O3… Looking Ahead

I am a big proponent of the notion that Phase II of the Oscar season – post-noms – is a second race. And there may be some big surprises this year… but probably not.
In the Top 8 categories, the nominations fell in such a way to make it even more clear in most categories than it was before.
For instance, Penelope Cruz is back to being a near-lock for the otherwise snubbed Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Ms WInslet out of that race. I think Wall-E is now a near-lock to win Best Original Screenplay with the three underdog nominations and only Milk in its way in a real way. (Remember, everyone votes for the win, making it more of a popularity contest, and Milk will likely get its consolation prize in Actor.)
The only Top 8 race I now see as seriously competitive is Best Actor, where Penn, Rourke or Langella will win, but it could easily be any one of the three. A bit less competitive is Best Actress, where Winslet has a lead over Streep and everyone else is just happy to be there (especially Barker & Bernard, even while losing out on Kristin Scott Thomas).
Outside of the Top 8, the big battle is between The Dark Knight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which go head-to-head in Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Makeup, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects… aka, the only categories aside from Mr Ledger where there is any chance to win gold.
I am willing to take a flier on 6 of the Top 8 categories with wins for Slumdog Milionaire in Picture, Director, and Screenplay (plus Film Editing, Sound Editing, Score and Song, assisted by the lack of Springsteen), and the other 5 Oscars going to 5 different movies/performances.
So…
I see 7 Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire.
2 for Wall-E
And somewhere between 2 and 4 apiece for Button and/or Batman.
I don’t think there will be more than 1 win for any other film.
CHARTS
Picture
Actor/Supp Actor
Actress/Supp Actress
Screenplays
Director

O2

Getting a look at the rest of the nominations, a few more comments…
The cynical view that dead jews are tough to beat in The Academy was sustained by The Reader, a movie with limited ad budget, a conflicted lead actress, and very mixed reviews pushing right past the mega-movie and the hard push for Doubt.
Scott Rudin will have to hang tightly onto his Oscar for last year after getting smacked in the nose on both Doubt and the less surprising miss, Revolutionary Road. Harvey Weinstein must be guffawing and guffawing loud.
As was always kind of obvious, Ben Button lead the nominations with a one-off-the-record 13. And it is realistically in the race for eight – Art direction, Cinematography, Costume design, Makeup, Original score, Sound mixing, and Visual effects. Expect it to take 3 or 4 of these.
Slumdog Millionaire’s BP cause was pushed forward a little bit more by the Reader ascension.
The complete list of “real” surprises:
The Reader for BP
Daldry for Director/Reader
Winslet in lead for Reader (only because of category games)
Downey, Jr for Tropic Thunder
Melissa Leo for Actress
Angelina Jolie for Actress
In Bruges for O screenplay
Frozen River for O screenplay
2 song noms for Slumdog… of just 3 nods… and none for HSM or for Springsteen’s song for The Wrestler
(ADD, 7:16a – The even more remarkable thing about The Reader, the one giant shock to the Oscar system this year, is that it got 5 nominations and all but 1 was a Top 8 nod, Picture, Actress, Director, Adapted Screenplay. (The 5th was cinematography… top of the next tier of nods.)
(Correction, 7:37a – Mr. Weinstein is back in NYC as of last night.)

O-Noms

As expected, the biggest surprises were in the supporting categories.
As unexpected, the biggest surprise of all was The Reader, which not only saw Ms. Winslet once nominated for Lead for that film, but got a Best Picture nod ahead of both Doubt and The Dark Knight (another black eye for WB as they lay off in spite of the superhero’s muscular box office).
Surprise success for Frozen River with Original Screenplay and Actress.
All noms after the jump….
Best motion picture of the year
*

DP/30 @ Sundance

Ashton Kutcher
Humpday
James Toback
And on the way… Pierce Brosnan, Rose Byrne, Michael Cera, Peter Gallagher, Bobcat Goldthwait, Black Dynamite, Carey Mulligan, Chris Rock, Susan Sarandon, Charlene Yi, and others…
But for now, the DP/30 that commenter LexG has been waiting for… let’s hope he can contain himself…



Bill Hader & Kristin Wiig, Greg Mottola, and Jesse Eisenberg & Kristen Stewart sit down to discuss their Sundance release (coming soon via Miramax), Adventureland.
The Video after the jump…

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BYOB – President 0, Day One

Less filling… tastes great…

A Great & Glorious Day

Let us all hope that he can be for America and by extension, the world, what we all hope… an honorable man, a muscular politician, a force for a moral ideal… a beacon.
Bless America and our best dreams.

DP/30 – Charlie Kaufman

BYOB 11709

Couldn't Be Happier…

I just got a press release – which I cannot cut & paste on the iPhone – that Overture and the folks who brought you Little Miss Sunshine, Big Beach, committed to make the feature of Jack Goes Boating, a LAByrinth Theater Co production, that I loved a couple of years ago.
It’s Phillip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz as a postmodern Norton & Kramden, who live through a time when Jack (Hoffman) focuses on love over pot and hope over misery. Ortiz’s character, on the other hand, has a somewhat successful marriage which may or may not be in trouble. Daphne Ruben-Vega reprises as his wife. And new to the foursome, Amy Ryan as Jack’s romantic focus.
And Hoffman will make this his film directing debut… smart choice. Small, doable. His big challenge will me opening it up.
But these characters are great and warm and funny and indelible. Good news.

Duh

Just got an alert from NYT that Alan Rosenberg has given up on a strike vote.
My response titles this entry.
The line between news, gossip, and awareness is blurry these days, but there is guessing and there is tea leaf reading and then there is this… signals that are 99% accurate no matter how much no one knows anything.
When SAG delayed the vote, the strike essentially ended. When WGA went out on strike on Nov 1, SAG, which has the most to lose – easily – in this year’s run of union obsessions, lost all leverage unless WGA went out for more than 6 months, which was never happening.
The question of import since before Christmas remains… can SAG even salvage contactual table scraps now.
And those blaming Rosenberg and Allen are wrong. There was no good answer so long as SAG struck alone and AFTRA was happy to fuck the SAGgers. The only better choice was to truly radicalize the membership… which would have never happened.
So now all the know it alls can claim that they could have done better. But they are full of shit.
SAG brought a knife to a gun fight. And now, AMPTP will slowly bleed out the acting middle class.
And so it goes.

BYOB – A Man In Sundance

A Sundance Chart

Who doesn’t always need just one more chart?
This one is designed to get a handle on the films most likely to find buyers (or not), to give you an overview of the market that Sundance has become, and to offer a daily perspective on what seems to be brewing.
We won’t be surprised when this one gets imitated.

Here is the link. It’s going to be updated daily… as all our coverage is on The MCN Sundance Page and The MCN Sundance Blog.
I expect we will be posting more every day as we go… after all, they’ve only shown one movie so far. We’ve only just begun…