98th Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 1 hour countdown & predictions open thread

Roy Edroso has posted his predictions at alicublog, throw yours in the comments.

I’ve been making Oscar predictions for years, peppered with what I used to call “sucker bets” until I realized I was using that term incorrectly. What I meant was, I sometimes get so sure that one specific nominee is perfectly suited to winning that I convince myself this feeling for the justice of their claim is actually a premonition of victory. That is, I play hunches.

That has worked out for me a few times, most spectacularly with Green Book in 2019*. My strong hunch was that Roma was too much more like a museum installation than a movie (at the time, that is — by 2021, the similarly offbeat Nomadland was able to win) and Green Book was the kind of slop the dopes like (see also CODA).

Or talk about the ritual of the Red Carpet. Discuss your most/least favorite MC. I guess you could also explain why popular kinema is too low brow for your tastes of something. It’s not like you’ll be able to see people making jerk off motions.

I must confess that I rarely watch movies and have never watched an entire broadcast of the Oscars. Maybe a few minutes if someone else in the house is watching it. But I think of it the same way I think of football and Game of Thrones and quilting: Things that are interesting to me because people I know and like find them interesting.

Open thread.