The BAFTAs are Coming! The BAFTAs are Coming! A Preview

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) will announce their nominees today or tonight or something. This is not a concept I can ever grasp completely, the time of this announcement, but I presume it’s late by California standards. Late-ish tonight?

(NOTE: There will be livestream of the announcement on Facebook starting tonight at 11:30 p.m. Pacific)

The BAFTAs will be the last gasp of Oscar 2019, the nominations phase. They have been known to push a last minute nominee or two, but their voting process is a bit different from the Oscars. If a name appears there that we haven’t seen before, there’s a decent chance that contender might also pop up at the Oscars.

The BAFTAS will have five Best Picture contenders and five Best Director contenders. A Best Picture winner would ideally show up both places but just one is better than none. Needless to say, they really love honoring their Brits, and thus we can probably expect to see, for instance, Saoirse Ronan to show up for Mary Queen of Scots.

There have been films that showed up at BAFTA that maybe seemed like they might crash the Oscar race, like Drive or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But alas, for those of us hoping against hope for a First Man nomination here, it’s not likely, not without a PGA or a DGA. First Man is probably going to get a decent amount of crafts nominations, as many predicted long ago, but though it is by far one of the best directed films of the year (and it remains a total joke that it’s being left off the list), the Oscar race, as we know, is about popularity. And First Man, right now, isn’t popular enough to make the cut.

Thus, we fully expect the usual suspects to show up. A Star Is Born, Green Book, Roma, The Favourite should all do really well, and probably also Vice, maybe Can You Ever Forgive Me. Perhaps Spike Lee and BlacKkKlansman and an outside shot for Black Panther. And of course, Bohemian Rhapsody should do very very well, considering it’s basically an international phenom, not to mention the history of Queen, etc. Honestly, these nominations will be as surprising as every stop on this race has been so far.

We’re not doing predictions for these, but head on over to AwardsWatch where Erik Anderson has laid his down. He’s listing Lynne Ramsay to make the cut for You Were Never Really Here. That’s certainly possible.