Academy Award Predictions 2017

MY ACADEMY AWARD PREDICTIONS 2017

Here are my picks:

Every year I watch the Academy Awards with my TIFF film festival Team and we do an Oscar Pool.  I usually come in close to 3rd or 4th.  We have some serious researchers and movie watchers.

Sometimes I choose what I think will win and sometimes it's what I think should win.  So this list has both what I think the Academy will choose and what I would like to see win.

BEST PICTURE

Arrival

Fences

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Hidden Figures – Should Win

La La Land – WILL WIN

Lion

Moonlight

Manchester by the Sea

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)

Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge)

Ryan Gosling (La La Land) – Should Win

Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic)

Denzel Washington (Fences) – WILL WIN

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water)

Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) – WILL WIN

Dev Patel (Lion)

Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea)

Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals) Should Win

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Isabelle Huppert (Elle)

Ruth Negga (Loving) - Should Win

Emma Stone (La La Land)  WILL WIN

Natalie Portman (Jackie)

Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins)

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Viola Davis (Fences) – WILL WIN

Naomie Harris (Moonlight)  Should Win

Nicole Kidman (Lion)

Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures)

Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea)

BEST DIRECTOR

Damien Chazelle (La La Land) – WILL WIN & Should Win

Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge)

Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)

Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea)

Denis Villeneuve (Arrival)

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Kubo and the Two Strings

Moana

My Life As a Zucchini

The Red Turtle

Zootopia – WILL WIN & Should Win

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

Blind Vaysha

Borrowed Time

Pear Cider and Cigarettes

Pearl

Piper - WILL WIN & Should Win

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)

Ennemis Intérieurs

La Femme et le TGV - WILL WIN

Silent Nights

Sing - Should Win

Timecode

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Fire at Sea

I Am Not Your Negro

Life, Animated

O.J.: Made In America - WILL WIN

13^{th -   Should Win}

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Extremis - WILL WIN & Should Win

4.1 Miles

Joe's Violin

Watani: My Homeland

The White Helmets

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Land of Mine (Denmark)

A Man Called Ove (Sweden) - Should WIN

The Salesman (Iran) - WILL WIN

Tanna (Australia)

Toni Erdmann (Germany)

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

Arrival

Fences

Hidden Figures - Should Win

Lion

Moonlight - WILL WIN

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

Hell or High Water

La La Land

The Lobster

Manchester by the Sea - WILL WIN & Should Win

20th Century Women

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

Jackie

La La Land – WILL WIN & Should Win

Lion

Moonlight

Passengers

ORIGINAL SONG

"Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" from La La Land

"Can't Stop The Feeling" from Trolls

"City of Stars" from La La Land – WILL WIN & Should Win

"The Empty Chair" from Jim: The James Foley Story

"How Far I'll Go" from Moana

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Arrival

La La Land – WILL WIN & Should Win

Lion

Moonlight

Silence

FILM EDITING

Arrival

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

La La Land – WILL WIN & Should Win

Moonlight

COSTUME DESIGN

Allied

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Should Win

Florence Foster Jenkins

Jackie - WILL WIN

La La Land

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

A Man Called Ove

Star Trek Beyond - WILL WIN - Should Win

Suicide Squad

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Arrival - Should Win

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Hail, Caesar!

La La Land - WILL WIN

Passengers

SOUND EDITING

Arrival

Deepwater Horizon

Hacksaw Ridge - WILL WIN- Should Win

La La Land 

Sully

SOUND MIXING

Arrival

Hacksaw Ridge - WILL WIN & Should WIN

La La Land –  

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Thirteen Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

VISUAL EFFECTS

Deepwater Horizon

Doctor Strange

The Jungle Book – WILL WIN & Should Win

Kubo and the Two Strings

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The Miserable Commuter in TO

You know that look when you see people on the bus or subway during Rush Hour or as I like to call it Rush Day.  It kind of looks like people at a funeral.  Everyone is wearing black and their heads are tilted down and the look on their face is of sadness, anger and depression.  There are thousands of these people flowing through public transit everyday.

You know them or you are one of them.

The Miserable Commuter

Why are they so miserable?  Here are 10 reasons.

Well here is a list of what I think makes them so miserable.

1.  People squish you into your seat so you can't even move your arms to scratch your nose.
2.  People with backpacks stand in your way when you try to get out of the bus or subway.
3.  People with backpacks hit you in the head or back up into you forgetting they have the size of another person on their back.  Can you tell I am not a fan of backpacks?  When you are 5' tall this is a problem frequently.
4.  There are a lot of crazy people on public transit so you don't want to make direct eye contact in case something sets them off.
5.  You can't get a seat unless you get on at the beginning of the line and are one of the first ones on.
6.  You have to stand and get pushed out of the way your whole commute.
7.  Unless your eyes are closed the whole time you have to witness people doing obnoxious, disgusting and rude things.  People eating, people making out, people grooming themselves, and other things I don't even want to get into.
8.  Sometimes people smell really bad.  It doesn't even have to be homeless people that smell bad, did you ride the Bloor subway in the summer?  Everyone smelled bad then.  Some people smell like salami and some people smell like they haven't had a shower or couldn't make it to the washroom and you have to sit or stand beside them because there is no room to move somewhere else.
9.  You wish you could afford to stay in bed and take a day off and skip the commute but then you remember that your living expenses suck up your whole salary.
10.  If you hear "We are sorry for the inconvenience" announced through the train you know you are going to be late for wherever you have to go and there is nothing you can do about it.  It sets off a domino effect to your day and sucking out more time to live a real life.


Oh, I could go on.  If you have lived in Toronto for more than 10 years you know this is a rapidly growing situation.  Too many people, and not enough ways to get around the downtown core.

They keep building huge skyscraper condos and pack them with people, but they don't build the transit to move them around to and from work and their daily lives.

That funeral look you see everyday on these commuters is their work life balance being sucked away from them.

15 years ago people could drive to work, take a bus, take a subway and they could get to work in a reasonable time and pretty comfortably.  Those days are gone.  If you are driving you are sitting in traffic with bad road raging drivers.  And if you are on public transit you are praying that nobody jumps on the tracks or there isn't a snow storm to slow everything down.

Have we reached the point of no return where this just keeps getting worse and we have to just live with it?

Living in Toronto used to be easy but now the salaries aren't going up and there aren't any new permanent jobs with benefits but the housing costs, public transit costs, food costs and other daily needs are sky rocketing.  Hence that miserable commuter look when people sit silently thinking about how their life is being sucked away while they are squeezed into subway trains like sardines.

Sometimes I think we need a revolution in the way we live and work but how do we do it?

Do we chuck everything and move to the wilderness and live in a tent?  Pretty soon there won't be any wilderness because they will cut all the trees down to make room for condos and highways for foreign investors to suck up.

Somebody people find some solutions so that our future isn't set in the place where Zombies live to live on the treadmill of life.

Yes, I had time to think about this post while being one of those miserable commuters riding on a packed subway train.  At least I used the time to do something constructive like write this blog post.