For Your Consideration: A Guide To The Oscar Precursors

Mo’Nique in a scene from Lee Daniels’ “Precious.” Image courtesy of Lionsgate

December 1st: Spirit Award Nominations

Last Year’s Big Winners:  “Frozen River,” “The Wrestler,” “Rachel Getting Married” and “Ballast” were among the major nominees for the Spirit Awards, which announce their nominations in December but then wait to fete the winners until the day before the Academy Awards (though this year it’s now the Friday night before the Oscars). In the end, “The Wrestler” won best film and best actor, while “Milk,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “Frozen River” each took multiple trophies as well.  Many major Oscar winners and nominees were represented, from Penelope Cruz and Dustin Lance Black (honored with wins at both) to a good dozen nominees including Mickey Rourke, Melissa Leo, Richard Jenkins and Anne Hathaway.

How This Year Could Shake Down: “Precious” seems poised to sweep these nominations.  Snubbed by the Gothams, it would be quite the surprise if the film didn’t lead the nominations, taking notices for best feature, director, first screenplay, actress and supporting actress.  Other major contenders could be the Coens’s “A Serious Man” and Tom Ford’s “A Single Man,” while the rest seems likely to be filled in by films unlikely to make plays at Oscar.  “The Hurt Locker” was actually eligible last year due to its screening at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival (and received nods for actors Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie), and “An Education” is British and therefore ineligible outside the foreign film category. 

Expect the deserving likes of Cary Fukunaga’s “Sin Nombre,” Ramin Bahrani’s “Goodbye Solo,” Oren Moverman’s “The Messenger” and perhaps Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday” or Marc Webb’s “(500) Days of Summer” to receive multiple nods.  Personally, I expect the former three to join “Precious” and one of the “men” (likely the “Serious” one) in the best feature category.  The acting categories should also be fun to watch, with clear Oscar possibilities like “Precious”‘s Gabby Sidibe and Mo’Nique, “A Single Man”‘s Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, and “Crazy Heart”‘s Jeff Bridges potentially competing against underdogs like “The Messenger”‘s Ben Foster, Samantha Morton, and Woody Harrelson, and full-on Oscar impossibilities like “Goodbye Solo”‘s Souleymane Sy Savane and the (anti)-romantic duo of Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt from “(500) Days.”

December 3rd: National Board of Review

Last Year’s Big Winners: “Slumdog Millionaire” took its first major best picture award of the season here, as well as honors for adapted screenplay and breakthrough actor Dev Patel. Other major winners included Clint Eastwood (best actor for “Gran Torino”), Anne Hathaway (best actress for “Rachel Getting Married”), Josh Brolin (best supporting actor for “Milk”) and Penelope Cruz (best supporting actress for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”).  Their top ten list consisted of four of the five eventual best picture Oscar nominees, leaving off “The Reader.”

How This Year Could Shake Down: Composed of “knowledgeable film enthusiasts, academics, filmmakers, and students in the New York metropolitan area,” the NBR occasionally make strange and/or questionable choices (“The Bucket List” made their top ten list in 2007).  But, the fact that they are much more mainstream in their selections than the more true-to-the-term critics awards that follow, usually provides a decent suggestion as to where awards season is heading.  Their best picture winner has gone on to win Oscar’s top prize two years running, and usually an acting winner or two follows suit. 

While pinpointing their specific choices are a challenge, one can assume “Invictus” (they historically love them some Clint Eastwood), “An Education,” “Up In The Air” and “Precious” will all be in the mix this time around, at least with a top 10 mention if not a major award. “Dreamgirls” failed to make their top ten in 2006, so it will be somewhat interesting to see how “Nine” plays out here.  For the hell of it, I’ll suggest this for the major categories: “Precious” takes best picture and supporting actress for Mo’Nique; “Invictus” takes best director and actor for Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman; Meryl Streep wins best actress for both “Julie & Julia” and “It’s Complicated,” while Stanley Tucci takes a joint best supporting actor honor for “Julie & Julia” and “The Lovely Bones.”

-continue to page 2 for takes on the NY & LA Film Critics Awards, the Critics Choice Awards, and the Golden Globes-