Two Completed Categories: Adapted Screenplay and Original Score

Welcome to the end of the first week of Oscar nominations! 

Have you made your checklists? Have you added up your totals of how many you need to see?  Have you lamented the fact that unless you are in Southern California you might not get to see Viva Verdi before the ceremony?  Have you asked yourself why you haven't yet moved back to Southern California?  I have done all of these things!

As of nominations morning, I already had two completed categories. 

Adapted Screenplay
Bugonia
Frankenstein
Hamnet
One Battle After Another 
Train Dreams 

Original Score
Bugonia
Frankenstein
Hamnet
One Battle After Another
Sinners

Similar nominees! Let's see what separates them, and what we think. 

First of all, I'll make it clear from the outset this year that I am a full-fledged member of #TeamBugonia. I love it, and I absolutely love it.  It is the best thing Emma & Yorgos have done, by far.  I was getting a little tired of their cinematic antics and when the Lanthimos-directed Poor Things earned Emma Stone another Oscar a couple years ago I was miserable; I loathed that flick. And I was dreading Bugonia, and my expectations couldn't have been lower as I grudgingly headed into the theatre back in November. Much to my pleasant surprise, it was fantastic.  I will be thrilled if it wins anything, although I don't know that it will. More on that as we move through the season. 

On the other hand, I am completely not buying the hype for One Battle After Another.  Yes, it was wild and had moments of hilarity and serious themes and staggering sequences and great performances. It was also interminable. I call it One Scene After Another. Enough. 

Adapted Screenplay is an interesting category. As much as Bugonia is my favorite of the five films, I don't know if it's the best adaptation of previously published material. It is based on a Korean movie, Save the Green Planet!  For this category, I think about what it took to take the prior work and turn it into this work, and in that sense I think there are two other strong contenders, both of which I also like immensely, Hamnet and Train Dreams. 

Hamnet is a wonderful, earthy, lovely, witchy, gritty, literary book that I found to be such a clever re-imagining of what led to Hamlet,  and the film was beautifully faithful to the book while giving us a glorious cinematic experience.  I am 100% OK with Hamnet winning everything, too. 

Train Dreams is a slight, odd novella that I read last year in anticipation of then-months-off Awards Season, and when I read it I thought it might work better as a film. I now agree with myself. The book is barely more than an idea, but the movie is another earthy, gritty, quietly powerful bit of art that rewards quiet contemplative viewing.  Did you see it?  What did you think? 

And Frankenstein?  Again, not so much the screenplay moved me here as Guillermo del Toro's weird and wondrous and lush filmmaking vision.  But it was beautiful and bookended well, with lots of great choices -- and his films don't always necessarily land for me, either, but this one surely did. 

And then there's Original Score, which is always hard for me to decide short of a true marvel (for example, The Brutalist last year or Gladiator more than two decades ago) because I honestly sometimes forget to pay attention.  When I contemplate these nominees now, I have to think back to how I was ushered through the film.  And honestly, all of them are fine, although it is unnecessary to reward One Battle After Another here. The music of Sinners was absolutely a huge part of it, but not necessarily because of the Original Score. It's possible that Sinners, a stunning movie, will pick up a slew of awards including this one. But the same can be said for Hamnet.  Will Bugonia and Frankenstein be shut out? 

Order I want the Adapted Screenplay nominees to win from my #1 pick to no thanks: 
Train Dreams, Hamnet, Bugonia, Frankenstein, One Battle After Another
Order I think they will win, if you'd like my help in your Oscar pool (ha!): 
Hamnet, One Battle After Another, Bugonia, Train Dreams, Frankenstein 

Order I want the Original Score nominees to win: 
Bugonia, Hamnet, Sinners or Frankenstein, One Battle After Another 
Order I think they will win (although I'm really truly not sure): 
Sinners, Hamnet, One Battle After Another, Frankenstein, Bugonia 

Well, that's two categories done out of 24! 
How about you? 
Is your Oscar nominee viewing off to a good start?