The 7 Academy Award races that are actually still exciting (and how you'll win your Oscar pool)

My Favourite Season is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that runs through the six-month "season" that is both his favourite and Moira Rose's. It explores all things awards in the lead-up to the big one: the Oscars, which are currently scheduled to take place on March 10.

The general consensus heading into this weekend's 96th Academy Awards is that we are in for an extremely predictable evening of Oppenheimer domination. And for the most part, I'm afraid that this is correct: Oppenheimer is more or less guaranteed eight trophies (the most one film has won since Slumdog Millionaire in 2009), and we are pretty certain who'll win the vast majority of the awards that won't go to an "Oppenhomie": best supporting actress to Da'Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, the screenplay prizes to Anatomy of a Fall and American Fiction and best international feature to The Zone of Interest, etc. But there is hope yet for some suspense on Oscar night! 

In my estimation, seven of the 23 categories are absolutely not sewn up, meaning there's still a chance for some upsets … and for you to launch a sneak attack in your Oscar prediction pool (you can also check out my final predictions in all the other categories here — and I would highly advise not voting against any of them).

Best Actress

Thankfully, every homosexual and their mother's favourite category at the Oscars is a nail-biter this year: It's the battle of the Stones! For their work in Killers of the Flower Moon and Poor Things, respectively, Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone have split the year's precursor awards, which generally are big predictors of who wins the Oscar. They both won Golden Globes, while Stone won the BAFTA and Gladstone won the SAG. 

This was the exact split that happened last year with BAFTA-winner Cate Blanchett and SAG-winner Michelle Yeoh, which ultimately led to Yeoh taking home the Oscar. Does that suggest it's Gladstone this time around? Not necessarily, since Yeoh had the benefit of starring in the night's biggest juggernaut, Everything Everywhere All At Once. But many are clearly rooting for Gladstone (even Emma?), who has given incredible speeches all season and would become the first Indigenous person to ever win this prize. Will that help propel her ahead of Stone, who is starring in a film that the Academy (and people in general) seem to have a lot more affection for than Killers and will want to award it a top prize? We truly will not know until the envelope is opened.

Best Production Design and Best Costume Design

From the second it debuted in theatres to more than a bit of fanfare, it seemed clear that Barbie was destined for at least three Oscars: best original song, best production design and best costume design. But then along came Poor Things, which like Barbie created some pretty extraordinary sets and costumes for its respective heroine to seek existential meaning within. So, while best original song is still as good as gold for Barbie (thankfully, Poor Things didn't have one of those), it's a tossup for the other two. One could easily take both, or they could be split up (which is my guess). But one thing's (almost) for sure: these are two Oscars Oppenheimer is not taking home.

Best Animated Feature

Two critically acclaimed animated box office hits stand before us. One is the sequel to a film that won this Oscar a few years ago, and the other is the (alleged) swan song of one of cinema's all-time great animators. Who will prevail? The arguments as to why Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse or The Boy and the Heron could each win this prize are plentiful, and it's really down to the wire which one will take home the Oscar. Can the Academy's increasingly international membership push Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki's film across the finish line? Or will they want to reward one of the few (only?) things Hollywood got right with superheroes in 2023? Stick a photo of a heron and a spider on either side of a coin and flip it.

Best Documentary Short and Best Animated Short

The shorts categories are always among the most challenging to predict at the Oscars, in part because the films mentioned simply have smaller profiles before the nominations come out. There's a huge exception this year with Wes Anderson's The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, which seems destined to win Anderson his first Oscar partly based on this rare name recognition (not to mention, it's pretty great). But the other two categories are toss-ups that will be huge factors in whether or not you win your Oscar pool.

In the animated short field, it seems down to Letter to a Pig — about a Holocaust survivor reading a letter he wrote to the pig who saved his life — and War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John &Yoko, which is about a pigeon who delivers messages across a WWI battlefield and also, obviously, the song by Lennon and Ono. Neither film is great (the best short in the category is Ninety-Five Senses, but it's likely a bit too weird for voters), but they do hit two big marks that winners here often have: they're about wars and they feature animals. (I'm not joking; so many winners feature one or the other, and these have both!) Take your pick between the pig and the pigeon, basically. 

The documentary short Oscar, meanwhile, is likely between three films: The ABCs of Book Banning, The Last Repair Shop and Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó. A lot of prognosticators are going with Book Banning, just because its subject matter is exactly the kinda thing that often wins here. But if voters actually watch all the films, it's hard to ignore the emotional pull of both Repair Shop (about how music can save lives, essentially) and Nǎi Nai (about the filmmaker's two grandmothers). Could really be any of them.

Best Visual Effects

Probably the only category where all five nominees have a reasonable shot at winning, best visual effects this year is wild. Oppenheimer and Poor Things dominated the precursors in this category, but neither of them ended up getting nominated for the Oscars! That leaves The Creator, Godzilla Minus One, Guardians of the Galaxy, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and Napoleon as the bizarre quintet gunning for gold. 

Japanese import (and surprise hit in North America) Godzilla is probably the buzziest of the titles in terms of its visual effects, which impressively cost very little). It's also the first film featuring the monster to ever even be nominated. But this is also its only nomination, which has only resulted in a win once (The Jungle Book) in the last 30 years. That might matter, leaving the door open for The Creator, which also has impressive effects for its budget, and Napoleon,  with the most nominations overall of the five, to take the monster down.

Check out our final predictions for the 2024 Academy Awards, which have now been updated to all categories.