Oscars 2017: Final Predictions
By Amy Woolsey
Culturess Oscars Coverage (Image via Kalistrya)
Determined to win your office pool? We used logic and (mostly) fairy dust to predict who will march to the podium at this year’s Oscars.
Have you seen that episode of Louie where he keeps waking up inside a nightmare? That’s kind of what movie awards season feels like. Each year, the Oscars arrive and we rejoice, thinking the buzz and debate have finally come to an end, only to realize that talk of next year’s Oscars has already started.
We kid, but seriously, it’s a relief that we only have to endure a couple more days of complaints that Movie X or Actor Y was “robbed”. You’d think that with everything going on in the world right now, people would be less inclined to get worked up over perceived injustices in the realm of entertainment trophies and more inclined to appreciate art, but, well, we’re only human.
Anyway, the key to enjoying the Oscars is to not take them seriously. Of course, you’re free to celebrate winners that you like and grumble about winners that you don’t like. Just keep in mind that movies are subjective, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences consists of 6,000 people who base their voting decisions on miscellaneous, often dubious reasons. Also, no one remembers a movie because it won an award; we remember movies because they move us and challenge us to think and inspire us to wonder.
It would undoubtedly help the fun factor if the winners didn’t feel so predetermined. Thanks to the months of precursor awards like the Golden Globes and SAGs that lead up to the Oscars, surprises are hard to come by. Those that do happen tend to be in the technical and other below-the-line categories (remember when Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty tied for Best Sound Editing?). Still, they’re not impossible. More than a decade later, people still fume about Crash upsetting Brokeback Mountain.
What lies in store for us this year? Our fingers are crossed for a curveball or two, but these are the films and people we expect to reign supreme on Oscar night.