148 Days Til Oscar Nominations!
Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 8:00PM 
Do you ever marvel at the countdown clock in the lefthand sidebar and think "Wow, only ___ days until Oscar nominations!". I know I do. As of right now there are only 148 days and some hours left until Oscar nominations. 21 weeks! That means the universe has plenty of time to back me up on my current predictions or destroy them savagely. Either way is fun for me which is, I suppose, why I've never been able to quit predicting Hollywood's High Holy Night.
CHART UPDATES
Best Picture & Best Director - The Great Gatsby and Baz Luhrmann exit the charts, both moving to summer 2013. And though I never had faith in Gatsby as an actual finalist (the book is too perfect as a book) what can rush in to replace it on the charts? The race is still wide open as it should be.
Gatsby will sit this particular party out. He'll throw his own next Summer
But from where I sit though I'm sure some will disagree, the franchise hopefuls are toast. A lot of people still think that The Gidling of the Lord of the Rings Lily: Part 1 of 3 will factor in but Oscar is not Emmy and LotR is not The West Wing. Fantasy is still a novelty for Oscar voters and I can't imagine that handing the last one 11 Oscars won't feel like enough of a reward for Jackson & Middle Earth. Yes, they've had a decade long breather but I figure the only way The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is competing for the top prize is if people go crazier for it than the original trilogy. And that would be an unexpected journey.
Meanwhile I suspect that The Avengers and The Dark Knight Concludes Divisively will have a rough time making it through the wild rapids of winter campaigning and I don't expect either of them in the big show beyond a few craft nods. I don't even have faith in the eagerly awaited Django Unchained as an Oscar hopeful. Quentin Tarantino, when he leans toward retro remixes of less prestigious film genres, is just not necessarily for them (see: Jackie Brown, Kill Bill). Yes, he leans towards that.. always... and he has made two big Oscar hits. But Pulp Fiction was the kind of pop-cultural zeitgeist breakthrough that's impossible to ignore and Inglourious Basterds was a WW II fantasy and Oscar does his own share of fantasizing about that.
All of this nitpicking doubt leads me to believe that Beasts of the Southern Wild, a movie that doesn't look much like an Oscar film (yay!), is on its way to locked up status as an Oscar film. While it didn't become the crossover hit we'd hoped it would, it's done well enough financially to ride the "beloved indie / critical darling" into the mainstream competition for gold. (Think Winter's Bone.)
Best Actor - It's been 11 years since Denzel Washington won his second Oscar and in that whole time he hasn't done anything worth Oscar's time. Will they welcome him back if Flight is a big hit?
What's Denzel's poison? And was he drinking it before the Flight?
The way I see it mainstream dramas that become big hits are shoo in for Oscar play. Oscar likes drama best and when films without genre trappings that are intended for adults soar at the box office, they join in the applause. I'm feeling it'll hit. Just a feeling.
But the big question in Best Actor is whether the Weinstein's will try to convince AMPAS voters that Joaquin Phoenix is "supporting" Phillip Seymour Hoffman (or the other way around) in The Master. If they risk a double lead campaign and the film is the critical mega-success the internet seems to be expecting, could they be the first Actor Pair since *gulp* Amadeus (twenty-eight years ago) to hog 40% of the shortlist? It's hilarious (and depressing) to view Amadeus in retrospect and know that campaign teams would try to pretend that Salieri or Mozart were "supporting" players in their own riveting brutal musical duet.
Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress -- We discussed these last week here.
Best Supporting Actor - This category hasn't come into focus yet which should make the fall extra exciting. So for the moment, you can predict just about anything (at least here) and feel like a true psychic. You can feel like a psychic right up until the moment the films open and prove you wrong! But the foggy nature of the Supporting goods me wonder if I'm not underestimating those that have already arrived and delighted (like Matthew McConaughey and Michael Fassbender) despite the lowbrow nature of their roles... at least accordingi to Oscar's general aesthetics.
Ruth E Carter, two time Oscar nominees, doing retro-chic looks for Sparkle
Best Visuals and Best Aurals - UPDATES STILL IN PROGRESS -- THIS TAKES TIME.
The latest film to enter the ring visually and aurally is the Motown musical Sparkle (my review tomorrow) and while I don't expect Oscar play anywhere stranger things have happened in the below the line categories.
Screenplay, Animated, Foreign Film and the Complete Prediction Chart. Check them out and report back.
Reader Comments (53)
Nat: When it comes to a matter of a movie's quality (which isn't even what my comment was supposed to be about (I'll concede being more than a little unclear)), I understand you blasting me for making comments before seeing the movie. Yes, that comment about Playtime was a bad move. But do I think the Academy could possibly hold Hanna's general subject matter (no matter how good it is, it's still a child assassin film) against Joe Wright if Anna Karenina doesn't receive an absolutely, almost uniformly, rapturous response? Yes. Which is why I'm not comfortable yet with it as a Best Picture prospect. I'd actually kind of love that loving reception to come out and shock the Academy into giving it a nom, but I'm working under the perception right now that (based only on the subject matter of the film it's directly following) it needs that level of insanely passionate reception to get a Best Picture nom, and you should never rely on that reception forming around a film on early predictions. Early 2013 predictions after the reviews are out but before the noms are announced? Yes. But right now, I'm staying cool with what I view are currently the five safest picks (Argo, Flight, The Master, Hyde Park on Hudson and Beasts of the Southern Wild) and a couple wild cards (Seven Psychopaths and ParaNorman) in Best Pic.
Just to be clear, I don't think Dustin Lance Black is nearly on the level of greatness as Tony Kushner (in fact, I don't think DLB is on any level of greatness, but that's another story). I was merely drawing the comparison to illustrate that people assumed J. Edgar would be a lot better than it actually turned out to be based on his involvement. As the very underrated For Your Consideration made clear (if in an exaggerated manner), a screenwriter's involvement never guarantees quality in the final product.
I apologize if this has already been mentioned in the comments, but what about Cloud Atlas? I haven't researched reviews or buzz on it yet, but damn that 5 minute trailer they released for it was quite extraordinary stuff. Not that that translates into a good movie. Also, Am I the only guy not really looking forward to the Life of Pi? I just don't feel like it's going to be good, I might get grounded for this but I'm not really a big fan of Ang Lee (except Sense and Sensibility...I LOVE that movie).
As a side note, I LOVED Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Another Side Note: I'm still holding out for the Hobbit. Critics on blogs keep acting like it's getting old or not much excitement. Um, EVERYONE I know has been going wild for it. Don't count that one out.