In Contention
By Josh Spiegel
December 18, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
First, the Golden Globes, also known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, announced its nominations for the year of film. The awards, which will be bestowed upon various winners on Sunday, January 17th, seem to initially favor the George Clooney film Up in the Air, directed by Jason Reitman. Up in the Air received six nominations, including Best Picture (Drama), Best Actor, Best Director, and two nods for Best Supporting Actress, for Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick. Other big vote-getters were Nine, with five nominations, including Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) and Best Supporting Actress, for Marion Cotillard; Avatar, with four nominations, including Best Picture (Drama), Best Director, for James Cameron, Best Score, and Best Song; and Inglourious Basterds, also with four nominations, including Best Picture (Drama).
Notable snubs included The Lovely Bones, which only got a Best Supporting Actor nod for Stanley Tucci; and An Education, which only got a Best Actress nomination for Carey Mulligan. Also, though Precious got three nods, its director, Lee Daniels, was snubbed. Whereas Daniels' film got love and he got none, Invictus was not nominated for Best Picture (Drama), while its helmer, Clint Eastwood, got a Best Director nomination. For the most part, there aren't a lot of surprises here (unless you want to consider The Hangover getting a Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) nomination a crazy surprise), as most of the stereotypes surrounding the Globes got reinforced. They love celebrities, mostly because they want to showcase as many celebs as possible during the televised ceremony. Frankly, this year's ceremony will be worth watching, if only because English comic Ricky Gervais will be hosting.
But what of the Globes serving as a crystal ball for the Oscars? A lot of people see, or used to see, the Golden Globes as something of an Oscar pre-game. It's an interesting notion, especially since the HFPA has been nothing near accurate in predicting the Best Picture Oscar winner in the past years. In the past five years, only their 2008 choice for Best Picture (Drama), Slumdog Millionaire, won the Oscar. Of course, in the past ten years, the HFPA has gotten six of ten Oscar winners right; from 1999 to 2003, they had a perfect record, but once 2004 came around, they became a lot iffier. In general, it's healthy to take the HFPA with a grain of salt, as the voters are all foreign journalists, some of whom have been accused of having somewhat questionable credentials or taking gifts for nominations and/or awards. The Golden Globes are a fun precursor to the Oscars, but not nearly as self-important as they'd like to be.
Onto the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, which were also announced this week. Of course, since the guild is made up of only...well, actors. The only awards they nominate are all acting. Instead of Best Picture, their big award is Best Ensemble; this year's nominees are An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Nine, and Precious. The notable miss here is Up in the Air, which has found luck in other awards as of late. However, seeing as George Clooney, Anna Kendrick, and Vera Farmiga, the film's three main actors, all got nominated in their respective categories (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress), there's little to worry about here. Other notable nominees include Helen Mirren in The Last Station, for Best Actress; Christopher Plummer in The Last Station, for Best Supporting Actor; and Diane Kruger in Inglourious Basterds, for Best Supporting Actress.
That last nomination is most notable, if only because the only other actor being highlighted from Quentin Tarantino's recent World War II film is Christoph Waltz, as Hans Landa. Waltz did get nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but Kruger's nomination is the kind of surprise that the SAGs are known for that probably won't repeat at the Oscars. Recent surprise nominees include Dev Patel for Slumdog Millionaire, the 2006 film Bobby for Best Ensemble, and 3:10 to Yuma for Best Ensemble. Kruger's performance is certainly entertaining, and she's most definitely a supporting role. But how likely is it that we'll see her get an Oscar nod? It would be as surprising, if not more so. This kind of incongruity, despite actors making up almost one-fifth of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is what makes the SAGs stand out as not the most solid predictor of Best Picture gold.
In the past ten years, the SAGs have correctly predicted six Best Picture winners. Though they missed the 2006 winner, The Departed, and the 2004 winner, Million Dollar Baby, in place of Little Miss Sunshine and Sideways, the Screen Actors Guild did predict correctly that Crash would win Best Picture at the Oscars. What's more important, as evidenced by the two examples in the previous paragraph, is that the Screen Actors Guild doesn't always nominate the same five films that AMPAS does. Granted, with the field of Best Picture nominees being ten this year, it's likely that all five of this year's Best Ensemble nominees will repeat at the Oscars. Still, with movies such as Up, which didn't get nominated at the SAGs (and its exclusion is not at all surprising, nor is that of Avatar), likely showing up at the Oscars, it's harder than ever to see any connection.
The American Film Institute is well-known for its famous top 100 lists of the best American movies of all time. However, in the past decade, the AFI has also become better-known for its year-end awards. Each year, they name ten movies as the best of their year. This year's list of AFI's top ten movies is as follows: Coraline, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, The Messenger, Precious, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Sugar, Up, and Up in the Air. I would imagine you've all done a double-take or two from this list. Coraline? The Hangover? Some of you may be wondering, and rightly so because of how quickly it vanished from theaters, what the hell Sugar is. This year, more than in recent past, the AFI has gone for the unique choices as opposed to something ordinary.
Matching up the AFI Awards with the Oscars is a bit difficult; last year, for example, their list of ten excluded Slumdog Millionaire, but only because the film wasn't American-made. In the past eight years (that's as long as AFI has been doing the top-ten list), only one other year's list didn't have the Best Picture Oscar winner: in 2006, they didn't pick The Departed as one of their favorites. All other years, though, did have the eventual victor. This year's list, though, will not match up with the Oscars, I'd venture. Though I loved Coraline and laughed at The Hangover, the filmmakers behind these films shouldn't be getting tuxes pressed for the ceremony in March. Of the list, The Hurt Locker, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, and Up in the Air are the likely Oscar contenders that will overlap.
So, finally, before we wait and see how many millions of dollars will be made this weekend, the same weekend in December when a certain Best Picture Oscar winner about an ill-fated ocean liner opened, how about we figure out if James Cameron will once again crown himself King of the World at the Oscars. Yes, Avatar is opening today; in fact, you may well be reading this after having seen a midnight showing, or an early showing, of the film. Much like Titanic, Cameron's last feature film, the buzz was negative until people, you know, saw the damn thing. The reviews have been mostly positive; though not all critics are agog with the science-fiction epic about a disabled man who becomes part of an alien culture that humans want to exploit, the majority have gone nuts about the special effects and the visual feast that has been offered up.
Does Avatar have a Best Picture Oscar in its sights, though? The award itself probably won't go to the movie, but if the film doesn't end up as a Best Picture nominee, it'll be very surprising. There's still a chance that the movie won't do as well as people are hoping at the box office, but the general excitement about the movie, plus the likely support from those Oscar voters who work on the technical side of filmmaking, is sure to help its chances. As I've mentioned in previous columns, despite having a stereotype of being a representation of outdated and fuddy-duddy elements of Hollywood, the Oscars have often nominated blockbusters, such as Star Wars, Jaws, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Oh, and Titanic, which, for all the cooing about the love story, did become the highest-grossing film ever. Avatar is probably going to get a lot of nominations; just don't be surprised if none of those nods are for acting or writing, neither of which are getting lots of noise behind them. The technical nominations, a nod for Cameron as Best Director, and the Best Picture nod will, almost certainly, be the bulk of Avatar's haul.
One final note, regarding movies like Avatar and Up. I mentioned in the section regarding the Screen Actors Guild that neither of these films got nominated for any major awards, nor were their exclusions surprising. The reason for this is simple: actors and, in some ways, the members of the Academy, are still very wary of Best Picture nominees being largely computer-generated. Up, despite having three strong performances, is always going to be seen as an animated movie; sure, Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer are in this movie, but they're not really in the movie. With Avatar, a movie that is, to be sure, not receiving loads of praise for its actors, the voters may look at it and think of a video game or just another cartoon. How can the Best Picture be a cartoon? This is the kind of outdated thinking that is unfortunately still very much part of the Academy. Having said that, with the advantage of ten Best Picture nominees, both movies will hopefully make a good showing.