And now, we start the 2007 Oscar season again for the last time…

Yes, Phase II (post-nom time, as it is called) 2007 may be the most wide open race in memory. The last time we were looking at as many of the 5 nominees that could really win was the year of Gladiator, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Chocolat. Of course, what was very different that year was that all but one of the movies (Chocolat) either had or were on their way to crossing the $100 million mark. And the films all had a significant number of nominations.

This year, as I wrote a few days ago, the 9 open categories aside from The Top Eight (Picture, Director, Acting, Writing) have a total of 6 nominations from this year’s five Best Picture nominees. What does this mean? Maybe nothing. Or maybe it means that Academy members continue to vote their minds and that none of the Big Five was as well crafted as other pictures, like 6-time nomineePan’s Labyrinth.

Ironically, this also indicates – to me, at least – that the shorter season remains a very positive influence. Members, especially in their branch votes, have seen a lot of the films and made independent minded choices. Another month of marketing seems quite unlikely to lead to a wider group of choices, but instead, more time for the bigger pictures to push for more.

The odd circumstance of the spread voting makes it very, very possible that Dreamgirls will continue the role of being a top Academy film, sans Best Picture, and win more or as many Oscars as any other film. Think about it. Hudson, Murphy, Song, and say, Sound Mixing. There are only a couple of films with enough total nominations to get four wins. If people assume that Jennifer Hudson still wins Best Supporting Actress – and do any of us feel like assuming much of anything this week? – that takes Babel down to 5 opportunities, Little Miss Sunshine down to 4 and leaves The Departed and The Queen at 5 and Letters from Iwo Jima at 4.

Speaking of The Queen, last year’s super-stat was Cynthia Swartz’s “no film ever won Best Picture without an editing nomination.”

Stats are made to be upended. And if any year is not going to comply with stats – however expected most of what has happened so far remains – this seems to be the one. But if you take on Ms. Swartz’s clever analysis, which leaned towards Crash and away from Brokeback Mountain last season, it leaves only The Departed and Babel in the running for the win.

Paramount Vantage’s favorite Phase I Oscar start was that 28 times there have been two Supporting Actress candidates from the same movie. This was prophetic, as Babel got nominations for both Rinko Kikuchi and Adrianna Barraza. Beyond getting in, the stat gets fuzzy. This has happened five times in the last 20 years. Only in the case of Chicago did the film go on to win Best Picture. In one other case, the film was nominated for Best Picture (Working Girl). And in the other three cases, there wasn’t even a BP nod (Almost Famous, Bullets Over Broadway, Enemies, A Love Story).

Other stats working against the nominees include the fact that only one film has ever won Best Picture without a directing nod, Driving Miss Daisy. Does that mean the disqualification of Little Miss Sunshine? Oh yes… and it’s been 29 years since the last comedy, Annie Hall, won Best Picture.

Even after overcoming the lack of guild support, is it really possible for Letters From Iwo Jima to move to the winner’s circle with no acting nominations and only one branch nod aside from the directors, the writers, and sound editing?

As for The Departed, when was the last time a remake won Best Picture? 1956 with Marty, a remake from a TV version of the same.

Of course, my position is and has been that Phase II is a different race than Phase I. Once the field has been narrowed to five, the dynamic shifts. And there are a whole new set of questions to answer.

Will Warner Bros spend big on Letters From Iwo Jima now, even though they never really saw this film as having much commercial potential? A push could pay off handsomely if the film actually won. But if it doesn’t, it is good money thrown away after already achieving the nomination.

How much deeper in the hole will Paramount and Paramount Vantage go on Babel in order to race. Again, the nomination actually puts the film in position to come within $10 million of breakeven after ancillaries. With an extraordinary success in DVD, they could break even. But any additional millions in spending to chase the win would all be lost if they didn’t win.

The campaign for The Departed has been very laid back. Will that change? Will Mark Wahlberg, now Oscar nominated, finally feel like he is appropriately valued by the studio? (Recall problematic moments at the junket and premieres.) The re-release might pay for itself. But is a strategic shift forthcoming?

The Queen will continue to expand and spend. But with Sheen out, leaving the same central trio on the campaign trail, with Mirren still an apparent lock, how can they ramp things up any further?

And we all know that Little Miss Sunshine will continue its “Little Best Picture” push. But how hard? And can they overshoot the mark?

The media involvement in all this remains at issue. As the media negativity on Dreamgirls spread to the New York Times and Variety, did it have some effect on the missed nominations? Who knows?

My theory on how the noms went is that there may not have been any first ballot nominees this year. With six strong candidates – which include Dreamgirls, and now, obviously, Letters From Iwo Jima – 14% each (6% short of a nomination) is 84% of the vote, leaving 16% for all the other films out there. I don’t think that many people doubt that any of these six titles managed 14% of the vote. Then, in the second round, counting #2 votes, all the nominees could well have gotten in. If ever there was a year where it feels this way, this is it. And indeed, others could have been in when #2 votes were counted, but came up short of the Top 5.

Looking at the final vote, start with that same 14% times 5 and that’s 70% of the vote. Where will the other displaced 30% go? That, my friends, is the rub. And that is where is might be a fight or it might be already close to settled.

Does Little Miss Sunshine have a unique advantage as the one non-drama?

Does The Queen have every one of the 400 British Oscar voters votes that it didn’t get the first time lined up now?

Does the box office dominance of The Departed make it more attractive?

Is Babel the Crash of this year… and if so, will the filmmakers blush?

Does the Eastwood Mystique and a very serious, contemplative, war related story make Letters From Iwo Jima a potential winner?

The bottom line is that there is both more and less of a race right now than appears on the surface to exist. And the media influence is both more and less significant than it appears to be.

One problem I have with the daily analysis, both online and in Traditional Media, is that there tends to be a sporting event mindset. If you lose, the quarterback sucks. If you win, he’s the best ever. The only play that counts in many minds is the last play. And most of all, there is this ongoing insane notion that the Academy equals an objective analysis of the best films of the year. A nomination means that the movie is better than the other movie… or the lack, that there is worse. But of course, that is just self-indulgence at its best.

My rule remains the same… if you want to make that argument, be consistent. If the Academy left out Dreamgirls because “they just didn’t think it was that good,” then it also left out United 93 and Pan’s Labyrinth for the same reason. If the Golden Globes are unimportant because Dreamgirls didn’t get nominated in spite of winning the most Globes, it was equally irrelevant for Babel, which did get nom’ed. And if you think all five nominees “deserved” or “didn’t deserve” to be nominated this year… the same will be true next year and forever.

The only think that really changes, for a lot of writers, is their personal opinion. When David Carr finds himself apologizing for believing Dreamgirls would win Best Picture, does it matter to anyone whether he was 50 votes off of this nomination or 1000 votes? There is no objective standard for analysis. And apologizing – or taking any of this personally – is idiotic. And the Bagger, a very smart guy, will surely learn this lesson if he chooses to continue on this beat in years to come. This is not a zero sum game.

Also, for all the talk about December being out of favor as a launching pad and the murmur about Crash’s May launch, it should be pointed out that Little Miss Sunshine’s July 26 launch was the earliest this year, with Letters From Iwo Jima’s Dec 20 launch the latest. One went out on the last days of Sept and two went in October. So is late Sept/early Oct the new Oscar hot zone? Of course not. Oscar is in the details, not the release date. Some movies would have been better off in December and others better off in October. Every film needs its own strategy. Period.

Finally, a side note. The nominations as they connect to the MCN’s Top Ten Chart turned out to be numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8. This is the second straight year when all the BP noms were in the Top Eight of critical consensus. Interesting. Another stat to rip up in the years to come. But as I have long written, the media’s primary involvement in the Oscar season is to narrow the field. And once again, it seems they have.

If you are curious, last year #7 (and the fourth highest ranked in the group of noms) won. That correlates to Little Miss Sunshine this year. Shrug.

(Thursday, 6:39p – Column Corrections – As sometimes happens, there are some stats that I got wrong this morning… and thanks to some committed, interested readers, here’s a chance to correct them. I thank all of you who sent e-mails.

1. Ordinary People (1981), Annie Hall (1978), and Grand Hotel (1932) won in the past without Best Editing nominations.

2. As I researched it last night, I left Dame duo Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren’s double Supporting Actress noms for Gosford Park off the list of films that had that phenomenon in the last 20 years.

With the Oscar season about to leap into the second phase, there is not a lot more to say before Tuesday. However, Los Angeles Magazine has been kind enough to drag the work of “Oscar Blogging” in and out of the mud, it seems like a good time to put forth my immodest theory as to just what the internet coverage of the awards season means.

Deep breath…

The Oscar season has evolved in many, many ways over the last dozen years since Pulp Fiction became the poster child for Harvey Weinstein & Co.’s ability to create a whole new series of tools in the pursuit of an award. The internet, which really only started breathing life a decade ago, is really a newcomer to the party.

The launching era of Oscar was really a completely different animal. The studios were in charge of every single thing, including the press, back then. The television era of Oscar started some profound changes.

But for me, as much of a fan of awards season as I always was, the business of Oscar started with the birth of Movie City News in 2002.

Apparently, Sasha Stone’s Oscarwatch was already around. Tom O’Neil had his cult of personality at Gold Derby. But these sites were, to me, bulletin board driven… which is to say that the crowd who hung around on the sites were more of the show than the leaders. This is not to say that the two leaders, who led the crowds around, were not very important. No doubt there were many awards sites that were not as popular.

By MCN’s eleventh month in business, our position as a web leader in Oscar coverage was established and we were establishing ad rates based on the trades… a modest percentage of what the trades were asking for online. I decided early on that MCN would sell awards space on a favored nations basis, one buy for the entire Phase One segment of the season, with one solicitation in Aug/Sept.

A big part of why I chose favored nations, though it costs us money to do it this way, is that I had heard the stories from studio execs and consultants about last award season ad placement wrangling by certain studios at the trades, LA Times, etc. Without someone selling ads for me, I could not afford, as a journalist, to be entertaining any of those calls. So we set our system, with no room for any editorial interference or pressure on me, a journalist, by any of the participating studios.

This year, MCN included two other awards sites, Oscarwatch and In Contention, in a secondary ad package. Others were invited to participate and passed. But the choice to do this speaks to the original thrust of MCN, which was, in no small part, to support the journalistic community and to give a voice to many, on line and off, with smaller niche readerships when good work is done. (Criticism of major papers, on the flip side, is, I hope, a service to those who might otherwise not consider context in those papers out of respect for their long and valued histories.)

So why were studios and consultants interested at all in placing award season ads with us? Well, MCN has always drawn an industry crowd. And in any significant industry crowd, there are awards voters. Additionally, with so much award season advertising being symbolic (“Consider…”) and not a direct call to action, MCN offered a place where journalists who frequent the site could also see who was serious about the season and who was not.

Of course, not every studio has thought we were worth advertising with. The only studio that had not taken at least one season worth of ads before last year was Universal. But they were pretty consistent in not doing it. And once again, this year, no interest. So be it. For better or for worse, we have not had an open season slot for Phase One since 2003.

I can’t speak for how and by whom the various other sites that have a lot of Oscar content are read. But the significance of web sites in this business is pretty much the same for Oscar season as for the entire year, for those of us who cover the entire film business and not just Oscar. We each inhabit and service a niche. The niche can be bigger or smaller. Each of us is taken more or less seriously by the industry… and that seriousness varies wildly from studio to studio, from person to person.

But like Traditional Media, the internet coverage is important because it exists. It is accessible. Thousands of people who don’t ever read me, for instance, have my work put in front of them by others who do and find tidbits that relate to the non-reader. Some of the first-timers stick. Others don’t. But if I write about Actor X in Movie Z, I know that while the actor may not know me from a hole in the wall and some of the studios execs may not recall who I am, that piece will bounce around the world of that actor and that movie and that studio for a few days. If what I wrote was strong enough, positive or negative, my phone will ring a few times with calls from people involved.

Yes, The L.A. Times is still considered more powerful than any one internet site. But the truth is, any one piece on a website may well be read by more people than any one piece in the L.A. Times, in print and on-line combined.

And in the world of the web, the amount of content changes the dynamic yet again. If an opinion columnist at a major paper writes once or twice a week and a similarly positioned person on the web writes 10 long items a week, the web writer has a lot more shots at catching a reader’s eye. Moreover, with so much repetition in entertainment journalism, a wider variety of stories mean a reach to a wider number of niches.

When it comes to Oscar, it is one fat niche. And from the content delivery side, the niche has gotten fatter in each of the last three seasons… to the point where we are now seeing diminishing returns for everyone involved.

It has to be frustrating for Traditional Media. Most internet players are happy to be making whatever money they are and are thrilled at the increasing interest. TM is in the process of losing large chunks of advertising every year… especially in awards season. So even though TM spending is still the major percentage of Oscar advertising, the number is now flat or dropping. (Perspective matters.)

For a guy like Patrick Goldstein, whose annual L.A. Times Oscar column was given enormous importance just a few years ago, it has to be maddening. Because whether fairly or not, his Oscar piece doesn’t mean much of anything anymore, floating in a massive river of coverage. Yes, by itself, it is more important than any one of, for instance, my Oscar columns. But my choice to engage in a weekly conversation for 20 straight weeks overwhelms his position simply by the size of that wave. It doesn’t make me better or him better. These are different slots in a changing media world.

I also have another advantage, which is that I have multiple platforms. Movie City News’ front page draws one readership, The Hot Button another, and The Hot Blog a third. Of course, many overlap. But a casual reader has the chance to engage with a site that is casual, but offers more depth at a click (including links to Patrick Goldstein and all the other media sites, Traditional and New). And a more interested reader can invest in a 1000 word column. And someone who wants direct human engagement can jump into the blog.

Of course, the greatest power of the New Media has always been the power to inform Traditional Media. No one has to agree with me or anyone else writing about Oscar or anything else on the web. But if they enjoy MCN, they are feeding on content that has been processed editorially. I never think that there is a direct cause and effect. But whether you are a civilian, an Academy voter, or a journalist, you can only consume so much content. And as a gateway, MCN has the power to move a movie business story as effectively as all but a handful of Traditional Media outlets.

The problem with most discussions about the influence of web sites on awards season or anything else is that people take it personally. Los Angeles Magazine decided to create a story about the gossip around “Oscar bloggers” instead of seriously exploring the influence that we may or may not have. Typical in an era in which printing the news always seems to lose to printing the legend. (There are many other factual errors, which simply aren’t worth discussing.)

Media influence is extremely hard to measure, no matter what the medium. This is why The Trades have such a clear advertising advantage in awards season. They have a very specific audience. Does Ad #47 for Movie Q mean much? Ad #60? Ad #11? But the studios keep buying at enormous cost.

The vast majority of what I do is to report on what’s happening, in spite of what some people have decided to believe. I also ride ahead of the wave sometimes… sometimes for better… sometimes for worse. It’s a long season.

But I never really tell anyone how to vote or think that I have a direct effect on anyone’s voting. I am here to engage in the conversation. That is, actually, why I am on the web and have been for a decade, and not in print. This medium allows interaction in a way that Traditional Media has not. And who knows, as things evolve, maybe MCN will become Traditional as Traditional jumps on the web.

There is a certain degree of triviality to the entire Oscar exercise and season. But that can be said about almost any area of the film world. An indie company may be a $100 million a year business, Oscar may be a $200 million a year business, one movie may be a $400 million business, and a studio is a $1.5 billion a year business.

It is all perspective. And while Traditional Media looks for cool new gossip to try to find their lost readership, some of us on the web will do nothing but gossip, some of us will be quite serious, and many in the middle… all doing their damnedest to influence a God fearing nation. And none of us can do anything more than to fight our best fight. Because influence grows wild and there is just no way to spin that.

Oh, that candy.

It’s right there. You can see it. You know the flavor, even if it was only described some other time by someone you are close with. But whether you have tasted it before or just heard about it, you want that flavor in your mouth. You want the invite to the ultimate party… the nominees’ luncheon, where without the hierarchy of Oscar night seating, all nominees are equal, everyone had a chance to win, and legends are all within arms reach.

But not everyone who is talked about this award season is going to have that afternoon in February.

Of course, last year at this time, the only clear lock to even be nominated for Best Picture was Brokeback Mountain. King Kong and Walk The Line were still in the Top Five of the Gurus o’ Gold. Crash was thought dead by many.

And yet this year, since November, The Queen, The Departed, Dreamgirls have consistently been considered nominations locks, Dreamgirls obviously the only film not in release, but first screened on November 15. And of the field after that – Letters From Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, Little Children, and United 93 – only Iwo Jima is a late entry. Babel was the next latest in – Oct 27 – though it premiered at Cannes.

Besides Letters From Iwo Jima, the only film to get any traction late – and not enough – was The Pursuit of Happyness, which got smacked by too many critics. Then there are The Walking BP Dead – The Good German, The Good Shepherd, Children of Men, The Painted Veil, Apocalypto, Blood Diamond, Rocky Balboa, Venus, Notes on A Scandal, Pan’s Labyrinth, Perfume, Factory Girl, Miss Potter, The Dead Girl – which some people want to say didn’t get traction because they were too late… but in reality were just never in the game.

There are a few nominations in there. Actress and Supporting Actress for Notes on a Scandal… O’Toole in Venus… maybe a surprise screenplay nod for Pan’s Labyrinth… maybe some other stuff. I’d love to see SAG embrace The Dead Girl, an acting extravaganza, even if Oscar won’t.

But 19 days from now, there are going to be a lot of hopeful people on the outside looking in… and few of them with be truly surprised.

More than a few people have been vocal about how boring this awards season has already been. And there will be a few surprises before it’s over. But it will still be pretty boring.

It’s almost as though fate had leapt into the fray as businesses lined up to try and rape and pillage the Oscars on a level never seen before.

Interestingly, the BFCA, which has been live on the WB for the last two years, has taken a hit this year, as the Critics Choice Awards will happen next Friday, but won’t appear on tape on E! until 8 days later, on January 20, five days after the Golden Globes and seven days after Oscar nominations close. This rather odd situation is, apparently, punishment by the cable network – which had subleased rights to the WB – for BFCA choosing not to renew their TV deal with them. Yet, the studio demand for seats – as well as the demand from media companies looking to have quick access to all of their potential customers in one fell swoop – has never been greater.

The oddly inverted punchline is that BFCA’s Critics’ Choice Awards will be scouted live by all the broadcast networks but NBC, and the group expects to make a long-term deal with a major network to compete even more aggressively with HFPA starting next year.

Turn, turn, turn.

And the same is true for non-nominees.

It would be a little heartbreaking to see little Abigail Breslin disappointed on the 23rd… but she has already won so big with her role in Little Miss Sunshine, how upset can she be?

If tough films Babel and United 93 are on the outside looking in, have they really lost? Will the films be any less important to those who love them so deeply?

Is Naomi Watts’ performance in The Painted Veil less interesting if not nominated? Sacha Baron Cohen’s? Mark Wahlberg’s?

Does Todd Field really need Best Picture noms for his first two films to feel good about his work? Are Cuaron, Gonzalez Inarritu, and del Toro any less talented if the Wilshire 5800 don’t say they are amongst the best 5 of 2006?

Really is anyone diminished by not being one of the five chosen in any given year? For that matter, does a nomination make a movie better?

Still… the candy…