THOUGHTS on the 2026 OSCARS!
“And the Oscar goes to…”
This post has been edited to include the names of the winners for the categories that I’m commenting on.
Well folks, the 98th Academy Awards have come and gone, and… oh, you didn’t know? Or care?
Okay.
Well I do! And I’ll keep talking about the Oscars until I’m thoroughly bored, which is not today.
To start, my predictions. I made predictions in all 24 categories, and I got 17 of them correct. 70% WOOHOO!!! That number jumps all the way up to 96% if you include the 6 categories I got correct with my backup picks. And I did say that I would give myself half-credit for those. So I’m splitting the difference and saying that it’s 83%. Good job, me! The only category I didn’t see coming was one that we’ll talk about below. (The order of these awards is the order they were given out at the ceremony.)
Best Supporting Actress
I love that Amy Madigan won for playing Aunt Gladys in Weapons! A wild, crazy performance in a horror movie is, to my knowledge, not something the Academy has ever recognized.
Best Supporting Actor
I don’t like that Sean Penn now has three Oscars despite not giving a crap about them - he gave one of his previous Oscars to the president of Ukraine, and he skipped award ceremonies left and right this year, including the Oscars. If someone basically announces ahead of time that they don’t want the award, then shouldn’t you, the Academy, give it to someone else?
Best Casting
I love that they set the new award apart with something special by bringing out five actors, one from each of the nominated movies, and having them speak directly to their movie’s casting director (they’ve done that in the past for the acting categories). Very cool moment for the casting directors, and I hope they do a similar thing in two years for the new Stunt Design category!
Best Visual Effects
Go Weta!
With Avatar: Fire and Ash winning, Avatar joins Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings as the only film series to have three wins in this category - surely Dune will join them next year with Dune: Part Three?
Best Documentary (Feature and Short Film)
What did I say? The “issues” carried the day for the documentaries: Russia/Ukraine for Documentary Feature (Mr. Nobody vs. Putin) and school shootings for Documentary Short (All the Empty Rooms).
Best Original Score
I’m officially tired of Ludwig Göransson. Please, Academy, do not give him this award again next year for The Odyssey. I’m begging you.
Best Cinematography
The only category I didn’t predict with either my main pick (One Battle) or my backup pick (Train Dreams). A well-deserved win for Autumn Arkapaw (the first woman to win this category), even if the transitions between the different aspect ratios weren’t always the most smooth!
Best International Feature
This category is full of confusion and should just be abolished. You can make a very good case for documentary and animation receiving special carve-out categories, since those really are different kinds of filmmaking, but the same is not true for foreign films. They can and have competed in major categories for the last ten years or so. Plus, the country submission system is dumb. Why should only one movie per country be allowed to compete? And if, for example, a movie is made by Iranians, stars Iranians, is about Iranians, takes place in Iran, and was filmed in Iran, then in what real sense can it be considered a French movie? (I refer to this year’s nominee It Was Just an Accident). Delete the category and let world cinema stand on its own two feet, I say!
Best Original Song
“Golden” is clearly the best song in this category, so good for them! But I don’t like this category. I don’t think that songwriting is an essential aspect of filmmaking, especially since there are basically no original movie musicals anymore (this category made more sense in the 40s and 50s when musicals were the most popular genre). So I would probably cut the category. But if they’re going to keep it, then they need to do something else with the song performances. It’s silly to only have two of the songs perform, like they did this year (even though those two are the only remotely popular ones). So they should either stop having performances altogether, or they should have all five.
Or there’s a third way: give the award out at the beginning of the ceremony, and let the winning song be the only song that gets performed, later on in the show. It’s a perfectly fair compromise, and it avoids the slog of having all five songs performed.
Best Director
I wish they would give this award out second-to-last, right before Best Picture! It’s silly to put it ahead of the two lead acting categories.
I didn’t catch all the speeches live, but I did this one. PTA gave quite a classy speech when he won Best Director. I have no real thoughts on PTA: I’ve only seen four of his movies, and only really liked one of them. He seems overhyped, but who knows!
Best Actor
Michael B. gave a good performance and certainly earned the win. It’s impossible not to like the guy. Pretty hilarious that he mentioned Will Smith in his speech lol
Sad for Timmy! He’s now been, in two consecutive years, the late-breaker who just couldn’t get enough momentum to win, and the early frontrunner who fizzled out.
I’m calling it now: Timmy is the new Leo. They’re gonna make him wait a decade or two before they give him an Oscar on his fifth or sixth nomination, for a mediocre movie.
Best Picture
Of course One Battle After Another wins Best Picture. It was the consistent front-runner throughout the season and it cruised its way to an easy victory. It won six awards total.
Bad news for Sinners, which came in to the ceremony with a record sixteen nominations, but only won four awards - and now has the dubious distinction of having lost twelve nominations. It’s so odd to see a movie get such broad support from every wing of the Academy and then come up empty-handed so often. I wonder if the days of Return of the King-style domination are just over. There hasn’t been a winner of more than seven awards since 2009. The previous new record-holder, La La Land, also bungled its nominations lead and famously didn’t win Best Picture.
Will a movie get seventeen nominations in a few years when there’s the new Stunt category?
My beloved Frankenstein did not win Best Picture, unfortunately. At least it can comfort itself with winning the inaugural Lux Award for Best Picture!!!
I say I don't care about the Oscars, then remember late last night that they had concluded and that the winners were in -- and spent the next half hour glowering at the results. XD
I, too, care about the Oscars and I am glad you wrote this article. I stopped watching the Oscars 16 years ago (I used to watch it, er, religiously 🫤), but I still eagerly follow up on the nominations and winners.
I think the first crazy horror performance to win was Kathy Bates in Misery and I am also very happy that Amy Madigan won. I don't agree with what you said about Sean Penn. The Oscar should go to the best performance, whether or not they appreciate it (I haven't seen that film). George C. Scott famously hated the Oscars; should he not have won for his iconic role in Patton? Frankenstein was my favorite Best Picture nominee as well, but the only other one I've seen so far is Sinners, which I'm ambivalent about. At least Frankenstein won three well-deserved awards.