In Contention
By Josh Spiegel
January 22, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
First, as I mentioned, let's talk about the BAFTAs, the British version of the Academy Awards and Emmy Awards. The BAFTAs, for some reason, are considered a major precursor of what movies are going to show up at the Oscars when the nominations are announced. I say "for some reason" not to bash the British, but to point out the obvious: when it comes to being a solid predictor of Best Picture gold, the BAFTAs aren't very good. Yes, last year's BAFTA winner, Slumdog Millionaire, also won the Best Picture Oscar. However, you'd have to go back to 2003 for another match between Oscar and the BAFTA with The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Though past years matched up well, they did omit one notable Best Picture Oscar winner: 1997's Titanic, which ended up losing at the BAFTAs to fellow Best Picture nominee The Full Monty.
So, keep that in mind when we go over the nominations. The nominees for Best Film are Avatar, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Precious, and Up in the Air. While the notable exception here, when matching with Oscar contenders, is Inglourious Basterds, let's point out a few things out. First of all, An Education, the movie that takes Inglourious Basterds' place, is a British film through and through, and these are the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. An Education was always considered a top contender at the BAFTAs, even though it's likely to show up among the Best Picture nominees. Also worth noting is that the director of An Education, Lone Scherfig, was nominated for Best Director, and so was Quentin Tarantino. Lee Daniels, the director of Precious, lost out here. At the very least, the mix of nominees between Best Picture and Best Director here is a bit eyebrow-raising.
The nominees there are James Cameron for Avatar, Neill Blomkamp for District 9, Lone Scherfig for An Education, Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, and Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. Once again, even though the BAFTA voters aren't going to be voting for the Oscars, one movie keeps showing up to prove its worth: District 9. With each passing day, it's becoming more and more likely that this sci-fi action film set in South Africa is going to not only show up among the Best Picture nominees, but be a serious dark horse contender to steal the prize. Some of you may not feel like it's possible that such a movie could win, let alone be nominated. However, it's clear that, despite the three frontrunners - Avatar, The Hurt Locker, and Up in the Air - holding a powerful sway over voters, those same voters aren't so sure about what to vote for.
You may have read the article by Pete Hammond earlier this week, in which he posed the wild idea that the comic horror movie Drag Me To Hell could be nominated for Best Picture. Although the film was well-regarded by most audiences (I must confess to not being among those folks), its inclusion at the Oscars would be nothing short of gasp-inducing shock. The main point of Hammond's article in the L.A. Times was that a good chunk of Academy voters are facing a big problem: they can't find ten movies to nominate for Best Picture. Now, before we go any further, let's remember a few things: Hammond is well-respected as an Oscar prognosticator, but he's also the king of the blurb. If you've seen an ad for a movie, you've likely seen him praise it. It doesn't matter if the movie is Avatar or Tooth Fairy (who else has reserved their tickets??), he'll like it.
Also, the people Hammond is talking to for the article don't represent every single person who votes on the Oscars. Moreover, these people shouldn't be considered representative of the entire Academy, right? It seems so unlikely that I, a regular person with an average five-day-a-week job, could see far more than 10 good movies in a year, and a person with a likely higher-paying job couldn't. That said, despite having DVD screeners sent to them like crazy, some voters are finding it hard to spend the time to watch movies (who knows? Maybe if they were focused on watching movies in their spare time instead of being interviewed, we wouldn't have this problem). So, there will be many ballots that don't list ten movies. What movies will be listed? The movies that mattered most to voters, the movies that entertained voters. Movies like District 9 and, in at least one case, Drag Me To Hell.
There was some initial skepticism that the extension of five Best Picture nominees to ten would lead to undeserving movies. Granted, there are some people who don't think that Star Trek or District 9 should get nominated, if only because they're science-fiction action movies. I, as noted above, wouldn't be for Drag Me To Hell or The Hangover, for example, getting nominated, but not because of their genres. I just don't think they're two of the best movies of the year. If that's the case with some voters, fine; you can't blame people for their opinions, as long as their opinions aren't colored by the assumption that, because it's a genre movie, a movie won't be good. The message to take from Hammond's article is the same one people take from most pre-Oscar news: a healthy amount of Oscar voters don't seem to like watching movies, or don't understand why people get so nuts about the awards they vote for.
Some people do care about it, including the people who make up the Broadcast Film Critics Association, who announced their awards on VH1 last Friday night, in what was called the Critics' Choice Awards. The big winner was diversity. Though the film that took home the Best Picture award, The Hurt Locker, also took home the award for Best Director, there was a lot of love thrown around at the year in film. Movies as diverse as The Blind Side, Avatar, Julie & Julia, Inglourious Basterds, and Up in the Air all took home some of the Critics' Choice Awards. The two awards we can get past right now are the ones that seem like foregone conclusions more than anything else: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. The winners here, as they were at the Golden Globes, were Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, and Mo'Nique for Precious.
There's really no analysis for those two; Waltz and Mo'Nique should just prepare their eloquent acceptance speeches, because they are as close to locks to win as anything gets. I know, you're probably thinking I should just call them locks and get it over with, but I am, as always, very hesitant to ever claim something's a lock unless it's something like the sun setting in the west. What can I say? I'm not a gambler. Anyway, as mentioned, the winner for Best Picture and Best Director was The Hurt Locker, one of the three frontrunners for the Best Picture Oscar. What does this mean? Well, it means that one movie is starting to slow down quite a bit. Unfortunately, that movie is Up in the Air. Though the movie is still more of a frontrunner than, say, Precious, by not winning any major awards at either the Golden Globes or the Critics' Choice Awards, it's showing signs of peaking at the wrong moment.
That said, Up in the Air did win the same award at both ceremonies, for its screenplay, written by director Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner. Still, by missing out for George Clooney and the actual film, Paramount may be wondering yet again if it made the right move by leaving Shutter Island to waste away in the middle of February 2010. Clooney did lose Best Actor in both ceremonies to the same man: Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. Bridges is proving that this could be the year he finally wins a gold statuette named Oscar. Like last year's push for Mickey Rourke, the push for Bridges is pretty similar: from Fox Searchlight comes a movie about a man who used to be famous, damaged himself up after leaving the spotlight, but wants to make a comeback. One is about wrestling, the other about country music. Bridges' advantage here is that there's no major and socially conscious performance from another potential nominee. It's looking more and more likely that he's going to ride this thunder to Oscar gold.
Finally, the other notable win here is in Best Actress, which went to a tie. Yes, there was a tie here, between Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia and Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side. And, yes, folks, those are the same two winners from the Golden Globes ceremonies. Even though some people may be surprised that the Best Actress Oscar category is going to come down to Julia Child and an outspoken Southern woman helping out a hefty teenager, there it is. Carey Mulligan for An Education, and Gaboury Sidibe for Precious will likely get nominated, along with, probably, Helen Mirren for The Last Station, but they're all just going to watch and hope that some fluke happens and they sneak in to steal the victory.
For Streep, it's, once again, a case of doing the right role and the right time. For Bullock, it's also about doing the right projects at the right time. Just think of what could've happened had All About Steve come out after The Blind Side, not before. Both of these actresses are past 40, and both are having banner years, with critical and commercial success. If I were a betting man - though we've already established that I'm not - I would still say that this trophy is Streep's to lose, but Bullock is having an undeniably strong showing in the last month or so. The Blind Side has been ridiculously successful, having snuck under the radar despite making over 200 million dollars. The film is liked well enough, and Bullock's time seems to have come. People like me - meaning, people who don't think Bullock's that charming - will just have to shrug and wonder what's wrong with the rest of you.