It’s a very odd time to be talking Oscar.

We’re 19 days away from the Presidential election, but 20 weeks from the Academy Awards. And the studios know it.

It’s been over a month since Toronto and two weeks since my last set of charts and in that time… very little has changed. Of the ten or so films legitimately in the Best Picture race, only Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight are actually available for viewing by most voters and/or journalists.

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’t want to become part of that wave of the conversation and they don’t want their talent to get sucked into that conversation, in great part because in the end they will not be releasing the movies during the election cycle.

Second, the season is filled with movies that are not really built to be leggy. Political, epic, and serious, these are films that could outstay their welcome. It is all too easy to forget that in the end, it is about the movie. But how you place that movie can make a difference.

None of the films amongst the likely pool of BP nominees is in danger of being ignored by Academy voters. They all have enough bait to get the eyeballs, whether it’s the familiar director or the major stars or the weight of the subject. So they can afford to slide into the late part of the pre-critics group season.

Ironically, the only one in the group that doesn’t carry that kind of built-in weight is Slumdog, which is also the movie that is likely to end the year as the most inherently entertaining.

It’s funny. The awards season is a series of events as bait that get us from one period to another. We are still waiting to get excited about the movies themselves. Then there is the first couple of weeks in December, during which the vast majority of the critics groups set their nominations… and if you don’t get nominated, you can’t win. The Academy nominations close soon after New Years. Then the nominations come out. Then there is the run from nomination to the actual awards. And every time it seems like there is nothing of interest left to examine, a new phase in the process arrives.

The problem is when we try to leap ahead of any section of the process, as each result informs the next. Every now and again there is a Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, where we know where the whole thing is going. But mostly, it is a cipher that shows itself slowly to those staying focused.

For instance, there is clearly an opportunity for Kristin Scott Thomas to grab some critics awards for her performance. But one screening of Benjamin Button or The Reader or Doubt could put an overwhelming roadblock in her way. At that point, how do Academy members become familiar with her and her performance, given that she’s on Broadway doing Chekhov right now?

And how do we judge how intense the love for Slumdog will be this year? Will LAFCA go for Frieda Pinto, suddenly throwing her into the race? Or will they get behind Hiam Abbass, who is another underdog? Or will they be unable to resist having Debra Winger at the table at the awards ceremony?

It’s a funny thing, balancing the rational reality that the awards season is not really all about what’s “best,” but is really about a lot of process… and then about what some very specific groups think is “best.” We all want it to be about love and, damn it, a lot of time it’s really about getting that green card so you can keep working the season.

It will be easier once we get to really chew on the movies… the movies that we won’t be spitting out.

I can’t wait.

– David Poland
October 16, 2008

By this time in most past years, the awards season was well under way, at least inside The Geltway. This year, not so much.

Why?

2007 taught studios, in spite of a win by a November release that went the Aug/Sept.Oct festival route, that you can still open late and be in the Oscar game. The only Best Picture film that was released prior to November 9 last year was Michael Clayton… starring George “Golden Boy” Clooney.

It’s not just that the sheep roam wherever the last success was. Really, that’s not the case at all. What the phenomenon speaks to is that it costs a ton to keep a film alive for months after a Sept/Oct release, even if you have had a success.

The 2006 line-up of Best Picture nominees saw less than 18% of their domestic box office after nomination. And that includes the one December release, Letters from Iwo Jima, which earned more than 80% of its $13.8 million gross after nomination.

Aside from The Dark Knight, the summer mega-hit, the earliest release on the first Gurus o’ Gold chart this year is Changeling, on October 24. On top of that, the only Toronto International Film Festival film expected to be in play before the fest that came out of the fest in play was Jon Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. As is often the case, two massive underdogs, The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire, emerged unexpectedly from the festival, both to be released by – who else? – Fox Searchlight.

As things lay out, the only non-TIFF movies being released in October that are chasing seriously are Body of Lies, W., and Changeling, the last of which premiered in Cannes in May.

Thing is, even when you get past the timing issues, this season seems heavily niche-oriented, even more than normal. For instance, Frost/Nixon is a pretty straight, but inherently amusing look at how all politics is show biz, and right now, it’s getting a lot of love unseen. W., on the other hand, is carrying some negative weight because of Oliver Stone’s recent history. But sight unseen, only one seems likely to be in the race at the end… and if W. is a brilliant Terry Southern-esque satire, it leaps ahead. And what of Che?

Slumdog Millionaire is the only serious underdog in the race. Everyone who has seen it knows that it delivers. And Searchlight will get it seen. So, it has a huge advantage as this year’s little engine that should.

Which period epic will emerge, Paramount Vantage’s Revolutionary Road, Paramount’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Paramount Vantage’s Defiance?

How would you like to be a serious minded drama? Revolutionary Road, Gran Torino, Changeling, The Wrestler, The Soloist, Doubt, and The Visitor are all chasing a certain constituency.

And how will being the only massive hit in play help The Dark Knight to a slot?

Will Milk be dragged into the political group with Nixon and Bush or will be it be a unique drama that illuminates the hypocrisies we still live with? Or more to the point, is there another movie that targets a significant gay portion of the Academy, and if it is up to Van Sant’s best standards, can it help but become a nominee c/o that constituency?

Of course, the biggest problem for the whole shebang is that the political story of 2008 is much more interesting than anything that seems to be coming up at the movies. I mean, a lot of good movies… but is there the truly great on the docket?

I hope so.

But this tone sets us for the pleasure of some real surprises. 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… strong… well acted and directed… all great. But discovery is the great narcotic.

I want to walk out of the theater after seeing Ben Button and say, “That movie HAS to be nominated or I will declare jihad!” I really do want to. Really, I want to feel that way about any movie… not just “that was really quite excellent,” but LOVE.

Of course, Love would have little to do with whether The Reader leaps into the fray in December. As always, there is one thing much stronger than love when we talk about awards season and no matter how well-intended and virginal filmmakers, critics, prognosticators and studios may wish to be, it is the root of this very expensive, beloved, personal art form.

But Love feels so much better as a rationalization.

See you in a couple of weeks…

– David Poland
September 25, 2008

Are we really starting The Oscar Season with just 22 movies in serious play… really 12 that look like serious Best Picture contenders… and Che’ just floating out there, waiting to land?

It’s kind of crazy, really.

This time last year, we were looking at 40 legitimate possibilities, at least.

I chose to wait another five weeks until doing my first Oscar chart for the season this year. In some ways, it’s counterintuitive. Studios continue to start their awards work earlier, even though they are talking a lot less about their game this year than in years before. But there was also some sense last year of the shark being jumped (or the fridge being nuked, if you prefer)… that everything has become examined beyond sanity. And that much of the hubbub just doesn’t matter.

At this point of the year, we are all guessing, particularly this year, where there have been no serious Best Picture contenders landing so far. (Sorry, Dark Knight fans, but while Heath Ledger has a decent shot at this point, the movie does not.) In order to be in this game, you need to know what product you have to aim at the target about now.

Fox Searchlight did a last minute turn as Juno became their clear film of choice at Telluride… but they were at Telluride with it. And the Eastwood backdoor entries are back again this year, but with an official place on the schedule. There still could be a backdoor surprise effort, like the Weinsteins’ Scott Rudin movie, The Reader… but probably not. (The one 2009 title that screams “They could make December!” is DreamAmount’s The Lovely Bones, though Par needs Benjamin Button to make a LOT of money and awards talk will help and DW’s side of that mountain is pushing The Soloist hard as they exit the auditorium.)

As is normal at this time of year, it’s the usual suspects out there, though one also must acknowledge that unlike previous years, there are not a lot of other films that seem to be positioned to be passed over for the vets. How many years have we spent talking about Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott, Ed Zwick, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant, Jon Demme, Sam Mendes, Joe Wright, Clint Eastwood, Mike Leigh, Fernando Meirelles, and the Coensas we start down this road?

Is David Fincher really “the new boy on the block?” Can Soderbergh become The Comeback Kid by bringing Che’ back to life after it was so viciously attacked at Cannes? Even John Patrick Shanley still carries the scent of Moonstruck on him. Really, John Hillcoat – who we will all have to pray won’t get The Harvey/Bob Treatment, since his work is so iconoclastic in some ways that it seems all too easy to unbalance with too many editing room demands – is the only really new kid having just the brilliant and underseen The Proposition on his American-released feature resume.

Even in an oddly empty season, the same players seem to be playing. Fox Searchlight is the only one that seems to really be sitting this one out. But Paramount Vantage, which is all but out of business, has three movies that it’s pushing. Universal has a strong play again with Frost/Nixon and a slightly questionable one with The Changeling. Warner Bros has their regular late Eastwood – even though they aren’t distributing the earlier one – and fill their Departed slot with Universal’s question mark from last year… is this the Ridley & Russell Oscar return movie? Focus has a potential monster with a gay undercurrent in Milk while their tradition of soft Brit-driven dramas goes on at Vantage with Keira Knightley’s The Duchess and at DW with Joe Wright’s The Soloist. (Maybe they only like the ones where the two are combined.) And Miramax has a hard road with three difficult dramas. Though Mike Leigh has broken through before, Meirelles is a genius who has always pushed Academy members too hard for their comfort zone, and Doubt will have to break away from the stage enough to feel like a “real movie.”

Joining the game, after feeling like they were out for a bit, are Fox (Australia), Lionsgate (W.), and yes, The Weinsteins, who picked up a 2929 film, The Road, and may manage to get the in-house Daldry picture, The Reader, in on time. The Reader also happens to be the last picture made by Mirage under Pollack and Minghella. But, the in-control producer on board is Scott Rudin, who always has a lot of awards pictures out there and probably doesn’t want this one to threaten Doubt or his beloved Revolutionary Road (which also stars Kate Winslet). And for that matter, Rudin is probably appalled with the idea of an appeal for The Reader being made by invoking two lost Oscar-winning filmmakers… especially Pollack, for whom Rudin went well out of his way to keep the keep the press at bay as Polack dealt with his illness and efforts at recovery. (On the other hand, certain people who are not on the east side of a certain street that borders Times Square would probably love to get into that battle and put The Old Man in his place in a direct head-to-head battle.)

The thing is that with this small a field, it seems like The Movies will become more important than The Hype from very early on. If we weed out half a dozen titles as mediocre by the middle of October, there won’t be much left to fight about. It’s a very split season this year. Still unseen movies are either out by October 17 (The Secret Life of Bees) or they are waiting until November 11 (The Road) or later.

There are probably six December releases of potential contenders this year (Rod Lurie’s Nothing But The Truth is still date dancing). Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, Will Smith’s Seven Pounds, Fincher’s Benjamin Button, Streep & PS Hoffman in Doubt, Eastwood’s second, Gran Torino, and Mendes’ Revolutionary Road are all classic examples of movies that can afford December releases, because they will all demand attention from Academy members and not just get lost in the shuffle. And for the first time in a long time, none of these movies is the true front runner… yet the five best Picture nominees could all, in theory, come from the month of December.

The election could also be a major part of what the season ends up looking like. Will the Academy electorate be turned on or off by the presidential election? Will W. be a movie – assuming it’s good – that says something profound and sticky about how we make our choices or will it be a one off? Will an Obama win or a McCain win make the long-view story of Frost/Nixon feel like old news or a fresh discussion of revisionism? How will those two movies bounce off of one another? And how will Milk, a story of a likeable progressive being killed by a moody guy who doesn’t want to move forward, play against these themes?

Many people don’t believe in Doubt, the stage drama turned movie, directed by the author, whose career as a director sputtered years ago. But I wonder about Driving Miss Daisy, a creaky bit of stage nostalgia that charmed its way right past the politically challenging Born On The Fourth Of July, the powerfully emotional and entertaining Field of Dreams. Of course, this was in the middle of The Reagan Era, a year after Reagan went out and Bush I took office, three years before Bill Clinton, for whom the two losing films were representative took office. (It’s tough to link any awards-giving mood to Clinton’s elections, as Schindler’s List and Titanic were bulldozer candidates.)

What is the Obama movie and what is the McCain movie? Are most of the movies “Obama movies” and the second Eastwood, Gran Torino, about an aging veteran teaching a young whippersnapper a lesson, the only real “McCain film?” I don’t know.

Can a light film, like Rachel Getting Married, shock people and emerge amongst a palette of very dark-minded films? Will Australia be the old-fashioned epic to knock off the personal epic of Benjamin Button or will the more modern epic of Body of Lies win the day?

And what if 10 of these movies just aren’t up to the task? Suddenly, any really good movie with someone pushing hard would be in position to get in. (The Happy Go Lucky theory.)

My prayer is that most of the movies will be worth the effort and that come December 1, we will be seriously talking about more than 10 movies as major contenders. The more great movies in the world, the better.

And the less that we in the media spend week after week chewing over the same small stories, digging and figthing for any scrap of originality… well, we experienced how exhausting and divisive that kind of fight could be during the Democratic primary this year. Let’s, please, not do that again.