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January 2017

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www.postmagazine.com 17 POST OSCAR PREDICTIONS JANUARY 2017 T he 89 th Academy Awards are almost here, and as usual, the spring/summer releases and biggest (i.e. most popular) films of the year, including such billion-dollar juggernauts as Captain America: Civil War, Finding Dory and Zootopia, along with other Top Ten global grossers (The Jungle Book, The Secret Life of Pets, Batman v Superman, Deadpool, Suicide Squad, Doctor Strange and The Mermaid) will have to vie for voter attention with the crowded fall and winter crop of potential contenders. For 'tis the season when the studios momentarily turn their backs on money-making monsters, superheroes and escapist fare (i.e. every one of those Top Ten blockbusters), and give their full attention to such serious, Oscar-worthy prestige projects as Sully, Loving, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight, La La Land, Silence, Paterson, 20th Century Women, Hidden Figures, Florence Foster Jenkins, Arrival, Fences, Hell or High Water, Lion, Neruda, Live By Night, A Monster Calls, Allied, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Elle, Hacksaw Ridge, Nocturnal Animals, Jackie, Captain Fantastic, Passengers and Rules Don't Apply. So will Oscar as usual largely turn a blind eye to popular, popcorn hits (except in sound and visual effects) in favor of the year-end releases? Impossible to tell, but with all that in mind, we now look into our crystal ball and present our annual top picks list of likely nominees. BEST PICTURE/ BEST DIRECTOR These big races are still up in the air, because at press time, some of the highest profile releases of the season, including Silence, Passengers, Fences and Paterson, still hadn't been fully unwrapped. And the Best Director race is looking particularly murky still, as the highly anticipated Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck and Morten Tyldum releases could blow other likely contenders out of the water, as these three directors are all Oscar favorites. So are Warren Beatty (see December's "Director's Chair" interview) and Clint Eastwood; Only Beatty and Orson Welles (for Citizen Kane) have been nominated by the Academy as an actor, a director, a writ- er and a producer for the same film — and Beatty is the only person ever to have done it twice, for Heaven Can Wait, and again for Reds which won him Best Director gold. Eastwood is a five-time Oscar winner (Best Picture, Best Director for Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven, the Irving G. Thalberg award) and still a potent force at the box office (Sully has grossed over $150M against a lean production budget of $60M.) After the wild excesses of The Wolf of Wall Street, the austere, pow- erful Silence once again reteams Oscar winner Scorsese with production designer Dante Ferretti, longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker and DP Rodrigo Prieto, and the result is a passion project decades in the making that is certain to appeal to many Academy voters. The iconic Taiwanese/American director Ang Lee has long been another Academy favorite; he's won three Oscars — twice for Best Director (2012's Life of Pi and 2006's Brokeback Mountain), and once for Best Foreign Language Film (2000's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Always an innovator, Lee's most recent film, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a drama about the effects of combat, is a fully-immersive ultra-HD 3D experience using an increased frame rate of 120fps that might tempt Oscar voters despite some critical blowback that the film's a bit too immersive. Mel Gibson, who earned very strong reviews for his powerful but har- rowing World War II movie Hacksaw Ridge, may also be a contender. The battle scenes are stunningly staged, and editor John Gilbert (The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring), sound editor Robert Mackenzie (also supervising sound editor on Lion) and the visual effects by SlateVFX and Cutting Edge are all Oscar-worthy. Gibson's direction is assured and in- spired, but is the Academy ready to welcome him back again? BY IAIN BLAIR La La Land

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