the revenant – The Popcorn Waltz

The 88th Academy Awards go live in an hour and we’re finally ready to share our picks, just in the nick of time! These are not our predictions, but rather what our choices for each of the categories. So queue the drumroll and read on:

Best Picture: Spotlight

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In a category this contested, this one resonates with us and our idea of movies as a means to tell stories. As Mike says, ‘There’s a story here and I think it’s an important story.’ And a story told spectacularly well.

Best Director: All’s not fine in idyll on this one! We couldn’t agree on one, so here are the two picks:

Adi’s Pick: George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road

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An out an out action film overcomes Oscar snobbery to get it’s due. What a day, what a lovely day!

Sahil’s Pick: Tom McCarthy for Spotlight

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It’s a story crafter with perfection and that couldn’t have been without Tom McCarthy. The spotlight’s on you!

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant

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Leo’s revenge against the Oscars. No ifs, no buts, all the crawls and the grunts, add up to an Oscar!

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Here again we’ve different picks!

Adi’s Pick: Brie Larson for Room

Room

This one is Cate Blanchett’s to lose. The super depressing nature of Larson’s Room, just makes it an unforgettable film to watch and a role that required a lot from her. Rooms can get claustrophobic.

Sahil’s Pick: Cate Blanchett for Carol

Cate Blanchett as Carol is mesmerizing. That is the performance of the year, and you can’t take your eyes off her!

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo for Spotlight

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This category is far more contested than Best Actor in a Leading Role and that is something to say about the awesomeness of each of the nominees. What a year of sterling characters, portrayed to perfection. Mark Ruffalo as Mike Rezendez is a powerhouse in Spotlight. And he is our pick!

Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl

Well she should have ideally been in the leading category, but Oscar voters went cuckoo over this one. Sorry Kate Winslet and Rooney Mara, but this goes to our Danish girl with top notch A.I. 😉

Best Original Screenplay: Spotlight

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Spotlight is storytelling at it’s very best. This one was very tricky and the right narrative was critical to tell the story. And it’s story worth telling.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short

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From a pile of numbers to a story on Silver Screen! We’d give this to Charles Randolph for trying to make this simple for the average man.

Best Cinematographer: The Revenant

For making bleak look beautiful, The Revenant is an easy pick for this category. If anyone could make this happen, it was Emmanuel Lubezki and well we gotta cheer for him – he is on a hat-trick!

Now let’s see who actually wins Oscar gold!

Keep the popcorn tub handy!
Adi & Sahil
@ThePopcornWaltz

As we’ve already established, we love watching films. Which also means that we have a love/hate relationship with the big ‘awards season’. Whether it’s the BAFTA or the Golden Globes, the SAG or the Oscars – each one has been known to have it’s moments when they seem to have completely lost the plot! But that doesn’t stop us from following them year after year. ‘Tis the season to root for our favorites and then feel intense although short lived, spurts of happiness or disappointment depending on the outcome. Whether the awards are fair game or just celebrate the inner circle is a historical debate, we’re definitely not getting into here – but they are surely a source of entertainment, excitement and exuberance.

The other thing these awards always end up doing is giving us an end of year movie watching list, the lesser heard, lesser advertised, outside of Marvel’s superheroes, fast and furious gang films (think Carol, Whiplash, The Pianist). And for the last many many years we’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to watch all films that emerge as contenders before the awards, just so we can say ‘I told you so’ when some of them win and some of them don’t 😉 So this year when we decided to start The Popcorn Waltz – it was only right to begin by undoing the wrong of years past. And we’re gonna do that by playing what we’re calling ‘The Oscars Challenge’, a name born at the lowest pits of our creative thinking :/

This is how it works. We’ve shortlisted 12 of the 20 odd Oscar nominated movies this year, primarily based on whether their trailers looked intriguing, but also how many categories they were nominated in and other logistical details. We have 5 weeks till Feb 28th to watch all 12 of these films, write about them and come up with our predictions. And what’s even better is you can play along! Watch any/all of these films and tell us what you think and when we open the poll for our predictions – please, please vote. It’s a super tight schedule, so let’s get started.

Here’s our list of films, if we’re missing something that’s a must watch let us know and we’ll try our best to incorporate:

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Our Picks for the 88th Annual Academy Awards a.k.a Oscars!

The Oscars Challenge!