Academy Awards: Who may win the Oscars tomorrow
As we keep reminding our readers, predicting the Oscars is serious business. The process not only involves binge watching a lot of motion pictures (37 titles this year), it also involves knowing how the Academy voters’ mindset works. And here’s a little primer on what that mindset is made of: the Academy Awards are governed by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS for short) a distinguished body of 5,783 members from various film-making disciplines. ‘The Academy’, as it is commonly referred to as, has a very stringent membership criteria, and their member’s median age is around 62. Members — cinematographers, editors, producers, actors — may be part of individual film guilds and unions, and each have their own set of rules and awards leading to the Oscars. Sometimes these awards may hint a win, or an upset, at a category.
What pundits fail to perceive, is the overall strength of that particular group. Often, a deserving cinematographer will be overlooked for the trophy because members who may be producers, actors or writers would vote for someone else. Shakeups also happen out of personal preference or industry tilt.
For instance, out of the 21 categories we have picked this year, 16 are near rock-solid predictions.
Before the righteous, controversial and ill-timed #OscarsSoWhite hashtag rears its head at the 88th Academy Awards and wrecks the mood of the ceremony, Images on Sunday takes its annual look at who may win — and more importantly why they may win — and in which categories
Leonardo DiCaprio, up for a Best Actor trophy, is a long-due favourite with a string of wins for his role of a critically wounded father in search of revenge in The Revenant. It is also slated to nab Best Director for Alejandro González Iñárritu (who won the same trophy last year for Birdman) and Best Cinematography for Emmanuel Lubezki.
The win for Lubezki makes Oscar history — so far no one has won three consecutive cinematography Oscars since the awards started in 1928! The 13-time nominee Roger Deakins (Skyfall, No Country for Old Men, A Beautiful Mind and The Shawshank Redemption) would, sadly, have to wait for another year.