Oscar Index: Social Network, King's Speech Commence Steel-Cage Death Match

Welcome back to Movieline's Oscar Index, your weekly, foolproof guide to the competition in the Academy Awards' six major categories. Er, maybe not "foolproof"; this is Oscar season we're talking about, when fools reign and underdogs crouch behind virtually every corner. Let us once again browse their ranks, yes?

[Click the graphs for larger images]

The Leading 10:

1. The King's Speech

2. The Social Network

3. True Grit

4. Black Swan

5. 127 Hours

6. The Fighter

7. Inception

8. The Kids Are All Right

9. [tie] Toy Story 3

9. [tie] Winter's Bone

Outsiders: Blue Valentine; Rabbit Hole; The Town; Shutter Island; Another Year

Notes: The big news here this week concerns the fallout from both the National Board of Review and British Independent Film Awards, a couple of bodies the Oscar cognoscenti loves to dis as Not Relevant to What We Do but for some reason can't stop talking about when they demarcate the specific battle lines we have to look forward to for the next 80 days or so. This time around the NBR surprised everyone (to the extent they expressed caring) by going all-out for The Social Network, while the BIFA gang threw its middleweight behind The King's Speech. Then the D.C. Film Critics Association jumped aboard the TSN bandwagon (for what that's worth), which is pretty much how most observers are predicting things will go for the rest of the season: wonks for TSN; hoi polloi for TKS. Wait and see if this formula doesn't hold on Sunday and Monday as the LA and NYC critics circles weigh in themselves.

True Grit, meanwhile, bulked up a bit over Black Swan, which made a fortune in its limited opening but couldn't muster much more beyond that than a half-full Academy screening and praise for Natalie Portman. Which is good... for Natalie Portman; not so much for the film that some pundits suspect will fall through the generation-gap cracks by the time final voting comes around in February. Everything else essentially idled all week, with a slight dip for Winter's Bone attributable only to the fact that Disney won't let anyone forget it has the best-reviewed film of the year in Toy Story 3 (except when it doesn't). That counts for something, right? No? Anyway.

The Leading 5:

1. David Fincher, The Social Network

2. Tom Hooper, The King's Speech

3. Christopher Nolan, Inception

4. Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit

5. Danny Boyle, 127 Hours

Outsiders: Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan; David O. Russell, The Fighter; Mike Leigh, Another Year; Peter Weir, The Way Back

Notes: As per usual, I present these selections with admittedly no effing clue who actually stands where. As objective as the Oscar Index strives to be, sometimes its susceptibility to hunches and random philosophical interventions provide just the same, if not a superior, effect. Whatever. I don't know, people. Refer above to the early awards dealt out like so many hands of poker, and as we discard and restock and fret and strategize and bluff our ways through the season, let us never pretend to really know who's got which cards or how well they'll play them or that we're doing anything more than garden-variety gambling. Sure, you've got the occasional Tom Hooper hard-luck snubography to go by, and you're going to find Academy members in various phases of ecstasy following their encounters with Boyle and 127 Hours, and Darren Aronofsky will spike and plunge all along as radically as his moods (or his choices), and the Coens will just stand back all sphinxy and laconic and over it. I'll say right now Chris Nolan could win this just as easily as anybody. Did I mention I don't know? I don't know. And you know what? Sometimes that's all right!

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