For Your Consideration: Assessing The Major Oscar Categories
by Peter Knegt (November 5, 2009)
A scene form Jason Reitman's "Up In The Air." Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
What’s been a slow awards season build since Toronto and Venice kicked things off two months ago is about to become an accelerated horserace. With Fox Searchlight’s announcement yesterday that they were bumping up awards bait “Crazy Heart” for 2009 Oscar consideration, it’s reasonable to believe that the final piece of this year’s candidate roster is complete. And while there are still a few major question marks remaining - namely Rob Marshall’s “Nine,” Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” and Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” - beginning with tomorrow’s release of “Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” every weekend from now to the next decade will offer us another piece of the puzzle. Focus Features has already jump started the For Your Consideration campaign mania with an ad for the Coens’ “A Serious Man”, and the folks at the Academy have made what one can only assume was a down-to-the-wire decision regarding who would be hosting their annual festivities. Remarkably, there’s only about four weeks to go before we’ll get the Independent Spirit Award nominations and the National Board of Review winners, which kick-off a nearly every-other-day blitz of precursors leading up to February 2nd’s Oscar nominations. In other words, it’s on. Before things get really heated, let’s assess where things currently seem to stand, at least regarding those six major categories at the heart of the millions of dollars about to be poured into campaigning. While in one sense it’s still a bit too murky to say anything with total certainty, it’s definitely late enough in the game to at least get a good sense of where we’re headed. I mean, take a look at these Oscar predictions from roughly a year ago. While, sure, I might have been a bit off-the-mark with “Revolutionary Road,” most categories ended up 3 for 5, and supporting actor was a clean sweep. So, one year later, here goes nothing: Best Picture This shiny new 10-nominee situation makes this category so much more fun to consider. While I’m completely in agreement with criticisms that the new rules cheapen the prestige of a best picture nominee (though on the other hand: “Chocolat,” “Crash,” “The Cider House Rules,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”...), when it comes to the act of awards prognostication, it’s double your pleasure. At this point, I think we can say with 99.9% certainty that three films are in: Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air,” and Lee Daniels’ “Precious.” While “Locker” needs to work hard to hang on to the buzz that met its mid-summer release, and both “Air” and “Precious” need to perform reasonably at the box office when their releases finally come (stay tuned to indieWIRE this weekend for full coverage of how “Precious” fares in its first weekend out), it would be quite the downfall for them not to make the top ten. Beyond that, I’d wager that there are roughly 17 films with something of a chance at the remaining 7 slots, some of them much better off than others (“An Education” and “Up,” for example, are looking pretty good right now). It’s within the six films that few among us have seen - “Invictus,” “Nine,” “The Lovely Bones,” “Avatar,” “Brothers,” “It’s Complicated” - that this game could really change, though I have little confidence in the latter three (particularly “Avatar,” and I know I’m in the minority there). As for “Invictus,” “Nine” and “Bones”... Simplistically put, they are this year’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Revolutionary Road” and “The Reader.” Films made for Oscar, and hyped as such from the second they start production. But as we know from last year’s batch, not all of them end up making it work. What should also be really interesting is what happens to the many films living on the brink here. “A Serious Man,” “A Single Man,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Bright Star” - these are, let’s face it, films that would not stand stand a chance at the shortlist in a five-slot-year. As a fan of all four, I think I’d forget my ten-slot apprehension if at least a couple of them ended up making the cut. As far as things stand now, I’ve got one. Ranked in terms of likelihood, here’s my rundown:
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Up In The Air
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Since many of my favorite movies are nominated for “best screenplay” Oscars but NOT for “best picture”, I’ll be interested to see how much or how little the expanded lineup for the latter overlaps with the writer categories.
I found it interesting that your line-up of 20 candidates for “best picture” included only seven original screenplays, and two of those (“Avatar” and “It’s Complicated”) were from your “seem unlikely” subcategory. The five other originals—all of which seem like strong “best original screenplay” candidates from this distance—are “Bright Star”, “The Hurt Locker”, “Inglourious Basterds”, “A Serious Man”, and “Up”.
The whole idea of “prestige pictures” has always favored adaptations, so it’s not surprising that you’ve got 13 of them in your list of 20. For the adapted screenplay Oscar, I’d be inclined to go with five of the six in your top three subcategories—“An Education”, “Invictus”, “The Lovely Bones”, “Precious”, and “Up in the Air”—and leave out the musical “Nine” on the theory that musicals favor spectacle over plot (but I could be wrong about this, not having seen the movie).
Especially with original screenplays, it’s likely that there’ll be at least one nominee that knocks conventional wisdom for a loop. Ten possibilities for a surprise nominee here—derived from a combination of IMDb popularity and reputation of the writers—are “Antichrist”, “Broken Embraces”, “District 9”, “Duplicity”, “(500) Days of Summer”, “The Hangover”, “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”, “Moon”, “Pirate Radio”, and “Zombieland”.
I didn’t bother to create such a list for adaptations—partly because you’ve already listed so many alternatives and partly because I don’t believe “Star Trek” or “Watchmen” have a serious chance here—but I’m intrigued by the possibility of an adapted screenplay nomination for “Fantastic Mr. Fox”. The film’s getting some fairly serious critical buzz, and its writers (Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach) have previously been nominated for writers Oscars, so why not?
Why isn’t Clive Owen mentioned for at least one of his three nearly flawless and very different performances he gave this year in THE BOYS ARE BACK,
DUPLICITY and THE INTERNATIONAL.
If there were awards for multiple performances, he would win.
My best picture predicts: An Education, Up In The Air, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Invictus, The Lovely Bones, A Serious Man and A Single Man. I say Nine and Avatar both tank. Precious for the win!