Variety’s Clayton Davis is at it again. In his post-BAFTA piece, titled “‘Everything Everywhere’ Up in the Air for Best Picture After BAFTA and DGA Split,” he makes the case for something other than EEAO winning Best Picture.
I’d love to believe him, but I don’t think BAFTA changes much in the Oscar race. It’s still EEAAO’s Oscar to lose. Yes, the UK voting bloc is fairly pronounced within the Academy, but I don’t believe we should take last night’s EEAAO snubbing as total gospel.
The fact of the matter is that the Academy has decided to be heavily influenced by Film Twitter this year and get sucked into the EEAAO bandwagon.
Yes, this is still a three-film race between EEAAO, “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” But what we need right now is for ‘Everything Everywhere’ to lose the Producers Guild of America — that’s the only way out of this mess.
Meanwhile, Anne Thompson believes that we should probably add “All Quiet on the Western Front” to that trio of Best Picture contenders. Sure, why not. It stands at better odds now than, say, “The Fabelmans” or “TÁR.”
Speaking of ‘Fabelmans’, Davis also believes that Edward Berger winning the BAFTA Directing trophy means Steven Spielberg is still the frontrunner to win the Best Director Oscar. Again, misguided thinking. Spielberg needed to win either BAFTA or DGA and he didn’t.
The stats and odds are stacked against Spielberg, as you have to go way back to 1996, with Mel Gibson for “Braveheart,” to find an Oscar-winner for directing that only won the Globe and no other major precursors.
We’ll definitely know who the actual contenders are this weekend which is when the PGA (Saturday) and SAG (Sunday) announced their winners.