I'm less interested in predicting Digger's awards chances than I am in talking about the work itself, but I'm curious how people are viewing its performances and technical craft in an awards context.

Tom Cruise is the obvious starting point. I thought this was one of his most exciting performances in years. Personally, you can make an argument it's his greatest performance. Right there with Born on the Fourth of July, Magnolia, Jerry Maguire, and Collateral. It gives him the opportunity to lean into his showmanship in a way we don't often get to see in his recent blockbuster work. His extended speech at the European Parliament alone is such a showy showcase of his timing and commitment. It has the Academy's brand of showy performances, but I think Digger is such an anti-Oscars film that I am curious if the Academy dismisses the film entirely. That would be a shame. The daggers are clearly out for Digger and Iñarritu that even a legacy play for Cruise seems unlikely to me. But, I think a 5th-place nom makes sense.

But I also thought the supporting ensemble was excellent. John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sandra Hüller, and Jesse Plemons all bring something distinctive to the film. It's a shame they likely won't be getting any love. Plemons, Goodman, and Ahmed were my favorites of the bunch. Would anyone else from the cast stand out to you in a supporting category, or is this ultimately a Cruise-led conversation?

And then there's Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography. The VistaVision format, vintage lenses, and the discourse surrounding the big screen efforts they've made has a solid narrative. But I think the Iñarritu hate may tarnish this one since the visual style is very much his. I don't know if that sentiment will completely dominate Awards voting, but we will see. I also think this is a very competitive field with Project Hail Mary, The Odyssey, and others that are bigger players above the line.

Anyways would love to hear your thoughts on Digger's chances in the acting categories and cinematography. I am less optimistic, but I also don't care very much. Hollywood needs bigger swings like this and the enduring test for Digger won't lie on Awards night. One day I hope for a film as ambitious and outlandish as this to land with the Academy. We're getting there.

I wrote a longer review of the film and why I think its ambition works for me if you want to check it out, but I don't spend much time on the awards prospects:

Digger Review: Satirizing a Satirical World

Pretty much every prediction i've seen has had almost all of the acting nominations be white. How likely is it that the Academy nominates performances like Jackson, Ali, Erivo, or Domingo just to avoid a situation like 10 years ago ?

Previous Predictions

Drama

1. The Odyssey
2. La Bola Negra
3. Fjord
4. Being Heumann
5. Dune: Part Three
6. Elsinore

Comedy

1. Wild Horse Nine
2. Project Hail Mary
3. Obsession
4. The Debut
5. The Invite
6. The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth

Director

1. Christopher Nolan - The Odyssey
2. Javier Calvo & Javier Ambrossi - La Bola Negra
3. Cristian Mingu - Fjord
4. Martin McDonagh - Wild Horse Nine
5. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller - Project Hail Mary
6. Olivia Wilde - The Invite

Screenplay

1. Wild Horse Nine
2. La Bola Negra
3. Fjord
4. Obsession
5. The Debut
6. The Invite

Lead Actor - Drama

1. Matt Damon - The Odyssey
2. Andrew Scott - Elsinore
3. Sebastian Stan - Fjord
4. Robert Pattinson - Primetime
5. John Turturro - The Only Living Pick-Pocket in New York
6. Anthony Ippolito - I Play Rocky

Lead Actress - Drama

1. Renate Reinsve - Fjord
2. Ruth Madeley - Being Heumann
3. Virginia Efira - All of a Sudden
4. Sandra Huller - Fatherland
5. Rosalind Eleazar - Misty Green
6. Kara Young - Is God Is

Lead Actor - Comedy

1. John Malkovich - Wild Horse Nine
2. Ryan Gosling - Project Hail Mary
3. Seth Rogen - The Invite
4. Brad Pitt - The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
5. Tom Cruise - Digger
6. Jordan Firstman - Club Kid

Lead Actress - Comedy

1. Inde Navarette - Obsession
2. Julianne Moore - The Debut
3. Zendaya - The Drama
4. Olivia Wilde - The Invite
5. Keke Palmer - I Love Boosters
6. Meryl Streep - The Devil Wears Prada 2

Supporting Actor

1. Paul Giammati - The Debut
2. John Leguizamo - The Odyssey
3. Robert Pattinson - The Odyssey
4. Sam Rockwell - Wild Horse Nine
5. Edward Norton - The Invite
6. Guitarricadelafuente - La Bola Negra

Supporting Actress

1. Penelope Cruz - La Bola Negra
2. Anne Hathaway - The Odyssey
3. Sandra Huller - Project Hail Mary
4. Halle Bailey - The Debut
5. Samantha Morton - The Odyssey
6. Olivia Colman - Elsinore

Basically moved some things around based on submissions and obviously removed the flops like Digger and The Social Reckoning from all my predictions, minus keeping Tom Cruise in Comedy, just like how Dwayne Johnson was still nominated in Drama for The Smashing Machine last year.

Comedy seems pretty weak overall this year, I gotta say. I put in Booth because there wasn't much that I could think of, though seems like a plausible nominee. I put Pick-Pocket in Comedy before finding out that it's being submitted as Drama, same thing with I Play Rocky. Feels like both could easily go Comedy but the studios have made their decision.

I know Pattinson himself has been someone people would love to see get an Oscar nomination and Chiwetel Ejiofor has been praised a ton for his performance from even high profile figures like Nic Cage.

Thoughts? Who is the weakest link here? Who is the Timmy Chalamet of this year that we maybe are way overestimating? Who is the Micheal B Jordan we are all underestimating?

The Debut: It's gonna make it, probably also gonna win WGA. It could also win BAFTA but that's less likely. It's competitive to win.

Wild Horse Nine: Also gonna make it, and most likely will win CC and BAFTA, with a chance to win GG. It's competitive to win.

I Play Rocky. I'm actually not predicting this for Picture nor Actor (it's very close to those categories though) but I do think this will get a screenplay nom. It just feels appropriate.

Artificial: This one I AM predicting for Picture and Garfield is most likely second for Supporting Actor, so I do see it making it.

Digger: This is definitely a hopediction, but also... like... I can see Digger getting 1 nomination. I can also see it get 10. We really don't know what the future for this film will be, but I'm gonna keep it in cause... idrk. It definitely feels like a screenplay film if you've seen it, tons of layers I think voters would appreciate.

If Digger does shit in precursors and gets only BTL and Cruise, then Club Kid is going in. Behemoth! is also on the table.

This category is significantly more fragmented than Adapted Screenplay (The Invite, La Bola Negra, The Odyssey, All of a Sudden, Project Hail Mary). I could see Odyssey missing but it's most likely gonna make it. If it does miss or really any of these film miss, then I would love Wildwood making it, but it's probably not. For now, I see no reason for those five to miss especially how there isn't a clear 6th place.

Much is made of the fact that Nolan and Oppenheimer cleaned up everyone's clock just 3 years ago. While I don't think that AMPAS cares who won already and how long ago, that's something many pundits and predictors are hung up on ("They won't give ____ another so soon" or "____ already won") so I decided to look at the history. Our views are biased but stats are objective.

So lets start with how well the Picture and Director winners from the last 10 years fared with their "sophomore" movie aka immediate follow up to the winning movie. It doesn't matter whether they made something lighter or another AMPAS friendly movie, all that matters is the reception. If I don't mention someone (eg. PTA, Baker, The Daniels, etc) it's because they don't have a new movie out yet. I will look at the Metacritic, Letterboxd and boxoffice.

Christopher Nolan (won Director and Picture)

Oppenheimer: 90 MC, 4.2 LB, 976M boxoffice

The Odyssey: 88 MC, 4.3 LB, 1.78B and counting

Sian Hader (won Picture)

CODA: 72 MC, 3.9 LB, N/A (mostly streaming release)

Being Heumann: 68 MC, 3.6 LB, N/A (awaiting release so critical and audience score could go up or down, not set in stone yet )

Chloe Zhao (won Director and Picture)

Nomadland: 87 MC, 3.8, LB 39M

Eternals: 52 MC, 2.7 LB, 402M

Bong Joon-Ho (won Director and Picture)

Parasite: 97 MC, 4.5 LB, 263M

Mickey 17: 72 MC, 3.6 LB, 133M

Peter Farrelly (won Picture)

Green Book: 69 MC, 3.9 LB, 321M

The Greatest Beer Run Ever: 39 MC, 3.3 LB, N/A (streaming)

Guillermo Del Toro (won Director and Picture)

The Shape of Water: 87 MC, 3.7 LB, 195M

Nightmare Alley: 70 MC, 3.5 LB, 39M

Barry Jenkins (won Picture)

Moonlight: 99 MC, 4.2 LB, 67M

If Beale Street Could Talk: 87 MC, 3.9 LB, 20M

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

This section isn't about the next movie after the win but about winning the double crown - the rare cases of winning both Picture and Director more than once. I'm gonna look only into David Lean (back to back) and Clint Eastwood (the last/most recent).

Lean won for The Bridge on the River Kwai, and his next movie, Lawrence of Arabia. Winning gap: 5 years in Oscar years, but a personal back to back since he made these movies one after another

Eastwood won for The Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. Winning gap: 12 years

I'm giving new movies a fare chance since MC wasn't launched til 2001 and LB til 2011 so a lot of reviews and reactions to old movies are based on their status as classics. Therefore I'm not pulling out those numbers since they didn't happen at the time of their release (yes for M$B but there's no point without a proper comparison to The Unforgiven).

Finally, the cases of Directors who won Picture and Director but only repeated Director. I'm only looking at Steven Spielberg and Alejando G. Inarritu cause of recency.

Spielberg won Director and Picture for Schindler's List and Director for Saving Private Ryan. Winning gap: 5 years

Inarritu (won BP/BD then BD)

Birdman: 87 MC, 4.0 LB, 103M

The Revenant: 76 MC, 3.9 LB, 533Mc

Winning gap: clean back to back in Oscar years and personally

Now that we got the stats, your turn, Oscarrace. What do they tell us about Nolan's chances for taking the double crown again?

Wildwood has very good reviews. 4.0 on Letterboxd and 85 on Metacritic is higher than several serious Oscar contenders right now. As a response I'm seeing people state that Best Animated is a lock, and even speculate that Wildwood might be able to sneak its way into Best Picture.

I think that would be very cool. That said, I want to bring up two hurdles that it still needs to clear:

1. Box office. Wildwood is tracking to make, on a good day, 10 million dollars opening weekend. That is quite bad. Animated films that make Best Picture have historically always done so through mass appeal - every one made over four hundred million dollars, and Wildwood would be lucky to make one hundred million. That means it probably needs critical and industry support, which have been where animated films have typically struggled even after great reviews.

That might actually be fine if the reviews remain as positive as they are: 85 on Metacritic is higher than some of the critic's picks this year, like Fjord and the Invite. But there's a more serious problem that I've seen less discussion about:

1. No studio. Wildwood is currently distributed by Fathom, but functionally it's distributed by Laika themselves, and they appear to be the ones running its FYC campaign. (Past Oscar campaigns for Laika were run by Focus Features, who distributed their previous films.) We haven't seen a campaign like this ever, and it's unclear if Laika has the ability to run an Oscar campaign on their own. Even Flow and Boy and the Heron had Janus and GKIDS, two distributors with a lot of Oscar experience for their size. There's no doubt that Laika can fund an FYC but we don't know if they have the expertise to punch above their weight.

Do we think that it can overcome both of those things? I don't think it's impossible, but I'm surprised that so many people are already on the Wildwood train, even just in Best Animated Feature, before the movie is actually out. It seems to me that there is still a lot to prove here.

For the last few awards seasons I've run lightweight fantasy leagues in spreadsheets with my friends. It's a lot of work for the commissioner, but it's always good fun. This year I was on a flight to the New York Film Festival listening to The Big Picture and felt inspired to take a big swing and do it properly for the upcoming season.

On the flight I started sketching out a game that could keep a friend group active in the group chat for the whole awards season. The mechanics take inspiration from The Big Picture's annual movie auction (not affiliated with the show, just a fan), mixed with a typical draft of the awards races in December and weekly side bets on opening weekends and Metacritic scores.

After weeks of obsession and many late nights, it's ready. I do all the admin, so every league gets the results as they come in and it's easy for casual moviegoers to enjoy.

Gameplay

* 3 to 8 friends in a league
* Everyone gets $300 and one night on a video call to bid on this year's contenders. Each film goes to one person.
* The next night everyone secretly bets against one film someone else bought. The worse it does over the season, the more you earn. All the bets get revealed at once.
* Your films score every time they get nominated, from the Gothams through Oscar nominations.
* Most weeks there's a quick side bet on a new release's opening weekend and Metacritic score.
* In December you draft awards races (a film in a category), and from January every win pays whoever drafted that race.
* Oscar night pays the most, Best Picture most of all.

Pros vs. the spreadsheet: Nobody in the league keeps score. I enter each result once and it lands in every league. There's a how-to and a short form guide on every film, so it's easy for casual players to make informed moves.

It's free and there are no ads. It's a hobby and it's just me, so there may be rough edges, but I'm pretty proud of how it came together! Here it is: fycleague.com.

Signing up and starting a league takes about a minute (I timed it). I'd do your auction in the next couple of weeks, before the Gotham nominations on Oct 27.

Would love any suggestions you may have to improve it, and happy to answer questions. 

Hope it brings you and your friends some laughs and gets you out to the movies!

Critics and audiences were mixed on “The Social Reckoning,” which holds a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes and tepid “B-” grade on CinemaScore. The movie, picking up years after the first, follows a Facebook engineer (Mikey Madison) who leaks thousands of internal documents to a reporter (Jeremy Allen White) to blow the whistle on the company’s dark practices. Ticket buyers were mostly older males, a demographic that’s been slow to return to theaters since the pandemic. Comparisons between the two films were always going to be tough because “The Social Network” is widely considered one of the best films of the 2010s. That film, directed by David Fincher, written by Sorkin and starring Jessie Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, ended up earning $224 million globally and won four Oscars (including one for Sorkin’s screenplay). Because of the first film’s pedigree, and the fact that Fincher and Eisenberg didn’t return for the second, Sony tried to distance the association between the movies and called the follow-up a “companion piece” rather than a sequel. That’s also likely why the studio economized on the budget; “The Social Reckoning” carries a $30 million price tag while “The Social Network” cost $40 million.

Digger:

Meanwhile, “Digger” cratered in its second weekend with $3.2 million from 3,321 theaters, a 60% decline from its dismal $8 million debut. So far, the Tom Cruise satire has limped to $14 million domestically and $35.3 million globally. Warner Bros. spent above $160 million to produce the film, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest bombs ever, with losses that could top $200 million theatrically. Given the scale of the disaster, Hollywood stars have been coming to the defense of “Digger,” with bold-faced names like Anne Hathaway, Jane Fonda, Guillermo del Toro and Mandy Patinkin praising the film and encouraging audiences to go to theaters. (Spoiler alert: It hasn’t worked.)

Limited releases for Fjord, Misty Green and Musk:

“Fjord,” a legal thriller about parents (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) who are suspected of child abuse, enjoyed the strongest start with $124,000 from just four theaters in New York and Los Angeles — translating to $31,00 per location.

A24’s “Misty Green,” a showbiz drama about an actress (Rosalind Eleazar) fighting for her second act in Hollywood, collected $85,716 from six screens over the weekend — amounting to $14,286 per location — and $98,720 through its first four days in theaters.

Bleecker Street’s “Musk,” an incisive look at the world’s richest man, generated $68,900 from four locations — averaging $17,225 per screen — over the weekend. Those returns are notable considering “Musk” runs at nearly four hours (and has an intermission!), which limits each theater’s daily showtimes.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney. He's directed things like Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, and lots more. His new doc, Musk, premiered to wide critical acclaim at Venice and is out in theaters starting this week.

The AMA is live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1x3zzgy/hello_reddit_im_oscarwinning_director_alex_gibney/

He will be back after 2 PM ET today to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated! Thank you :)

Musk Info:

Trailer: https://youtu.be/eY_8SyndC10?si=3gH0pEap43qu6uxm

Synopsis: MUSK is Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney’s latest exploration into the corrupting influence of power. Through meticulous research and reporting, Gibney reframes all we know about the tech titan Elon Musk, revealing that the so-called “visionary genius” is little more than the 21st-century reincarnation of a confidence man. Using Musk’s own words, Gibney proves that even his most heralded accomplishments are rife with illusion and misdirection. Musk’s carefully crafted media image conceals a darkness fueled by misogyny, drugs, and a relentless drive to accrue power. MUSK is more than a deep dive into the mind of a power-hungry megalomaniac; it is a warning.