Breaking Drift
This week on The Score – Who will win this year’s Oscars?
By Rick Sincere
February 23, 2019
What Will Be The Watercooler Talk At Work After The Oscars?
This Sunday night, February 24, Hollywood presents the movie industry’s top awards, sponsored since 1928 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). I sat down with The Score’s film critic, Tim Hulsey, about who might win the Oscars and what we’ll be talking about Monday morning.
Our discussion bounced around from College of William and Mary alumna Glenn Close, nominated for the seventh time for her role in The Wife, and Rami Malek, nominated for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, to the surprising late-career first nominations for director Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman, which Tim describes as the “wokest” of the Best Picture nominees) and screenwriter Paul Schrader (First Reformed). In between we talked about Lady Gaga and Sam Elliott (A Star Is Born), Olivia Colman (The Favourite), Black Panther‘s box office take ($1.3 billion and counting), and the nominees for screenplay and cinematography, and whether Alfonso Cuaron’s black-and-white memoir Roma, produced by Netflix, can win Best Picture or Best Director.
Tim thinks the water-cooler moment of Sunday’s awards show won’t actually be any of the awards:
I think that Olivia Colman is unlikely to win for The Favourite. If it wins anything, it will probably win Best Original Screenplay. It’s a very tricky little film. The cinematography is very good, but I don’t think it will win for cinematography. I think Caleb Deschanel will win for Never Look Away, the German nominee for Foreign Language Film, He’s another one who’s been nominated several times and his work in the community is so highly respected, but he’s never actually won…
I think what people are going to talk about over their coffee at the office [Monday morning] is not going to be an award at all. I think it’s going to happen when Bette Midler sings a song from Mary Poppins Returns, “The Place Where Lost Things Go,” which is a three-hanky tear-jerker of a song and Bette Midler is going to milk it for everything she could get out of it. I think that’s what people are going to be talking about after the Oscars. I don’t even think they’re going to be talking about who won or who lost.
I met with Tim outside a coffee shop, so you may hear some streetscape sounds in the background. The Oscars will be broadcast live on ABC-TV but there are alternative ways to watchthe ceremony, too. You can follow the Oscars on Twitter at @TheAcademy.
Last year for The Score, Tim reviewed Oscar nominees BlacKkKlansman, Incredibles 2, Christopher Robin, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Avengers: Infinity War.
