Oscar Predictions: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

This year, Oscar nominations will be announced on Monday, March 15th. I’ll be offering detailed predictions in all categories.

Last year’s nominees: Bombshell, Joker, Judy, Maleficient: Mistress of Evil, 1917

My choices: Coming soon!

This year’s finalists: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Pinocchio, One Night in Miami, Birds of Prey, Mank, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, Hillbilly Elegy, Emma, The Glorias, The Little Things

The rundown: This category should be easier to predict because fifty percent of the shortlisted films will end up as nominees, but it’s hard to decipher which ones will advance. The Makeup Artists and Hair Stylists Guild has a number of categories that include six of the films on this list as this year’s nominees. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with the makeup and hair teams for three films - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Pinocchio, and One Night in Miami, which you can read here, here, and here – but that’s not why I put them first as the likeliest nominees. The first and last of those are well-regarded and expected to perform strongly in other categories, while the work in the middle may just impress voters given the audaciousness of the effort. Birds of Prey doesn’t feature the Joker, a three-time nominee in a film represented here last year and a big part of “Suicide Squad,” the original film that won this prize in 2016. I still think it can show, and I believe that Mank, a presumed contender in many other races, will take the last spot. Hillbilly Elegy, The Glorias, and The Little Things may suffer from negative reviews, though that rarely impacts this category (see “Norbit” and “The Lone Ranger). Emma might benefit from its likely costume design bid, while I’m not sure what to conclude about the only finalist in this category that I haven’t seen, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey.

Forecasted winner: I think Pinocchio wins, but let’s see the list of nominees first.