The Oscars (and other awards)

Watch out Zootopia, Sausage Party wants to fuck up your Oscar hopes. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony is granting the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg movie about cursing hot dogs a “full-out awards campaign.” Sony Pictures chair Tom Rothman rationalized the decision to promote Sausage Party in this manner to THR saying, “Academy members are way smarter and more forward-thinking than people realize. They want to recognize bold, original, risky breakthroughs, and that’s what Sausage Party is, however subversive. Plus, it’s just plain cool.”

Oscar Futures: Can Arrival Make the Cut In Best Picture?

This heady alien-invasion drama is scoring terrific reviews and could be an Oscar sleeper: While it's not as emphatic as Oscar-friendly sci-fi blockbusters Gravity and The Martian, there's room for a movie like this in the Oscars race, especially if year-end studio flicks like Silence, Live by Night, and Passengers falter. Still, one crucial, complicating twist that comes late in the film has left some early viewers I've talked to absolutely befuddled. Team Arrival will have to hope that enough Academy members are smart enough to get it.

Denis Villeneuve's 2010 film Incendies was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and his Hollywood films like Sicario and Arrival have shown an enticing ability to take Hollywood potboilers and invest them with cool intelligence. The directors’ branch is bound to respond to him at some point, but will it happen on this film?

Is Amy Adams our new Leonardo DiCaprio? The five-time nominee now feels due for a win, and there's now a little bit of room for her to squeeze into a formidable Best Actress category. I worry, though, because Adams is necessarily muted in Arrival and the film's big twist informs her performance in a way that could puzzle some. She's doing exactly what she needs to do for the movie, but Oscar sometimes demands a little more.

Jeremy Renner was once on his way to becoming an Oscar darling after fronting Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker and scoring his second nomination the following year for The Town. But paycheck-supporting gigs for Mission: Impossible and Marvel movies didn't do much to up his critical profile, and surly press appearances weren't a help, either. To that end, simply showing up and doing good work in Arrival is an encouraging step for the actor … even if his gig as Amy Adams's alien-deciphering partner isn't an Oscar role.