Frontrunner Friday has returned and this time it will be a weekly update of the top 8 categories of films, directors, actors and screenplays in the 2019 Oscar race. These are an accompaniment to the official monthly predictions and reflect minor adjustments based on buzz, news, official announcements like acting category placement, trailers and festival response.
We’re just a week away from the announcement of the Telluride Film Festival but we have the lineups for Venice (August 29-September 8), which will give us the world premieres of ROMA, A Star Is Born, The Favourite and First Man; Toronto (September 6-16), debuting the first looks at Beautiful Boy, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Widows; and New York (September 28-October 14), who will give us a highlighted version of Venice, Toronto and Cannes films.
Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.