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!
The Leading 5:
1. Natalie Portman, Black Swan
2. Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
3. Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
4. Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
5. Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
Outsiders: Lesley Manville, Another Year; Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right; Sally Hawkins, Made in Dagenham; Tilda Swinton, I Am Love; Naomi Watts, Fair Game
Notes: First off: Congratulations to Moore for sneaking back into the outer limits of contention thanks to Sally Hawkins' utter disappearance. (There's always the Globes, Sally!) Second... Um, yeah. Nothing happened in this race this week. Actually, there may have even been a slight cultural uptick in Portman's standing (more on that a little later today, maybe tomorrow), which may, in turn, be canceled out by a rumored potential Franco/Hathaway/Social Network/whippersnapper backlash among older Oscar voters, but still. This race looks about as close to over as it's ever been.
The Leading 5:
1. Colin Firth, The King's Speech
2. [tie] Jeff Bridges, True Grit
2. [tie] Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
4. James Franco, 127 Hours
5. Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Outsiders: Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter; Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine; Robert Duvall, Get Low; Paul Giamatti, Barney's Version
Notes: While Firth remains in a fairly safe lead at the moment, there's some serious tumult in this category's also-ran echelons. For example, Thelma Adams wasn't just speaking for herself when she noted how in possibly any other year Ryan Gosling would contend for the prize -- not that I agree (like, at all) about his performance, but it's the kind of showy garbage that historically tends to occupy at least one or two of the final five slots. But! With Javier Bardem finally on the warpath for his far more impactful, modulated and devastating work in Biutiful, those final five are looking increasingly locked in. And by "warpath," I mean warpath, with no less than Sean Penn -- the most recent Best Actor incumbent who's not actually squaring off against Bardem -- coming out of Haitian hiding just to declare Bardem's performance the best since Brando's in Last Tango in Paris. Top that, R-Gos.
Elsewhere, let's see if Eisenberg can maintain through awards season. So far so good here at Movieline; if he keeps it together you're possibly looking at a Penn/Rourke-style photo finish on Oscar night. Backlash or not, there's just too much unilateral support for Social Network to think Fincher fans will break ranks for Firth. It's a big branch; stranger things have happened.
The Leading 5:
1. Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
2. Melissa Leo, The Fighter
3. Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
4. Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
5. Amy Adams, The Fighter
Outsiders: Dianne Wiest, Rabbit Hole; Barbara Hershey, Black Swan; Mila Kunis, Black Swan; Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right; Sissy Spacek, Get Low
Notes: Sorry, this category is not the one where I defer to impartial analysis of trends, developments, gossip and/or other Oscar-race implications. This is the one where I say hell YES did you see Jacki Weaver dunk from the free-throw line over Leo and Steinfeld? Screw the T-shirt; I want her NBR victory on a poster over my desk. Or maybe on one of those traditional motivational placards featuring her Animal Kingdom character above the word "CHARM" and her winning recent quote, "I can't believe I'm talking to Vanity Fair. I've got the Cher issue in front of me. Who knows, maybe one day I'll get to meet Graydon Carter!"
Meanwhile, Steinfeld leapfrogs Leo on the basis of continued, aforementioned True Grit goodwill; I hear it's borderline (if not outright) category fraud, but so what? Maybe Paramount can teach Focus a thing or two regarding its handling of Julianne Moore.
The Leading 5:
1. Christian Bale, The Fighter
2. Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech
3. Matt Damon, True Grit
4. Armie Hammer, The Social Network
5. Andrew Garfield, The Social Network
Outsiders: Michael Douglas, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps; Ed Harris, The Way Back; John Hawkes, Winter's Bone; Sam Rockwell, Conviction
Notes: Matt Damon's coming strong with enough momentum to overtake Rush by this time next week, while Hawkes may yet do the same to Harris and maybe even the gradually resurgent Douglas. And Bale will still win. It's an honor to be nominated, etc. etc.