20 Weeks
24 Weeks To Oscar….
Add, 10:30p Friday – Pushing out the column this week, I overlooked one title that I really do think is a serious contender for Best Picture now… and that is Inglourious Basterds (the chart has now been corrected). It is not the film I would normally expect to get in and I discounted the likelihood around release. But with Toronto flopping as an award parade, a quality movie-movie that many people really, really enjoy – not unlike The Departed – becomes more and more likely to make the cut.
I wish I could say Where The Wild Things Are is in that same position of potential, but while the film is gorgeous and powerfully built below the conscious surface, I suspect that a film that will be a classic in future will not be a film that plays strongly and clearly enough right now for the over-50 set. So, the film may turn out – like Antichrist and The White Ribbon – to be one of the films that sticks for the longest time from 2009, I don’t see Oscar written all over it.
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What is clear is that there is plenty of room to fight for a slot at this point. Of my Top 12
20 Weeks – A First Look The Oscar Season To Come
35 Weeks To Go
The Next Oscars Will Be Rated X
Some will try to make it The Year of The Woman, with Nine leading the way for such hopefuls as Julie & Julia, Bright Star, Precious, An Education, Broken Embraces, the 2 SPC Coco Chanel movies, Amelia, Cheri, and even the female director of The Hurt Locker. And maybe they will have a point
Summer of Love
Why has the idea of doing my Summer Preview: 20 Weeks of Summer been like anticipating a trip to a dentist this year?
I guess it’s because so much of this upcoming summer is so not for me.
I mean, I am actually looking forward to Transformers 2. Not being irritated by it would be great, but should this really be the film I am excited about?
Terminator: Salvation? I hope so… but God, does McG’s name on it scare me.
I think Angels & Demons will be a lot better than the first of that series, but how excited can I get?
Up is certainly going to be very good, but Nemo, The Rat & The Wall will be hard to beat.
I would love to love The Girlfriend Experience, but everything about the movie screams ambivalence.
Land of The Lost and Year One? Surprise me please!
I am pretty sure I will get on board The Taking of Pelham 123. That could make a nice mid-summer adult pleasure.
The great two week span for me is likely to be Public Enemies and Bruno. It’s a big ball move for Mann to be doing period with handheld digital and Cohen will surely be just balls out.
God, I hope that Julie & Julia is actually great… and come on, Quentin… hit one out again… it’s been a long time!
I don’t know… another Harry Potter movie kind of defines it all for me… should be good… but hard to get excited for it…
Where’s the surprise going to come from?
20 Weeks – 2 Weeks To Go
Ladies & Gentlemen
23 Comments »20 Weeks To Oscar: 3 Weeks To Go
D. It Is Written
The great irony of this year
13 Weeks to Oscar – The Year of Ambiguity
We’ve seen The Year of the Bio-Pic, The Year of the Big Director, The Year of The Indie … but this year, it’s The Year of Ambiguity.
But like years past, it is looking like the thing that it is the “year of” may turn out to be the thing that becomes the least Oscar celebrated thing of all.
Australia, Che, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Defiance, Doubt, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, The Wrestler … all ambiguous in different ways … some ambiguous emotionally, some intellectually, some morally, some in style … but hard to nail down.
Great for critics. Crappy for marketing.
The rest…
And the charts…
15 Weeks to Oscar
It is that ambivalence that has made a near-lock out of Slumdog Millionaire, which would be seen as a strong underdog in other seasons, but as one of the few films that truly wears its heart (and movie love) on its sleeve, it has stepped into a front-running role. Anticipation for Benjamin Button and even a fear of Australia are similarly based on the idea that they will pull the trigger in a big way. (The love and fear of Luhrmann remain unavoidably within millimeters of each other.)
Which brings me to Revolutionary Road, one of those
20 Weeks To Oscar – Do Politics Matter?
Four years ago, it was one of our softest Oscar seasons.
Eight years ago, it was one of our best.
How much does the election matter?
2004 didn’t seem terribly urgent, as the election went. As much as people wanted Bush out in this town, by this time of year it already seemed pretty unlikely that John Kerry had it in him to overthrow the W.
There was something rather retro about the season, with The Aviator, Ray, and Finding Neverland all set in the past; Million Dollar Baby feeling for all the world like a 50s period drama, and the only “current” movie was Sideways, which was, as most Payne/Taylor films are, kinda 70s.
Left behind were Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Sea Inside, The Motorcycle Diaries, Collateral, House Of Flying Daggers, Bad Education, and others
20 Weeks – Waiting…
The films will start landing in earnest in about two weeks, and between October 28 and November 21, most of the answers of what the season will really be will be answered.
But until then, the dance of Oscar is complicated by two major elements. First, the election is definitely making people nervous. They don
22 Weeks – Corrections, We Have Corrections…
As usual, the first round of 20 weeks charts have plenty of flaws and oversights… though some of the “oversights” are intentional.
Here are some:
I noticed on your prediction charts that you have THE DUCHESS spelled incorrectly (DUTCHESS)
One minor correction on the “22 weeks to Oscar” page – the release date for “Australia” is November 26, not November 14 (it was changed about a month ago).
where is Elsa Zylberstein?
ILYSL is gaining serious traction
22 Weeks To Oscar
The charts…
I am absolutely looking forward to the films at the top of the leader board. But the W.s and the Australias and the Seven Pounds and, of course, the Slumdog Millionaire, is where the fun seems to be this season. Winning
20 Weeks Of Summer… Wish Fulfillment
A theme for the summer has finally emerged from the back of my brain pan.
It’s not the most original idea, but it’s come together in the reflection of Iron Man‘s massive opening and the rising tide of expectation for Sex & The City, the male and female conduits.
But even more so, It was about figuring out the problem with Speed Racer? There was no character in that film that became the connective tissue to a wider audience. Speed is, pretty much, a kid in a fast toy. The emotional rooting interest was never offered in the advertising and the critics rarely noticed it, as they reached for vomit bags because too much movement tends to upset people over 30.
Of course, as I said from the moment I saw the film, the film is primarily for children, who dream, like Speed, of going fast, winning races, and receiving perfect love from their parents. But they didn’t sell that.
It’s Wish Fulfillment, Stupid.
The rest….
And updated gross projection charts…
20 Wks Of Summer Preview Week
Geeks and Girls have got to be drooling coming into the season. Not only is there an new Indiana Jones, but there is a great comic book hero coming along with some very good buzz, a new Batman from a hero director, a Star Wars that is supposed to look like a cartoon, and the return of two beloved geek colors, green and red. For women, Hollywood responded strongly to some female-driven hits in recent summers with no less than a half-dozen films aimed at them.
The big question mark of this summer is whether Sandler, Ferrell, Stiller, Carrell, Myers, and Pineapple Express is just too much boy comedy for one summer. It