Oscar Winner Predictions: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

The competition: Darkest Hour (Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick), Victoria and Abdul (Daniel Phillips and Lou Sheppard), Wonder (Arjen Tuiten)

Previous winners: Suicide Squad, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Dallas Buyers Club, Les Miserables, The Iron Lady, The Wolfman
My winner: Announcing shortly after the Oscars!

The facts: Only Tsuji has been nominated before, for “Click” and “Norbit.” Both “Darkest Hour” and “Wonder” contended for all three Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild Awards – hair styling, makeup, and special makeup effects. “Darkest Hour” won two prizes, and “Victoria and Abdul” wasn't nominated there at all. All three of these films were nominated along with two others at BAFTA, where “Darkest Hour” prevailed. The last film to win for primarily one central character’s makeup was “The Iron Lady” in 2011, with “Hitchcock,” “Foxcatcher,” “The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared,” and “A Man Called Ove” losing to bigger-scale operations “Les Miserables,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and “Suicide Squad.”

Who should win: I’m still puzzled by the omission of “I, Tonya” here in favor of “Victoria and Abdul,” which didn’t seem all that impressive. “Wonder,” a delightful film, was surely a daily endeavor, and a productive one at that. I don’t think anything can compare to “Darkest Hour,” however, for completely transforming Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill and making the rest of its cast look right too.

Who will win: I suppose “Wonder” could take it, but I would be pretty shocked if Darkest Hour wasn’t rewarded here.