#tired and exhausted and heartbroken and with the vague sense of hopelessness

[dendro-darling]

Physically ill over the thought that if Wolfwood were to be reincarnated, it would be Vash's luck that he never finds him until he gives up looking completely and then seeing that familiar face in the crowd hits him like a truck

[bnha-imagines-all-around]

Jealous (Mirio Togata Headcanons)

Request: “Hi! I loved “Please Don’t leave me” with Togata, legit made me cryyy! Can I request angsty headcanons with Togata?? Best friend secretly loves him but gets distant, cold and jealous bc girls flirt with him? Togata notices and feels hurt and confused and tries to talk to her but she avoids him till he physically stops her and breaks down cause he’s afraid of losing her cause he also loves her? You can pick the ending (fluff, angst, both, anything is good)! Thanks!”

Author’s note: YAY MORE SUNSHINE BOI!!! These turned out way longer than I anticipated (my bad) and probably read more like an imagine than headcanons (again my bad), but hope it’s okay! Also, my request box is OPEN, so please send in all the requests! :D

Warnings: Angst, some fluff

- You couldn’t help but notice how girls tried to talk to Mirio all the time, to the point where you and him were never alone together anymore.

- You would literally just be getting to a moment where it was just you and him, alone, when a group of girls would seemingly magically appear, giggling and flirting with Mirio right in front of you. They acted as though you were a ghost, as though you weren’t actually there with them. You were insignificant to them because Mirio was there.

- You began to feel your blood boiling and your heart pounding almost viciously in your chest as you watched the girls fawn over your best friend. They would bat their eyes at him, smile wide and laugh at every joke he made, twirl their hair, lean slightly too close to him, rest their hands on his arms or chest. And the worst part? He seemed to be enjoying every second of it.

- “Mirio? Hey, are we still going to that cafe you spoke about? Cause my lunch break is almost over,” You called out just a bit too loudly, trying to regain your best friend’s attention. 

- However, Mirio simply waved his hand at you and payed you just enough attention to smile sheepishly, “Sorry, (Y/N)! Maybe another time. Guess I got too caught up chatting!”

- This went on for days; you trying to hang out with Mirio and your plans being blown off because of random girls. 

- Eventually it became a week, and then another. Mirio was your best friend, and yet, he had barely said so much as “hello” to you in the past few weeks. He always seemed caught up by some group of air-headed, flirty girls and you had seemed to fade out of existence to him. 

- Your heart was breaking a little more with every passing day. You loved Mirio, more than just a friend, and yet it seemed as though you weren’t even that to him anymore. You had truly become a ghost, invisible to him. 

- The jealousy you felt every day from seeing the same scene play over and over again, paired with the loss of your best friend and the boy you loved, was starting to tear you apart. 

- You started to spend less and less time with Mirio, leaving sooner and sooner each time the other girls came up and began to flirt with him. Mirio was a gentleman, you knew that, so he’d dedicate his full attention to them as they spoke to him. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

- It eventually got to the point where you didn’t even bother making an attempt to be around Mirio. You just couldn’t do it anymore, it hurt too much. 

- It even progressed to you actively avoiding Mirio at every turn; if you saw him coming towards you, you would either turn and walk in a different direction, or just walk straight past him without acknowledging that you had even seen him. Not that Mirio noticed, anyways.

- The pain and heartbreak you felt each day began to affect you more profoundly than ever before. You no longer ate properly, only picking at whatever was on the plate in front of you, you barely slept anymore, and most of all, you withdrew into yourself more than ever. 

- Your appearance changed drastically; you suddenly looked worn down and exhausted, and despite hearing other students whispering about it in the hallways, you couldn’t really care less about it anymore.

- Nejire and Tamaki would also notice the drastic changes almost immediately, pulling you aside to speak to you one day.

- “(Y/N)-chan! What’s going on? You look super exhausted, are you sleeping at all? You don’t talk to us anymore, did something happen? Did we do something?” 

- Nejire asked you a billion questions in quick succession, but all you could do was shake your head in reply. You had no energy to give her a proper answer. 

- “(L/N)... what happened? We wanna help you... we’re your friends,” Tamaki asked quietly, but again, you just shook your head and vaguely mumbled something about you ‘being fine’.

- “Don’t lie to us, (Y/N)-chan, we can see that something’s wrong. Maybe I should get Mirio! He was always good at cheering you up!” Nejire suggested.

- the coldness and harshness of the look you suddenly sent her took both her and Tamaki aback. You always went to Mirio if you were upset; what had changed?

- Then, for the first time in days, you spoke.

- “I want nothing to do with Togata. I don’t want to see him, I don’t want to be around him, I want nothing to do with him anymore. Understood?”

- Nejire and Tamaki both stood there, absolutely stunned by the coldness and resolution in your voice as you swiftly spun on your heel and walked away. You hadn’t referred to Mirio by his last name in years. This was bad. 

- Of course, what you didn’t realize was that Mirio DID notice you. He noticed everything about you; your change in demeanour, your change in appearance your absence, everything.

- It took him a little while, but Mirio did notice that you weren’t ever around him anymore. What’s more, you never even made the effort to come talk to him or be with him anymore, and it broke his heart.

- Mirio was constantly brushing off the girls who came to speak and flirt with him as he tried to find you and talk to you, but to no success.  

- When Mirio caught glimpses of you in the hallways and over lunch breaks, he saw how run-down you looked, and he quickly began to feel your loss. 

- While the attention the girls gave him was nice, it often proved more annoying than anything and, well, Mirio being Mirio, he was just trying to be polite. He wasn’t interested in any of them because he had you. You were his best friend, his partner, and his number one person to turn to whenever he wanted to talk about anything. You were his (Y/N). 

- Or rather, he’d hoped you’d be his (Y/N) one day. Mirio had been in love with you for a long, LONG time, and you were his favourite person in the whole world, always by his side. And now, suddenly, you weren’t there anymore. It was like there was this huge hole that had been punched out in his chest. You weren’t there anymore, but... why?

- It broke his heart even more every time he looked at you; you looked so tired, so sad, so... fragile. Mirio felt heartbroken, confused and scared. What had happened? What had he done to lose you?

- Mirio quickly realized that not only were you not seeking him out anymore, you were actively avoiding him. He couldn’t help but feel a pang in his chest when he saw you turn around and walk in a different direction when you had noticed him coming towards you. 

- “(Y/N)! Hey, (Y/N)! Wait up!” Mirio had shouted to you one day, but as you always did, you quickly turned around, ignored him and walked away even faster, eventually losing him in a crowd of students returning to class. 

- Mirio was beginning to feel hopeless and panicked; he needed to do something. He needed to speak to you, no matter the cost, to make things right. He had to fix this.

- “Mirio! I don’t know what happened between you and (Y/N)-chan, but you gotta fix it! She said she wants nothing to do with you anymore! She even called you “Togata” when I suggested I get you to cheer her up! I haven’t heard her call you that since before you became friends! You need to fix this!” Nejire would exclaim one day during lunch, and Mirio felt his heart sink to the floor. It reaffirmed what he already knew; this was really, really bad.

- Mirio’s heart would pound violently in his chest as he sprinted through the halls of the school, trying desperately to find you. His mind was racing through a million thoughts per second, but there was one constantly reoccurring thought:

- ‘(Y/N)... where are you? I’m sorry... please, let me fix this!’

- Fate was on his side that day, because Mirio managed to find you curled up tightly in a windowsill in the library, with one of your favorite books in your lap as you gazed out the window.

- “(Y/N)! I found you,” Mirio exclaimed, panting slightly as he approached you. 

- His words had startled you out of your revelry, and you quickly turned to see Mirio standing there, looking straight at you with sadness in his eyes.

- You wouldn’t speak a word. The scene of Mirio flirting with countless girls flashed in your mind, and as your heart broke a little more, you would swiftly put your book away and get off the windowsill before heading towards the exit of the library behind Mirio. You couldn’t do this.

- “No, wait! (Y/N), please don’t go!” Mirio shouted, his hand extending to grab your wrist as you passed him.

- His sudden action startled you, and you found yourself frozen on the spot for a moment before you felt a familiar sense of anger rising in you.

- You jerked your wrist out of his grasp before snapping, “Why? I don’t owe you anything, Togata. Don’t you have some girls to flirt with? You’ll be terribly behind schedule if you waste your time talking to somebody like me.”

- Mirio visibly winced at the sound of his last name, but he reached out and grabbed both of your hands this time, not giving up the fight. He couldn’t lose you.

- “Please just, listen to me! Please, (Y/N), p-please...” Mirio’s voice cracked as he begged you to listen, and he felt his eyes sting as tears suddenly pooled in them; he was so, so afraid. He didn’t know what was going to happen, and he didn’t know if he had already lost you, but he had to try. 

- “(Y/N)... I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry if I hurt you, (Y/N). I honestly didn’t mean to hurt you. Please... let me set this right. I can’t... I can’t lose you.”

- You found yourself listening to him, but all the hurt and jealousy and heartbreak from the past weeks suddenly came rushing back as Mirio spoke.

- His voice was quiet, and you could hear it trembling slightly as Mirio tried to keep calm. Your heart lurched in your chest; you had never seen him this way before. He looked so scared.

- Tears suddenly filled your eyes and slid silently down your cheeks, your body shaking with silent sobs as you tried to keep yourself together. Before you knew it, all the words you had wanted to say came spilling out of your mouth.

- “Well, you did hurt me, Mirio! You hurt me, and you hurt me bad! I tried so hard to be around you, to put up with being ignored and shoved aside like I meant nothing to you every single day. Do you know how that feels?! Do you know what it’s like to have the person you’re in love with cast you into the shadows because other girls wanna flirt and giggle with and fawn over him?! Do you know how it feels to watch yourself being replaced?! Because I do! YOU made me go through that, Mirio! For days, weeks!”

- At any other time, you would’ve felt awful for shouting at Mirio the way you were doing now, but there were so many things you needed to say that you couldn’t make yourself stop.

- “Yeah, at first I was just jealous, but it became more than that, Mirio! Seeing that, it was tearing me apart, piece by piece, and I couldn’t do it anymore! I’ve loved you for so long, and I tried so hard but I couldn’t do it anymore!”

- You took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to collect yourself before finishing shakily, “If you’re trying to play the hero now because you feel guilty, you’re too late. I had to save myself because you couldn’t even see me.”

- A heavy silence would fill the air, which would be pierced by a sound you did not expect; a sob. But not one that came from you.

- You would watch as Mirio silently broke down in front of you, tears spilling down his cheeks and you began to cry again too. 

- Then, before you had time to register what was happening, you found yourself in Mirio’s embrace. He was hugging you tighter than ever before, and your heart did a funny jolt; you faintly registered that you had admitted to loving him in your speech.

- Mirio would just hold you and hug you tightly until both of you calmed down. Once he was collected enough, he would begin to speak quietly, not letting you go for a moment.

- “I’m sorry I hurt you so badly, (Y/N). I’m so sorry. I honestly didn’t mean to. Those girls, they didn’t mean anything. The attention was nice at first, but... it quickly grew to be annoying. I was just trying to be polite. I didn’t realize what it cost me. Please... let me try to make it up to you. Please, (Y/N). I can’t bear to lose you. You’re my best friend and I love you too much to lose you this way. I love you, (Y/N). I do, and I have for so long. Longer than even I know! Please... let me fix this.”

- You would think about his words for a good few moments, but all you could hear was his voice saying those three words over and over; “I love you.” You didn’t realize just how much you had missed Mirio until now; you’d missed his embrace, his voice, his eyes, his smile, his spirit, everything about him. Even just this one moment with him was healing.

- You believed Mirio and what he said, so you made your decision.

- “... Alright. You’ll have a chance to make it up to me. But don’t screw this up. It’s the only chance you’ll get, understood?”

- “Thank you, (Y/N). I won’t screw it up, I promise!” Mirio would pull his head back just enough to smile down at you, to which you returned a small smile. Then, in a moment of courage, Mirio leaned down and gently pressed his lips to your forehead, causing you to blush violently. 

- “You know... I meant what I said, (Y/N). I love you. I do,” Mirio whispered, his own cheeks turning bright red.

- “I know. I love you too, but I think we have some work to do first,” you replied, looking up at him.

- “Well... how about that coffee date I promised you?”

- “I though you’d never ask.”

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

LARB presents an excerpt from Geert Lovink’s latest book, Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism, which was released this month by Pluto Press.

¤

“Solitary tears are not wasted.” — René Char

“I dreamt about autocorrect last night.” — Darcie Wilder

“The personal is impersonal.”  — Mark Fisher

Try and dream, if you can, of a mourning app. The mobile has come dangerously close to our psychic bone, to the point where the two can no longer be separated. If only my phone could gently weep. McLuhan’s “extensions of man” has imploded right into the exhausted self. Social media and the psyche have fused, turning daily life into a “social reality” that — much like artificial and virtual reality — is overtaking our perception of the world and its inhabitants. Social reality is a corporate hybrid between handheld media and the psychic structure of the user. It’s a distributed form of social ranking that can no longer be reduced to the interests of state and corporate platforms. As online subjects, we too are implicit, far too deeply involved. Likes and followers define your social status. But what happens when nothing can motivate you anymore, when all the self-optimization techniques fail and you begin to carefully avoid these forms of emotional analytics? Compared to others your ranking is low — and this makes you sad.

Omnipresent social media places a claim on our elapsed time, our fractured lives. We’re all sad in our very own way. As there are no lulls or quiet moments anymore, the result is fatigue, depletion, and loss of energy. We’re becoming obsessed with waiting. How long have you been forgotten by your love ones? Time, meticulously measured on every app, tells us right to our face. Chronos hurts. Should I post something to attract attention and show I’m still here? Nobody likes me anymore. As the random messages keep relentlessly piling in, there’s no way to halt them, to take a moment and think it all through.

Delacroix once declared that every day which is not noted is like a day that does not exist. Diary writing used to fulfil that task. Elements of early blog culture tried to update the diary form for the online realm, but that moment has now passed. Unlike the blog entries of the Web 2.0 era, social media have surpassed the summary stage of the diary in a desperate attempt to keep up with real-time regime. Instagram Stories, for example, bring back the nostalgia of an unfolding chain of events — and then disappear at the end of the day, like a revenge act, a satire of ancient sentiments gone by. Storage will make the pain permanent. Better forget about it and move on.

In the online context, sadness appears as a short moment of indecisiveness, a flash that opens up the possibility of a reflection. The frequently used “sad” label is a vehicle, a strange attractor to enter the liquid mess called social media. Sadness is a container. Each and every situation can potentially be qualified as sad. Through this mild form of suffering we enter the blues of being in the world. When something’s sad, things around it become gray. You trust the machine because you feel you’re in control of it. You want to go from zero to hero. But then your propped-up ego implodes and the failure of self-esteem becomes apparent again.

The price of self-control in an age of instant gratification is high. We long to revolt against the restless zombie inside us, but we don’t know how. Our psychic armor is thin and eroded from within, open to behavioral modifications. Sadness arises at the point when we’re exhausted by the online world. After yet another app session in which we failed to make a date, purchased a ticket, and did a quick round of videos, the post-dopamine mood hits us hard. The sheer busyness and self-importance of the world makes you feel joyless. After a dive into the network, we’re drained and feel socially awkward. The swiping finger is tired, and we have to stop.

Sadness has neighboring feelings we can check out. There is the sense of worthlessness, blankness, joylessness, the fear of accelerating boredom, the feeling of nothingness, plain self-hatred while trying to get off drug dependency, those lapses of self-esteem, the laying low in the mornings, those moments of being overtaken by a sense of dread and alienation, up to your neck in crippling anxiety, there is the self-violence, panic attacks, and deep despondency before we cycle all the way back to reoccurring despair. We can go into the deep emotional territory of the Russian toska. Or we can think of online sadness as part of that moment of cosmic loneliness Camus imagined after God created the earth. I wish that every chat were never ending. But what do you do when your inability to respond takes over? You’re heartbroken and delete the session. After yet another stretch of compulsory engagement with those cruel Likes, silly comments, empty text messages, detached emails, and vacuous selfies, you feel empty and indifferent. You hover for a moment, vaguely unsatisfied. You want to stay calm, yet start to lose your edge, disgusted by your own Facebook Memories. But what’s this message that just came in? Strange. Did he respond?

Evidence that sadness today is designed is overwhelming. Take the social reality of WhatsApp. The gray and blue tick marks alongside each message in the app may seem a trivial detail, but let’s not ignore the mass anxiety it’s causing. Forget being ignored. Forget pretending you didn’t read a friend’s text. Some thought that this feature already existed, but in fact two gray tick marks signify only that a message was sent and received — not read. Even if you know what the double tick syndrome is about, it still incites jealousy, anxiety, and suspicion. It may be possible that ignorance is bliss, that by intentionally not knowing whether the person has seen or received the message, your relationship will improve. The bare-all nature of social media causes rifts between lovers who would rather not have this information. But in the information age, this does not bode well with the social pressure to be “on social,” as the Italians call it.

We should be careful to distinguish sadness from anomalies such as suicide, depression, and burnout. Everything and everyone can be called sad, but not everyone is depressed. Much like boredom, sadness is not a medical condition (though never say never because everything can be turned into one). No matter how brief and mild, sadness is the default mental state of the online billions. Its original intensity gets dissipated. It seeps out, becoming a general atmosphere, a chronic background condition. Occasionally — for a brief moment — we feel the loss. A seething rage emerges. After checking for the 10th time what someone said on Instagram, the pain of the social makes us feel miserable, and we put the phone away. Am I suffering from the phantom vibration syndrome? Wouldn’t it be nice if we were offline? Why’s life so tragic? He blocked me. At night, you read through the thread again. Do we need to quit again, to go cold turkey again? Others are supposed to move us, to arouse us, and yet we don’t feel anything anymore. The heart is frozen.

Social media anxiety has found its literary expressions, even if these take decidedly different forms than the despair on display in Franz Kafka’s letters to Felice Bauer. The willingness to publicly perform your own mental health is now a viable strategy in our attention economy. Take L.A. writer Melissa Broder, whose So Sad Today “twitterature” benefited from her previous literary activities as a poet. Broder is the contemporary expert in matters of apathy, sorrow, and uselessness. During one afternoon she can feel compulsive about cheesecakes, show her true self as an online exhibitionist, be lonely out in public, babble and then cry, go on about her short attention span, hate everything, and desire “to fuck up life.” In between taking care of her sick husband and the obligatory meeting with Santa Monica socialites, there are always more “insatiable spiritual holes” to be filled. The more we intensify events, the sadder we are once they’re over. The moment we leave, the urge for the next experiential high arises. As phone and life can no longer be separated, neither can we distinguish between real and virtual, fact or fiction, data or poetry. Broder’s polyamorous lifestyle is an integral part of the precarious condition. Instead of empathy, the cold despair invites us to see the larger picture of a society in permanent anxiety. If anything, Broder embodies Slavoj Žižek’s courage of hopelessness: “Forget the light at the end of the tunnel — it’s actually the headlight of a train about to hit us.”

Once the excitement has worn off, we seek distance, searching for mental detachment. The wish for “anti-experience” arises, as Mark Greif has described it. The reduction of feeling is an essential part of what he calls “the anaesthetic ideology.” If experience is the “habit of creating isolated moments within raw occurrence in order to save and recount them,” the desire to anaesthetize experience is a kind of immune response against “the stimulations of another modern novelty, the total aesthetic environment.”

Most of the time your eyes are glued to a screen, as if it’s now or never. As Gloria Estefan summarized the FOMO condition: “The sad truth is that opportunity doesn’t knock twice.” Then, you stand up and walk away from the intrusions. The fear of missing out backfires, the social battery is empty and you put the phone aside. This is the moment sadness arises. It’s all been too much, the intake has been pulverized and you shut down for a moment, poisoning him with your unanswered messages. According to Greif, “the hallmark of the conversion to anti-experience is a lowered threshold for eventfulness.” A Facebook event is the one you’re interested in, but do not attend. We observe others around us, yet are no longer part of the conversation: “They are nature’s creatures, in the full grace of modernity. The sad truth is that you still want to live in their world. It just somehow seems this world has changed to exile you.” You leave the online arena; you need to rest. This is an inverse movement from the constant quest for experience. That is, until we turn our heads away, grab the phone, swipe, and text back. God only knows what I’d be without the app.

Anxieties that go untreated build up to a breaking point. Yet unlike burnout, sadness is a continuous state of mind. Sadness pops up the second events start to fade away — and now you’re down in the rabbit hole once more. The perpetual now can no longer be captured and leaves us isolated, a scattered set of online subjects. What happens when the soul is caught in the permanent present? Is this what Franco Berardi calls the “slow cancellation of the future”? By scrolling, swiping, and flipping, we hungry ghosts try to fill the existential emptiness, frantically searching for a determining sign — and failing. When the phone hurts and you cry together, that’s technological sadness. “I miss your voice. Call, don’t text.”

We overcome sadness not through happiness, but rather, as Andrew Culp insisted, through a hatred of this world. Sadness occurs in situations where the stagnant “becoming” has turned into a blatant lie. We suffer, and there’s no form of absurdism that can offer an escape. Public access to a 21st-century version of Dadaism has been blocked. The absence of surrealism hurts. What could our social fantasies look like? Are legal constructs such as creative commons and cooperatives all we can come up with? It seems we’re trapped in smoothness, skimming a surface littered with impressions and notifications. The collective imaginary is on hold. What’s worse, this banality itself is seamless, offering no indicators of its dangers and distortions. As a result, we’ve become subdued. Has the possibility of myth become technologically impossible? Instead of creatively externalizing our inner shipwrecks, we project our need for strangeness on humanized robots. The digital is neither new nor old, but — to use Culp’s phrase — it will become cataclysmic when smooth services fall apart into tragic ruins. Faced with the limited possibilities of the individual domain, we cannot positively identify with the tragic manifestation of the collective being called social media. We can neither return to mysticism nor to positivism. The naïve act of communication is lost — and this is why we cry.

¤

Geert Lovink is a media theorist and internet critic and the author of Zero Comments, Networks Without a Cause, Social Media Abyss, and Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism. He founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and teaches at the European Graduate School. He stopped using Facebook in 2010.

The post This Is Why We Cry: From “Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://bit.ly/2YAr2Re

[ryanjdonovan]

Donovan's Oscar Prognostication 2018

How bad did the Harvey Weinstein scandal get? Well, just wait until Paddington Bear comes forth with his exposé from the making of Paddington 2. (You won't be able to eat marmalade ever again.) So with Harvey out of the picture, what we can we expect at the Academy Awards this year? Read my 19th annual Oscar predictions and find out. And I promise: No Star Wars this year.

Okay, fine. Minimal Star Wars.

BEST PICTURE:

SHOULD WIN: Get Out WILL WIN: The Shape Of Water GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Beauty And The Beast

INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: The Big Sick

I feel like I say this most years, but: Man, the Best Picture nominees are a bunch of bummers. How is it possible that the happiest one is Dunkirk, a movie where soldiers are getting violently killed in a seemingly hopeless situation for an hour and half?? The most "fun" thing we can hope for with this group of nominees is the wrong winner to be announced. Again. (Call me pathetic, but the Best Picture debacle at last year's ceremony was one of the best things that's ever happened to me. At least we can agree that it was way better than any of the actual movies.) Intriguingly, this category is the biggest enigma of them all. While the acting races were locked up weeks ago at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, this category is anyone's guess. Most pundits have The Shape Of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in a dead heat, with room for Get Out, Lady Bird, or even Dunkirk to sneak in. Any "expert" who tells you they are confident in their prediction is lying. Except me. I'll confidently say that The Shape Of Water will win. Probably. I think.

Talk about a "fish story"… Writer/director Guillermo del Toro tells a tall tale (tail?) in his amazing fantasy-romance-slash-Cold-War-paranoia-thriller, The Shape Of Water. And he pulls out all the stops (as one does when making a fantasy-romance-slash-Cold-War-paranoia-thriller). In filmmaking, they say you can't have too much genre. del Toro certainly believes that; he also seems to believe you can't have too MANY genres, either. I'm not so sure I necessarily subscribe to either theory; I think there's something to be said for subtlety. But I can't deny that del Toro's approach ultimately pays off: He transports us to an alternate reality where anything is possible and everything is beautiful. And he amps up (or overturns) every conceivable element of the genres he's working in. The result is a gorgeous film and a zippy story, but also some thin characters and clunky clichés. And then, yeah, there's the element of physical love with a fish-dude. If you can get on board with that, you're probably willing to overlook everything else. For me, it all works. Bonus points to del Toro for the title - I realize it seems obtuse, without having much to do with the narrative… but anyone who's seen the film knows how well it ties into the climax. (By the way, is it me, or did the movie remind anyone else of the Kanye West "fish dicks" gag on South Park? Just me…?)

It's probably not going to win, but the best movie of the year is Get Out. It's the only movie where I immediately thought afterward, "I've gotta see that again!" The social aspect of it is sharp, novel, humorous, and accessible. But it's much more than that. I appreciate the fact that it's a horror movie that doesn't rely heavily on gore or gratuitous violence - it's more psychologically troubling than traditionally scary. The film is true to the genre without feeling tired or hackneyed. In particular, it excels at honing in on a legitimate anxiety - meeting your significant other's parents, for example - and plays it out as a terrifying worst-case-scenario. And that's just the tip of the iceberg (or the bottom of the sunken place, as it were.) It cleverly flips a few horror tropes on their heads, wink at the audience, and keep us guessing. The top-flight acting helped, of course. The only gripe: No cameo from Key?

Here's my experience watching Three Billboards in a nutshell: The movie started with Frances McDormand and I was happy, then almost immediately a knot formed in my stomach, and then the knot got worse, then worse, and worse, then there was a chuckle and a moment of relief, then the knot came back, then got agonizingly worse, then worse still, then the movie was over. Ugh. I'm generally up for a sardonic dark comedy, but this is not that; this is revenge porn. Here's what gets me (and I'll speak vaguely so as not to spoil plot points): It's clear (but curiously not really explored) that most of the characters in the fictional (thank god!) town of Ebbing are truly angry with themselves. But they choose to externalize everything (because it's a movie, I guess) and take it out on everyone within arm's reach - even their dearest loved ones. And instead of doing anything constructive or graceful or self-analytical, they make every destructive decision possible. It's like… instead of cutting off your nose to spite your face, you're cutting off the noses of a bunch of other people to spite their faces (or in this case, burning the nose on the face of another person), welcoming the fact that they're going cut off your nose in return… and your ears and eyes (plus the noses of some other people for good measure), so you wind up spiting your face anyway, and you've just pissed off a lot of people and refuse to admit that what you really wanted to do all along was cut off your own nose and spite your own face, so in the end you're left with a bunch of nose-less people who spite each other when they should be simply spiting themselves. (Sorry, this seemed like a good metaphor at one point, but it's quite gone off the rails.) What I'm trying to say is that the film might be a little more palatable if the characters were more… introspective. But as you can tell by the near-unanimous glowing reviews, almost nobody agrees with me. I just can't in good conscience predict this as the Best Picture winner. And the capper for me is the fact that it's not nominated for Best Director, and in 89 years, only 4 films in that situation have taken home the big prize. (Talk Argo all you want, I just don't see it happening again so soon.)

I love Dunkirk… but I WANT to love it more than I actually do. There's so much to admire: the realism, the palpable anxiety and claustrophobia, the exhausting sequences, the scope and precision of the cinematography, the tense score, and most of all, the legitimate feeling of being there - you can practically feel the salt in the air. I'm also impressed by the judicious use of dialogue - it's architected much like a silent film, which really adds to the sense of disorientation. Then there are the handful of things I don't exactly love about it. The storytelling: While I'm usually on board with Christopher Nolan's non-linear timelines, his approach to this seems unnecessary and makes it a little less accessible for me (though I understand why he plots the three stories in the way he did); storytelling is often his strongest suit, but this film tellingly didn't get nominating for Best Screenplay. Tom Hardy's flight mask: "I'm sorry Bane, could you speak up?" And Harry Styles: Enough said. All in all, it's fantastic, but it's not my favorite Nolan film. So when it doesn't win, I won't be too heartbroken.

I'm not quite sure how to feel about Lady Bird. It certainly feels personal, but not terribly personal to me. Surprise, surprise, based on misrepresentative marketing, I expected it to be more quirky-fun than quirky-sour. Even moments that play humorously in the trailer play more mutedly in the film. And I think that's fully intentional on the part of writer/director Greta Gerwig - she clearly has a vision, and it's not intended to give me warm-fuzzies. It's supposed to be bittersweet, sure; but in her story about a teenager breaching adulthood, bitterness is the overwhelming feeling while it's happening - the sweetness is only really in hindsight. That's fine, but if I’m going to go along for the movie version of it, I'd like it to be a little more… entertaining.

BEST ACTOR:

SHOULD WIN: Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour) WILL WIN: Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Hugh Jackman (The Greatest Showman)

INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Hugh Jackman (Logan)

This seemed inevitable, didn't it? After years (decades!) of chameleonic performances (and one measly nomination to show for it), Gary Oldman has finally found a role that is a slam dunk for an Oscar, in Darkest Hour. He's so overdue that ordinarily insurmountable obstacles are being rendered inconsequential: Daniel Day-Lewis is also in the race (he's usually - and correctly - the presumptive favorite when he decides to actually make a movie); Winston Churchill is a character that's been played ad nauseum (many revered actors have already portrayed him in award-winning performances, most recently Emmy recipient John Lithgow in The Crown); there's a young up-and-coming nominee grabbing a lot of attention for a star-making performance (though if you ask me, "Timothée Chalamet" sounds more like a vegan bistro in the French Alps than a person - I still can't believe he's American). While it's hard to believe that Oldman has never won an Academy Award, it's even harder to believe that after he wins this year, he'll STILL merely have the same Oscar resume as Casey "I'm not presenting at the ceremony this year because yeah maybe the allegations are true" Affleck.

Phantom Thread is rumored to be famously always-in-character Daniel Day-Lewis's last film ("Thank god!" his beleaguered wife is probably saying). And he's not going to score a record-breaking 4th Oscar for it. Most of his other roles are completely transformative, but in this film he just looks and sounds like… Daniel Day-Lewis. Maybe he should have gone out on top, after Lincoln. Then again, without Day-Lewis's nomination, we'd have to deal with James Franco in this category. So thanks, Daniel, for doing us a solid.

So without Day-Lewis hogging the top roles and collecting accolades for every film he makes, there will be a void in the cinematic landscape. Who should fill it? The mantle should be picked up by preferably a fellow Brit, I suppose, one whose career is just starting, but could be a top talent for years to come. Might I suggest… Daniel Day-Kaluuya? (There's nothing precluding him from changing his middle name to "Day-", is there?) And after arriving in Get Out, Daniel Kaluuya isn't going anywhere.

At this point, what else can be said about Denzel Washington? With Roman J. Israel, Esq., it's another year, and another iconic role. He'll get a 3rd Oscar at some point, but this won't be it.

Hugh Jackman managed to win both my Omitted and Snubbed awards in the same year. A dubious honor indeed. Congratulations, good sir!

BEST ACTRESS:

SHOULD WIN: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) WILL WIN: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Emma Watson (The Circle / Beauty And The Beast)

INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Zoe Kazan (The Big Sick)

Not much to debate here: Frances McDormand is (rightfully) running away in this race, for her role as a vengeful, grieving mother in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. In a word, she's a force. McDormand is a commanding actress, and you're willing to go along with her, even when you don't want to, even when you're practically yelling at her in opposition… and if you're not willing, by god, she's going to demand it. Her character is unflinching (except for a few fleeting moments of doubt or empathy), so blinded by sorrow that her only outlet is measured anger, resulting in increasingly calculated and unfocused revenge. The toll of her daughter's rape and unsolved murder has left her so corroded that she literally doesn't care about anyone else, much less herself. She's a stubborn, ornery cuss who's decided to use a sledgehammer on a nail, full well knowing it's going to break a couple of her fingers and really jack up the drywall, because a hammer isn't her style, and goddam it, she's going to drive that nail no matter what. It's a rare performance, one that instantly became the front-runner when it debuted to audiences. In real life, she comes off as awesome, impressive, intimidating, and of course, a total kook. At all the award shows, I've never seen someone look so put-out and irritated to be honored for their work. (Ditto her husband Joel Coen.) The only reason McDormand will lose some votes is because she's already won once (in 1997 for the magnificent Fargo), and a few voters may prefer someone who's been nominated before but never won. Which brings us to…

Saoirse. I dare you to pronounce her name correctly - I dare you! She's only 23, and somehow Saoirse Ronan is already on her third Oscar nomination, for Lady Bird. (Only Jennifer Lawrence has scored 3 noms at a younger age.) It's hard to claim that someone that young is due for a victory, but after she falls short this year, people will be saying that about her. (Except Amy Adams, who will be saying, "Get in line, B.") She's probably the second choice in this race for a lot of people, so some may vote for her to try to spread the gold around a little.

As good as Ronan was, the true runner-up in my book is Sally Hawkins, for The Shape Of Water. In fact, in a lot of other years she'd be my top choice. (And she was my top choice for Supporting Actress in 2015 for Blue Jasmine.) The Shape Of Water is a dazzling (if polarizing) film, and Hawkins is the lynchpin to the entire operation. If you're not willing to go along with her for the ride in the first half of the film (and that first scene in particular, where she, um, takes matters into her own hands), the second half is a total waste of time. It's a tall order (falling in love with a giant fish!), and she pulls it off remarkably. Even when the scenes get uncomfortable, unappealing, or flat-out anatomically impossible, she keeps the audience harnessed and invested. Her character seems invisible (or more literally, silent) to the world, but that masks her true self: assertive, calculating, willful, and sexually aggressive. In a film full of (intentionally, effectively) over-the-top characters and inconceivable happenstance, she manages to ground the film with her underplayed yet emboldened performance. She provides what the film needs most: the reassurance that it's okay to believe in fairy tales.

Are we sure Margot Robbie isn't Jaime Pressly? Frankly, Pressly would have been a more believable choice to play Tonya Harding. On second thought, are we sure Jaime Pressly ISN'T Tonya Harding? While a win would be surprising, it wouldn't be more surprising than Robbie's path to the nomination. If you told anyone a couple years ago that the annoyingly-accented wife in The Wolf Of Wall Street would get nominated for an Oscar for playing Tonya Harding, they would have said you were crazier than… Tonya Harding.

And finally… Let's face it, at this point Meryl Streep is just here for the appetizers.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

SHOULD WIN: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) WILL WIN: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Harrison Ford (Blade Runner 2049)

INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Patrick Stewart (Logan)

The only guy in this race without a previous nomination is the one who's clearly going to win it: Sam Rockwell. It's hard to root for a portrayal of such a wretched human being, but it hasn't stopped voters so far: Rockwell has won every significant award leading up to the Oscars, for his vile role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. While he's great in this film (I don't think anyone else here is more deserving), he has the benefit of having a huge amount of screen time for a "supporting" role. But whether he wins the Oscar or not, this is still The Frances McDormand Show.

Christopher Plummer has a chance to break his own record for the oldest Oscar winner for acting, at the ripe young age of 88, for his role as J. Paul Getty in All The Money In The World. (He previously won at 82 for Beginners. And this year's nomination makes him the oldest nominee ever for acting.) Though he had a little help: This nomination is as much for director Ridley Scott (and his cojones) and his decision to excise frequent creep and occasional pedophile Kevin Spacey from the film. Nothing against Plummer, but I can't help but feel like the Academy would have nominated ANYBODY in the role, just to give Spacey the middle finger. Eric Roberts as J. Paul Getty? Sure! Give 'em an Oscar nomination! (Actually, the more I think about Eric Roberts as Getty, the awesomer it sounds.)

Woody Harrelson and Willem Dafoe are interesting inclusions in this race. They both became famous in the 80s for oddly iconic roles (Harrelson as a hayseed bartender, Dafoe as none other than Jesus Christ), have been incredibly prolific since then, have been somewhat typecast (as goofy and creepy, respectively), aren't generally considered "prestige role" actors, and somehow manage to pop up in the Oscar race once in a blue moon. This is the third nomination for each (Harrelson for Three Billboards and Dafoe for The Florida Project), and neither has a particularly strong chance of winning (again). The roles that manage to mix their strengths with something unexpected (and happen to be in critically acclaimed movies) seem to yield the magical golden formula. Though honestly, I'm not sure I'm on board with Harrelson's nomination this year, in this fairly tiny role, especially in light of the other fantastic actors that were passed over (to name a few: Rob Morgan in Mudbound, Bradley Whitford in Get Out, Ray Romano in The Big Sick, Mark Rylance in Dunkirk, Stephen Henderson in Lady Bird, and one more that I'll get to in a minute). He got a big boost from his dynamic chemistry with McDormand, which the film could have used a lot more of. I guess we'll wait and see Harrelson and Dafoe bring to the Oscar table next time, in 10 or 15 years.

Richard Jenkins is actually another guy you don't necessarily expect to show up here, probably because he's strictly considered a character actor, is mostly thought of as the straight man in lowbrow comedies, and wasn't really on the radar until he was in his 50s. He was able to channel those everyman characteristics into the figurative heart (and literal voice) of The Shape Of Water. While this role will forever be a highlight of his career, I'll always remember him for one of the funniest lines from There's Something About Mary: "Highway rest areas, they’re the bath houses of the 90s."

The guy I REALLY wanted to see nominated here was Patrick Stewart, for playing a world famous mutant octogenarian ("Actually, I'm a nonagenarian!"). In Logan, Stewart has an absolute blast as an ancient, senile, powerful X-Man - easily his best Professor X role. In fact, It's one of his best roles, period. He had a realistic shot at an Oscar nomination, raking in a bunch of film critic nominations this year. Unbelievably, it would have been the first Academy Award nom of his career. (A 50-year veteran of TV, stage, and screen, with an incomparable Shakespearean pedigree and a trademark commanding, aristocratic voice, he's scored nominations for just about every other kind of award there is, except the Nobel - and I bet he'll have a shot at that one at some point.) But alas. I guess we'll just have to wait for him to top this in his next role, hopefully as a world famous mutant centenarian.

I really, really want to, but I just can't even with Harrison Ford anymore. (Am I using that right, "just can't even"?)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

SHOULD WIN: Allison Janney (I, Tonya) WILL WIN: Allison Janney (I, Tonya) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Allison Williams (Get Out)

INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Catherine Keener (Get Out)

America may be divided right now, but that's nothing compared to the delicious divisiveness in this category. Never has a fiery chasm between two sworn enemies been so vast and irreparable as it is between Allison Janney and Laurie Metcalf. As everyone knows, they completely hate each other (that's not true, but let's pretend). Their mutual disdain has reached dizzying heights over the past few decades, having competed head-to-head on every smart, wisecracking, mother-figure role that's been cast for TV, cinema, and stage. So before debating the merits of their work (Janney in I, Tonya; Metcalf in Lady Bird), let's indulge in the depth of their bilious feud. Imagine the petty stakes between these two vindictive and venomous veterans (both playing opinionated doyennes whose daughters don't appreciate them): The victor will not only gain pride and satisfaction knowing the soul of the other has been crushed, but will become the clear first choice for every mouthy, meddling matriarch role that comes along for the next dozen or so years. Parallels between them abound: They're close in age, both rose to prominence in long-running critically-acclaimed network TV shows, both have extensive theater backgrounds (Janney has 2 Tony nominations; Metcalf has 4 noms and 1 win), both are award-circuit darlings at the Emmys (Janney: 13 nominations and 7 wins; Metcalf: 10 nominations and 3 wins) and Golden Globes (Janney: 6 nominations and 1 win; Metcalf: 3 nominations). However, the parallel they care about the most? Neither had an Oscar nomination until this year. And they would kill each other (I mean, 'pretend' kill each other) to take home the statuette, preferably while watching the other crumple in agonizing disappointment in the rear view mirror.

So who will emerge victorious, clutching the coveted prize with a heel firmly planted in the loser's windpipe? It's not a sure thing, but all the major precursor awards indicate that it will be Janney. She's a go-to for a lot of prestige films and has been a fixture in Oscar-bait for 20 years, so voters are probably astonished that she's never achieved a nomination before; she simply SEEMS like she's due for an Oscar. Metcalf, on the other hand, doesn't appear in films regularly (and Scream 2 didn't exactly wow the Academy), so voters may feel that her nomination is recognition enough. But a bigger factor will be the showier role: Janney hams it up as a downright diabolical eccentric, while Metcalf plays it straighter as a realistically concerned everywoman. (Ironically, Janney is the one playing a real-life person.) The clincher? The bird on the shoulder. For my pick, it's probably a coin-toss; while I’m ultimately picking Janney, I'm actually rooting for Metcalf. I've gotta be a homer, cheering on the local theater legend (she's a charter member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre). It helps that Metcalf's husband in Lady Bird is played by Tracy Letts, another Chicago stalwart, Steppenwolf player, and Pulitzer Prize winner to boot. (And one more Lady Bird Chicago reference: The driving instructor is played by - hey! - a guy I saw in a Second City beginner class show about 15 years ago.)

There are, of course, other nominees in this category. Octavia Spencer is great as usual in The Shape Of Water, but she's been more impressive in other roles. Mary J. Blige is a pleasant revelation in Mudbound, but I'm not sure her performance is the one I would single out from that film; Rob Morgan, Jason Mitchell, and Carey Mulligan are all just as worthy. (Blige may take home an Oscar regardless - she's also nominated for Best Song from the film.) And Lesley Manville… well, she's also nominated. If any of these women somehow pull an upset and win, then the feud between Janney and Metcalf may finally be put on hold momentarily… so they can team up and bludgeon the winner.

BEST DIRECTOR:

SHOULD WIN: Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk) WILL WIN: Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049)

After a career of making fantastical cinematic spectacles, Guillermo del Toro is finally getting his due, with The Shape Of Water. It's a story only he could tell, and a story only he WOULD tell. He has a unique talent (among his many) to embrace the things that others would ordinarily ignore or discard. With his point of view, you almost get a sense of kinship, like he feels obligated to tell the (fictional) story as if it was about someone he loved. He unleashes a geyser of big ideas both real and implied, not the least of which is his love of movies. (In a lot of ways, I think this film is his love letter to cinema - where his masterful Pan's Labyrinth could be called a love letter to fairy tales - and all the things that made him want to be a filmmaker.) He likes his symbolism heavy, his production design opulent, his creatures extraordinary, and his protagonists… well, miserable. He works his themes into every scene and every aspect of the film experience: what it means to be whole, to be different, to be silent, and to make sound. And so del Toro will win Best Director, and it will be well deserved. When he wins, it'll be the 4th time in 5 years that this prize goes to a Mexican director (after Cuarón and Alejandro Iñárritu - twice); in fact, the only American-born director to win in the past 7 years was last year's Damien Chazelle for La La Land. (On a side note, speaking of foreign directors, the more of del Toro's films I see, the more he reminds me of Pedro Almodóvar. They seem to share many of the same sensibilities: strong, decisive women, sympathy for what others consider grotesque, a fun-house mirror reflection of the world, a matter-of-factness and tenderness with which they present the outlandish. Most of all, they dare you to believe when everything else tells you not to.)

In my head, I know this is true, but I'm still trying to fathom it: This is the first Best Director nomination for Christopher Nolan (for Dunkirk). After seeing Memento 19 years ago, I assumed by this time he'd have WON at least half a dozen Oscars for Directing and Writing. (I'm still pained by the Memento and Inception snubs.) When Dunkirk stormed into theaters last summer, victory seemed inevitable. But then erosion over time and a visionary fish story knocked him off the podium. So while he won't win, he's still hands-down my pick for Director this year. And let's be honest, my personal endorsement beats a clunky golden bookend any day.

The rest of the nominees are somewhat surprising, for different reasons. Comedian Jordan Peele shocked everyone (in more ways than one) with his horror/satire Get Out, as a first-time director. Similarly, prolific indie darling Greta Gerwig snuck up on Hollywood with her debut, Lady Bird. Both filmmakers clearly collaborate well with actors (both being primarily performers themselves). They are also undoubtedly self-assured, and not unnecessarily showy - they use the camera to tell the story without drawing much attention to the camera itself. While Peele manages to find laughs in the least likely of places, Gerwig reminds us that there is humor (and seriousness and sadness) in just about all places - it all depends on your perspective. The last nominee is Paul Thomas Anderson, for The Phantom Thread - the only one in the category with a previous Directing nomination. He was an afterthought during the entire awards season, and somehow squeezed in instead of folks like Steven Spielberg, Martin McDonagh, Dee Rees, Luca Guadagnino, Patty Jenkins, Ridley Scott, and Joe Wright. He should probably write Daniel Day-Lewis a nice thank-you note for this one.

Aside from Nolan, the person I most wanted to see get nominated was Denis Villeneuve, for Blade Runner 2049. His film is a luscious, consuming, worthy follow-up to the original Blade Runner. The visuals are both consistent with the original and refreshingly contemporary. Each scene isn't directed, it's composed. (Also credit the cinematographer: Roger Deakins is nominated for his 14th time, and he's astoundingly never won.) It's a slow burn, and complements the first film surprisingly well, expanding the story in an organic but unexpected way. And it's every bit as haunting as the first one. A lot of people were spooked by its nearly-three-hour running time, but the length feels earned. I can't say it doesn’t feel long, because it does, but it's enjoyably long (unlike The Lord Of The Rings or, ahem, The Last Jedi). You want to spend time in every scene. You want a master to take his time. Now, give this master the keys to the Star Wars franchise!

Don't feel too bad for Martin McDonagh for being passed over for Best Director for Three Billboards. He's actually already got an Oscar - for Best Short Film in 2006 for a film called Six Shooter. Gee, I wonder if there's any uncomfortable violence in a movie with that name?

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

SHOULD WIN: Jordan Peele (Get Out) WILL WIN: Jordan Peele (Get Out) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Rian Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi)

INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Steven Rogers (I, Tonya)

What to make of the Original Screenplay category? It's just as befuddling as the Best Picture race. Get Out and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri are neck and neck, with Lady Bird also in position for a possible steal. Usually the lead-up awards give an indication, but confoundingly, the script that won the Writers Guild Award (Get Out) wasn't even nominated for the Golden Globe. And the Golden Globe winner (Three Billboards) wasn't nominated for the WGA. (Though that's deceiving: Three Billboards was not eligible for the WGA because it didn't conform to all the Writers Guild standards; its omission probably won't impact its Oscar chances.) Who in the world will sort out this madness and provide a beacon of hope?? Thank goodness I'm here. Most people will tell you that Three Billboards will win. Most people are idiots. In an upset, it will be Get Out.

I also happen to think Get Out (by Jordan Peele) is the most deserving entry in this category. And frankly, this is the film's best shot at taking home a trophy. Despite all the buzz, it's still hard for people to believe that it's written by one of the minds behind the Key & Peele sketches, because the show wasn't exactly known for, you know, mind-bending horror-thrills. But it's not surprising that he brings a unique sense of humor and satire (not to mention social commentary) to it that, say, Eli Roth wouldn't. It's clear from his script that he has the point of view of someone who loves, and is probably a little tired of, horror movies. It's a sign of a clever and air-tight script that the film demands multiple viewings, and that the set-ups play and pay off in a completely different yet satisfying way the second time around.

I'm fairly conflicted about Martin McDonagh's screenplay for Three Billboards. While the film was grueling, I have to say, the man can write scenes. His background is in theater, and it shows. The screenplay stands apart in its excellent execution (pun sort-of intended), regardless of your opinion of the ending or the tone. He clearly understands that EVERY SINGLE SCENE in a drama should be all dramatic conflict and nothing else. It's a great example for novice screenwriters (and even some experienced ones). The scene starts when the conflict starts, and ends when the conflict ends… or often even before that. (And notice I said when the conflict "ends", not when the conflict "resolves"; the conflict "resolves" when the movie is over.) McDonagh even pulls this off when it's just Frances McDormand talking to a wandering deer, or alone imagining a conversation between her bunny slippers. As for theme? I'm not so sure I can commend him as much on that one. Thematic elements are obviously up to interpretation by the audience (that's kind of the point), but I don't really know what to take away from this. I have a few suspicions of what McDonagh was trying to say, but they're either muddy (to which he'd respond, "Good!") or they're enraging (to which he'd probably also respond, "Good!") or they're irredeemably charred, dredged from the depths of a soulless abyss (and frankly, I think he'd be okay with that as well).

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon's screenplay for The Big Sick is my second-favorite this year behind Get Out, so I was thrilled to see it get a nomination here. (I would have liked to see it get a Best Picture nod too, but I'll get over it.) This kind of film seems to be my style (these days, anyway, as I get older) - at least how to make tragedy palatable: with a healthy blend of humor. (50/50 is another recent example.) Maybe that means I've gotten soft, that I like my drama safe and my comedy harmless. Or maybe I just don't want to feel like I've been drinking warm sewage for two hours at the end of a movie.

I'll be honest, I didn't have a strong personal connection with Lady Bird, so I didn't come away with much from it. The screenplay feels true, and seems to be trying to say something without shouting a message, which I can appreciate. I probably see the film more from the parent's perspective than the teenager's perspective. So to me, it basically says that children never really know how much their parents love them, in part because parents aren't really able to articulate it in a way that children (especially teenagers) can truly understand. And frankly, it also says that children are eternally ungrateful to their parents… except when they make unexpected declarations at the end of Hollywood movies. Little brats.

Though it's got a strong shot to win two of the biggest awards, The Shape Of Water won't be a factor here. Of all its wonders, its screenplay is considered the least dazzling. It's meant to feel like a film from 50 years ago, so the screenplay is intentionally structured in a fairly simple way, with several one-dimensional characters and straightforward dialogue. It's a fable, really, so it's executed as such. It's got some significant plot holes (but in light of the fact that it's a "dating a fish" story, they're pretty minor), the creature gets very little backstory (which is just as well - any attempt to explain it would demystify the story and be a flat waste of time), and the lessons are heavy-handed. Everybody (good, evil, or otherwise) is "less than whole" in some way, whether it's in how they perceive themselves, or in how they are perceived by others. The one that can make them whole (physically or metaphorically) is the one who fits in the least: the fish-man, the proverbial "missing link". (Except for the poor cat. The fish-man makes the cat… decidedly less than whole.)

No, that's not a typo. I put Star Wars: The Last Jedi as my Gloriously Omitted choice. What was wrong with the Canto Bight detour? Well, how much time do you have? I could rant about it for 30 minutes, the same amount of time squandered on that throwaway sequence. What a waste of time. As for the rest of the screenplay… mostly, as a fan of Rian Johnson's other work (like Looper), I expected… more. I really thought he'd have something cool up his sleeve, whether it was a twist or an unexpected structure. New "magical" Force tricks didn't really cut it for me. Filmmaker Werner Herzog once said, "Manoeuvre and mislead, but always deliver." Johnson forgot to heed the second half of that advice. (I am willing, however, to give Johnson extra credit for his Hardware Wars reference - an Easter Egg intended for probably only 1% of even the biggest Start Wars fans.)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

SHOULD WIN: James Ivory (Call Me By Your Name) WILL WIN: James Ivory (Call Me By Your Name) GLORIOUSLY OMITTED: Stephen Chbosky, Evan Spiliotopoulos (Beauty And The Beast)

INGLORIOUSLY SNUBBED: Hampton Fancher, Michael Green (Blade Runner 2049)

The Adapted category takes a bit of a back seat to its Original counterpart this year. Only one of the nominees is in contention for Best Picture (as opposed to all 5 in the Original category), and none of the nominees got a Best Director nod (compared to 3 in the other category). The result is a somewhat surprising and unconventional (if arguably weaker) crop of nominees.

As the only Best Picture nominee and the winner of the Writers Guild Award, Call Me By Your Name is the clear front-runner. It's also the sentimental favorite: It's written by 89-year-old James Ivory (he of the esteemed Merchant-Ivory brand), who's been nominated for 3 previous Oscars but has never won. It would make him the oldest non-honorary winner ever. The films of Merchant-Ivory Productions, a period-piece powerhouse in the 80s and 90s, have achieved 6 Oscar wins and countless nominations (like A Room With A View, Howard's End, The Remains Of The Day, and a bunch of other films you've heard are good but have never seen… you heathen), typically directed by Ivory, and produced by Ismail Merchant. (The Wikipedia description of the company is both accurate and hilarious: "A typical 'Merchant-Ivory film' would be a period piece set in the early 20th century, usually in Edwardian England, featuring lavish sets and top British actors portraying genteel characters who suffer from disillusionment and tragic entanglements.") Merchant died in 2005, and Ivory has been mostly inactive since then. So a win here would be seen by many admiring voters as a fitting coda for one of the underappreciated auteurs of his generation.

I was thisclose to calling Logan my Should Win. For those of you who are not paying attention (or who are not as dorky as I am), it's another X-Men movie (astonishingly, the 10th in the franchise). Logan is Wolverine. Wolverine is Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman is… if you don't know, I guess I can't help you. The writers (including director James Mangold) took a risk and made a gritty, nihilistic, R-rated version of a comic book (yeah, it's a Marvel superhero movie - relax), and it paid off. The result is perhaps the best X-Men film yet, one that is faithful and irreverent at the same time, and feels more like a drama than a comic flick. It's redefined what's possible with these kind of films. Expect it a usher in a new era of superhero movies. (Except for D.C. You guys keep making absurd Batmans Vs. Supermans. Morons.)

Mudbound incorporates all the fun elements of a classic feel-good movie: Alcoholism, rape, miscarriage, murder, racism, hardship, violent war death, familial strife, affairs, incest, extreme PTSD, unexpected pregnancies, broken limbs, filth, domestic abuse, fist fights, flooding, loveless marriage, abject poverty, childhood illness, grave digging, animal slaughter, mutilation… and that's all before the KKK shows up! I'm not quite sure what to say about Mudbound, as a film overall, or as a screenplay nominee. To call the film "challenging" is an understatement. As an experience, it's downright punishing. It's also extraordinarily beautiful, especially considering the dismal, impoverished environment in which the film is set. Cinematography (by Rachel Morrison) is probably its most deserving nomination, and it may well beat out several renown DPs in that category. I'm impressed by the screenplay (by Dee Rees and Virgil Williams), even if I don't have the stomach for its subject matter. It's unflinching and elegiac, haunting and inspiring. It features dialogue and narration (which is usually a strike against in my book) that is poetic and mollifying. But unfortunately, it also features about 2 hours of misery and only about 10 seconds of happiness.

As you've probably heard by now, The Disaster Artist is the (realistic?) portrayal of the making of reputedly the worst movie of all time, The Room. I’m pretty sure James Franco, on the heels of his Golden Globe victory, was expecting 3 Oscar nominations for his triple-threat work on the film: Actor, Director, and Best Picture. But, poor chap, the one he ended up with was the one he doesn't actually get credit for: Screenplay. (It was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the writing team behind seemingly every annoying, angsty teen coming-of-age movie from the past 5 years.) I can't decide if The Disaster Artist's endeavor is genius or crazy or simply overindulgent. (Franco himself is usually categorized as all three.) I mean, the original movie is not good. And it's not bad in an awesome way, either, despite its reputation to the contrary. If it hadn't become a cult classic among an influential clique of comedians and actors (i.e., Franco's pals - many of whom have small parts in the film), nobody would pay it a second's attention, the behind-the-scenes book would be a footnote, and this film would never have reason to exist. But it does. And now - good god - The Room is actually an Oscar nominee. I guess there's hope for us all.