They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?:
Mid-Year State of the Race
By J. Don Birnam
August 18, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
And when you consider that people scout Sundance and Cannes for early signs of contention (Birth of a Nation was crowned this year’s Best Picture winner before we knew whether Spotlight or The Revenant were to triumph for last’s), then it really literally, is always Oscar season.
You thought presidential campaigns and their politics nasty? Please.
Perhaps that depressing intro was not what you needed to get again excited about the Oscars, but look on the bright-side: a promising lineup of potentially great movies lies in wait.
So let’s start off this year by our customary approach - let’s take a look at what you may have missed so far in terms of movies that have already been released that may get a nomination for anything. Even on the cusp of the start of the season predicting is a perilous endeavor - just take a look at last year, when at this time I predicted that Documentary Feature looked “locked and sealed” for The Wolfpack (it was shutout); that Mad Max “will likely land” a cinematography and visual effects nod (it lost both), but “highly doubt” it will make it into Best Picture (it did, and Best Director too); and that “I expect [Ex Machina] to be completely shut out” (it won an Oscar for visual effects). Hey, at least I had The Revenant set to do well earlier in the year, sight unseen.
The State of the Race So Far: Released Movies
My own horrific predictive abilities aside, I do struggle to see anything even coming close to a Best Picture nomination from what has been released so far. Like last year, the summer has provided a couple of hits that seem shoo-ins for Best Animated Feature: Finding Dory and this weekend Kubo and The Two Strings looks to add itself to the list. There have also been some interesting Original Songs, one from Alan Menken in, yes, Sausage Party, as well as a host of new tunes from the sentimental Pete’s Dragon.
For the bigger races: What have the critics liked so far? Eye in the Sky, Helen Mirren’s drone movie, was well-received, but it will get nowhere near the Oscar conversation. Some liked A Bigger Splash, the Tilda Swinton/Ralph Fiennes movie that had a small debut earlier this year (and I did not see), and I guess those two are known quantities that could see something in a weaker year. Others have pointed to the indie-drama from Sundance, Indignation, which was already released in theaters, as something to look out for, but I fear the piece is too wooden and has a problematic ending to make it. If anything, last weekend’s Hell or High Water may get in there with writing or ensemble nods along the way.
And last but not least is this past week’s Florence Foster Jenkins, the Meryl Streep biopic about the famously bad singer. While I can see some Globes traction for it, I don’t think Oscar voters will go for it. Critical reviews have been decent, but the movie has its sentimental moments. Would they give Hugh Grant a career nomination? Perhaps, as the supporting categories can be thin.
There’s really nothing out there so far. In a sense that’s good news: you haven’t missed anything. In a sense it’s bad: there’s a lot to see still.
Oh, and no, sorry, Suicide Squad isn’t going to make it in either.
The State of the Race So Far: Sundance and Cannes
By now you should be intimately familiar with the story of Sundance and Cannes - at the very least one or two of their screenings make the Best Picture lineup, with others seriously in contention (last year, Brooklyn made it from Sundance to the race, and Carol traveled from Cannes but fell just short of the top list).
Of course we all heard of how Birth of a Nation won at Sundance and will win this year at the Kodiak to end the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. If it does get in, expect nominations for Screenplay, Director and Actor for Nate Parker as well. And if anything else, recent conversations about rape allegations surrounding Nate Parker should convince you that he expects to be in the spotlight come this season.
The other much-talked about race-relations story this year is Loving, the true story of the Supreme Court case/couple that brought down the remaining anti-miscegenation laws in the country. This showed at Cannes to standing ovations, and could be headed for acting nods for Ruth Negga, who plays the titular man’s wife, as well as Mr. Loving himself, Joel Edgerton.
The other big Sundance movie that people are talking about is Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By the Sea, starring Casey Affleck as a man who has to take care of his nephew after his brother days. With Matt Damon as one of its producers, you know there will be a strong push for this one and, like the other movies I’m listing from Sundance and Cannes - expect to see them in the fall festival line-up as well.
The French do love Kristen Stewart as we know from the past, and this year’s Personal Shopper (about an obvious topic) was no exception. I expect her to be in the conversation again, and maybe even show up at festivals, but it may just be that her American brethren are not as ready to take her seriously comme les Francais. It’s not necessarily a Best Picture movie but if you’re looking for acting nominations, this may be one.
Finally, Cannes winner I, Daniel Blake, about the intricacies of British bureaucratic welfare states, may resonate in an elections season, though Palme D’Or winners rarely if ever resonate with American audiences to the degree needed to land an Oscar nomination. So, unless they really do go for the easy #OscarsSoWhite out, I don’t think we have seen our Best Picture winner in the festivals yet.
What Lies Ahead: Venice, Telluride, Toronto
The real fun starts when looking at the lists that have been released by the first three film-festivals of the season: Venice, Telluride, and Toronto. Of course Telluride famously does not “release” a lineup, instead it announces it as a surprise on the day the festival starts. But, one can read tea leaves: since Toronto and the New York Film Festival have announced their lineups, to the extent a movie that hasn’t been seen yet is listed there as a “New York premiere” or a “Canada premiere,” you can guess it may be in Colorado first.
Venice
But, what about Italy? They’re starting their fest with La La Land, from the director of Whiplash, Damien Chazelle. Also listed are Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (he did Drive and Demolition in past years), and Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time. Chazelle’s film is a musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as she’s trying to live out her dream as an actress. While musicals have not fared well of late with the Oscars, they do like the subject matter. Meanwhile, Malick (whose movie looks to be an eccentric documentary about the story of the universe) and Villeneuve (about mysterious spacecraft arriving on Earth) have never really found space with the Academy, either, but that’s pretty much what people said about Birdman the year it premiered in Venice and we know how that turned out.
In fact, as Oscar lovers well know by now, basically every past Best Picture winner has been seen by the time Toronto announces the People’s Choice Award, with most of them making a debut or an appearance in either Venice or Telluride.
Telluride
Moving on to the Rocky Mountains, it’s hard to tell what we can expect from Telluride right now (though a lot of the ones we’ve already listed from Sundance, Cannes, and Venice will surely be there). The question is what will be the Steve Jobs like surprise? Of course Jobs ended up going nowhere fast at the Oscars, but it was nevertheless a movie to consider. Even better, is there going to be a Room at Telluride? Could that be Clint Eastwood’s Sully, about the fated United Airlines flight that landed on the Hudson? Something always makes a debut and a splash there, and it normally hangs around the Oscar conversation.
Rest assured, we will be covering Telluride right here, daily on Box Office Prophets over Labor Day weekend, so we will dissect the tea leaves as soon as they are uncovered.
Toronto
And when it comes to Toronto, we have at least a few potential Oscar contenders that will make their debut there. Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral, based on the Phillip Roth novel about destructive political allegiances, is on the list, while the psychological thriller Elle, about a powerful business woman attacked in her home, has been mentioned (though, it being foreign language, I have my doubts).
That said, TIFF’s broad lineup does permit it to show case some of the best of world cinema, and numerous Best Foreign Language Film submissions, as well as eventual nominees, are routinely seen there. This year, Chile’s Neruda, by Pablo Larrain, will play north of the border.
Looking Ahead to the Rest
Of course, the three first festivals don’t have the final say. Even though they have premiered the eventual Best Picture winners for the last few years, serious nominees have premiered after. Just last year, The Revenant came within a bear paw of dethroning the festivals, and NYFF’s Bridge of Spies and AFI Fest’s The Big Short had strong pushes as well.
So in NYFF, aside from some of the above-mentioned names, you’ll have Ava Duvarney’s documentary The 13th as the opening, and Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women will have the centerpiece spot that Bridge of Spies had last year. NYFF is also known for adding a surprise here or there (last year it was The Martian, which we had already seen in Toronto), so you never know.
And of course the sky is the limit beyond that - Ang Lee and Martin Scorsese have movies this year that will come out late in the year, and the now-perennial Best Picture actor Michael Keaton will be Ray Kroc in the Weinstein Company’s The Founder towards the end. I, of course, infamously already had it as a Best Picture contender in my monkey-throwing-darts column after the end of last ceremony.
That’s the landscape so far, folks. While it has been a relatively sleepy year so far in terms of released contender movies, it is really a promising and exciting lineup in the months to come. If I had to sum it up, I’d say that the winners of the major acting categories have not been released in theaters yet, and that, if any of them have been seen at all, they come from either Birth of Nation, Manchester by the Sea, or Loving.
Welcome back to the BOP Oscars column, and see you in two weeks or so from the sleepy Colorado mountains! May the odds be ever in your favorite movie’s favor.