Oscar Sunday is here at last and I think it’s shaping up to be a good night for “Oppenheimer.”
As always, I’ve come up with my predictions for who will win, but that’s not all. I also list possible upsets, how I would have voted, and a note a couple areas where If eel there were snubs.
Find all my thoughts on each category below.
Summer 2023 is in the rearview and looking back, it was a pretty good one. The season was largely bolstered by the releases of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” but there were quite a few other good flicks out there.
Just a note, I did miss a few of the blockbusters, namely ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” and “The Flash.” However, from what I’ve read, I didn’t miss much.
Based on what I did see, I’m ready to give out my personal awards to the best this summer had to offer.
There are two things I love watching during this time of year: college football bowl games and award ceremonies.
Both are exciting in their own right. Bowl games, big and small, often provide some thrilling postseason moments making for great entertainment even if your team isn’t playing.
Award season, meanwhile, are celebrations of great films and offers a bit of competition to the world of movies, making for really good drama.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that the two seasons have something in common, which is that they’re not created equal. As the award season goes on, the prestige of the ceremonies increases. It’s the same way with bowl season.
With college football, there are six games, called the New Year’s Six, that are considered the best bowls, and include the two semi-finals to qualify for the national title game. In award season, meanwhile, the major awards often include the guild ceremonies and the Oscars, which happen late in the season.
With that in mind, I decided to match which game equates best to an award ceremony in the season.
Summer 2022, headlined by “Top Gun: Maverick,” has come to an end, meaning it’s time to honor the best the season had to offer.
The summer movie season, for me, runs from the start of May until the end of August, so any movie I watched during that time was eligible. “Maverick” as expected, definitely had some success. However, plenty of other films earned awards too.
The Gotham Award nominations came out in late October. Nearly five months later, we’re finally toward the conclusion of the 2021-2022 award season.
It’s been an entertaining season for sure, with the Best Picture front-runner shifting a lot, from “Belfast,” to “The Power of the Dog” and now, seemingly, “CODA.” We’ll know the winner of this category and all the others on Sunday during the Academy Awards ceremony.
Until then, we can only predict what will happen. So here are my predictions for who will win on Sunday, who could maybe play spoiler, my choices for who should get the Oscar and a few snubs.
Matthew Liedke on Film 