Makeup and Hairstyling

✓ “Vice”



“Border”



“Mary Queen of Scots”

This Oscar almost always goes to the team that worked on a best-picture contender or a performance that is likely to win an Oscar, which eliminates “Mary Queen of Scots” and the beguilingly offbeat “Border.” We’d at least have a more interesting race if “Suspiria” had been nominated for its transformation of Tilda Swinton into an elderly man, but given the field as it stands, “Vice” is the clear winner for encasing Christian Bale in Dick Cheney’s visage.

Animated Short

✓ “Bao”



“Animal Behaviour”



“Late Afternoon”



“One Small Step”



“Weekends”

Though they are all animated in strikingly different ways, several of this year’s short nominees have an undeniably Pixar feel to them, in that they telescope the span of an entire life into a single heart-tugging montage. Of them, the actual Pixar short has the best chance at winning: Domee Shi’s “Bao,” which played before “Incredibles 2,” is a clever film about a Chinese-Canadian woman who pours her love for her son into the food she makes, with surprising results.

Live-Action Short

✓ “Skin” “Detainment” “Fauve” “Marguerite” “Mother”

Mad respect to anyone who can make it through all five of these shorts, a beautifully shot but brutal lot in which nearly every story is about children in distress. Two nominees I think voters may respond to are “Fauve,” a harrowing story about two boys encountering quicksand, and “Skin,” a good-looking but incredibly obvious parable about race that stars Hollywood actors like Danielle Macdonald and Jonathan Tucker. “Marguerite” is a wistful story about an elderly woman that will win points for harming no children, but I wonder if it may be too slight to win. “Skin,” for all its familiarity, probably has the inside track.

Documentary Short

✓ “Period. End of Sentence.” “A Night at the Garden” “Black Sheep” “End Game” “Lifeboat”

This is the strongest of this year’s three short-film crops. Some voters may be drawn to “A Night at the Garden,” a documentary using footage of a 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, since it recently made headlines when Fox News refused to run an ad for it. Still, the two strongest entries are probably the ones pushed by Netflix: “Period. End of Sentence.,” an empowering story of Indian women manufacturing sanitary pads, and “End Game,” about an end-of-life care facility. The former, with its welcome moments of lightness and humor, may prove to be Oscar's pick.