Matt vs. the Academy

With the actors' and writers' strikes behind us, Oscar season is well and truly heating up. Always an exciting time of year, in large part due to the glut of Oscar-bait movies that are released. Other than the Barbenheimer duo, I've not seen many of the contenders so my watchlist is growing as rapidly as my anticipation for such titles as Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, May December, Napoleon, Past Lives, American Fiction, Poor Things, The Holdovers... So many movies, so little time. Meanwhile, next up in 1991's shortlist is the first animated film to gain a Best Picture nomination... Beauty and the Beast Director : Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise Screenplay : Linda Woolverton Starring : Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, Bradley Pierce, Rex Everhart, Jesse Corti Academy Awards : 6 nominations 2 wins, for Best Original Score and Best Original Song In this classic fairy tale, a heartless prince (Benson)...

Oof, I'm yet again introducing a blog post by noting how embarrassingly long it has been since my last one. This time, it's just over a year (not including Oscar predictions). Hopefully, this slow pace won't remain for too much longer. Let's dive in to another of 1991's Best Picture nominees... JFK Director : Oliver Stone Screenplay : Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar (based on the books "On the Trail of the Assassins" by Jim Garrison and "Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy" by Jim Marrs) Starring : Kevin Costner, Kevin Bacon, Tommy Lee Jones, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Oldman, Michael Rooker, Jay O. Sanders, Sissy Spacek, Joe Pesci Academy Awards : 8 nominations 2 wins, for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing Shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Costner) discovers that the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (Oldman), had ties to his jurisdiction....

My picks for the Oscar nominations ended up being fairly average. Not my best performance by a long shot, but certainly not my worst either. But now it's time to look into our crystal ball at the winners. Looking back at my guesses from last year, I note that I introduced them with an astounding lack of confidence, bemoaning the fact that not many categories had any clear frontrunners. As it turns out, I managed to correctly peg 20 of the 23 categories, so I guess those slight favourites in each category wound up winning. I can only hope that the same thing happens again this year, because (and I'm going to repeat myself now) this is possibly the most up-in-the-air race I've ever had to predict. Best Animated Feature and Best Visual Effects are the two categories I'm most confident about. Almost everything else is primed for a surprise, particularly the acting categories. In most years, at least one or two (or sometimes all four) categories have a performer who has swep...

It's Oscar season again! The nominations announcement is a little less than 12 hours away, so I'm posting my predictions just under the wire. I only just got back from a two-week family road trip around Western Australia, after which we adopted two adorable kittens, so suffice it to say, spare time has been fleeting these last few weeks. Hence, these are probably the most rushed picks I've ever made in the more than two decades I've been doing this. At least, that's my excuse if it all goes awry. It seems All Quiet on the Western Front is the film with the most momentum right now. With an incredibly strong showing at the BAFTA nominations last week, along with its appearance in almost all of the Academy's own preliminary shortlists, I have a feeling it will pick up a bunch more nods than I've pegged it for. Not to mention that it's based on the same novel that was adapted into the Best Picture winner at the 3rd Academy Awards way back in 1930. Anyway, l...