Arrival v La La Land v Moonlight v Manchester by the Sea

1,all will be nominated except arrival

2, la la land, actually i am not interested in musicals but i have no problem to give it a chance because it is directed by whiplash's director

I think they'll all get nominated.

I had reasons to be very psyched about 3 of these, some personal:

-- Loved You Can Count on Me, thought Margaret (director's cut) was a masterpiece, so I was hugely awaiting Lonergan's next film. And my best friend's brother lives in Manchester by the Sea and I've been to their house a number of times.

-- The aforementioned best friend is saxophonist Grace Kelly's #1 fan, so I vaguely know her trumpet player Jason Palmer, who starred in a tiny indie film called Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Before I could see that, I saw a Sundance-wining short film by its director called Whiplash. Then I heard it was going to be a feature ... which I thought was a minor masterpiece. Now he supposedly has the Oscar favorite ...

-- But I was stunned by Villaneuve's Incendies (a near-minor masterpiece, robbed of the Oscar Best Foreign Film), and I'm a fanatic about intelligent sci-fi, and I know Ted Chiang and hung out with him a bit in July '16, and he assured me that the movie based on his story had a great screenplay.

So that's my 3, 2, 1 most anticipated. And then Moonlight turned out to be so good that it'll be hard to top. But Arrival is currently #2 for me.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.