Christopher Nolan’s Coronation Had Kenergy | 96th Oscars Recap and Review

(L-R) Emma Stone, Christopher Nolan, and Ryan Gosling at the 96th Academy Awards — IMAGE STILLS: A.M.P.A.S. 2024.

Last night, Jimmy Kimmel hosted the 96th edition of the Academy Awards on a night where awards prognosticators felt most of the big awards were already spoken for beforehand. However, conventional prognosticating wisdom did not always win out, as the presenters read out the winners of the Academy’s 23 categories. The early frontrunner and expected Best Picture winner Oppenheimer did, indeed, become the biggest winner of the night with seven total Oscars including wins that saw shatteringly good work from Robert Downey, Jr. and Cillian Murphy earn them their first ‘Little Golden Men.’ Hollywood’s safest bet and — as I liked to call him last night on social media — the ‘Crown Prince of Cinema,’ Christopher Nolan, had his grand coronation as Steven Spielberg passed the baton, awarded him with the Best Director award, and gave him a big hug. For many, that is what the night will be remembered for — i.e. the triumph of the immensely popular biopic and Christopher Nolan who, as some will undoubtedly perceive it, went toe-to-toe with Barbie and came out of the explosion that was ‘Barbenheimer’ with 7 golden statuettes in tow. Indeed, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a hugely deserving winner of all of the awards that the cast and crew went home with (including Best Picture, which was announced in a relatively confusing way by film-legend Al Pacino), but that’s not all the 96th edition of the Academy Awards should be remembered for. 

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Who Will Win? – Final Predictions | 96th Oscars

To paraphrase one of Hollywood’s all-time best awards hosts, it is a wonderful day for Oscar! Oscar, Oscar — who will win? In quite a few categories tonight, it seems we already know. But there are some genuine close calls this year with actress, costuming, and production design being particularly interesting. Read on below to find out which films I think will be the big winners tonight, where we all expect Christopher Nolan to be crowned for his achievements as the safest bet in Hollywood when it comes to visionary modern directors.

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Nominations Predictions | 96th Academy Awards

Tomorrow, AMPAS is announcing its list of nominees for the upcoming 96th Academy Awards. So, now is the time to fill in your final Oscars nominations predictions! Below you’ll see what I’m predicting along with a few comments here and there. The choices are ranked from either one to five or one to ten based on how confident I am that something is getting nominated with 1 being the most confident.

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The 95th Oscars Ceremony was safe and relatively predictable (and that’s okay)

Host Jimmy Kimmel is danced off the stage by dancers performing the ‘Naatu Naatu’ dance from RRR — PHOTO: Carlos Barria/Reuters.

We’ve now all had some time to sleep on and sit with the 95th Academy Awards ceremony, and, so, now feels like a good time to look back and assess what is supposed to be the biggest night in Hollywood. Jimmy Kimmel was back to be the host, all of the categories were back, and it never got physical like last year did. It was therefore meant to be a normal Oscars ceremony, but what does a normal Oscars ceremony look like in 2023, and how should we feel about this year’s list of winners? Well, I have thoughts. 

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95th Oscars – Nomination Predictions

It’s that time of the year again, folks. 2022 came to an end almost a full month ago, but there are still a couple of things that have to happen before we can all fully switch focus to 2023 in the world of cinema. One of these things is the upcoming 95th Academy Awards. The ceremony is on the 12th of March, but, first, we have the nominations to go through. In just a couple of days, on the 24th of January, AMPAS will announce its list of nominees, and so now is the time for me to reveal my list of predictions. There are many like them, but these are mine. Just like every year, the film that I’ve placed at the top of each category is the one that I feel the most confident about getting a nomination, and the film at the bottom of each category is the one that I am the most uncertain about. Finally, in most categories, I’ll also note a film that is ‘next in line,’ which means that these films are the ones that I think could sneak in on nomination morning instead of the ones that I’ve predicted. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

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REVIEW: CODA (2021)

Emilia Jones as ‘Ruby Rossi’ in Sian Heder’s CODA – Photo: Apple TV+.

Directed by Sian Heder – Screenplay by Sian Heder.

Whenever a film wins the Academy Awards’ Best Picture the spotlights start to assemble on top of it. People wish to poke holes in the film, call it overrated, and, in general, it suddenly has to live up to loftier expectations than it had to back when it was just a popular film. Moonlight was able to handle those spotlights, and it is still one of the previous decade’s great Best Picture winners (even though I preferred La La Land). Green Book, on the other hand, not so much.

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The 94th Oscars Ceremony was already problematic before Will Smith struck Chris Rock

A visibly-emotional Will Smith sits down after having slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Dolby Theatre – PHOTO: AMPAS, 2022.

Others may disagree but the Academy Awards ceremony — arguably Hollywood’s biggest night — is never boring to me. Some cinephiles think of it like their Super Bowl, their WrestleMania, but I don’t think anyone expected the ceremony to devolve into a contact sport as it briefly did in the Dolby Theatre at the 94th Academy Awards, when one of Hollywood’s last name-brand movie stars, the almost-always cool Will Smith, lost his temper. It was certainly one of the uglier moments in Oscar history, and it also topped what was previously the craziest moment in Oscar history.

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94th Academy Awards: Final Predictions

I get it. We’re almost in April. You’ve probably already started to think about this year’s films and whether or not films like The Batman can secure an Oscar nomination next year. But AMPAS nevertheless decided that the Oscars ceremony celebrating 2021 films was to be held this upcoming Sunday. It’s been a long awards season, and it feels like some of the original frontrunners — like The Power of the Dog — have fallen behind in the race for the biggest award of the night. Now it looks like the crowd-pleasing CODA has overtaken the spotlight from the truly cinematic Netflix flick directed by Jane Campion. In this article, I’ll give you my final predictions for the 94th Academy Awards, along with some longer explanations for the biggest categories. Hollywood’s biggest night is almost here, but who will win? Read below to find out what I think will happen.

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94th Academy Awards – Nomination Predictions – Mid-January

From Left to Right: Posters for The Power of the Dog (Netflix), Dune (Warner Bros.), West Side Story (20th Century Studios), Belfast (Focus Features / Universal).

The new year just started, and yet it feels like the first month of the year has almost come to an end. So, today, before the final major guilds (and the BAFTAs) share their film award nominations, I am ready to share my own predictions for the upcoming 94th edition of the Oscars (except for the short film categories). The recent SAG nominations really changed my thoughts on Best Actress, but they (and the BAFTA longlists) also focused my thoughts on Best Picture, which I feel pretty good about right now, even though the film I’m predicting to win may not be the most accessible film that I’m predicting to be nominated for the top award. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

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A Celebration or a Clusterfuck? My Thoughts on the 93rd Academy Awards

In honor of Thomas Vinterberg’s extremely moving acceptance speech last night, allow me to open with a reference to arguably his most famous film. There is a moment in Thomas Vinterberg’s Cannes Awards-winning Dogme-film Festen (international title: The Celebration), where the main character Christian (played by Ulrich Thomsen) asks his father, whose birthday is being celebrated, what speech he would like Christian to read for him — the green speech or the yellow speech? His father chooses the ‘green’ speech, and, as a result, the events of the unforgettable film take place. Sometimes a single decision can change everything. And, in the case of the 93rd Academy Awards’ ceremony, a decision was made that ultimately destroyed an otherwise decent ceremony.

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