Is it just me or do you feel weirdly calm about what’s making it into Best Picture and that it’s going to be the PGA 10?
Maybe it’s just the end of Phase I of the season or maybe it’s the meds kicking in, but there’s something so right about the PGA 10 of American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest. Interestingly enough, this was my December 2023 lineup a month before PGA.
It’s the inclusion of Anatomy and Zone that clinches it for me. Two non-English language films have never made PGA in the same year; they’re exactly the kind of films that the PGA sidelines in favor of a blockbuster or the ‘right’ kind of (usually American) arthouse film. We could have seen The Color Purple, Wonka, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Saltburn or May December could have made the cut but we didn’t. Why not? Any of those would make PGA sense when you look at previous years.
When the Academy expanded its best picture lineup from five to 10 nominees in 2009, the PGA followed suit. Only three times have the PGA and the Oscars matched were during the sliding scale years between 2011-2021 when the Oscars nominated either eight or nine movies: 2016, 2018, and 2019. In the years of a solid 10, they missed two or more. Last year saw three PGA titles – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story, and The Whale – miss out on Best Picture to All Quiet on the Western Front, Triangle of Sadness and Women Talking. In years prior to the 10-film lineup the PGA wasn’t that consistent either, with years of five and years of six films and even one year with seven. We haven’t had exact crossover ever in the expanded era and the last time the PGA and Oscar Best Picture lined up perfectly was 1994. Oddly enough, it did in 1993 and 1992 as well, the 6th, 5th and 4th year of the PGA, respectively. Meaning, statistically Best Picture and Oscar going 10/10 is highly unlikely because it’s never happened. But every time we say something can never happen or history won’t change, it does. Every year sees new records made and old stats broken. This could be the next one.
But if the PGA 10 aren’t our Oscar 10, who gets cut? Who’s the weak link in the lineup? Right now I have to feel that it’s Past Lives for a couple of reasons. It’s unlikely to get any other Oscar nominations outside of Original Screenplay (Greta Lee is an outside shot in Best Actress) and A24 has yet to get two films into Best Picture in the same year. It absolutely should have happened last year with Everything Everywhere All At Once, the Best Picture winner, and The Whale, the Best Actor winner. But it didn’t. So who’s bubbling under enough to replace it? The Color Purple should have been a great guild performer this season but it’s been blanked everywhere except SAG. That could be enough, especially if Danielle Brooks is getting in, to push it in at the last minute.
Now directing is where we’re going to see some significant snubs, depending on how you look at it, of course. The directing branch of the Academy hasn’t aligned with the DGA since the first year of the Oscars Best Picture expanded lineup in 2009. Before that it was 2005, 1998, 1981 and 1977. This year, the DGA went for Greta Gerwig for Barbie, Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things, Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer, Alexander Payne for The Holdovers and Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon.
Gerwig, Nolan, Payne and Scorsese made the Golden Globes cut (along with Celine Song for Past Lives, who is nominated for DGA First-Time Director, and Bradley Cooper for Maestro) and BAFTA went for Nolan, Payne and Cooper with Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers), Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest) and Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall). Three huge DGA snubs – Gerwig, Scorsese and Lanthimos (Poor Things) – sent shockwaves through the interwebs on Thursday morning.
So where do the two meet? Are we going to be closer to the DGA five or the BAFTA six this year? Realistically, only Christopher Nolan is safe safe. It’s wild to think that everyone else is vulnerable to a certain extent but they are. They’re all either missing one component and the competition is so intense that it’s going to give us the deepest cuts of probably any category. It’s almost impossible to think of a lineup that doesn’t include Scorsese. The Holdovers peaked at exactly the right time so Payne feels in. Anatomy and Zone too, those PGA nominations speak loudly. But loudly enough for the directors branch of the Academy to go 3/5 with DGA? 2/5? On average the DGA and Oscar director lineup goes 4/5; it has 11 times since the Best Picture expanded lineup in 2009. It went 3/5 once (the Green Book year) and we all remember the anomaly of 2012 (the Argo year) that saw just 2/5 crossover. So why not just predict four of the five DGA to get in and call it a day? Because there’s something interesting about the 3/5 year. That was when the DGA went for Alfonso Cuarón (the eventual DGA and Oscar winner), Spike Lee and Adam McKay – all of whom went onto Oscar nominations – plus Peter Farrelly and Bradley Cooper. The Oscars said no to Farrelly and Cooper and opted instead for Yorgos Lanthimos and Paweł Pawlikowski. While it’s clearly not a 1:1 comparison with this year, I can’t help but think we’ll get double non-English language directors in again in Glazer and Triet. I’ve had Glazer in my top 5 since May 2023 but Triet and her film that have been killing it too. But who gets the boot as a result? Gerwig? Lanthimos? Both? Gerwig missing would feel catastrophic, like if James Cameron had missed for Avatar. The enormity of her achievement with Barbie‘s box office success seems too much to ignore. Or is it? It’s a race that’s really too hard to call as so many combinations of five make sense. But that’s what we’re here to do so here we go.
Oscar nominations will be announced on January 23 and the 96th Academy Awards will be held on March 10.
Here are my 2024 Oscar Predictions in Best Picture and Best Director.
6. Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) – CCA, DGA, GG
7. Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall (NEON) – BAFTA
8. Bradley Cooper – Maestro (Netflix) – BAFTA, GG
9. Celine Song – Past Lives (A24) – GG
10. Cord Jefferson – American Fiction (Amazon MGM/Orion)
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