Predicting the 97th Oscars
....and a contest!
Dear Squawkers,
This year’s Oscar race is nearly over, and as we stand on the cusp of the finish line, some of the categories are pretty well locked in, others remain competitive, which is exciting for us, the viewers, and then there are the shorts categories and extremely competitive categories for feature-length animated and documentary films, here to mess up everyone’s ballots, if you’re filling out one of those.
Which, by the way, you can do with us! We’re bringing back our Red Carpet contest this year for those of you who are paid Squawk subscribers (and if you’re not, please upgrade!). We’ve got some cool prizes up for grabs including a Shark Matrix self-empty robot vacuum, a Bellesa prize pack including including the Pebble, Diskreet Thurst, and AirVibe Pro, and a bunch of other stuff. Not to mention Squawker bragging rights.
The contest closes at 11:59pm ET on Saturday night. Click here to enter this year’s contest and to read all the details, particularly regarding entry using your Squawk/Substack email address as we’ll be using those to cross-reference against our database.
In addition, our friends at Bellesa are also giving away thousands of free vibrators & gift cards and a chance to win free vibes FOR LIFE regardless of whether you’re a paid subscriber or if you enter a ballot. Click here to enter that draw and for those details. Again, this part is open to everyone.
As for this year’s nominees and their chances, I am doing my best with these odds, but every single Academy voter I talk to about this stuff echoed the same refrain—I didn’t see that.
The Oscars have always had a not-so-secret issue with people voting for stuff they haven’t actually seen based on word of mouth, celebrity likeability, voting for friends, or voting for the work of their own companies. This year, I suspect that might be even more the case, as the LA wildfires interrupted awards season and turned people’s attention to much more urgent matters. It’s completely understandable. In the wake of real-life devastation and loss, people just quit on awards season and some never got back into it.
But what it means for us, watching and balloting with our friends and officemates or here at The Squawk, is that the Oscars might be more unpredictable, even chaotic, than we expect. This is the least confident I’ve been in my Oscar picks in a long time, even though several categories have clear, even unchallenged, favorites. But here they are, my final Oscar odds. I will honestly be happy if even 50% of this is right. As always, these picks are what I think WILL win, not what SHOULD win. We’re trying to outguess the Academy, a body of over 9,900 voters with a significant generation gap and wildly divergent tastes. Here goes nothing.
