Moonlight

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.

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 wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I finally found time to catch Moonlight in theaters, so you’ll excuse me if the buzz around Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s film hasn’t quite worn off yet. Moonlight isn’t just a powerful story of one person’s struggle with his sexuality, it is also one of the most powerfully acted and beautifully shot films of the decade. In my professional opinion as a film critic, we should just throw awards at that movie until both filmmakers are forced to move into bigger houses just to store them all. That’s my professional opinion, mind you.

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.)

Today GLAAD announced their 2017 Media Awards nominees, which included plenty of exciting milestones and achievements, but also some disappointing news about the current state of Hollywood. It seems that in our post-Election world, there’s no such thing as good news without a side of bad (or lately, more like a four-course meal of bad with a side of good).

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.

The Oscar nominations will be announced bright and early tomorrow morning, marking the beginning of the end for the plodding death march that is awards season. But critical groups continue to truck along for the time being, with the London Critics’ Circle the latest body to weigh in with their picks for the best of 2016’s cinematic offerings. Even across the Atlantic, La La Land continues to win over movie types; Damien Chazelle’s bittersweet romantic musical took the Film of the Year distinction, though stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone went unrecognized, as did director Chazelle.

The Directors Guild of America has officially unveiled its 2016 film nominees, a list that boasts very few — if any — surprises. Indeed, the DGA has added its voice(s) to the growing awards season choir, singing the praises of La La Land, Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea — all but guaranteeing their Oscar nominations for Best Picture. The DGA has also revealed the nominees for First-Time Feature Filmmaker, which include Dan Trachtenberg for 10 Cloverfield Lane and (brace yourselves for this totally un-shocking shocker) Tim Miller for Deadpool.

La La Land, duh. Manchester By the Sea, right. Moonlight, you better. Deadpool – excuse me? It’s true, Ryan Reynolds’ superhero movie has just been named one of the 10 best films of 2016 by the Producers Guild of America (via Variety). Many of us thought its Golden Globes nominations were just a result of the HFPA’s always wacky taste, but it seems the Deadpool virus has spread across the nation to multiple voting bodies, from the Writer’s Guild of America to the Producers.