One Category at a Time: Best Production Design

This feels like one of those tight categories in which literally any of the five nominees could win. The usual period dressings are conspicuously absent, precursors have been split every which way, and said precursors have not been all that informative in recent years anyway; Three Best Production Design winners of that last ten didn't have any of the ADG, BAFTA or Critics Choice Awards in hand before taking the Oscar.

My Award Nominations: Production Design

It'll be hard for the Academy's designers branch to come up with a bad nominee for Best Production Design this year, even if it doesn't match very closely with my own ballot (outlined after the cut). There's just so much good work out there.

My Award Nominations: Supporting Actor

While the ranks of leading men were a bit thin this year (though not really as bad as some are declaring), there were many supporting players to choose from, and that's not even including lead performers who were campaigned in this category. These five true Supporting Actors were tops for me, and on any given day the list could change.

My Award Nominations: Original Song

It promises to be a slow news week for awards watchers, with little to do but twiddle our thumbs while the number crunchers at PwC determine the nominees who will be announced next Tuesday. So now seems an apt time for me to start running through my own year-in-review rituals. I'll be listing nominations for my personal ballot periodically over the course of the next six weeks, culminating in my Top 20 and my selection of winners the Friday before the Oscars.

It was a stellar year for movie songs (pleasant U-turn from 2015's wasteland), especially thanks to three original musicals providing us with catchy new tunes. Theoretically, I could have filled all five of my Best Original Song slots using any one of them, but in the spirit of spreading the wealth, I made the executive decision to only select a single entry from each. It wouldn't be fair otherwise, especially to some non-musicals with worthy tracks to feast our ears upon.

Here are the final five I've settled on, followed by a longer-than-usual list of second tier contenders:

Art Directors Guild nominations

The ADG has joined the chorus. While it's not unheard of for production design efforts that miss with the guild to find Oscar love, it doesn't happen often (only three films have pulled that trick in the last five years), so that doesn't bode well for Silence, Rules Don't Apply or Live by Night.

Let's take a look at the three feature film categories after the jump...

March palette cleansers

New releases will be low on my list of priorities for the next few weeks, but anything I do happen to see in the 'Oscar off-season' (three so far) I'll mention here.

2016 predictions coming later this spring.