The 2024 Academy Awards

Hello, and welcome to the strangest time of year in American movie-going: Oscars week. The industry has been giving awards, giving acceptance speeches, and maybe more importantly trying to convince Academy voters to vote for them. I will sincerely miss Fran Hoefner’s Maestro Moment, a feature of her weekly writing in which she reports on what the hell Bradley Cooper was doing week-to-week to garner and retain attention. God bless Fran, and god bless Bradley.

Instead of going long and taking the Academy Awards too seriously, which I certainly have done in the past, I’m taking my foot off the pedal this year. We’re coasting. We’re enjoying the scenery as we coast on by, baby. I’m going to give you my predictions for who will win on Sunday, who should win, maybe who should have been nominated, what preparation you should do in your headphones this week, and some playlists of movie music that can help get you in the proper mood this week/end.

Let me lead with a playlist, in case you want some backing music to your reading of this fine work of internet writing: Lindsay Zoladz, for the Times’ The Amplifier newsletter, made a playlist of the best songs that have won the Best Original Song Academy Award, and gives blurbs about each. Zoladz doesn’t miss.

Best Song Playlist

Now, to the awards:

Who will win: Oppenheimer

Who should win: Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer has been the favorite since it came out, and nothing has come close to unseating it. If I was the czar, however, I would want the other big adaptation of an important moment in American history, the one that more effectively says something about humanity, America, destruction, and those being destroyed.

Who will win: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

Who should win: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

This is Nolan’s most “something” movie, and I could pick a dozen words to fill in for something. It is still cold and lacking real human emotions, but let’s get Nolan his Oscar, and get that future baggage out of the way to correctly reward future deserving winners. Does Scorsese deserve this, and a second, Best Director award? Probably. But I’m easy.

Who will win: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

Who should win: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

The movie is based on putting an IMAX camear six inches from this man’s face, and it works. I loved Giamatti, and would love to see him get this award sometime in his life. Cillian seems like a great guy, though, and someone who doesn’t take these things over-seriously, or care about them at all. He just wants to get back home to Ireland with his wife. God bless Cillian.

Who will win: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

Who should win: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon

This performance has the most weight on top of it, and the performer has the most weight on them in this role and this opportunity. Gladstone gave the best performance, an important performance, and is a deserving winner. Emma Stone is REALLY GOOD in Poor Things, but that is a silly movie and a silly character, and I don’t need it to be cast in gold. God bless Lily Gladstone.

Who will win: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer

Who should win: Charles Melton, May December

Yeah, I’m breaking the fucking rules here. Charles Melton gave the best performance of the year, period. RDJ rocks in Oppenheimer, and everyone is overly glad that the Marvel movies are dead and that actors can do other things again, and that’s fine and worth rewarding. But we, as a species, fucked up on this one. God bless Charles Melton.

Who will win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Who should win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

She rocks, her performance is great, and some performance from this movie should be recognized. The three “leads” are all great.

Who will win: Anatomy of a Fall

Who should win: May December

This is a really tough one. I think the brilliance of Anatomy of a Fall is best represented in the editing category (spoiler), but also that May December’s success is inseparable from its direction and every single performance in it (all great). Since May December isn’t nominated for other things that it should be, I’m giving it this one, since the screenplay is actively great, and a fascinating work of fiction pieced together from real life and from cultural reflection. 

Who will win: American Fiction

Who should win: Barbie

HUGE CAVEAT: I have not seen American Fiction; I am seeing it tomorrow! Stop yelling at me!

I was going to give this award to Oppenheimer, which turns a doorstop biography into a blockbuster thriller, but that is actually the wrong take, 

Who will win: Oppenheimer

Who should win: Anatomy of a Fall

This is a tricky one. Christopher Nolan’s movies are always going to be meticulously and specifically edited, and much of his vision is created in the editing more than anything else. Killers of the Flower Moon is also wonderfully edited, and the partnership of director Martin Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker is the best one in Hollywood. But the success of a suspenseful legal whodunnit thriller is in the editing, and if Anatomy of a Fall succeeds at all, it’s because of its visual and narrative cohesion.

Who will win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Who should win: The Boy and the Heron

I think Spider-Man will win for a couple of reasons: it’s domestic, it’s vibrant and exciting, and it’s a replication of something people love. Additionally, I think the lack of interest in this or any American award from those involved in creating The Boy and the Heron will make people cold to giving it this award.

That said, do we really think that Spider-Man, only half of a full narrative film, is better than the most obtuse and challenging and far-reaching lifelong finale from the finest animated feature director who has ever lived? Give me a break. God bless Hayao Miyazaki.

Who will win: Oppenheimer

Who should win: Oppenheimer

I’ve been on the Ludwig Göransson bandwagon for a long time, and Christopher Nolan relies on soundtrack to fuck with your mind, and to tell you what emotion you should be feeling (because his human characters sure won’t be doing it). This score is muscular and technically innovative, and thrilling and exciting as hell. God bless Ludwig.

Who will win: “What Was I Made For?”, Barbie

Who should win: “I’m Just Ken”, Barbie

Come on, people. Easiest choice of my life

Who will win: Poor Things

Who should win: Killers of the Flower Moon

Have I decided this ever since reading the NYTimes go long on Jack Fisk? You bet your ass. Am I wrong? You bet your ass I’m not.

This will be the Poor Things win most easily locked up, I believe, for the worlds built for it to exist in, which are objectively cool. It feels like the Batman movies of the 1990’s (masterpieces).

Sorry, we’re skipping a bunch of awards, because our foot is off the gas. We’re cruising, baby.

If I was smarter, and more timely, I would created my own awards to give out to things that I really liked or thought were noteworthy this past year. I didn’t do that, but some other people did.

Patrick Willems, who my friend Paul says looks exactly like me (he’s wrong [no he isn’t]), returns with his second annual awards show, where he gives out awards like Best Fall, Best Oppenheimer Dude, ____, and Best Fucked-Up Bird. His videos are long, but his work is great. Give it a watch while doing dishes, like I did, and enjoy your chores.

This episode features our greatest living culture critic Wesley Morris, who is fearlessly giving takes in this episode, calling some currently very successful directors “frauds”, which is a fun, and good, take, and also describes what he thinks gets Christopher Nolan hard. God bless Wesley.

My longest running relationship with a movie podcast is with Blank Check, which has an annual Blankies award show in which the two hosts and fellow podcaster/writer Joe Reid pick their own nominees and winners for the big Oscar categories. They have great and frequently insane choices, and I like letting their alternative picks wash over me and cleanse me of months of thinking about the same seven actors, directors, and writers.

Finally, to prepare for my own Academy Awards party, I created a playlist featuring the nominated music and songs from the Oscars, and also soundtrack songs/needle drops from a ton of movies from the past year. Some serious sounds, some hilarious sounds, and many classics are here. Let it guide you through your red-carpet/happy hours this Sunday.

Thank you, as always, for reading. I hope you take a couple hours to celebrate and enjoy the movies of the last year this weekend. The Academy Awards, while endlessly fraught and incorrect, put on a decent awards show, and is one of the few remaining “high-profile” award shows this country has left, which is an opportunity to see celebrities and drama all in one place. What a treat.

TTFN,

Bobby