The Night Water 2025 Oscar Ballot
Plus: Steven Seagal and an update on the Movies Fantasy League
As longtime Night Water subscribers know, I love an Oscar ballot. The Academy Awards ceremony is the capstone event of film awards season (if you don’t count the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards, which usually happens in March or April) and the winners are relatively easy to predict based on who has been winning and losing all season.
This means that with a little research, there’s no reason you shouldn’t win a casual Oscars ballot at work or a friend’s party.
But what if you’re locked in a competition with other people who know how to Google? Do you have what it takes to push ahead of the competition? Can you astutely pick the winner of a toss-up category? Will reading the discourse tea leaves be a distraction or grant you Apollo’s gift of prophecy?
Find out in the 2nd annual Night Water Oscars Ballot, back after a mildly successful first year! Last year’s ballot featured 29 competitors, with an average score of 10/23 correct predictions. I think we can beat those numbers in 2025, folks.
The grand prize winner will receive a year of free Day Soda—the exclusive newsletter for paid Night Water subscribers. Second place and third place will win six months and three months of Day Soda, respectively. Winners will also have access to the full archive of Day Soda, including this rant about British movie theater popcorn.
The ballot closes on March 2nd at 6 PM eastern, one hour before the Oscars broadcast begins.
This year’s ballot also features two optional questions about your favorite movie nominated for an Oscar (as we all know, personal favorites are often not winners) and your own spicy hot take to add to this year’s Oscars discourse. It’s the perfect opportunity to get something off your chest about Emilia Pérez, Anora, or The Brutalist.
My Oscars hot take? There shouldn’t be two songs from the same movie nominated for Best Original Song. That’s just common sense.
What do movie star Steven Seagal and Cabbage Patch Kids dolls have in common?
A few months ago, Rob Stephenson wrote to me with a little fun fact: Steven Seagal’s former producing partner, Julius Nasso, founded the famed Babyland General location on Fifth Avenue in New York City (or so he claims).
If you just read that fun fact and thought, “What the hell is this guy talking about?”, I encourage you to go back to my piece about the fabled faux hospital from a few years ago:
Adam Cecil
Rob was looking into Seagal and Nasso for his own newsletter, The Neighborhoods, where he’s documenting every neighborhood in New York City in an idiosyncratic attempt to capture the city as a whole. You can read more about Seagal and Nasso in his piece on Eltingville, Staten Island.
A Movies Fantasy League update
Last fall, riding high on the unparalleled success of my first annual Oscar Ballot, I tried to convince Night Water subscribers to join Vulture’s Movie Fantasy League. The MFL is an Oscar ballot on steroids. Instead of waiting until the end of awards season to predict the ultimate winners, you’re starting in October, and need to build a team of just eight films with a limited budget, kind of like a fantasy sports team.
Vulture lets folks make mini-leagues to compete with friends and/or fellow newsletter readers, and while only three of you took me up on the idea, the Night Water MFL mini-league is still going strong.
Of course, I waited until I was in first place to share an update with the broader Night Water newsletter subscriber base. My lineup of Anora, Emilia Pérez, The Piano Lesson, The Substance, Wallce & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Will & Harper, and Heretic has served me pretty well, earning me 3067 points so far from box office returns and awards nominations and wins. If Emilia Pérez turns even a fraction of its Oscars nominations into wins, I’ll be cruising.
Via is right behind me with 2320 points so far, with Dune: Part Two, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Challengers, Babygirl, Brothers, The Friend, and Megalopolis in her lineup. I really commend the Megalopolis choice. A bold move that did not pay off at all. (You can find Via’s newsletter about food, movies, and food in the movies over at Film Flavor.)
In third place is CheddarGoblin, taking their name from the 2018 Nicolas Cage hit Mandy. (It was a hit with me, at least.) CheddarGoblin has picked up 1414 points so far from Nickel Boys, Dune: Part Two, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, I Am Celine Dion, Joker: Folie a Deux, Bagman, Twisters, and Challengers. Near, far, wherever you are, that lineup’s just not enough to compete.
Picking up the rear is Milkshake with 1127 points. Their team includes Dune: Part Two, Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Monkey Man, Queer, Megalopolis, The Wild Robot, and Bird. Don’t worry, Milkshake—there’s still a lot of green space between now and the Academy Awards, and a few big wins could change the entire league.
If you want to follow along at home, check out the leaderboard at Vulture.
