La La Land

After months of hype and controversy, the big night is finally upon us. The red carpet has been rolled out, the votes have been cast, and host Jimmy Kimmel has rehearsed all his best Matt Damon jokes. At last, the 89th Academy Awards have arrived.

Sure, the Academy Awards are swanky and fun and tell us what the industry wants in a film, but what about what the people want? Well, as it turns out, when Fandango conducted a poll of 8,000 moviegoers nationwide, Oscar favorite La La Land didn‘t stand a chance against Hidden Figures.

It’s that time of the year again where we must set aside our personal opinions and favorites to try and guess which movies the Academy will deem the most culturally significant. A lot had changed since our initial Oscar predictions last December. Manchester By the Sea is no longer a Best Picture frontrunner, a race dominated by La La Land with Moonlight shortly behind. The days of calling Natalie Portman a Best Actress shoe-in last fall feel like a distant dream, and Lion and Hacksaw Ridge might just lend this year’s Oscars some surprising upsets.

It’s no secret by now that Damien Chazelle’s La La Land featured some unbelievably ridiculous camerawork. Now that the film has been nominated for Best Picture and Best Cinematography, as well as Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Production Design, the film’s campaign is making sure the Academy voters know exactly how much it deserves to win in the technical categories.

Cheerio, and cor blimey! The BAFTAs, Britain’s most prestigious film awards program, took place last night in London and recognized the finest achievements of the year on the silver screen. And in 2016, regardless of which side of the Atlantic your awards show happens to transpiring, that means an evening-long salute to awards juggernaut La La Land. With a little less than two weeks to go before Oscar night, Damien Chazelle’s crowd-pleasing musical picked up a few more accolades to pad its portfolio and brighten its chances for the big dance.

For months we’ve speculated who and what will take home golden statues come Oscar night. Will La La Land continue its awards season domination? Does Moonlight have a shot at winning Best Picture? Is 2017 such a garbage fire that Mel Gibson may actually win a Best Director Academy Award for Hacksaw Ridge? And is Lion really that good, or is it just the Pumpkin Spice Latte of the Oscars? (It is.)

When it comes to predicting future Oscar winners, few institutions are as prescient as the Directors Guild of America. Only once in the past decade has the DGA honored a filmmaker who did not go on to win the Academy Award for Best Director; that took place in 2012, when the DGA selected Ben Affleck for Argo while the AMPAS went with Ang Lee and Life of Pi. If the DGA selects you as the best director of the previous year, you might as well start working on that Oscar acceptance speech.

The Supergirl-Flash musical crossover “Duet” may not bring us a full soundtrack of original tunes, but what few new songs we get are quickly populating their own “City of Stars.” Not only is Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom contributing a number, but so too are composing team Pasek and Paul, lyricists behind La La Land.

Just when pundits had begun to reduce the Oscar fracas to a two-horse race between toe-tapping populist favorite La La Land and critically-adored downbeat character piece Moonlight, a possible spoiler has come out of nowhere. Last night, the 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild Awards gave Hollywood’s union of performers a chance to recognize some of their own whom had done outstanding work over the past year. The most coveted award of the ceremony is the prize for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Motion Picture, regarded by some as a bellweather for Oscar night, and it went to unexpected contender Hidden Figures.

Ah, can you smell it? The aroma of scorching hot awards season debates is already in the air! The nominees for the 2017 Oscars were announced bright and early this morning – or should we say dark and early, as the ScreenCrush team beat the sunrise for the big announcement.