Finally got through the best picture nominees. I liked The Post more than I thought I would, which seems to be a running theme with the last few stragglers.

My personal ranking of all nine would probably be something like:
Lady Bird
Get Out
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Darkest Hour
Phantom Thread
The Post
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Call Me By Your Name

With the top three and bottom three being pretty clear cut and the middle three being fairly flexible on any given day.

I just got back from seeing Phantom Thread... man, was that a twisted ending. Very good throughout though, and excellent performances by all involved. And it has to have the Costume Design Oscar in the bag, right? (Though when I saw the first dress, my immediate thought was "where's the black wimple and poison apple?")

And it has to have the Costume Design Oscar in the bag, right?

One would think. My guess is that it won't win any "big" awards but will nap Costume Design and Best Original Score, with Shape of Water the only one presenting real challenge for both awards. SoW will almost certainly win the Best Director for Del Toro (and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets Best Film, honestly) so it'll all shake out evenly, I think.

I could see Daniel Day Lewis winning as a dark horse candidate what with the public announcement of this being his last film. Though maybe the Academy would instead go for a special Lifetime Achievement award down the line.

I think Gary Oldman has that category in the bag. He's good and a dominating force in The Darkest Hour and the Academy loves biopics. Phantom Thread is more of a three-header, plus DDL already has like 3 Best Actor Oscars at home. :) That said, upsets are always possible. I would place my odds at something like 80% Oldman, 10% Timonthee Chalamet, and 10% DDL. I don't think there is any chance that Daniel Kaluuya or Denzel would cause an upset.

The more I think of it, the more I'm astounded by how many noms Phantom Thread got. It's such a weird film. I guess it does have all the surface trappings of a prestige pic.

It had a feel that kind of reminded me of Shadowlands. If C.S. Lewis were a fussbudget dressmaker and Joy Davidman had won his heart by poisoning him instead of coming down with cancer herself, I guess.

One of my friends sent me a tweet from somebody who thinks that Matt Casey should be cast as Nightwing, I think if you're going to cast a Matt as Nightwing it should be Bomer. Although both actors might be too old for the part. Who would you cast?

I wouldn't believe anyone who wasn't a trained acrobat or gymnast in the role.

That's why I thought Bomer.

Tom Holland has the skills, but doesn't look like Nightwing to me.

(Relatedly, in the current Nightwing comic, he is undercover as an exotic dancer. FOR REAL. So fanfic eventually becomes canon if you wait long enough.)