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Oscars: Who will win, who should win, and who should’ve been nominated

Well, after last year’s ceremony, this year’s Oscars feels positively boring, even if the Best Picture field is wide open. Still, you have Oscar pools to win and money to lose, and we’re back with our Vegas-assisted predictions for the evening’s events (and in case you need a reminder, the Oscars will be airing on ABC this Sunday, March 4, at 8 p.m. Boston time).

We’re using betting lines from bwin (which, once again, we are totally unaffiliated with) as of Monday, February 26. So, get your wallets and your pencils ready, folks, and hold on for a crazy ride. And, as always, the only awards that matter are the ones you choose for yourself. No Hollywood voting organization can ever tell you what to like.

Now, on to the major categories:

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Best Supporting Actor

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project (+500)
Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (+3300)
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water (+2000)
Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World (+2500)
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (-833)

Will Win: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Like it or not, Rockwell’s the guy at the moment, at least according to the prior awards shows and Vegas. This has a bunch of people (us included) feeling sort of like Larry David: we love Rockwell and all of the bizarre movies he’s managed to get across the finish line, but we hate-hate-hate this movie and his role here. If anything, we can kind of justify it by saying that Rockwell gold-plated this turd, and made it watchable instead of disastrous.

Should Win: Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project. Somebody else made a gag about this is Dafoe’s most Christ-like role since Platoon, and we’d just like to repeat that here. (Update: this joke comes via the great Mike D’Angelo in his Letterboxd re-review of the film.)

Should Have Been Nominated: Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me By Your Name. It is to the Academy’s everlasting disgrace that this man wasn’t nominated for his performance in that film. Seriously, God help these voters.

Dark Horses: Dafoe’s the only one, really, especially given that all of the others are seen by Vegas as heavy outliers. If you were to put down a dollar on one of those far-out picks though, you miserable louse, we’d recommend you bet Plummer, if nothing else for the fact that the Academy loves a good behind-the-scenes story about how a performance came together. With those odds, a $1 bet would earn you $26, which is a pretty good return. But yeah, Rockwell’s gonna win this one.

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