imagery, but I found the throughline to be lacking.

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Further Oscars Reading

• When COVID Almost Canceled the Oscars: An Oral History of a Most Surreal Night by Scott Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter

  • Really great reporting, plus a reveal of the speech Chadwick Boseman’s widow would have given, had he won that posthumous Best Actor award.

• Pulling Bolts Out of the Ferris Wheel by A. S. Hamrah, n+1

  • This just got published this morning so I haven’t read it yet, but A. S. Hamrah’s annual criticism of Oscar movies is always essential reading.

• He’ll Scan Your Ticket and Offer Commentary on the Movie You’re About to See at AMC Lincoln Square by Caitlin Kitson, West Side Rag

  • Not actually about awards, but if you’ve ever had your ticket scanned by Jeffry at the AMC Lincoln Square, you know he deserves an Oscar for Best Cinema Usher.