​By Ryan C. Showers 

​Timothée Chalamet has acted as the first-place prediction for a majority of award show fans keeping track of predictions this summer in the Best Supporting Actor category. After his rise to stardom for his Oscar-nominated work in “Call Me By Your Name” and the promise of a dynamic character in “Beautiful Boy,” a film adaptation of the true story and best-selling memoirs, this year looked to be an opportunity for Chalamet to clinch the Hollywood spotlight. That was before phase one began and before “Beautiful Boy” screened for critics and audiences. Throwing a roadblock in Chalamet’s mission, people have not warmly embraced the film, citing the approach to be heavy-handed and uneven. Chalamet stands a fair chance to remain in the conversation, but he has a battle cut out for his publicist. Chalamet’s work has been praised, but the film’s reviews are underwhelming, and some even disappointing, which opens up the Best Supporting Actor race in a big way.

By Ryan C. Showers 

A trend has developed in recent years. For as long as I can remember, Best Actor was always the most competitive acting race of the four, always outpacing the supporting races and Best Actress. Since 2014, Best Actress has outmatched Best Actor in the number of quality performances in the race, and each year, Best Actor has become weaker and weaker. This year has materialized with a whimper rather than a bang to the point where I’m at the bottom of a barrel, scraping for traces of Best Actor possibilities. Now that we have gone through Venice, Telluride, and Toronto (and are currently underway with New York) film festivals, we have an idea of what we’re dealing with.

​By Ryan C. Showers 

Most Oscar pundits and people who write about awards races have had a common thread when discussing the Best Supporting Actress race of 2018: Amy Adams. Period, the end, moving on. Little did we know just how competitive would become. The three festivals so far (Venice, Telluride, and Toronto) have ushered in serious Best Supporting Actress players. Ironically, we’ve seen almost all of the contenders except the one everyone has and probably will continue to talk about: Amy Adams.

By Ryan C. Showers 

​Venice. 
Telluride. 
Toronto. 
Check, check, and check. 

Now that we’re well into phase one of the 2018-19 awards season, the races are starting to take shape with an abundance of clarity. Critics and pundits have found common ground about which performances will put up a good fight upon their release for the awards circuit. From my understanding and analysis, the Best Actress race comes down to eight performances, four frontrunners, and four possibilities.

Eleven months ago, I wrote a piece published on this blog where I summarized last year’s Best Actress race as being “the mystery of the fifth slot.” This meant I was confident that Meryl Streep, Sally Hawkins, Frances McDormand, and Margot Robbie would be nominated in the Academy Awards lineup. (I was correct.) The final slot in Best Actress was an enigma to me, and I listed Jessica Chastain, Emma Stone, Saoirse Ronan, and Judi Dench as the actresses who could end up occupying it. In the conclusion of that piece, I predicted Ronan for the last spot, which was right before the “Lady Bird” buzz took off. (Again, I was correct. I predicted all five of the Best Actress nominees last year in October.) After Venice, Telluride, and Toronto, this year’s Best Actress race breaks down along a similar structure as the category did last year. I see four frontrunners with ideal roles and critical reviews, and then I see another thorough group of actresses who all stand a decent shot at filling the final spot. I’m not ready to say I’m confident in any of the frontrunners since the autumn films haven’t been released theatrically yet, but the principle similarly applies.

By Daniel Howat 

With the Venice, Telluride, and Toronto Film Festivals wrapped up, we’ve now got plenty of insight into the Oscar race. Most of the major contenders have premiered, giving us a clear picture of which films to keep an eye on. The Best Director race is heating up with previous winners, directorial debuts, unexpected hits, and more entering the fray.​

By Matt Neglia 

Pippin - "It's so quiet.."
Gandalf - "It's the deep breath before the plunge."

​​And that's exactly where we are right now. It's been a long 6 months since the 90th Academy Awards ceremony and the next 6 are about to be even longer for it all begins again tomorrow: phase one of the 2018 Oscar season.

By Tom O'Brien 

​Welcome to the fourth in our NBP series of the 10 best early Oscar contenders in each of the four acting categories. For the first two weeks, we have looked at the early contenders in the Supporting categories before the fall film festivals kick into high gear, and last week we turned our attention to the hot Best Actress race. This week, we turn our eagle eye to the most likely contenders for the Oscar as Best Actor.

​Just to address this week's rumor mill, Kris Tapley of Variety sent a tweet that intimated that Clint Eastwood may jump into this race at the last minute for his performance in his latest film "The Mule," in which he portrays a real-life 90-year-old horticulturalist who moonlights as a drug smuggler for a Mexican cartel. Eastwood has a history of last-minute Oscar bids -- in 2004, "Million Dollar Baby" came out of nowhere at the last second to be eligible and wound up with a Best Picture win, as well as two major acting awards.  Without subsequent confirmation, however, I'm leaving him off this list for now. But keep your eye on Clint. He's a wily one.

At this moment, here are the 10 men who, as we see it, stand the best chance of hearing their name on nomination morning. Click below to see the top contenders in alphabetical order.

By Tom O'Brien 

Welcome to the second in our NBP series of the 10 best early Oscar contenders in each of the four acting categories. Last week, we looked at the early contenders for Best Supporting Actress before the fall film festivals kicked into high gear. This week, we turn our attention to Best Supporting Actor.
 
At this moment, here are the 10 men who, as we see it, stand the best chance of hearing their name on nomination morning. Click below to see the top contenders in alphabetical order.

By Ryan C. Showers 
​
We made it through the dreadful early-year releases, slogged our way through the empty films slated in the spring, and now the big, blockbuster summer releases – also known as the prime time for movies that will now campaign for “Best Popular Film” at the Oscars – are starting to wrap up. In fairness, the majority of films with value released in the first two-thirds of the year have 15 minutes of fame at the time of their release but rarely encompass a lasting reputation to compete in awards races. Most the films the public spends money on for the majority of the year won’t see the light of any golden accolades – again, except now in the “Best Popular Film” category, recently added to the Academy Awards. Quality films, Oscar buzz, and award season contenders are revving up to take over the industry in the coming months. That being said, there are opportunities for successful and critically acclaimed early-released films to make an appearance during the long months of award season.

A pocket for such opportunities is the Golden Globes Comedy/Musical categories. Though those categories typically have their fair share of late-released awards bait and film-festival darlings, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HPFA) sometimes ushers in movies that made their mark with critics or at the box office early in the year.

By Tom O'Brien 

As stated yesterday by Matt, we will be continuing to provide you with the best Oscar coverage we possibly can for the 2018 Awards Season. With that said, each week in August, we'll take on the four acting categories and try to determine the 10 performers who, at this moment, stand the best chance at scoring those coveted Oscar nominations.

We'll start this week with the already-hot race for Best Supporting Actress race. In alphabetical order, here, as we see it, are the top contenders.

​By Will Mavity 

​We're halfway through 2018. Insane right? And we still don’t have a good idea as to what our major Oscar players are going to be. In fact, the rest of the year looks downright bleak, at least in comparison to previous years. We asked yesterday on Episode 98 of the podcast if there are any Oscars contenders from the first half of the year that have already released? And the answer to that is yes! Not as many as some past years, but we’ve got a few likely nominees already in play regardless.

For the sake of realism, we will only be discussing films that have viable chances of getting nominated. So as much as you might want to see "American Animals" get nominated for Best Picture, there is a 0% chance of that happening. Instead, we’re focusing on films that have genuine chances (Limited to the categories where they could actually contend).

Also note, we are only looking at films that have already had a theatrical release. So, although "BlackKklansman," for example, has already premiered at Cannes or "Eighth Grade" at Sundance and they look to be a contenders, they have not officially been ‘released.'

​By Will Mavity 

A few weeks ago, the Academy announced some long overdue changes to its Original Score and Original Song Categories. After years of many Original Score nominees snagging nominations based on the credentials of their composers (“Skyfall,” “Passengers,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” etc), The Academy will instead institute a method, not unlike that used for determining Visual Effects and Makeup nominees. Academy music members will attend a presentation of 15 shortlisted films where scores will be performed along with onscreen footage. Presumably, we will end up with a more creative set of nominees as a result of this process. 

Only time will tell which 15 films will end up on this year’s shortlist (And just as with the VFX and Makeup shortlists, surely there will be some irritating snubs), but for now, here are the 15 scores we at Next Best Picture are most excited about for the rest of this year (And no…these are not the 15 scores I am predicting to make the list).

By Josh Williams ​

​Jason Reitman is a filmmaker who exploded onto the filmmaking scene and grew steadily in stature with both critics and audiences until his career slowly fizzled out. Now, with one highly acclaimed release currently playing in theaters ("Tully") and another high profile potential awards contender being released later in the year ("The Front Runner"), we have to ask the question: Is Jason Reitman finally coming back to reclaim the Oscar he should've won for "Up In The Air?" The way things are looking, he could be in a prime position to do more than that.

By Daniel Howat 

It’s been a staggering ten years since “Iron Man” debuted in theaters in 2008, launching one of the most successful franchises in film history. In the years since the Marvel Cinematic Universe launched, so much has changed in the film industry. Numerous studios have tried to recreate the concept of having an interconnected universe of films. Superhero films have continued to pervade our culture, as evidenced by the massive anticipation of the upcoming “Avengers: Infinity War.”

The franchise has raked in the money over the years, but the MCU hasn’t had a great deal of success at the Academy Awards. From ten total Oscar nominations, the franchise has netted zero wins. Will that change in the near future? Let’s look back at the awards history, category by category, of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

​By Daniel Howat

​The 90th Academy Awards are officially finished, with “The Shape Of Water” finally taking home the big prize. Of course, it’s never too early to look forward to next year’s contenders! Okay, maybe it is too early, but stick with me anyway. Let’s look ahead to some potentially great films from 2018 that might be in contention at the 91st Academy Awards.

Click below to see the films we think have the most Oscar potential as we move through 2018.