In Contention

By Josh Spiegel

December 14, 2010

Friends now, mortal enemies later.

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How does an opinion become a fact? The answer should be a very quick, very simple “Opinions cannot become facts.” Because, of course, that’s correct. It’s not an opinion that the sun rises in the East, that you and I are humans (I apologize here to my cats; you’re not sentient, but I still love you!), and that Barack Obama is the president of the United States. These are irrefutable facts. In the world of the Oscars, however, opinions and facts are far closer to each other than they ever should be. The way things shake out is much more complicated than is necessary. Take, for example, an early potential Oscars-night story that is likely not going to happen. In 1999 and 2004, Annette Bening starred in American Beauty and Being Julia, respectively. For both films, she was nominated as Best Actress. She lost both years, to Hilary Swank.

Keep that in mind as we look at 2010. This year, Bening stars opposite Julianne Moore in what I could consider the highly overrated The Kids Are All Right. She is pretty likely to get nominated for an Oscar once again. And, as with 1999 and 2004, Hilary Swank was the lead of an Oscar-bait movie, Conviction. Conviction has a lot of what matches up with the Oscar checklist. Starring a former winner? Check. Based on a true story? Check. Heartwarming film about the determination of the human spirit? Check. Conviction, just like last year’s Amelia, should be a shoo-in for Oscar gold, but it has just about disappeared from theaters, and any hopes of Swank pulling another victory away from Bening are mostly dead. This doesn’t stop Oscar writers from assuming that, hey, since it could happen, let’s talk about it as if it will.




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I don’t mean to spend too much time this week focusing on the chatter of the Oscar season as opposed to the actual awards, but it’s just before the time when predictions of who will and won’t get nominated for the late-February ceremony make any sense. Today, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announces its nominees for the Golden Globes, and over the past few days, the New York and Los Angeles-based critics announced their awards. But it’s still way too early. Next week, we can get into the nitty-gritty of what films will fill out the ten nominees, but even with that, there’s less guesswork than just assuming that the movies getting the nod now will get the nod later. The King’s Speech, The Social Network, Inception, True Grit, Toy Story 3, Black Swan, 127 Hours, The Kids Are All Right; these eight films are probably the top eight nominees.

More unfortunately, the Oscar writers wouldn’t have much to talk about if not for the endless chatter, so why not focus on that for a little bit? Right now, as the final movies in contention for 2010 are released (since last time, True Grit opened for critics, and opened strong enough to be appropriately considered a strong contender, though not strong enough to immediately dethrone Speech or Network), we can only speculate on which films will or won’t dominate, which films should dominate, and why they should. Hence, we get opinions turned into fact just like straw spun into gold. This week, let’s talk about why everyone hates Toy Story 3. Okay, I’m being unfair. Very few people hate Toy Story 3, and that’s mostly because...well, who could hate a Pixar movie? Who could hate Toy Story 3? But there is, as previously mentioned, an anti-animation bias equivalent to hate.


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