​By Matt Neglia 

​I know. I know. Is anything truly a lock on Oscar night? Shockers happen all the time. Contenders sweep the entire season, winning every award possible, like Jason Reitman's "Up In The Air" for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2009, and then out of the blue "Precious" wins on Oscar night. Since these posts are more rooted in stats than gut feeling (though, that sometimes plays a role as well), I think it's very fair to call certain categories locked and loaded for Oscar night on February 24th. There's not many but they do exist this year and while we wait for some of the final guilds to chime in for those categories, let's take a look at these.

Click below to see my in-depth analysis on the categories I deem to be locks for the 91st Academy Awards and be sure to check out my previous article on the acting categories.

By Matt Neglia 

We have heard from the Critics Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, the Screen Actor's Guild Awards and most recently, the BAFTAs. Now, all that's left are the Academy Awards. As I've done the past couple of years, I will be doing a deep dive into each category to analyze who I think might win the Academy Award on February 24th using a combination of stats from the creation of the SAG Awards in 1994 to today along with gut instinct and intuition (which this year certainly requires). First up are the acting categories which have thrown us a few curveballs this season. Let's take a look.

Click below to see my in-depth analysis on each of the four acting categories.

By Liam Heffernan​ 

​If the Academy commits to presenting some categories during commercials, the shorts will certainly be three of them. They suffer from a lack of exposure and by proxy, a lack of interest from audiences. After all, if you haven’t seen the nominees how do you know what to root for, or who to care about?

Well, here’s a badly kept secret – most of us have never see the short films before the Oscars either. Predicting them is often a complete guess based on hype and previous award tallies.

However, short films shine a spotlight on some of the biggest new filmmakers around the world. These categories celebrate diversity, technical bravery, and innovative storytelling, from those who will one day redefine what good looks like for a new generation of moviegoers. In 2006, Martin McDonagh won the Oscar for his live-action short "Six Shooter." He has since received three Oscar nominations for "In Bruges" and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri." Previous winners also include Andrea Arnold ("American Honey") and Taika Waititi ("Thor: Ragnarok").

Luckily, whether you genuinely want to take an interest in the shorts or you just want to sound like you know anything, we have you covered this year.

​Here is a rundown of the live action short film nominees.

By Daniel Howat ​

The morning is finally here! After months and months of deliberation, campaigning, and plenty of arguing, the nominations for the 91st Academy Awards are here. As per usual, they came with plenty of surprises, more than a few snubs, and plenty to talk about.

Let’s dive into our initial reactions to the nominations!

By Daniel Howat 

​“Black Panther” was the highest grossing film in America in 2018, and received overwhelming critical acclaim. Culturally, the film made a huge, lasting impact for representation on screen. Because of all of these elements, “Black Panther” has received a legendary awards push from Disney and Marvel. That push has poised “Black Panther” to break new ground not only for Marvel but superhero films as a whole. Let’s look back at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s history at the Academy Awards, category-by-category.

By Beatrice Loayza 

Two fascinating categories (and two that also sadly have a shot at being left off of the live ceremony this year due to the Academy's stubborn move to keep the Oscar ceremony to under three hours long) are Best Costume Design and Production Design. With Oscar nominations a day away, I wanted to take one final look at both categories and highlight some hopefuls and some favorites to give these proper artists and films their due.

By Matt Neglia 

Tomorrow is the big day. Everything we've talked about for the past 10 months culminates tomorrow.

Starting at 8:20am EST, the nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced. We have discussed on Episode 126 at great length, the reasoning behind our predictions, and now we have them all listed below for you to see.

A reminder though, that for as many happy moments which will occur tomorrow for your favorite films or performances, there will be just as many snubs as well. Hearts WILL be broken. I guarantee you that. I think with the way this season has gone so far, it's important to remember to be respectful to each other. This season has gotten ugly on more than a few occssions and if someone likes a partciular film or performance you don't and they're happy that it got nominated, I ask that you don't take their happiness away from them.

With that said, let's all take a deep breath, dive right in and hope that we can come up from the bottom for air on the other side.

By Cody Dericks 

​With Oscar nominations fast approaching, everybody is working and stressing to solidify their predictions. But this year is a weird one. So many races are still up in the air, least of all the performance categories. The general consensus for these races is that all of the categories have a solid four nominees that are seemingly a sure thing, with the fifth slot (in other words, your predicted nominee that stands the smallest chance of actually getting nominated) less easy to pin down. Let’s go through all four of these categories and try to determine the fifth slots using both cold hard statistics and general awards trajectory. ​

By Cody Dericks 

​As I mentioned several times in my article analyzing their nominees, the Critics' Choice Awards are seemingly most preoccupied with being reliable predictors of the Oscars, so they should be cautiously referenced when making your own Oscar predictions. However, they can be used as a semi-decent bellwether in terms of seeing where the various races are generally heading, and they are inevitably looked at by actual Oscar voters, even if they aren't voted on by any of them. Last night's awards brought us a decent mix of predictable winners and honest-to-God shockers. Let's take a look at some of them and see what they mean for the state of the race!

By Will Mavity 

With the Critics' Choice Awards announcing winners last night, the critics awards portion of awards season is essentially over. With 80 percent of the groups providing either nominees or runner-ups in addition to wins, we’ve decided to tabulate the results from each group into rankings category by category of who received the most mentions throughout the season.

To be clear...THESE ARE NOT PREDICTIONS. These are a ranking of who has the most critic group mentions throughout the season. Seeing such a broad consensus from so many different people can be telling as far as what a large voting body like the Academy may go for yes. But this is not set in stone. The Academy will undoubtedly differ from the critical consensus. Nonetheless, it’s fun to see who has the most mentions on the critics' circuit.

One other thing I want to mention: This is a tally from critics groups only. No guild associations, no Golden Globes, no BAFTA's, no Indie Spirits. Just critics groups.

Click below to see if anything surprises you.

By Matt Neglia ​

The 2019 EE BAFTA nominations were announced this morning. Being the last major stop on the road to the Oscar nominations on January 22 (and with Academy members currently voting on their ballots as we speak), many pundits were looking to them for help to clear the air on several categories.

Honestly, I believe we were left with more questions than answers.

By Will Mavity 

Every year, the Academy Visual Effects branch determines the five Best Visual Effects nominees through a 4-hour event known as the “bake-off.” Ten pre-selected films present 10-minute reels of VFX-heavy footage along with a 3-minute introduction and a Q&A afterward. Typically, voters vote in the room, meaning your bake off performance is the end all be all. In 2010, “Tron: Legacy” had an infamously bad presentation, and shockingly missed a nomination, while in 2016, “Deepwater Horizon” defeated more obvious contenders by virtue of an amazing reel.

This year, unlike previous years, the bake-off features 3-minute behind-the scenes-reels prior to the main reels. Each of these behind-the-scenes reels showed before and after footage and ended up being a highlight.​

Click below to read about how this year's presentation went for the Best Visual Effects Oscar hopefuls.

​By Ryan C. Showers ​

​It’s increasingly becoming clear that “A Star Is Born” is being positioned to win Best Picture at the Oscars. It avoided controversy from the time of its early release in October through now, after scoring across-the-board love with Critics Choice, Golden Globes, and SAG nominations. Along with “Black Panther” and “BlacKkKlansman,” it’s one of the few Best Picture contenders to garner a SAG Cast Ensemble nomination, which until last year, was an ironclad award to measure Best Picture possibility. When I saw “A Star Is Born” opening day, it struck me as a film like “Birdman,” something the Academy will love because of the subject matter, talent involved, and style. How it will perform on a preferential ballot remains up in the air, while pundits disagree over whether it will do well or poorly. I believe it’s going to do just fine on the preferential ballot, as opposed to films like “Green Book,” “The Favourite,” and “Roma.” I remain constant in that prediction, and no other film has proven it has the gusto to really fill the mold of a Best Picture winner.

​By Ryan C. Showers ​

​Last week, the Screen Actors Guild announced their nominations for the 2018-19 film awards season. The fundamental fact about predicting the acting winners at the Oscars is understanding the weight of SAG. If an actor misses a SAG nomination, it’s unlikely they will win the Oscar. Period, end of story. There have been only two instances in Academy/SAG history where an actor has won the Oscar without a SAG nomination: Marcia Gay Harden for "Pollock" (2000) and Christoph Waltz for "Django Unchained" (2012). If they win SAG, their chances of winning the Oscar increase but are not written in stone. But if they lose SAG, it’s not a complete death nail in terms of winning, as long as they are included in the lineup and are on the radar of the acting branch.

​By Ryan C. Showers ​

​Annapurna Pictures’ awards season slate for the 2018-19 is killer. They have two big pushes for Best Picture and beyond with “Vice” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” as well as a Best Actress contender for Nicole Kidman in “Destroyer.” On paper, these films look as though they could rule the school. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association seemed to agree, with this group of movies accumulating 10 Golden Globe nominations, tying with the reigning champ of film awards this decade, Fox Searchlight. However, the rest of the season is going to be more complicated. The rest of the year will not as simple as assembling approximately 90 members in a room to see their films like it was with the HFPA. Strangely, Annapurna has taken a unique position by releasing all three of these Oscar hopefuls on Dec. 25, Christmas Day. It’s a risky move and one that doesn’t make much sense, especially since “If Beale Street Could Talk” was originally intended to be released a month earlier, on Nov. 30.