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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, January 23rd, 2018 - 7 Comments »
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20 Weeks To Oscar: Nomination Morning

For an unpredictable season, this was pretty predictable.

The niche movies that settled early – Lady Bird, Get Out, Call Me By Your Name – got in. The rest – I, Tonya, The Big Sick, Mudbound – did not. Phantom Thread, which is in so many ways a traditional Academy film, was the surprise tag on the day. A lot of people had written off Darkest Hour, but it got the Best Picture nod, though not a surprise in other categories that would suggest it could possibly cause an upset.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Shape of Water, Dunkirk, and The Post were widely expected nominees.

So now what? Probably not much, in terms of big surprises.

It’s very easy to imagine:
Best Picture: 3 Billboards
Best Director: Guillermo del Toro
Best Actress: Frances McDormand
Best Actor: Gary Oldman
Best Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell
Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney
Best Original Screenplay: Three Billboards
Best Adapted Screenplay: Call Me By Your Name

Things could swing in a couple of those categories, but not by much. It’s the same list you would have expected before the nominations this morning.

On the other hand… Three Billboards is under attack from the PC police.

Universal will keep pushing Get Out hard. Focus got “do-over” opportunities for their two Best Picture nominees that many felt would not have gotten their BP slots, Phantom Thread and Darkest Hour. Warner Bros isn’t abandoning Dunkirk. And at Searchlight, they have two children, one the more cerebral (3BB) and one more of the heart, The Shape of Water, which as the frontrunner for Best Director has a legit chance of becoming the BP winner too. (And Lady Bird isn’t a dead issue to win BP either.)

Nomination morning is reset morning.

How can the consultants, publicists, and marketers turn the corner and make their movie the movie of the moment, a film of importance, a film of higher value, a film you love and shouldn’t be afraid to imagine winning?

Of course, the easy assumption is that things are now baked in an won’t change. And that may well end up being the case.

But the season is still soft.

This is when the hard-boiled will of the team behind any film can rise and change the game.

Three Billboards needs Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson out there explaining why the movie is about something profound and about moving forward, not about lingering in the pain of the moment (however long it has lasted).

Focus didn’t really explain why Darkest Hour was so much of the moment when they released this film. They could do this now.

Phantom Thread relied heavily on the shoulders of Vicky Krieps and Mark Bridges up until now… if that changes and PTA is also willing to have them explain the film a bit more, the ball can be moved.

Dunkirk‘s unique place in filmmaking can be further exploited.

Universal has done great work in positioning Get Out as more than a horror comedy (though this is probably the top of the mountain).

Context is in order for The Shape of Water… a movie about movies… Oscar loves that shit. (Also, true here.)

Lady Bird needs to stay solid and emphasize that it is about the future of a young woman… thus, the future of all women.

I am a fan of Call Me By Your Name and The Post, but neither is winning this year.

In meetings all over town, the question of whether Phase II will be a war or a love letter is being determined. Me? I think the door is open just wide enough for people to come out fighting. But we shall see… about this time next week, just before every single person alive is honored in Santa Barbara, we will know.

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7 Comments »

7 Responses to “20 Weeks To Oscar: Nomination Morning”

  1. The Pope says:
    January 23, 2018 at 11:58 am

    While I agree Call Me By Your Name will win Adapted Screenplay, I think Lady Bird will win Original. For the simple reason that for all its inventiveness and (ticklish) offensiveness, Three Billboards, like all of McDonagh’s work, exists solely within a conceit, a construct, a frame of McDonagh’s impression of mid-America.

    Lady Bird feels authentic. Ask anyone who has been through a Sacred Heart school and they will say the same thing. Yes, Gerwig’s screenplay is charming and warm and drizzled with the clichés of final year and going to the prom, but it always feels that the characters have actually lived in real life.

    For me, Three Billboards… doesn’t deliver that experience.

  2. lockedcut says:
    January 23, 2018 at 1:47 pm

    Picture will be won as always by least divisive film benefitting from an instant runoff, so probably can easily eliminate from contention 3 billboards, phantom thread, and Dunkirk.

    I’m rooting for something bizarre but it’s be nice to see del toro join the other two amigos.

  3. Sam E says:
    January 23, 2018 at 4:59 pm

    Moonlight and Birdman were the least divisive films nominated for best picture?

  4. palmtree says:
    January 23, 2018 at 5:10 pm

    More fatal to 3BB than the so-called PC police is that the movie isn’t very good. I mean, well-made and well-acted and well-plotted, but the substance of the movie is a bit shallow. I mean, if they need to explain to people that the movie is really about something profound, well then…it might just mean the movie isn’t.

  5. Stephen Barrow says:
    January 23, 2018 at 5:14 pm

    I’m disappointed for Martin McDonagh (as director), Judi Dench, Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg (if these two “split their vote” how didn’t Harrelson and Rockwell?). I’m very happy for Lesley Manville (although we haven’t had Phantom Thread in the UK yet). I’m a bit surprised by Denzel, Meryl and Christopher Plummer (did they need or even want these noms?). I have a feeling Oscar will revert to what used to be expected and Del Toro and Shape of Water will win (we haven’t had that one yet either!)

  6. Bob Burns says:
    January 23, 2018 at 6:54 pm

    now name the publicists running the campaigns behind all these films, so we know who to blame for the negative campaigns.

  7. Greg says:
    January 26, 2018 at 2:40 pm

    Still holding out hope for Laurie Metcalf.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

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.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon