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2010 was 
both a very interesting year for movies and a supremely uninteresting one for Oscars. While there were a number of excellent, director-driven pictures like “Inception,” “Black Swan” and “True Grit” (all of which did spectacularly well at the box office, to boot), the Oscar race only featured two horses: “The Social Network” and “The King's Speech.” This was established by September and held true to the awards, even if the probability tilted from about 70/30 in “The Social Network's” favor this time last year to 90/10 in “The King's Speech's” favor by January. The point being, only two pictures had a chance at Best Picture last year.
By contrast, 2011 is still a wide-open field as of this writing. Part of this is because a large percentage of the expected contenders for Best Picture have yet to be released. Another is that of those expected contenders there are invariably a couple clunkers we don't know about. Those of you old enough to remember 1999 will recall the seeming inevitability of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” sweeping the Oscars, since its entire cast seemingly was comprised of Oscar winners, and everyone was sweating Jude Law like he was going to win Best Supporting and become a $20 mil-per-picture megastar. Only it turned out the picture was a lot darker and less conventional (some said “shittier”) than people expected and lo and behold, the picture that cleaned up that year (“American Beauty”) wasn't on anyone's radar going into that year's nomination season.
But, worry not. I'm not about to let something dumb like uncertainty and the impossibility of predicting future events that unfold on a non-linear, quantum basis stop me from making several broad assertions about this year's Oscars. Save this column, bookmark it, and refer to it while lamenting that Eddie Murphy isn't getting enough chances to be funny during this year's ceremony. Because I'm from New York, and you know what that means: I know everything. Unless any of these predictions end up being wrong, in which case I was just kidding.
PREDICTION #1: Moneyball and Drive will be shut out.
The thing about people thinking Oscar season starts in September just because it (aberrantly) did last year is that the following year, they're going to look at September releases and start going “OMG OSCAR MATERIAL!” In the case of Moneyball, it's easy to look at it, see a lot of similar personnel and the fact that it's also based on a non-fiction bestseller and think “Social Network Redux.” Only problem is, the Academy was underwhelmed by “The Social Network,” and “Moneyball” doesn't even have the advantage of its predecessor's delirious critical buzz. If “Moneyball” gets any nominations at all, it'll be because November and December shaped up really, really weak.
As for “Drive,” critics loved it (as I did), but it would have needed to do earth-shattering business to break through from Cannes favorite to Oscar contender, and it didn't. Non-critics actually don't seem to have liked it much, to further diminish its chances for Oscars. The only nominations it has any chance at all for are an ever-diminishing likelihood of Albert Brooks landing one for Best Supporting Actor (which in a just world, he would win by shutout), and a couple like Cinematography or Editing (which I'd personally vote for, but I'm not in the Academy. Yet.)
PREDICTION #2: George Clooney will get multiple nominations in several categories but only win, at most, one.
He's going to be up for both “The Ides of March” (in which he acts, in addition to having co-written, co-produced, and directed) and Alexander Payne's “The Descendants” (in which he only acted, and about which I have another bold prediction in a bit). And, because he's George Clooney, such a dashed handsome devil, such a glorious movie star (he so dreamy . . .), the media is going to fall all over themselves writing until their keyboards break about him.
Only problem is, he's got five chances to be nominated: writing, producing, directing, and acting in “Ides of March,” and acting in “Descendants.” He's the lead in both, so one's going to cancel the other one out, leaving us with four possibilities. The chances of his winning in all four are steep enough as it is before we take into consideration the fact that a lot of Academy voters are going to think of him as an actor before all else, decreasing his chances of winning anything for “Ides of March,” since he's splitting the Clooney vote with his performance in “The Descendants.” His chances of winning anything for that decrease a bit more when we get to . . .
PREDICTION #3: The Descendants will be shut out except for Clooney, if he indeed actually wins.
“But wait, how can you say that, it doesn't even come out til December!” Well, this is where things get a little rickety and dependent on hearsay. “Descendants” director/co-writer Alexander Payne hasn't made a feature since 2004's “Sideways,” another notable Oscar also-ran that no one has rewatched in at least five years. This isn't because it was a bad movie. Alexander Payne's a good director and a good writer, but he makes quiet, unassuming pictures that are small in scale and specific to a given place and time. None of those things make for big Oscar winners; the Academy likes those all-things-to-all-people type pictures, with easy messages and flashy acting.
Also, “The Descendants” has been getting very tepid critical buzz from festivals. So there's that, too.
PREDICTION #4: No Lord of the Rings-style consolation prize Oscars for Harry Potter.
A number of critics, including friends of mine whom I respect greatly, are convinced that the enormously successful and recently-concluded “Harry Potter” series is going to get a bunch of nominations as a nod to the massive goddamn amount of money it made, as well as to the fact that the series got better as it went along, which is some down-is-up, black-is-white mess right there.
There's another element to this, which is the fact that, weirdly, Alan Rickman has never been nominated for an Oscar. He's got BAFTAs and all kinds of other statues, but never even been up for an Oscar. My critic friends posit that this means he'll get a nod for his consistently outstanding work as Snape over the course of the “Potter” movies, but I'm doubtful. “The Lord of the Rings” Oscar year was because everyone had collectively decided they were going to wait and give them the Oscars for the whole trilogy for the third movie, otherwise it would have swept three years in a row (a distinct possibility, considering how weak the fields were each year between 2001-03). The “Potter” movies, at best, got critics saying “wow, that was better than I thought it would be!” There's a difference there. “Deathly Hallows Part 2” should get a few FX noms but nothing else.
PREDICTION #5: A black-and-white silent foreign movie is going to make a lot of money in the US and get several Oscar nominations.
This is all contingent on it being marketed right, of course, but when “The Artist” drops in the United States, get ready for the biggest surprise hit of 2011. People who saw this at Cannes LOST THEIR MINDS. And I know it sounds like I've lost mine, and that I have my cloistered New York head up my out-of-touch-with-the-mainstream ass, but mark it, Dude. This is going to get crazy off-the-chain press, be hyped like hell, and a whole bunch of people are going to be like, “hahahahahahaha I'm going to a black-and-white silent European movie, what the fuck is wrong with the universe?” But they're going.
Keep in mind, too, when I say “a lot of money” I mean it's going to gross about $30 million, which is to say a lot of money by black-and-white silent foreign movie standards. File this one away for future reference, and when I'm proved right, I expect your adulation, and a retinue to fan me with palm fronds and feed me figs. Remember the names Michel Hazanavicius (writer-director) and Jean Dujardin (male lead). And remember what Tommy Lee Jones said in “The Fugitive,” another surprise Oscar winner, “Don't ever argue with the big dog, the big dog's always right.” In that analogy, I'm the big dog. Just so there's no misunderstanding.
PREDICTION #6: J. Edgar will get more nominations than any other picture, even though the critics are going to have a civil war over whether it sucks or is brilliant.
This is more a prediction about my fellow critics than anything else. Clint Eastwood is long overdue for some bullshit argument about whether he's overrated as a director or not, and this picture is the battleground over which the critics will have said argument. For one, anyone the slightest bit right-of-center in the critical community is going to flip the hell out about any gay/transvestite content screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar for his textbook-perfect script for “Milk”) contributes. Actually, whether there's any gay/trans content or not, right-of-center critics will convince themselves there is.
The bigger controversy will likely come from left-of-center critics pissed off that Eastwood takes it too easy on Hoover, who spent decades trying to purge the United States of every last vestige of leftism he could. Then the conservatives are going to jump in and start bellowing that the American left always underrated the threat of Communism (if they weren't actually Communists themselves), and things will degenerate from there. The upshoot? No one actually watches the movie because they're too busy grinding their political axes, and it'll get all the nominations everyone expects it to just because. It won't get goose-egged but it'll take one or two Oscars, tops.
PREDICTION #7: Fox Searchlight loses $40 million promoting Shame, gets a whole bunch of nominations, wins a handful.
British director Steve McQueen (real name) made a huge splash at Toronto with his movie “Shame,” and somehow managed to get a distribution deal with Fox Searchlight that prohibited them from cutting the movie, and obligated them to do one of their huge Fox Searchlight awards campaigns.
So what's the problem? It's got lots and lots and lots of full frontal nudity and explicit sex and basically is headed straight for a guaranteed NC-17. Again, if you're like me, you're still not seeing a problem here, even less so when I mention that Michael Fassbender has multiple full-frontal scenes, and Carey Mulligan does as well, as do many other extremely attractive people. But the problem with NC-17 movies is that there are whole huge chunks of the country where they are just never going to be screened, and where there's no way to even get the DVD. So, the only way for an NC-17 movie to make money—theoretically—is to be an enormous hit in the handful of places that aren't at the mercy of theater chains that won't show NC-17 movies. And, from all accounts, “Shame” does not have commercial hit written all over it. But Fox Searchlight is, apparently, obligated to spend lots of money on “Shame,” and on getting it lots of Oscar nominations, and so it will.
Once it gets those nominations, I predict an enormous upset in which Michael Fassbender wins Best Actor, the picture wins Best Editing, McQueen wins best director because the old people in the Academy forget that the old Steve McQueen is dead, and when this big, garrulous black English guy jumps up on stage, Ernest Borgnine causes a civil disturbance and the Price Waterhouse guys come out onstage with shotguns and fire a couple warning shots into the ceiling til everyone calms the hell down.
This is, admittedly, the longest shot of these predictions. On to the last one:
PREDICTION #8: The Help will get only two nominations, but win both.
Viola Davis is a dead lock for this and will remain so through the entire nominating, voting, and winning process. (Bonus prediction: she gets so pissed off at people bringing up the movie's controversy every time she gets interviewed that eventually she's going to tell some reporter to go fuck herself—it'll be a young white woman, who'll write something about being told to go fuck herself that critics will have Twitter aneurysms about for a week—but this'll all be forgotten by Oscar time).
What's the second one? Best Picture. That's right. No screenplay, no director, no Emma Stone, no Octavia Spencer, no Bryce Dallas Howard, no costume design, none of that. Just a seemingly arbitrary and incongruous Best Picture nom. Which it's going to win. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Anyway. September is, admittedly, way too early to even be talking about any of this nonsense. Take all these predictions with a big grain of salt, preferably on the rim of a big margarita glass, and remember this koan: “It's all bullshit anyway.”
Danny Bowes' is a prolific writer and critic who lives in New York City. You can look for his column every Wednesday, and read him online at moviesbybowes.blogspot.com.
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... Yeah, I agree. I don't think the "Harry Potter" films will be winning anything. Plus, I feel like "Lord of the Rings" was much more of a production than the "Harry Potter" film series. Also, I haven't seen "The Help" yet, but everyone keeps telling me really good things about it. Its on my list of movies to see soon, and from what I've heard, it deserves to win its nominations. I can't wait to see it. And I really need to still see "Moneyball", another film that I've heard nothing but rave reviews about. |
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