Who is going to win an Oscar?
The final 2025 Brady Ballot
I downplay how much fun I have watching the Oscars. However much the most Philly person who follows me cared about the Super Bowl this year is how much I care about the Oscars every year, more or less. It’s sport: I place educated bets on winners and losers with emotional investments that might or might not correlate with those bets. Most of all, I watch other people agonize over the sport for no good reason. Last Sunday, for example, I listened to Club Chalamet’s live Space chat on X.com. I’m not sure how long this broadcast lasted, in full, but for the 20 minutes I listened she breathlessly speculated the odds of Timothée Chalamet winning an Oscar for playing Bob Dylan, using what she presented as facts and evidence. For example (I’m paraphrasing): “when Adrien Brody won in 2003, he was 29 but about to turn 30, but Timothée is a young 29, which means his chances are even higher than Brody’s” (?).
Nothing makes me laugh harder than this kind of hopeful statisticization of movies, especially because I also do it: the torture is thrilling. Winning an Oscar in 2025 could be seen as financially and culturally insignificant, because the broadcast’s ratings are in the toilet and they are not neatly tied to the box office, which has its own problems capturing any monocultural momentum. But, all live TV ratings are in the toilet, and—as Barbenheimer proved—people are willing to see real (i.e. not Red Hulk) movies if they look good: the gulf between movies at the Oscars and movies people see does not have to be, nor is it always, so huge. People care about the Oscars, and they still matter in terms of acquiring movies and paying people to make art. But, more importantly, they’re fun.
It’s a particularly interesting year, I would say, especially in contrast to last year’s snoozefest (predictable + Anatomy of a Fall 😴). Not because the nominated movies are better (they’re just slightly worse), but because they are just a little unwieldy. I think my 2024 ballot came out perfect except for Production Design and Costumes, which I hopefully guessed would be Barbie’s bones under the Poor Things authoritarian regime.1 This year, though, I am waffling down to the wire on one of the actors, a screenplay, director, and best picture. Finally: a game.
A word on the New Oscars
Before 2015, The Academy let very few new people into its voting body. Since then, there has been a frequent flood of new voters, which has very slowly shaken up the way Oscar predicting and winning “works.” But in the interim, COVID happened, greasing the streaming economics wheels to completely steamroll the industry, and an already dwindling box office went dark. Combined with disruptions to distribution and awards timelines by COVID and the strikes, I believe the game of Oscars betting has become completely unrecognizable to what it was a decade ago, and that even 5-year-old tools used to understand the game are soon going to be obsolete.
The most obvious, legible changes to casual viewers is that the BAFTAs are far weaker indicators of who might win Oscars, and that crazy (in different ways) stuff sweeps every couple years. The more nuanced and annoying discrepancy is that other pre-Oscars stuff like the DGAs—once almost 100% accurate predictors—are a little more unreliable now, too. People love to say that winning a DGA is your Oscar guarantee, but even before the post-2015 shakeups, Ben Affleck won the DGA and wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. And Sam Mendes was nominated for 1917 after his DGA win, but he lost: in 2019, right as these changes started to avalanche. More importantly, though, the post-2020 Directing category hasn’t been very competitive to begin with. The last time I remember there being real contention was when Guillermo del Toro won 2018, but I still remember easily putting him on my ballot.2 And, since then, it was 1) Cuarón for Roma, 2) Bong Joon-ho, 3) two years of fake COVID stuff where there was absolutely no competition because there were no movies released (of course, the two years women won—can we have anything), 4) Everything Everywhere All At Once, and 5) Oppenheimer. Who else was going to win in 2023… Ruben Östlund?3
This year’s Directing category is extraordinarily competitive. Until the very last second, Jacques Audiard was certainly in the running, and Brady Corbet was the first and last to do speech auditions at the Globes and BAFTAs. Sean Baker won the Palme and the DGA—he’s always been a serious contender—but that Brady. Think of it this way: if the BAFTAs were the only glitzy body to award Anora (they were), but they still gave Director to Big B, and if the populist awards (SAGs) didn’t give Anora anything (they didn’t)…
SAG Report
But, what’s so fun about this year is that it is not at all unlikely that Sean Baker wins Director, after all.4 It’s just far less likely than Gold Derby says it is, whose experts have Jacques Audiard as the least likely person to win—ok, wishful thinking! I would put Audiard in third place, and I wouldn’t discount it.
Yet, my BB (Brady bet) is formed, in part, by the result of the SAGs. The interesting takeaway was that they voted the same direction as the British people in giving Conclave a big award. People love to claim that the SAG ensemble award “doesn’t mean anything,” but the post-COVID winners were CODA, EEAAO, and Oppenheimer. The BAFTAs were Power of the Dog, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Oppenheimer. The one alignment here indicates to me an ease of choice in those years. And Conclave was pretty easy to watch.
But so was Emilia Pérez (in terms of bright colors and namable actors), which had Best Picture locked until recent events. Look: the last batch of Academy inductees included the casting director of Saltburn, Jason Clark (of Chappaquiddick fame), Cord Jefferson, Emma Seligman, and David Yates. There are some real artists and freethinkers on there, but there’s no real trend except more people, prone to more erratic voting. They might disagree on something like Anora or Emilia Pérez—due to variations in age, wokeness, and Americanness—but if the masses start to clearly and loudly agree one way, they’ll just go with it, e.g. Emilia Pérez one month ago. But, when there is no loud, unanimous agreement, what they can probably agree on is that they’re not finishing their Brutalist screeners. But, given how utterly, ridiculously stupid the second half of The Brutalist is, and that voters keep seeing the BBs (Brutalist Boys / Brody & Brady) walk around and talk about “cinema” and “the state” of it, that’s not a bad thing. Voters are watching awards shows, where the BBs are taking over, where Conclave is sweeping the end-of-night-ers. I haven’t seen Sean Baker talk once the whole season, and neither have they.
Speaking of, though, I’ve had Adrien Brody on my ballot since the Globes, but this Conclave business really makes you think. Before the season really kicked off, I thought Ralph Fiennes would have a cakewalk to the Dolby. It quickly became clear he wouldn’t, but I really wouldn’t write it off. If he’s trailing Chalamet and all the actors vote for Chalamet, while all the Euros and young non-actors vote for Brody, that splits it with the rest of the normies and decades-long members voting for Fiennes. It’s tight.
The other thing SAG told us is that Demi Moore is a shoo-in, which I’ve known since September but it’s nice when others learn.
RED CARPET INTERMISSION
Best
Anna Sawai in Armani
Someday I’ll learn who this is!
Selena Gomez in Celine
It’s hard for something so boring to be quite so error-less.
Drew Starkey in Valentino
I have a thing for Alessandro Michele, and the thing is that I love him and his stupid clothing. Seeing a blue blooded Jonathan Anderson boy in Michele was such a delightful surprise, I could hardly get over it. And with a Cartier hand and buzzcut, no less!
Nicola Coughlan in Dior
Frequently the best dressed at anything she goes to, and I still only have an 80% comprehension of who she is.
Keke Palmer in Chanel
Not complicated but “yay,” as we say.
Worst
Kaitlyn Dever in Elie Saab
Work, girl!
Cynthia Erivo in Givenchy by McQueen
She is frequently on my “best” lists, but just because something’s a cool archive pull doesn’t mean it looks good on a body or that it’s event appropriate. But this thing was ugly when McQueen was alive and it’s ugly now!
Joey King in Miu Miu
Is this a joke?
Millie Bobby Brown in LV
Shapeless and vomit colored. Oh no!
Timothée Chalamet in Chrome Hearts
Chrome Hearts is cool and makes me laugh, but Timothée Chalamet isn’t and doesn’t.
My ballot
I’m not including any of the shorts because I don’t know about those and usually guess or copy someone else’s guesses the day of. I also really took some swings on the technicals and animated because I like to take risks these days.
Best Picture: Conclave
Best Director: Brady Corbet
Best Actress: Demi Moore
Best Actor: Adrien Brody
Best Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldaña
Best Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin
Best Adapted Screenplay: Conclave
Best Original Screenplay: Anora
Best Cinematography: LOL CRAWLEY!
Best Costume Design: Wicked
Best Film Editing: Conclave
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Wicked
Best Production Design: The Brutalist
Best Score: The Brutalist
Best Song: “El Mal”
Best Sound: Dune: Part Two
Best Visual Effects: Dune: Part Two
Best Animated Feature: Flow
Best Documentary: No Other Land
Best International: I’m Still Here
I liked Poor Things but am generally against 1) sweeps of all kinds (unless it’s Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist!) and 2) young people winning Oscars for acting.
Did people (like myself) just hate Shape of Water? Am I misremembering this?
Spielberg hasn’t won since 1999.
I feel similarly about Original, but flip flopped.
Drew Starkey and Jeremy Strong have the same stylist
Academy inductee timelines are so funny… they let David Yates in like fifteen years after Harry Potter wrapped up?? Secrets of Dumbledore convinced them??