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Best Costume Design.

So let’s start with: can anything beat La La Land here? The contenders to do so are Allied, Fantastic Beasts, Jackie, and Florence Foster Jenkins. You could say that La La Land has an inherent disadvantage in that it does not have the showiest costumes and you’d have a point. If you are going for that, then you’d probably go for Florence Foster, given that they normally go for more traditional dresses and have yet to really reward something way past the 1940s.

But also consider that La La is the only Best Picture nominee there. Can such a film lose here? Sure. It has happened many times, but the history of the award shows that it happens more often when two or more Best Picture nominees are here, like when Alice in Wonderland triumphed over The King’s Speech and True Grit, or Anna Karenina over Lincoln and Les Miz. The truth is they love the showy, grand costumes, and La La Land does not have that.

Still, I’m going for it. Why? Simply because it is so beloved. The costumes in the other films aren’t as grand in scale as those of Alice or Anna, but I suppose Meryl’s Streep’s movie comes close, and maybe so does the Harry Potter spinoff. Tough pick, but this is my current guess - let’s see what the costume designer say in their guilds next week.

Will win: La La Land
Could win: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Best Production Design

So, once more, it is La La Land against the field, which consists of Arrival, Fantastic Beasts, Hail! Caesar, and Passengers. Look, let’s be honest, you can make compelling cases for a lot of these, except for probably the ridiculed Jennifer Lawrence film. The truth, though, is that if you want to win your Oscar pool you are just must better off checking off La La Land in a lot of categories - you are much more likely to do well like that than trying to guess which one they could get picked off at.

Could they seek to reward Arrival here? Sure, but the sets do not quite jump out at you beyond the house she inhabits and the alien pod. Hail! Caesar, meanwhile, seems to have sets of sets, another one I have trouble seeing wining. I suppose the obvious spoiler is Fantastic Beasts. Wouldn’t it be somewhat funny for the first Oscar ever won by this franchise to be in this spinoff? Odder things have happened, I suppose.

Indeed, the history of this award is replete with examples of the same film winning both here and in Costumes - coming to mind are Alice in Wonderland but also The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Great Gasby, and of course Mad Max did it last year. So perhaps you could see a Beasts spoiler in both races. This makes sense, given that the sets in La La Land did not appear particularly memorable to me.

Unless and until I see it lose more awards, say maybe at BAFTA, I’m just sticking with this train for the moment.

Will Win: La La Land
Could Win: Fantastic Beasts

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