The Oscars are less than 10 days away. To prepare for the big night, my friend, colleague, and fellow Oscar nerd Antonio Elefano and I share our predictions for each of the eight biggest categories.
The Short Takes:
Antonio
Will Win: Cate Blanchett
Should Win: Cate Blanchett
The best performance in any movie this year, maybe this decade, was by Cate Blanchett in Tar. She will win. She should win.
Jen
Will Win: Cate Blanchett
Should Win: Michelle Yeoh
A win for Yeoh would be the kind of career Oscar I can get behind, and Blanchett already has two Oscars. Voters will want to give something to Tar, though, and Blanchett’s performance defines the film.
Image Credit: Slate
The Long Take:
Antonio:
With all the talk about Andrea Riseborough, the names that I would have left off the ballot are Ana de Armas and Michelle Williams. I could only feel pity for the former through all twelve hours of Blonde, a baffling marathon that answers the question: what if someone did The Passion of the Christ but with Marilyn Monroe? It pains me to write an unkind word about Michelle Williams, one of our finest actors (see Brokeback Mountain, Wendy and Lucy, Manchester by the Sea), but her Mitzi felt like what happens to a manic pixie dream girl when she bears children. Riseborough was perfectly fine in a film so small it makes Causeway look like Top Gun: Maverick, but it’s a familiar character and story. Yeoh was amazing as always in Everything Everywhere, and in almost any other year, I’d be rooting for her. I know this would be Cate Blanchett’s third Oscar if she does in fact win, so there’s not much urgency in handing her yet another prize. But what’s the point in having Oscars for performance if you’re not going to give it to Blanchett’s mesmerizing, volcanic work in Tar?
Jen:
I love Tar as well – it’s probably my #2 film of the year after Everything Everywhere. So this category is pure agony for me. On the one hand, I’d have no problem with Cate Blanchett winning another statue for a career best performance (how does she keep getting better and better just when we think she’s at her best?). On the other hand, she already has two Oscars and I do not want her to get another one at the expense of Michelle Yeoh getting one at all. Clayton Davis of Variety keeps saying that this is realistically Michelle Yeoh’s one shot, and as a lifelong fan of hers, I don’t want her to miss it.
While Blanchett may be volcanic in Tar, Yeoh is cosmic in Everything Everywhere. She’s able to do it all: comedic timing, high octane action scenes, convoluted sci fi exposition, portraying a complex mother who loves but constantly alienates her daughter, and encapsulating so much of the Asian immigrant experience in one performance.
My strategy here is to avoid hopedicting and set myself up to be pleasantly surprised rather than devastated. My Oscar puzzle, looking at my total predictions for each film across categories, has Tar coming up empty-handed unless Blanchett wins. So I’m keeping her as the winner for now. I hope I’m wrong and EEAAO’s groundswell of passion frothing over an already full cup of popularity will carry Michelle Yeoh across the finish line.
Listen to the audio recording of our full conversation about this and seven other major Oscar categories here.