20W2O: Episode 12 Wks to Go – The Desolation Of Smog

The world of covering the Oscar race has changed.

Of course, you know that. It’s not really news. I guess my question is whether awards coverage 2103 is the chicken or the egg of current journalistic trends.

We just did our 7th Best Picture chart for Gurus o’ Gold and the thing that strikes me most powerfully, is that the movies that were in the Top Ten are still the same 10 movies that are there today and none of them have ever dropped out of the 10… and obviously, nothing new has broken in.

Yesterday, we did a post-Globes nomination chart and only one other Guru beside myself chose to stay pat with the same Top Ten as just 2 or 3 days before. But did anything actually change with the Globes nominations? Well, there was movement inside the group of 10 select pictures. The overall number of films getting any votes went from 14 to 13. But was there any real change? No.

American Hustle didn’t get the full embrace after NYFCC voted for it… but after it also got a bunch of Globes nominations, it got the bear hug. And after Saving Mr. Banks didn’t get a picture nomination of either flavor, it fell a bit. Of course, The Wolf of Wall Street took an even bigger hit, falling from #6 (presumed in) to #9 (very borderline) after getting nominated. So go figure.

This is what I figure. I think that movie journalists, bless our hearts, have gone from keeping score on the pinball machine of the season to being under the glass… part of the game. Every time there is a noise, instead of just reporting it in the perspective of the hundreds of other sounds—and the biggest story, which is whether the ball is still in play—each noise is A GAME CHANGER.

But to misquote The Incredibles, if everything is a Game Changer, then nothing is a Game Changer.

We’ve pretty much been in award lockdown since before Venice/Telluride/Toronto. Take a look at the pre-V/T/T Gurus chart and you will see that the only film not in The Top Ten back then that’s there today and has been there since Gurus started voting weekly in November is Her, which became a member of the Top Ten and has stayed since it was shown at the NY Film Festival in October.

And yet, there we are, OMGing every award from every obscure and not-so-obscure awards-giving body (or individual person).

Now, to be fair, there are other categories. But even that shows very little movement since 6 charts ago. Really, the specific performances in American Hustle have been the one real change in the game since we started playing all those months ago.

The odd thing is that instead of this being hailed as a fairly even race between pictures and performances and below-the-line efforts on a dozen movies that are pretty well-liked and respected across the board, allowing the media and everyone else to slow it all down and to appreciate the pleasure of each award—knowing full well that in the end, with one of the longest Phase II periods ever, Academy members will see each of the dozen movies and just plain make up their minds for themselves—the intensity of every single freakin’ moment as a crucial change in the wind is sucking much of the pleasure out of the strong movie year we are experiencing.

(Was that a run-on sentence or just really, really long?)

I don’t expect The Oscars themselves to be a better or as good a show as the musical event thrown by Scott Rudin, CBS Films, and T-Bone Burnett for Inside Llewyn Davis. I’m not sure there will be as lovely a moment on the Oscar show as Richard Sherman leading a restaurant full of jaded indistry-ites in “Let’s Go Fly A Kite” with an able assist from Emma Thompson and the cast of Saving Mr. Banks. Will there be another experience like the first time you see Gravity on a big screen and wonder if you have seen the dawn of a new cinema? Can anyone ever know what is going to come out of the heart of Spike Jonze?

And there are thousands of people who vote and cover and think about awards season who are having all kinds of other wonderful experiences of their own along the way. That’s the point, isn’t it? To celebrate what is amazing about movies?

So next time you read, “X has happened and it’s changed the race dramatically,” take a deep breath and think. If the race has been between the same 15 movies and the same 35 actors, etc, for months already, does any one event really change… or even suggest anything changing amongst 5800 people who are, mostly, not voting for any of the prior awards?

Or more specifically, do you really believe that being included or not included in the votes of 88-ish foreign journalists really define the choices that thousands of Academy members will make next week?

Or even more specifically, do you really feel comfortable that, say, Joaquin Phoenix or Idris Elba isn’t locked into an Academy Best Actor slot, but Bruce Dern and Robert Redford are after being nominated for the same awards? Is Saving Mr Banks really out of the Best Picture race because it wasn’t nominated for a Best Picture Globe, but Nebraska and Rush are because they were?

Even the most statistically valid of arguments… that not being Globe nominated makes it unlikely that a film will win Best Picture at the Oscars… has exceptions. But the most basic one, of which films will be Academy-nominated, are invariably wrong if you compare the Globes 10 to the Academy 10.

All groups are now reading off the same small list of “legit contenders.” They have been for months and will be throughout the rest of the season. There will be—and have been—variations of which films and performances are chosen from that list. There is even the possibility of someone or something coming from completely off the small list.

Trends do start to happen. This is completely legit. But they don’t happen because of award nominations.

So stop, look at the movies, and don’t listen too much. You’re likely being sold a duck in a barrel… the very best one.

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