Welcome to another very boring Oscar year. Bloggers will try to make it more exciting to get through the next few months but overall, when Best Picture and Best Director are already decided, the race, as my good friend David Carr once noted, is flattened. Some people are more into the acting categories, I suppose. Can we hang our hopes on what will win Live Action Short? But if you’re like me, the top prize is the most exciting.
Even still, the Telluride Film Festival is almost upon us. It will begin September 3rd, Labor Day Weekend. The Venice Film Festival starts just a day before, September 2nd. After that, the clusterfuck that is festival season will pile one “take” after another.
Because the Oscar race has mostly swallowed up film criticism, the hive mind has decided that a film’s worth is usually whether or not it will win awards. And in general, we kind of know what will be nominated and win awards and we know why. Know the voters, know the wins.
So when people watch films like Ink, Wild Horse Nine or Bucking Fastard or any of the other big films they will be watching them to see if they are sturdy race horses, not so much whether they are great works of cinema. Even if they were great works of cinema, whether anyone sees or hears from them again will depend on whether they pick up the desired “Oscar buzz.”
Essentially, the next few months will be about the hive mind places the necessary Chess pieces on the board and deciding, via groupthink, who “should” win in the various categories. This group also decides where they go anticipating what they think the Oscar voters will do. It’s selection by consensus – who should win and why.
Without the “woke” aspects of The Odyssey, there is a chance that another film could rise and defeat it. But the culture war, the casting of Elliot Page and Lupita Nyong’o as the “face that launched a thousand ships,” is proof enough, to this group, that Christopher Nolan is doing good, as opposed to making a hit film that lots of people saw. The old Academy, prior to adding thousands of new members, might not be as easily won over but when it comes to understanding the hive mind, one of the biggest parts of who “should” win is how much good they’re doing.
Who should win matters because this Academy, this industry, this hive mind has become an insular, totalitarian movement that punishes dissent and decides who can and can’t participate. They decide guilt or innocence with the court of public opinion online. That means someone can be hit with a bad vibe that can derail their Oscar campaign while another more deserving person wins.
We can see that throughout Oscar history, like Jason Reitman losing Adapted Screenplay for Up in the Air after a messy lawsuit to be credited as the sole writer (maybe that was why). Geoffrey Fletcher won for Precioius instead because voters felt like they were putting their vote to good use.
For Christopher Nolan, it’s nothing but green lights. Not only is The Odyssey “peak woke” but he’s known around town as a good guy, whether it was pushing for Ryan Coogler to win last year, or standing up for real film as opposed to streaming, to not using social media, etc.
But some people won’t be so lucky. They might get hit with one fake narrative or another decided by the types of people who are eroding the industry’s worth, in my opinion.
The Odyssey is also a “Movie for Our Time,” which will only help propel it forward. It’s doubtful there will be another “Movie of Our Time” that will top it. I can’t think of one. But let’s quickly look at the lineups.
Here are the films in competition at Venice. I have starred the ones I think will be in play.
Venezia 83 — Competition (Golden Lion)
Naza — Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
*Company — Casey Affleck
Kami Nour (A Bit of Light) — Ali Asgari
Ritorno a Buenos Aires — Marco Bechis
*Ink — Danny Boyle (opening film)
Un bon petit soldat (A Good Little Soldier) — Stéphane Brizé
Il fuoco che ti porti dentro (The Fire Within You) — Edoardo De Angelis
Kvinde Ukendt (Woman Unknown) — May el-Toukhy
*Bucking Fastard — Werner Herzog
15/18 (A Place to Heal) — Cédric Kahn
Dau — Ilya Khrzhanovsky
Look Back — Hirokazu Kore-eda
Ga-neung-han sa-rang (Possible Love) — Lee Chang-dong
*Wild Horse Nine — Martin McDonagh
Succederà questa notte (It Will Happen Tonight) — Nanni Moretti
*Primetime — Lance Oppenheim
The Echo Chamber — Andrea Pallaoro
Un peu avant minuit — Nicolas Pariser
L’estranea — Paolo Strippoli
Nelson san, anata wa hito wo koroshimashitaka? (Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?) — Shinya Tsukamoto
*Bunker — Florian Zeller
Best Picture
Wild Horse Nine has the strongest pre-festival buzz.
Ink could prove to be something. In Danny Boyle we trust, even if it will be yet another liberal screed against the big bad Republicans. Who knows, maybe it won’t be too terrible.
Company – directed by Casey Affleck, “Follows a love triangle between a husband and wife and the mysterious grifter. The narrative will also focus on a sixteen-year-old named Caleb, who is described as peculiar and sullen.”
Best Actress:
Bunker features Penelope Cruz in yet another role (The Invite, La Bola Negra) and husband Javier Bardem. He’s building a bunker for a tech bro, which slots this film in with a series of films this year aimed at big tech. But they’re good actors and who knows.
Bucking Fastard has the Mara sisters, Kate and Rooney playing creepy twins. Maybe one of them will rise to the top of the pile.
Best Actor
Primetime looks fantastic, with Robert Pattinson in the lead role.
Bunker, Company, Wild Horse Nine, Ink also in Best Actor territory.
There will probably be more but these films will have to meet the expectations of the hive mind that they are good and “Oscar worthy.”
Next we move to the Telluride Film Festival and for that we’ll head to Michael’s Telluride Blog that predicts the Telluride lineup so much so that the festival organizers have named him an Enemy of the State.
Here are his pics currently:
1) Elsinore — Best Actor contender for Andrew Scott
2) The Debut — Best Actress contender for Julianne Moore and Supporting for Paul Giamatti
3) Ink — see above
4) Club Kid
5) Bucking Fastard — see above
6) Wild Horse Nine — see above
7) Fatherland — Best Actress contender for Sandra Huller
8) La Bola Negra (The Black Ball) — Best Picture, Director contender
9) A Long Winter — Best Picture, Director, and Actress contender
10) Everest: The Other Side
11) Minotaur
12) Fjord — Best Picture, Director contender
13) Tender Loving Care
14) Gentle Monster
15) Rose
16) The Man I Love
17)The Alpha Gang
18) My Undesirable Friends Part II
19) Rehearsal for a Revolution
20) The Unknown
21) Tenzing
22) The Idiots
23) The Liberation
24) Making Marie Antoinette
25) One More Time
Other possibilities:
Ancient History
The Basics of Philosophy
Burgundy
Diamond
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
Primetime
Sense and Sensibility — Best Picture, Best Actress contender
The Story of Documentary Film
Yellow Letters
For those who cover this phase of the race, this is a very exciting time. As someone who has become a bit of an outsider, I can see it from where most people outside the bubble do – and that is that it feels like a shrinking world, not an expanding one. That’s mainly due to the extreme filtering of what stories can be told, what can be said, what opinions can be shared. We’re all living with this madness.
For instance, Michael Patterson, who runs Michael’s Telluride Blog has been a great friend of mine for years. He held my quote at the top of his page for years but in 2024, he took it off because he had to. He knew the consequences of having my name on his page. That is what has become of this industry. It is terrifying, punitive, censorious and oppressive. To me, that makes the Oscar race a lot less exciting because everyone must play it so very safe.
I yearn for the counterculture to arrive with a loud thud and much of it has on the outside of this bubble — like Obsession and I hope The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. I so crave, and I know lots of people do, people to just kick down the wall that contains art and culture now and allow truth and dissent to find their way back in.
We’ll be getting a lot of movies that see our current world from the perch of the morally superior. At the moment, only one turns that camera around to look at what has become of speech and art. That’s Fjord. We will have to wait and see how it plays with this group. Hope springs eternal.
Scott Kernen will be doing his dispatches from Telluride so we have that to look foward to.
Movies that stand out this year are clear. There are four strong contenders.
The Odyssey – the frontrunner, slated to win at the very least Picture, Director, Casting.
Project Hail Mary – quietly the best film of the year so far. Not hive mind friendly but if these voters are doing their job they won’t let this slip away.
The Invite – an absolute triumph from Olivia Wilde and her four actors.
Obsession – a game-changer by Curry Barker that has made an ungodly sum of money but more than that, is inventive and thrilling.
Probably La Bola Negra is a strong contender, though it is only, at the moment, a fan favorite. It probably lands in the sixth spot.
These are the top contenders, to my mind. We don’t know how voters will respond to some of these but they are the standouts. Now, we have to fill in five more.
Here are my predictions for this week.
Predictions
Best Picture
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
The Invite
Wild Horse Nine
Fjord
Obsession
La Bola Negra
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Dune III
Digger
Alt. Ink
Director
Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey
Olivia Wilde, The Invite
Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine
Los Jovis, La Bola Negra
David Fincher, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Alt. Curry Barker, Obsession, Christian Mungiu, Fjord, Denis Villeneuve, Dune III, Danny Boyle, Ink
Actor
Matt Damon, The Odyssey
Tom Cruise, Digger
Seth Rogan, The Invite
Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary
John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine
Alt. Brad Pitt, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, Andrew Scott, Elsinore, Guy Pearce, Ink
Actress
Ruth Madeley, Being Heumann
Inde Navarette, Obsession
Rosalind Eleazar, Misty Green
Julianne Moore, The Debut
Olivia Wilde, The Invite
Alt. Renate Reinsve, Fjord
Supporting Actor
Paul Giamatti, The Debut
Guitarricadelafuente, La Bola Negra
Sam Rockwell, Wild Horse Nine
Jeremy Strong, The Social Reckoning
Edward Norton, The Invite
Supporting Actress
Anne Hathaway, The Odyssey
Penelope Cruz, La Bola Negra
Carla Gugino, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Sandra Huller, Digger
Penelope Cruz, The Invite
Original Screenplay
Wild Horse Nine
Misty Green
Fjord
Obsession
Ink
Adapted Screenplay
The Invite
Project Hail Mary
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
The Odyssey
La Bola Negra
Editing
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Wild Horse Nine
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Dune III
Casting
The Odyssey
The Debut
Digger
Bucking Fastard
La Bola Negra
Visual Effects
Dune: Part Three
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
Disclosure Day
Cinematography
Dune: Part Three
The Odyssey
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Werwulf
La Bolla Negra
Costumes
Werwulf
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Ink
Sense and Sensibility
Makeup and Hair
Digger
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
La Bola Negra
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Production Design
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Not much has changed. We’ll know more in about two weeks.
