20 Weeks to Oscar By David Polandpoland@moviecitynews.com
20 Weeks To Oscar: What We Talk About When We Talk About Best Picture
The die is likely already cast, even if all the votes are not. My experience of talking to voters is that those who are waiting are trying to see the short film selections and perhaps a doc or foreign language film, not hedging on Best Picture.
But what that answer is… I can make a list… I make a list every week… but do I know? I must admit, I have never felt this far from knowing this far into the season in 17 years of doing this.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: Is The Door Wide Open Again?
Could the Academy’s bizarre preferential balloting system be the defining issue in coming to a Best Picture winner this year?
And let me note again, before going any further, that the existence of the preferential ballot system at The Academy is IDIOTIC and I will forever believe that this was a bad joke foisted on The Academy by an exiting Bruce Davis.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: It’s Gettin’ Hot In Here
There are a lot of theories out there about how to read the tea leaves this season. But for me, the truth is that I have never seen anything quite like it.
PGA and SAG, Birdman. Globes, Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel. LAFCA and NYFCC, Boyhood. Coming up in short order… DGA, BAFTA, WGA.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: Ragin’
I don’t know that I have seen anything like this before. It’s kind of about Oscar season. It’s mostly not. But Oscar has yelled “pull” and now everyone is shooting at the clay pigeons. And the bullets are flying from every direction.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: The Most Shocking Event Of The Week!!!!
The Answers…
Clint Eastwood.
Bradley Cooper.
Alexandre Desplat.
Foxcatcher.
The LEGO Movie.
Life Itself.
The Question…
What are six Oscar occurrences today that are legitimately more surprising than Selma “only” getting a Best Picture nod?
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: Screenermania!
An industry in which a $2.4 million buy-in ($900,000 before you are nominated for anything) just for DVDs—before ads, books, promo items, appearance costs, etc,—to be considered “serious” about receiving awards is a problem.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: The Trouble With Endings (spoilers)
This piece deals with the end of three Oscar Best Picture candidates, reveling the ending of American Sniper, The Imitation Game, and Unbroken. DO NOT PROCEED is you haven’t seen the films or do not want to know the endings… you have been warned!
SPOILER ALERT!!!
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: SNUB!
A snub is a smile turned upside down. That’s the First thing that always hits me when people scream, “SNUB!.” In order for some potential nominee who didn’t get nominated to be snubbed, someone who did get nominated has to have been undeserving in the eyes of the screamer(s). Second thing I think of is…
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: How To Get Nominated
I’m starting this piece with less than an hour to go in the Oscar voting. And my advice (this is the cheap stuff… if I ever became an awards consultant, my advice would be way more valuable than this) is different for Phase II. But here goes… a list. I hate lists. But it feels like the right format here…
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: In A Holding Pattern
There will be plenty to do for the next week, as we wait for the only nominations that the industry actually cares about. The Critics Choice Awards… Golden Globes… in some ways, these are really the start of the award season for real people. Neither group is particularly legit and neither will have more than a very, very minor influence on the ultimate Oscar winners. More, these televised awards tend to continue the process the settling.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: Sexism and Racism and Awards Voting, Oh My! (2015 Edition)
This morning’s PGA vote is as unsurprising as unsurprising can be. To begin with, there is nothing included that is out of the box that has been defined for months. American Sniper has built a lot of heat over the holidays. Nightcrawler has been gaining heat for a while already. And Foxcatcher has been expected by most prognosticators since Cannes, pushed into “unexpected” status only in the last few weeks.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: The Soft Settling
This is the time of year when I usually write a story about what Bill Condon coined, “The Great Settling.” What that means, essentially, is that Academy voters have now had a chance to watch their DVDs, go to their screenings, hear some whispers, be fed a bunch of narratives, and get advertised to endlessly for a month and the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: Another Oscar Zit
Walter Keane’s daughter from his first marriage, Susan, believes her dad’s story. And she built a website.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: Oscar Zit Of The Day
Wasn’t it just 48 hours ago that I wrote about the foolishness of reconsidering Selma as a work of art because of what may a legitimate beef on the detail of the film by a witness to a part of the history the film covers? Now we have an eruption from the only participating central subject in Foxcatcher, Mark Schultz. He is angry, angry, angry at Bennett Miller…
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: History Is Written By…
I don’t care whether Selma is a work of precise historical accuracy. I do care how it makes me and other audiences feel, how it makes us think, what it has to say. This is just as true of The Interview and American Sniper and Foxcatcher and The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything and Unbroken and Big Eyes and The Penguins of Madagascar.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: Box Office
After The Hurt Locker won with less than $15 million in the box office till… after The Artist won with $32 million… And even 12 Years A Slave at $50 million and 4 well-respected contenders over $100 million… does “a wasted vote” exist anymore?
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: The Trouble With Biopics
We’re close to an all-biopic Oscar season. Maybe that’s why it’s such a blur right now. The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, Selma, Unbroken, Foxcatcher, Mr. Turner, Big Eyes, and American Sniper are all specifically biopics. Boyhood and Birdman are fiction, but have major biographical elements driving them. Lots of bios.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: First Major Event
Guild nominations are rarely outside of the well-established box. It takes a series of those events in coordination to change the game. Critics awards… lovely. But enjoy them for what they are, because they may not match nominations, much less winners.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar – The Ides Of November
It’s still early. And it’s so late! There are a few titles floating out there, waiting for their moment in the spotlight. But it’s getting awfully late to make a first impression.
Read the full article »20 Weeks To Oscar: A Thin Line Between Love & Hate
When people start answering questions under the protection of anonymity (“isn’t identified for lack of wanting to be seen taking a position on this in the New York Times because there is only downside from being quoted in a story like this”)… well, professional spinners is gonna spin. And professional reporters are, it seems, going to take a side when they don’t have truly firm facts.
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