Are you expecting a major upset in any acting categories?

Sadly they're probably pretty much sewn up except for Best Supporting Actress which I really don't have a clue. King makes the most sense to me on paper, but I really think that de Tavira could end up winning because of the love for Roma. I know people are saying that the nomination was her reward, which it might be, but she was barely on the award radar, and yet there was enough passion for her to get in over Blunt, Foy, Kidman, etc. Normally if there was a clear front-runner like Allison Janney last year, then I would pretty much dismiss the idea of someone like de Tavira being able to win. However, this is a very strange year in this category, and the conditions are perfect for de Tevira to pull off another surprise.

King might be the overwhelming critics favorite and well liked and respected, but she still missed SAG and BAFTA, and If Beale Street Could Talk missed Best Picture. She's the front-runner to me right now, but she's definitely not a lock like Close or Ali.

As for the other categories, I think Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor are done now.

Best Actor is probably Malek, but depending on how the Singer factor goes, he could still end up losing probably to Bale. However, I think there's a very, very small possibility that if Cooper does more campaigning like making a surprise appearance to sing with Lady Gaga the other night, maybe he could pull it off. Probably not though, but there's still almost a month of voting where anything could happen.

People on here kind of look past Ali and how great Oscar is being with him - he's better here than he was in Moonlight, it's a great performance and people say stupid stuff like Grant should win - and he is fine and good, but Ali really deserves it - no one is in the league of that performance in the category imo. It's great.

What is interesting Bale/Malek - Bale (best of category) is the greater performance but both of these are special performances in films that are just not good (and Dafoe is better than Malek). If Bale wins he joins DDL as the only UK actor ever - think of that - to have 2 Oscars where at least 1 is BA - that is a historic win if he wins it, I don't know that they want to give him 2 but.......he deserves 2 though.

Close will win

Supporting Actress is up in the air.

I completely agree with you on Ali.  My post ha nothing to do with the performance itself.  I just think people underestimate the chances the Academy will go with a complelty out of left field upset.

Yes. Hoping Colman to upset.

I think the BAFTA will be more relevant to the Oscars this year than often before...

Best Actor - The BAFTA confirms the winner here. If Malek wins, it's over. However, if Bale wins, Bohemian Rhapsody's luck has run out and Bale will repeat.

Best Actress - Close is the frontrunner right now but if Colman wins the BAFTA I think she'll give Close a run for her money and might prevail.

Best Supporting Actor - Ali feels like the closest lock of the four categories. Not even an unlikely Grant BAFTA win could upset Ali at the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actress - SAGs seem to confirm Adams is out thankfully! King wasn't even nominated for SAG or BAFTA and her film wasn't nominated in any other top 6 categories and feels generally passionless right now. Weisz looks like a frontrunner to win the BAFTA (but vote splitting between her and Stone may continue to hurt them) and that could likely pave the road to an Oscar win.


This speculation begs the question, Which is likelier:

Three previous winners: Bale, Ali and Weisz?
or
Four American winners: Malek, Close, Ali and King (or Adams)?

I still think Colman has a shot if Academy members start to realize that they’ve never even heard of The Wife, but at this point she’d certainly be an upset. And, unfortunately, not one that I’m predicting anymore.

Neither Malek nor Bale would be an upset — it’s a two-horse race between them and I doubt BAFTA would change that very much, especially if Bale wins. I could feasibly see either one winning it, but I don’t see an upset happening.

Ali is a lock. So that one’s a no.

And with supporting actress, well, it’s kind of hard to call anything an upset when there’s no consensus frontrunner. I still think it’s King’s to lose and will continue to predict her for now, but she’s still not such an obvious choice that a loss would necessarily be an upset.

Totally agreed. I didn't like Green Book but Ali was INCREDIBLE in it, even better than his great turn in Moonlight. It's probably my favorite performance of the year.

Disagree on Bale v. Malek. I know a lot of people criticize Malek for simply doing a Freddie Mercury impression, but I don't know what they're talking about. Throughout the majority of the film he doesn't look like Mercury and barely even sounds like Mercury. But Malek creates a very good character arc for the film, and by the third act I was surprisingly emotionally connected to his performance despite the limitations imposed on it by the insultingly hackneyed, contrived script. Mercury's arc in the film is so by-the-numbers cliche, and yet somehow Malek makes it work. I see a real soul through his eyes, one fraught with arrogance and self-doubt in equal measure, and it takes a truly gifted actor (like Ali) to achieve this with such bad material. And then, after spending two hours building up the performance, the film ends with the major payoff of Malek finally going FULL Freddie Mercury in that Live Aid set and actually doing the impression, and doing it PERFECTLY. For all the film's major issues, it was a very good structural decision to treat the narrative like some superhero origin story, where we're witnessing the realization of an icon. Malek (his back to the camera) gives us some nice subtle Mercury movements in that opening credit sequence that foreshadow the impression, but it takes the whole movie for that full-on impression to arrive, and he fucking knocks it out of the park. It's not just that he mimics the movements perfectly (he does), but more importantly, he projects that fearless, magnificent confidence that defines Mercury's unbeatable stage presence. Malek is having just as much fun as Mercury was having at the real show, and that exuberance is absolutely infectious. I spent two hours rolling my eyes at the film's overall mediocrity, but that ending gave me goosebumps and it was all because of Malek.

Bale, on the other hand, is doing absolutely nothing but a one-dimensional, SNL-level Cheney impersonation. Like Malek, the script gives him very little to work with, and yet unlike Malek he does nothing to elevate the material. He talks in Cheney's cadence and looks quietly sinister in that particular Cheney way. That's it. It's such a horribly one-note performance that he gets upstaged by Steve Carell of all people. He's not aggressively terrible like Amy Adams (who I usually love btw), just terribly bland. Not a single thing about that movie deserves any awards consideration whatsoever, except a Razzie for McKay's direction.

Anyway, my predictions are Malek for Actor (if controversy didn't ruin it for Casey Affleck then controversy-by-association won't ruin it for Malek), Close for Actress, Ali for Supporting Actor, and King for Supporting Actress (though I'll do somersaults in my living room if de Tavira gets a surprise win).

Lmao... did you see the wife? No she's at home.