My 2023 Academy Award Predictions (for movies released in 2022)
Well, that’s not the worst job I’ve ever done predicting and preferring what I think should win or what I want to win at the annual Academy Awards self-love-gala-fest. Only one result—in those categories that I bother with—escaped my probably-will-win and ought-to-win columns. Congratulations, Jamie Lee Curtis. We share your joy and excitement mostly because we don’t think you thought you were going to win either. This marks the return of that hoary old academy tradition of rewarding someone for their whole body of work (as opposed to just the single performance under consideration) and/or because people like them.
I certainly can’t begrudge her the recognition and validation, but it meant that this was yet one more Irish nomination that came up dry. I stick by Kerry Condon as my preference for Best Supporting Actress, but of course, that plus two and a half euro will get her a cup of americano in Dublin. If I had her email address I’d actually send her the money for the cuppa myself. Still, she got to go the Oscars, and that’s something most of us will never experience.
I certainly can’t complain about the fact that the academy agreed with me (or did I agree with them?) about the best movie—of the ones nominated—and consequently the best directors and best (original) screenwriters were the Daniels and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
The early conventional wisdom was that Cate Blanchett was a shoo-in for Best Lead Actress for Tár, but then—after I had locked in my predictions—it shifted toward Michelle Yeoh, and I can’t complain about that. I also don’t begrudge Sarah Polley for her win for adapting Miriam Toews’s novel for Women Talking, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t still think that Kazuo Ishiguro—and for that matter Bill Nighy—got robbed for their work on Living.
If there was any certainty in any category, it was that the Best International Feature winner would have the word “quiet” in the title. I can’t argue with giving the prize to Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front, but there was something fundamentally unfair about such a blockbuster competing with thoughtful, personal, sensitive films like Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl and Lukas Dhont’s Close. It’s symptomatic of the basic problem about arbitrary awards such as these, and you can expect a rant (another one, that is) about it from me one of these days.
Congratulations to Tom Berkeley and Ross White (and birthday boy James Martin) for their win for An Irish Goodbye. Thanks to you (and Dublin-born Avatar: The Way of Water visual effects wiz Richard Baneham) the Irish didn’t go home empty-handed.
|
Category |
Most Likely to Win |
Most Deserving to Win |
Most Actually Won |
|
Best Picture |
|||
|
Lead Actor |
Brendan Fraser (The Whale) |
Bill Nighy (Living) |
|
|
Lead Actress |
Cate Blanchett (Tár) |
Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once) |
|
|
Supporting Actor |
Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once) |
Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin) |
|
|
Supporting Actress |
Angela Bassett (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) |
Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin) |
Jamie Lee Curtis (Everything Everywhere All at Once) |
|
Director |
Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans) |
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once) |
|
|
Original Screenplay |
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once) |
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once) |
|
|
Adapted Screenplay |
Sarah Polley (Women Talking) |
Kazuo Ishiguro (Living) |
|
|
Animated Feature |
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio |
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio |
|
|
Best International Feature Film |
All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany) |
The Quiet Girl (Ireland) |
|
|
Total Scores |
7 |
5 |
1 |
Color Key to Actual Results:
Winners who got the Oscar
“Winners” who did not get the Oscar