Wow, can't believe the ceremony is only a week away! This has been quite the show leading up to the big show, with at least four negative decisions the Academy made to alter the show, until public response triggered them to change their plan. Now, we will see all 24 categories presented live, all but one of the nominated songs performed, all of last year's award recipients for acting give out this year's awards, and no BEST POPULAR FILM category!

We could very well see the strangest, most bizarre Oscar ceremony yet this Sunday, but like any year, I will still give you what I think will wind up winning the big prizes. They are:

Wow. It happened. I don't know how, but it happened. A superhero movie finally got nominated for Best Picture... and it's Black Panther. What a travesty. But that's not even the surface of the incredible angst I feel right now against the Academy of Motion Pictures.

This morning, the nominations for the 91st Annual Academy Awards were announced, and what do you know? They went with exactly the horrible picks all other awards shows and critic circles went with. 

But before I get on with my thoughts (and I have a lot of them), here's the official Oscar nominees this year:

Okay, here it is finally! I worked hard all year to analyze the recent patterns the Oscars took while voting for the nominees in each category. That included looking at this five-year period (2014-2018) to see where the Academy is now in selecting their nominees, breaking the year up into trimesters (Jan-Apr/May-Aug/Sept-Dec), and analyzing which movies of which categories were recognized based on box office performance and RottenTomatoes rating. Coupled with that, I checked to see whether if the movie would be a likely candidate for Best Picture, which would qualify it for most other categories... if not, then one usually has to be a previous nominee to be eligible for a nomination. Not to mention I also took time to analyze each category to see what types of films got nominated. For instance, you'll never see a movie within 45 years before or after today nominated for Costume Design (unless it's a musical), and a critically panned movie will not be up for Best Makeup unless it's also eligible for Best Visual Effects, in which only Sci-fi, Fantasy, Big-scale Biopics, and future setting films that made at least $25 million at the box office are eligible.

Yes, I certainly worked very hard at this, and hopefully my final predictions prove to be more successful than the past. Especially since this awards season has been extraordinarily unpredictable in the way they are awarding the wrong movies. But that's why if this system doesn't work and my predictions here are no better than my previous years' predictions, then things must change on my end!

Just full disclaimer: this is not what I personally think are the artistically best of the year, just what I realistically think the Academy will go for once their nominees are announced a week from today. Then, we'll do a check-in that Tuesday morning, including my full thoughts on the results, and in about a month before the big host-less ceremony, I'll present the 2nd Annual TVOH Awards!

But for now, here are my final predictions:

Black Panther
Best Picture
Best Popular Film

What do these three have in common? The latest changes the Academy has made, with the inclusion of a 25th category: Best Popular Film. What does that mean? Well, to be honest, nobody knows, not even the Academy themselves! They're still working out the details...

Another significant change they made includes condensing the ceremony to a much stricter 3 hour run time, which means the winners of the smaller categories will only be able to have their speeches condensed into a shorter montage run during commercial break, kind of like how the Tony Awards works.

If you've been on social media a lot since yesterday, I'm sure you saw that the response has been overwhelmingly negative. As in, I have not seen even one person who's happy about these changes. At first, I didn't really care much about the Best Popular Film category, but after thinking about it more, and hearing other people's reactions, I do have some things to say.

Well, that's it. it's all over. All 24 awards last night were given out, and the controversies can be settled. Based off my predictions, in total I got 17 out of 24 correct, which was one more than I got last year. Thankfully, there was no envelope mix up this year, and PricewaterhouseCoopers even made sure we knew that by labeling the category onto the envelope in HUGE letters! Whew! And how nice: Warren and Faye got to redeem themselves from the disaster they bestowed upon us last year! And let me tell you: I am so, so, SO happy that The Shape of Water won the big prize! It is such a beautiful testament to the discriminated that gives us greater insight into ourselves, and truly was the best of the nominees! But of course, there were several winners that I was not necessarily happy with, and plenty of other words I have to say in response to the ceremony as a whole. But first, here are the winners:

I now want to introduce something that is new for both of us: a full complete list of what I believe is the best of the year. Now, I haven't seen everything this year, and that includes several of the films that the Oscars nominated, so based on all 53 releases this year I assessed and graded, here's what I genuinely believe deserves the honors.

But first, a few notes on some of these categories:

I considered the animated films for all the categories except for makeup and costume design, since there are technicians behind the editing, cinematography, and set design that deserve every bit as much recognition as those who work on live action films. So it's virtually free for all in everything.

I also consider all films that feature visual effects shots a chance in Best Visual Effects. I say that it should be the goal of any vfx artists to  make the effects invisible, so that's what I've been judging this year.

I'm not following the same judgment as the Oscars, who like to judge based on technical achievement. While that's important to acknowledge to make sure the artistry of filmmaking continues to grow with its discoveries, my focus is on how the practical elements contribute to the film's unique needs, so you may find nominees in some of these categories you'd never expect to find in any other awards show lineup. I'm not saying I'm better than any of them, but rather this is my two cents on what's important in filmmaking.

So now without further ado, here's my nominees, starting with...

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