The 2016 Oscars, AKA Leo’s Big Day: The Official Junkee Drinking Game And Predictions

It’s that time again! I know as a film critic I’m not supposed to support the Academy Awards and everything they stand for, but apart from enjoying the pomp and the excitement, I also think the Oscars do a lot of good for cinematic culture in terms of awareness. I mean, honestly, I doubt we’d even see movies like Carol, The Revenant, or Steve Jobs being made without them.

We certainly wouldn’t be talking about them for as long as we do after opening weekend. And with cinemas all too eager to seemingly only play big budget tentpole movies all-year ‘round, smaller movies such as Room, 45 Years, and Anomalisa, as well as any sort of documentary or foreign language title would likely not even reach our screens at all if it weren’t for the hope that an award or two could help puts bums on seats. Eight-time Oscar winner Cabaret wasn’t wrong.

This year’s race has been one of the tightest ever, with several major categories completely up in the air. Even below the line categories that are usually easy to predict for the biggest or most prestigious of contenders are tricky to predict thanks to several large-scale Hollywood extravaganzas jostling for votes. Bragging rights for what these 6000 industry members that make up the Academy – predominantly, yes, older white men – are going to go down to the wire.

If you’re watching the Oscars at home – the red carpet coverage starts at 9.30 so get prepared! – then I suggest you have a few drinks on hand. And what better way to celebrate the movies’ biggest event than with a drinking game? Sure, it’s Monday, but that’s basically still the weekend.

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Take a drink any time:

• Chris Rock makes an #OscarsSoWhite joke. May I suggest just a sip for this one, otherwise you won’t get past the opening monologue. It’s going to be a long ceremony in this regard.
• A white winner controversially uses their speech to make a statement about how the Oscars are not so white. Make it a double if the crowd boos.
• A winner uses their speech to decry other forms of diversity issues. Like, for example, the Oscar telecast nixing song performances by a trans woman and an Asian woman whose songs are nominated for awards. Or like Patricia Arquette at last year’s ceremony.

• Chris Rock insults an actor like he did to Jude Law when he last hosted in 2005. Bottoms up if it’s Michael Fassbender.
• A winner from the technical awards has the post-production uniform – long hair.
• An actress trips over her dress and the crowd marvels in awe at her bravery for continuing on.
• John Travolta presents looking like a scary lizard creature with a merkin on top. Double up if he inappropriately touches his female co-presenter or mangles a name.

• Someone makes a “Leonardo DiCaprio was raped by a bear” joke
• Oprah shows up. Just because.
• A young, masculine actor sheds a tear on camera. Chris Pine, you ol’ softie!

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Drink the whole damn bottle when:

• Dave Grohl performs. Nobody should have to sit through that shit sober. What did we cinephiles do to deserve that?

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Now, maybe you’re stuck at the office and you want to win the official tipping pool? Or maybe you just want to show up your mates with your predicting expertise. Either way, here are our official predictions for the Academy Awards. Please note, we could be entirely wrong on everything. In fact, we probably are.

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Best Picture

Will Win: The Revenant
Could Win: Spotlight or The Big Short
Should Win: Mad Max: Fury Road

It’s a three-horse race between The Revenant, Spotlight, and The Big Short, although we can hope that enough voters vote for George Miller’s post-apocalyptic action spectacle on a lark that he somehow overtakes them all. The Revenant feels like the most likely winner simply because it’s the biggest of the bunch. Let’s face it, movie-makers like to think they have the hardest job in the world and when a film actively publicises that its crew nearly died? It’s a vote for grandiosity.

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Best Director

Will Win: Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant
Could Win: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Should Win: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road

George Miller, the patron saint of kick-ass action filmmaking, is a genuine threat for the win if this 70-year-old’s herculean effort is rightly seen as the worthier accomplishment. However, a seemingly overflowing love of The Revenant – it led the nomination tally with 12; Max got 10 – including surprising nods for Tom Hardy and production design (thanks, nature!) suggests they will have no qualms about awarding Inarritu a second Oscar for directing in two years, the first time that will have happened in over 60 years.

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Best Actor

Will Win: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Could Win: Are you kidding? It’s Leo!
Should Win: Matt Damon, The Martian

I am not a fan of the film or the performance, but at least if Leo finally wins an Oscar we won’t have to hear about how he’s overdue for one ever again. Let’s hurry this along before this 16-bit arcade game Leo’s Red Carpet Rampage becomes a reality.

https://49.media.tumblr.com/2e846450bd55880010bf5225489733d2/tumblr_nrn6n3cGQ81qanm80o1_500.gif

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Best Actress

Will Win: Brie Larson, Room
Could Win: Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
Should Win: Cate Blanchett, Carol

Sure, Jennifer Lawrence is nominated mostly because of her starpower and less so for the movie she starred in – Joy was entertaining, but little more – but even that can’t spoil this exceptional line-up. It’s almost a shame that Larson ended up steamrolling through the award season with her performance in the abduction drama Room since there were so many great actresses this year. Not least of which are Ronan and Blanchett in their duel 1950s romantic dramas, and the fifth nominee Charlotte Rampling, who were all at the top of their games.

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Best Supporting Actor

Will Win: Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Could Win: Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Should Win: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

The sentimental favourite is Stallone who returned to the Rocky franchise that made him a star some 40 years ago. He would be an atypical winner since he is the only nominee not in a Best Picture contender, but the overwhelming love for Stallone at award shows like The Golden Globes proves he will be hard to beat.

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Best Supporting Actress

Will Win: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Could Win: Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Should Win: Rooney Mara, Carol

Ambivalence towards The Danish Girl and its obvious Oscar-bait inspirations make rooting for Vikander, as good as she is in the film, somewhat hard to do. Especially when she was just as good in Ex Machina. But then, Kate Winslet – who won the Golden Globe and the BAFTA – is also in a film that didn’t go down as well as many expected. If there’s a true surprise in the works, maybe Rachel McAdams will win in a sign of strength to Spotlight. She is, after all, the only nominee from a Best Picture contender.

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Best Original Screenplay

Will Win: Spotlight
Could Win: Straight Outta Compton
Should Win: Ex Machina

Spotlight’s win here seems pretty assured, not least of which is because it’s very much a movie where the written word shines. If Tom McCarthy’s Catholic abuse drama is to win Best Picture then also winning for Screenplay is a given. If it doesn’t, then it’s a great consolation prize.

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Best Adapted Screenplay

Will Win: The Big Short
Could Win: Room
Should Win: Carol

Everything that I just said about Spotlight applies here for The Big Short. It either comes in tandem with Best Picture or it’s a consolation prize for the popular stock market comedy.

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Best Animated Feature

Will Win: Inside Out
Could Win: Ummm…
Should Win: Shaun the Sheep Movie

One of the year’s best categories is actually this one, since the voters ignored glossy American productions like The Peanuts Movie for acclaimed foreign ones such as Boy and the World and When Marnie Was There, the last film to ever be made by Studio Ghibli. Despite my childlike adoration for the adorable Shaun the Sheep Movie, it would be virtually impossible for anything to beat Pixar’s high-concept comedy Inside Out for the win.

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Best Cinematography

Will Win: The Revenant
Could Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Should Win: Sicario

While everyone has been pouting over Leonardo DiCaprio being Oscarless, poor ol’ Roger Deakins has been here lamenting the likelihood that he will lose his thirteenth Oscar! And to The Revenant’s Emmanuel Lubezki, no less, who will likely make history and win his third Oscar in a row. That’s never been done before, but there’s a first time for everything.

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Best Costume Design

Will Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Could Win: Cinderella
Should Win: Carol

What once felt like a surprise to even be nominated, now feels like the odds-on favourite to win. Costume designer Jenny Beaven, known before now predominantly for her works on British period dramas like Howard’s End, Sense and Sensibility and The King’s Speech, turned sand-stained rags and festering breastplates into cinematic couture and should take home her second statue for it.

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Best Production Design

Will Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Could Win: Bridge of Spies
Should Win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Like its costumes, the custom-converted automobiles of Mad Max: Fury Road would be a surprisingly untraditional winner here, but can they ignore a film that so joyously throws its insane visions into the audience’s face? We can only hope they don’t, but Bridge of Spies’ wonderful recreation of Cold War-era East Berlin would be an equally deserving winner.

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Best Editing

Will Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Could Win: The Big Short
Should Win: Mad Max: Fury Road

If George Miller himself can’t win an Oscar, then maybe his wife can. Miller asked his partner Margaret Sixel, who had previously worked in non-fiction and television, because anybody else would make his film look like every other film on at the multiplex. That fresh vision helped get Max to be lauded as one of the greatest action movies ever made and her efforts should be rightly rewarded.

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Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Will Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Could Win: The Revenant
Should Win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Good rule of thumb: if your movie has already inspired Halloween revellers’ makeup then you should probably win this category for being so instantly iconic.

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Best Original Score

Will Win: Carol
Could Win: The Hateful Eight
Should Win: Sicario

The logical bet is that Ennio Morricone will finally win a competitive Oscar – he has an honorary one – for his work on Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. However, I am predicting they’ll use this place to give Carol a single, solitary award. An apology of sorts for clearly liking the film, but not giving it the best picture nomination it so richly deserved.

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Best Original Song

Will Win: Youth
Could Win: The Hunting Ground
Should Win: Fifty Shades of Grey

What an idiotic category this year, but it would be nice to see Diane Warren win from her eighth nomination. Her Lady Gaga collaboration from college rape documentary The Hunting Ground would also be a pertinent winner in the wake of the Kesha’s legal troubles. Still, the only half-decent song nominated is the one from the much-maligned Fifty Shades of Grey by The Weeknd. Still, I reckon fans of Youth will use this as their sole chance to reward it by recognising Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s operatic ‘Simple Song #3’.

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Best Sound Mixing and Sound Editing

Will Win: Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant
Could Win: Anything else seems doubtful
Should Win: Mad Max: Fury Road

The two big technical films of the day could likely split the sound categories, although if The Revenant takes both early in the ceremony then you can likely expect it to win Best Picture in a sweep.

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Best Visual Effects

Will Win: Mad Max: Fury Road
Could Win: Star Wars or The Revenant
Should Win: Any of them

A perfect collection of nominees this year that includes big sci-fi spectacles, fantasy adventures, intimate robot romances, and more down-to-earth animal effects. Give the edge to Mad Max because it is both a best picture nominee and a damn impressive lookin’ film, but that bear attack in The Revenant and the astronomical box office of Star Wars cannot be ruled out.

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Best Foreign Language Film

Will Win: Son of Saul (Hungary)
Could Win: Mustang (France)
Should Win: N/A

Sadly, only two of the nominated films have reached our shores so it’s hard to say what should win, but when in doubt predict the WWII movie. Especially if it’s as acclaimed as Son of Saul.

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Best Documentary

Will Win: Amy
Could Win: What Happened, Miss Simone?
Should Win: The Look of Silence

Amy is the highest-grossing nominee by a very wide margin and if voters have seen at least one of the nominees, it will be that one.

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Best Documentary Short

Will Win: Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
Could Win: Body Team 12
Should Win: Last Day of Freedom

Once more, when in doubt go with the film about the Holocaust. The neat thing about Spectres of the Shoah is that it is a second-hand way of honouring Shoah, the ten-hour 1985 Holocaust documentary that has been hailed one of the greatest non-fiction film ever made.

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Best Animated Short

Will Win: Bear Story
Could Win: The World of Tomorrow
Should Win: The World of Tomorrow

The futuristic 15-minute existential comedy The World of Tomorrow may just be the best film nominated for an Oscar this year, period – in any category, feature or short. That it might not actually win is sad, but if it doesn’t then the touching Chilean cartoon Bear Story is the best one to steal the trophy.

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Best Live Action Short

Will Win: Day One
Could Win: Shok
Should Win: Everything Will Be Okay

The German drama Everything Will Be Okay, about a father’s efforts to kidnap his daughter after a divorce, deserves to win this category hands down. However, the Oscars aren’t always fair and the American warzone drama Day One about a female interpreter’s efforts to assist in the birth of a terror suspect’s baby is a more likely winner.

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The Oscars screen on Channel 9 from 12.30pm.

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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer from Melbourne. He also works as an editor and a film festival programmer while tweeting too much @glenndunks.