Sinners’ big night, Best Supporting, and other races

As I wrote earlier, this weekend was a huge momentum shift in Sinners’ favor (which might also have been helped a bit by the Olympics providing a two-week pause to break momentum from early February). The PGA Awards were also this weekend, and One Battle After Another won there, which is no small thing, but between the actors and the producers, the actors are a bigger voting branch. So OBAA has the producers, the directors, and the Brits, but Sinners has the biggest voting bloc on their side. And in between there are all the other branches. This is a real race!

Meanwhile, in the Best Supporting Actor category, Sean Penn picked up another win, which is personally affronting to me in the year of our lady 2026. I will tentatively call him a frontrunner, because Stellan Skarsgård was not nominated at the SAGs, but I do think there is a lot of support for Stellar Skateboard from his peers, and the Academy is more international now than it was ten years ago. I think we’re in for an international surprise on Oscar night, and it’s either going to be Stellan winning Best Supporting Actor, or Wagner Moura winning Best Actor. One of them will pull it off.

And with the Oscars T-minus two weeks out, the state of the Best Picture race is this: OBAA maintains a slight edge for Best Picture, but it is NOT a sure thing, and I think the gap between it and Sinners is probably pretty narrow. Narrow enough that a 2016 split, in which Damien Chazelle won Best Director for La La Land, but Moonlight won Best Picture, is entirely possible. I do think Paul Thomas Anderson has Best Director pretty well locked down. He’ll get that, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Ryan Coogler is getting Best Original Screenplay (these picks will likely be confirmed by the WGA Awards later this week, though the non-televised ceremony has been cancelled due to a labor strike).

But Best Picture is up for grabs, and maybe we get another split in which Best Director and Best Picture do not move in lockstep. The category to watch on Oscar night is Best Editing, because it is traditionally the best bellwether for Best Picture, and guess what? The editors are split, too! At the ACE Eddie Awards, handed out by American Cinema Editors, they award films in drama and comedy categories, and OBAA was put up as a comedy (which is mostly is). So Sinners and OBAA both won, which means we can’t really tell how the Academy voters in the editing branch will break. Also, ACE and the editing branch are not a 1-1 membership circle, there are non-ACE members voting on the Oscars. But still, I don’t think THAT category is settled, either.

Talking to the Academy voters in my life, which is anecdotal, but these are people puzzling over their ballots, they have all echoed the same sentiment—Sinners and OBAA are both wonderful films, they’re both expertly made, the acting is incredible across the board, having to choose between them SUCKS. One voter told me he is deliberately “trading categories” between them, trying to spread the love around. This is why I think a Best Picture/Director split might really be possible. Give PTA the Best Director award he’s been missing for 20 years, but give Ryan Coogler Best Picture for making a thrilling, entertaining film that put butts in seats, but is also made to an incredible degree of artistic and thematic merit. I wonder how many other voters are considering that same “spread the love strategy”.

Two things are sure, though. Going into Oscar night, we have a real competition, it’s going to be an exciting night for sure. The Oscars are a lot more fun when there is not a consensus and it feels like we’re in for twists and turns all night. But the other certainty is this: everyone agrees this is not Timothee Chalamet’s year.