'Three Billboards' will take home top Oscar, film critic Dann Gire predicts
No matter what movie wins the Best Picture Academy Award on Sunday night, the conventional rules of predicting the Oscars will go out the proverbial window.
Can “The Shape of Water” win when an ill-timed lawsuit charges that filmmaker Guillermo del Toro plagiarized a 1969 play to create his movie?
Can “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” win when it lacks a director's nomination that has accompanied all but four Best Picture winners in Oscar's 90-year existence?
Can Steven Spielberg's crusading newspaper drama “The Post” follow in the Oscar success of “Spotlight” with only two lonely nominations (Best Picture and Best Actress for Meryl Streep)?
Can former Evanston resident Christopher Nolan's “Dunkirk” win without nominations for screenplay or acting, a feat pulled off only by “Grand Hotel” in 1932?
Predicting the 90th Academy Awards winners might be tougher than in previous years, simply because of an influx of new (younger and more diverse) Academy members: 683 in 2016, 774 in 2017.
Having the overwhelming majority of voters be white, male and middle-aged made voting patterns easier to spot. Now, anything goes.
So here we go with fearless predictions for Oscar's 90th.
Best Picture: Early odds from the usually reliable oddsmaker Bovada favored “The Shape of Water” with 13 Oscar nominations, the most in the 2017 race.
As a rule, the highest number of nominations usually leads to a Best Picture win. But hold the smartphone!
Last week, Bovada revised its prediction, giving Oscar's big win to “Three Billboards.”
That makes a lot of sense if we look at what happened last year when “La La Land” faced off against “Moonlight.”
Academy voters awarded Best Director to Damien Chazelle for his winsome, visionary, fantastic, sad-yet-comic musical “La La Land.”
Then they reminded us that they are image-conscious voters inclined to bestow the big enchilada on movies with perceived prestige and social importance, such as the serious, symbolically diversified drama “Moonlight.” It won.
On Sunday, voters will repeat this pattern by awarding Best Director to the insanely imaginative Guillermo del Toro for his winsome, visionary, fantastic, sad-yet-comic musical “The Shape of Water.”
But will voters support a movie about a mute janitor who has interspecies sex with the Creature From the Black Lagoon's cute, younger brother while fantasizing about performing a Busby Berkeley Broadway number with him?
Maybe.
But voters might opt for something perceived to be more worthy.
“The Post”? Too preachy and thrown-together to make its December release date.
“Dunkirk”? A technically well-crafted marvel shot on luminous 70 mm. film stock. But confusing for some viewers and emotionally cool.
“Darkest Hour”? High prestige, but a World War II drama lacks immediate current relevance.
“Three Billboards”? It's about an unstoppable wonder woman who takes on the failing male-dominated institutions in her small town to find her daughter's killer.
Bingo! “Three Billboards” should win even without a Best Director nod, and that has happened only four times, the last being “Argo” in 2013.
“Shape of Water” will see its winning chances narrowed after Del Toro was charged with plagiarizing the 1969 stage play, “Let Me Hear You Whisper,” about a cleaning woman trying to rescue a dolphin from a military lab. It was adapted for television. If anything, this might hurt the film's screenplay nomination.
If my fearless predictions are correct, Sunday night will be a true share-the-wealth event for the increasingly diversified Academy. Here we go.
<b>Director:</b> Del Toro, no contest.
<b>Actress:</b> Frances McDormand as a force of nature in “Three Billboards.”
<b>Actor:</b> Gary Oldman's meticulous, transcendent performance as Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour.”
<b>
Supporting Actress:</b> Allison Janney as Tonya Harding's hardhearted mom in “I, Tonya.”
<b>Supporting Actor:</b> Sam Rockwell as the doofus cop in “Three Billboards”
<b>Animated Feature:</b> “Coco”
<b>
Production Design:</b> “The Shape of Water”
<b>Makeup & Hairstyling:</b> “Darkest Hour”
<b>Original Screenplay:</b> “Get Out”
<b>Adapted Screenplay:</b> “Call Me By Your Name”
<b>Original Song:</b> “Remember Me” from “Coco”
<b>Original Score:</b> “The Shape of Water”
<b>Foreign Language Film:</b> “A Fantastic Woman”
<b>Editing:</b> “Dunkirk”
<b>Documentary Feature:</b> “Faces Places”
<b>Costume Design:</b> “Phantom Thread”
<b>Cinematography:</b> “Blade Runner 2049” (ending Roger Deakins' string of 14 nomination losses)
<b>Sound Editing:</b> “Dunkirk”
<b>Sound Mixing:</b> “Dunkirk”
<b>Visual Effects:</b> “War For the Planet of the Apes”