Oscars 2016: Predicting All The Winners
The Revenant Vs. Mad Max - who saw that coming?
It's that magical time of year - awards season. And, following the nominations from the various guilds and the flashy Golden Globes, it's time for the big one to step into the frame; the Academy Awards. The Oscar nominations have just been announced, and it's looking to be one of the hardest to call races in years.
Overall, the big winner from the nominations is The Revenant, which is in the running in a phenomenal twelve categories, although it's followed closely by the real awards season surprise, Mad Max: Fury Road, which scooped an unexpected ten. Several other films also had a good innings (The Martian got seven), but in terms of number of wins it's looking like a contest between these two epics.
There's something kinda nice about that; both suffered incredibly troubled productions, yet were wrangled in to become two of the most technically proficient and engaging movies of the year (although two that couldn't be more different if they tried).
So, who's going to win on the night? There's twenty-four categories to pick for, so let's get to it (in the order that they were awarded in last year).
Honourable Mention - The Short Film Categories
The short film categories are always the hardest to assess, what with them being a highly niche form that is tangential to the rest of the feature awards. But it'd be unfair to just ignore them, so as usual let's take a look at them in an honourable mention.
Animated Short Film typically goes to the most prolific film, which makes Sanjay's Super Team (which came along with The Good Dinosaur) the most likely recipient. Live-Action Short Film is a very diverse set this year, with several nationalities represented and a wide-range of topics. Out of these, I'm going to say Afghan drama Day One. Documentary Short is the most painful to pin down, but I'm inclined to go with Claude Lanzmann: Spectres Of The Shoah - it's the most high profile of the nominees and deals with filmmaking and the holocaust, two fascinating subjects.