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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Also On Oscar Charts

I am both honored and amused with the obsessive detail with which some people chart my charts. They should read the copy that goes with the piece more carefully.

I approach the charts (and most of my writing) like a chess board. The industry is sitting in the opposite chair. What moves the industry makes, including marketing choices and film quality, is not up to me. If I had the five Best Picture nominees in the top five slots of my chart today, it would be nothing but dumb luck. No one can make that educated a guess right now… not without seeing the films… and not without seeing the films play with a real audience. There is a reason why I see contending pictures multiple times and it’s not just because I love film. It is because the season is most assuredly not about me. And The Academy does not vote based on my taste.

But more importantly… and using yet another analogy… the Oscar season is, to me, a horse race. I am not trying to be Sybil The Soothsayer. I am a guy in the booth upstairs at the track, calling the race. I am not a jockey. I don’t know what patch of wet dirt Horse X is going to hit before he hits it. I can’t foresee a bump between two horses that will allow a third horse to finish in the money.

Right now, I can lay out the odds… I can tell you what the history of the horses are… I can even go to the paddock and spend some time with some of the horses (the ones whose doors are open) and see if they are strong or lame. But now, in September, the horses aren’t even in the gate, even though the planning for the race is already months old.

Movies like Vanity Fair and Shall We Dance, which looked like potential winners, have already scratched. The Man O’ Wars of the field – The Aviator, Alexander and Closer – could easily pull a muscle in training and gamely race but limp out of the gate. And dark horses, like Phantom of the Opera and Spanglish and Sideways, could run the race of their lives.

Anyway, my mindset with these charts is to provide a snapshot of the moment, not necessarily to offer an answer to what will happen in January and February. It is not a measurement of manhood. And it is not meant to send people to the Bahamas to bet on the awards. For instance, Rope Burns may or may not move into this year… but rest assured that I didn’t pull it out of my rectum… and by the time I do my next chart in a few weeks, which will launch the weekly column, it may be out of the race definitively. But right now, it is a real possibility and if it is in, it changes the overall dynamic of what is possible. And if it is not, so be it. Some of you may feel a need to award the winner today, but not me… not what I do.

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3 Responses to “Also On Oscar Charts”

  1. Jerri says:

    Yes, people DO obsess about your Oscar charts but that’s why they’re on the web in the first place…they want to be a critic and be the first one to predict the winners. They also love to prove YOU wrong. Personally I feel it’s ridiculous to even try at this stage of the game, and we all know how unpredicable AMPAS can be on announcement day.

  2. Jack says:

    I saw Shall We Dance two days ago. It was much better than Vanity Fair. It was a wonderful movie. Why do you think it ‘have already scrathed’? Maybe it’s not an Oscar worthy movie, but it was very enjoyable and entertaining. You criticised the acting. But in my opinion Gere and Sarandon were great. Tucci was incredible funny. The Lopez I saw was not “J.Lo” but Lopez. Whatever… you may be right. It’s not an Oscar worthy movie. But it was very entertaining. My wife liked it very much…

  3. J says:

    Kate Bosworth? You’ve got to be kidding. She ranks up there with all the other “it” girls who simply don’t deserve the buzz. She barely got mentioned in reviews of BTS and when she did it was faint praise or pretty cardbord mentions. Barf.

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So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

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