My 2021 Academy Award Predictions (for movies released in 2020 or so)
First, in my defense my predictions were pretty darn good when you take into account the fact that I made them way back in the year 2015. In fact, it is downright uncanny how many I got right. Wait, sorry, it only seems like I made them six years ago. I actually made them six weeks ago, which is still a pretty long period of time. In fact, so long ago that I couldn’t remember if I had made any predictions or not—let alone what I had predicted.
Actually, when you think about it, my column of likely winners was essentially the collective conventional wisdom of who would be the likely winners at the time of the nomination announcements, so the fact that half of them turned out to be wrong reflects more on the coventional wisdom than on myself. Hey, conventional wisdom, get your act together and try to do a better job of predicting next year. On the other hand, no fewer than 70 percent of my choices of those deserving to win actually did end up collecting the prize. Unfortunately, that’s not particularly a validation of my prediction ability. Rather it’s more of a case of the Academy voters agreeing with my judgments. So if anyone should be patting themselves on the back for all those green tiles in that column, its the Academy voters.
Two winners in the ten categories I chose to predict (I’m sorry, but no one cares who I might think deserves to get an Oscar for Best Sound) defied both me and the conventional wisdom. Who thought the voters would snub the beloved, departed Chadwick Boseman? Apparently, no one except maybe a plurality of the voters themselves. In recent years the voters have shown an intermittent interest in handing out awards that break a barrier (e.g. first of a particular ethnic group) or set a record (youngest, oldest), and this time they went for the oldest person to win an Oscar in any acting category. At 83 Anthony Hopkins (winner of Best Lead Actor for The Father) is seven years older than Henry Fonda was when he won that award for On Golden Pond in 1981. Quick trivia question: Do you know who was the previous holder of the record for being the oldest Best Lead Actor winner? It was John Wayne, who won for True Grit in 1970 at the age of 62. He was only 107 days older than the previous record holder, George Arliss who won for the movie Disraeli in 1930.
In the interest of balance, let us ask who holds the record in the Best Lead Actress category. That would be Jessica Tandy, who won for Driving Miss Daisy in 1990 at the age of 80. Oldest Best Supporting Actress? Seventy-seven-year-old Peggy Ashcroft for A Passage to India. Oldest Best Supporting Actor? Christopher Plummer for Beginners in 2012. In fact, Plummer, who left us in February at the age of 91, could have set an even more impressive record than Hopkins’s when he was nominated three years ago for All the Money in the World—if the Academy had voted to give him the award instead of Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Still that nomination in 2018 does make Plummer, who was then 88, the record holder for the oldest nominee in any acting category. The oldest nominee in any female acting category? That would be 87-year-old Gloria Stuart, who was up for Best Supporting Actress for Titanic in 1998 but lost to Kim Basinger for L.A. Confidential.
Hey, did you see what I did there? I changed the subject away from my dismal predictive abilities by throwing a bunch of trivia at you. I may just have a chance for a political career after all.
|
Category |
Most Likely to Win |
Most Deserving to Win |
Most Actually Did Win |
|
Best Picture |
|||
|
Lead Actor |
Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) |
Steven Yeun (Minari) |
Anthony Hopkins (The Father) |
|
Lead Actress |
Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman) |
Frances McDormand (Nomadland) |
|
|
Supporting Actor |
Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) |
Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) |
|
|
Supporting Actress |
Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) |
Youn Yuh-jung (Minari) |
|
|
Director |
Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) |
Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) |
|
|
Original Screenplay |
Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7) |
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) |
Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) |
|
Adapted Screenplay |
Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) |
Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller (The Father) |
|
|
Animated Feature |
Soul |
Wolfwalkers |
|
|
Best International Feature Film |
Druk (Another Round) (Denmark) |
Collective (Romania) |
|
|
Total Scores |
5 |
6 |
2 |
Color Key to Actual Results:
Actual Winners
Also Winners—just not winners of Oscars this year