🎧 Two Days Out: Oscar Shockers, Shorts and Second Thoughts
Need help winning your Oscar pool? I’ve got you covered
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
Watch on YouTube
There are just two days left to vote for this year’s Oscars, and if you’re the kind of person who gets more joy out of being surprised than correctly predicting every category, things have gotten a lot more fun.
Sunday night’s Actor Awards confirmed that Sinners is having an undeniable surge, winning the ensemble award and best actor for Michael B. Jordan, and making a compelling case for some major Oscar victories in the final moments of the season. Are these good vibes enough to help it beat One Battle After Another for best picture? History suggests it could be — well, probably.
On Sunday night, immediately after the Actor Awards wrapped up, my colleague Christopher Rosen and I hopped on YouTube live to discuss it all, and ponder what now feel like two very wide-open acting races, with some questions still remaining about just how dominant One Battle After Another star Sean Penn really is over in the best supporting actor category. Today’s episode of the podcast kicks off with a replay of that conversation, plus a brief introduction in which Chris has become even more convinced overnight that Sinners can pull off a best picture win. As of this writing, he’s changed his mind again (I have the Slack receipts). There’s going to be a lot of that between now and Oscar night!
In the second half of the episode, Chris sticks around so we can partake in one of my favorite annual Oscar traditions: watching all 15 Oscar-nominated shorts and making good predictions based on them. Spoiler alert: It almost never works! Short film voters — that is, the Academy members who take the time to watch all of the nominees, which may not be many at all — can be very idiosyncratic in their tastes, and just when you think you’ve recognized a pattern from year to year, they switch it up. Sometimes they want the movies with the most clear-cut emotional messages; sometimes they reward animated films that are absolutely unlike anything you’ve ever seen.
This year’s lineup of nominees is generally pretty strong, and — as I learned when I talked to several of the live-action short filmmakers for yesterday’s newsletter — so much more goes into making these shorts than you can possibly see on the screen. Chris and I mostly agree on the frontrunners in each category, and predict that Two People Exchanging Saliva will win for live-action (you can watch that one above), All the Empty Rooms has the edge in documentary and Retirement Plan is our favorite for animated.
You can listen to the podcast to hear why and see if you agree. But also make sure to check out the shorts yourself! They’re now playing in theaters around the country, and many are available online as well. I can’t guarantee that watching them will help you win your Oscar pool, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.