Well, here we go: Nomination ballots are in Academy voters' mailboxes as of this week, meaning that the "[m]ost over-covered, over-considered Oscar season ever" just became that much more over-covered and over-considered. How can we ever hope to break it down? To the Index!
[Click the graphs for larger images]
The Leading 10:
1. The Social Network
2. The King's Speech
3. The Fighter
4. Inception
5. Black Swan
6. True Grit
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. 127 Hours
9. Winter's Bone
10. Toy Story 3
Outsiders: Blue Valentine; The Town; Rabbit Hole; Shutter Island
Notes: The holiday week featured some serious Oscarology in the Best Picture category, with aftershocks from a number of awards precursors rippling the competition between the general punditocracy favorite The Social Network and The King's Speech, The Fighter and Inception. One notable King's Speech defection -- based principally on the torrent of critics awards for TSN -- gave way to Dave Karger's emphatic reminder that "Oscar voters are not critics [...]"
The only group to announce so far with a voting body that overlaps with the Academy is the Screen Actors Guild, and I find it interesting that Network earned only two nominations compared to four for Speech or The Fighter. I keep hearing from many Academy members who absolutely adore The King's Speech. Can The Social Network win Best Picture on Feb. 27? Of course it can. Particularly if voters decide they want an American film to win. But until it picks up significant guild support, I'm not ready to swap my rankings.
Sasha Stone isn't having any of it, so at least from an observational standpoint around the culture, maybe we can call the top three a push? But the most scintillating evidence of Oscar-race ascendancy comes from Camp Inception, where theatrical "For Your Consideration" ads rule the day and for whom Chris Beachum at Gold Derby undertook some of the week's most determined flag-waving:
The film will receive major guild support, including the DGA, WGA and PGA. Nolan could win the DGA Award, and the PGA loves to honor box office successes. Inception contends in 10 Critics Choice categories as well as for four more with the Golden Globes. The staggering box office success ($292 million in the U.S.) of Inception boosts its Best Picture chances. While Academy voters of late have favored independent, small budget films (The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, etc.), that works in favor of Inception. In 2003, "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" swept the Academy Awards, winning a record-tying 11 including Best Picture. It could be time for the voters to reward another big moneymaker. The only other blockbuster this year likely to be in the Best Picture race is Toy Story 3, which, as an animated film, has little chance to win.
That guild influence is crucial here, because we're facing a diverse enough crop of nominees in the top categories that voters (actors, directors, and craftspeople/technicians in particular) wouldn't necessarily feel apprehensive about electing Inception the year's Best Picture. Look at it this way: If you're wanting to spread the wealth between the top five to date, you could do a lot worse than TSN in Director and Screenplay, Black Swan in Actress, King's Speech in Actor, The Fighter in the Supporting categories, and Inception -- Gladiator style, apologies to Chris Nolan -- in Picture. This is absolutely a scenario to watch for as those aforementioned guilds continue announcing nominations next week.
And listen, those bottom two or three picks? Totally vulnerable. Both Winter's Bone and Blue Valentine have enough dedicated support among the actors branch to sneak into contention, but I wonder how opening today will affect the latter: Fresh in the mind, or late to the game? Hustle, Harvey! And then there are the labor unions putting the screws to Disney and Toy Story 3. And then there's The Town, which I'm just not feeling in this crop, but we'll see. Again, watch the guilds.
The Leading 5:
1. David Fincher, The Social Network
2. Christopher Nolan, Inception
3. Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
4. Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
5. David O. Russell, The Fighter
Outsiders: Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit; Danny Boyle, 127 Hours; Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right; Mike Leigh, Another Year
Notes: As noted above, an uptick in Inception's profile means more for the film than for Nolan himself -- but there is an uptick. A little more intriguing, however, is the pundit push-pull concerning Fincher, whom Nicole Sperling speculated might be jeopardizing his frontrunner status by paring back his campaign accessibility. Steve Pond disagreed ("[Fincher] hasn't been completely absent: last week, for instance, he did three Q&As in two days on the Sony lot, and he's scheduled for other events including the Palm Springs Film Festival."), and anyway, let's keep this in perspective: Dude is in the middle of making arguably next fall's most anticipated blockbuster. Sorry if he can't pull off that extra interview or photo shoot or whatever between all those trans-Atlantic travels.
The Leading 5:
1. Natalie Portman, Black Swan
2. Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
3. Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
4. Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
5. Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Outsiders: Lesley Manville, Another Year; Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right; Hilary Swank, Conviction; Tilda Swinton, I Am Love
Notes: So you might have heard Natalie Portman is knocked up. This dominated the Best Actress conversation for a couple days as Oscarphiles scanned history for hints and clues as to pregnancy's awards-season advantages (hint: there are none), but that'll die down by the time you finish reading this sentence. More important, perhaps, is this whole thing about "Steak Eaters" -- the Academy's "red-blooded males (not just American--Europeans and Aussies too), often directors, writers and craftspeople [...] who voted for The Silence of the Lambs, Braveheart, Gladiator, Avatar and yes, Crash over Brokeback Mountain." Oscar campaigners confirmed this subspecies of voter to Anne Thompson, who suggests their predilections could keep The Kids Are All Right out of any serious Best Picture or Director contention.
Fine -- but what does this mean for Best Actress? Let's say the Steak Eaters are real, and they drive at least part of the conversation among actors as well -- the Academy's most populous branch. When surveying Best Actress (we're talking after nominations, now; Annette Bening is all but assured a nod), are they likelier to jump aboard a sexy, scary, male-directed ballet psychodrama with plenty of bloodletting and some hot girl-girl action, or will they indulge the grande-ish dame lead actress in a woman-directed comedy about lesbian parents who unceremoniously discard their sperm donor like a gob of stale gum?
Moreover, are Steak Eaters the ones Harvey was really targeting with his whole Blue Valentine/NC-17 non-troversy? While the ladies swoon at Michelle Williams's tearful Nightline appearance and the candid confessionals ("I wasn't sure if I wanted to act anymore. I wasn't even sure if I could act anymore"), are the fellas all breathless and waiting to reward what one wag hyped as "the sweetest sex ever shown in movies"? In any case, and by all accounts, Williams is on the move, but still... Steak Eaters! These guys! Keep an eye out for them.
The Leading 5:
1. Colin Firth, The King's Speech
2. Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
3. Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter
4. Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine
5. James Franco, 127 Hours
Outsiders: Javier Bardem, Biutiful; Jeff Bridges, True Grit; Robert Duvall, Get Low; Paul Giamatti, Barney's Version
Notes: Here we go, Barrrr-dem, here we go! [Clap, clap -- repeat] The praise for Bardem's haunting performance is finally, finally reaching the roiling black surface of the Sea of Hype, where even Biutiful's most skeptical critics can't help but acknowledge the divine work of the actor at its center. He's still on the outside looking in thanks to graceless oversights among the Globes (to be expected), the SAG Award noms (not as expected) and critics associations (unforgivable), not to mention Gosling's own leather-gloved, hater-strengthened surge behind Blue Valentine. And while The Fighter has been a Twitter staple since its first screening last month at AFI Fest, it's tweets like director Greg Mottola's -- "Just watched The Fighter, thought it was really great. Terrific performances all around and cannot praise Mark Wahlberg enough" -- that suggest Wahlberg's firm standing among Academy creatives. It's still Firth's to lose, I think, but hey. Take whatever movement you can get.
The Leading 5:
1. Melissa Leo, The Fighter
2. Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
3. Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
4. Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
5. Mila Kunis, Black Swan
Outsiders: Amy Adams, The Fighter; Dianne Wiest, Rabbit Hole; Barbara Hershey, Black Swan; Sissy Spacek, Get Low
Notes: Speaking of celebrity tweet support, Olivia Wilde was great on Tuesday: "Just watched The Fighter. Sooo should I go drop off Melissa Leo's Oscar right now?" This is pretty much the way 2010-11 is gonna go for Supporting Actress, where the far more intriguing drama can be found in the pile-up for slots two through five. Adams looks increasingly likely to make the cut (and probably surge to the middle of the pack; one Oscar-winning observer cited her as "the great revelation of the movie [...] constantly screwing herself to fighting pitch to take on forces larger than she is"), as do Steinfeld and Carter, the latter of whom continues to benefit from pieces like this one situating King's Speech as the year's likely leading nomination-getter. (Nine? Ten?) That could leave Weaver and Kunis battling for the fifth nomination -- a bloody distributor cage-match-in-the-making between Sony Classics and Fox Searchlight if ever I saw one. My heart goes for Jacki, as always. My brain... enh. Screw the sausage -- this is how Hollywood headaches are made.
The Leading 5:
1. Christian Bale, The Fighter
2. Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech
3. Andrew Garfield, The Social Network
4. Jeremy Renner, The Town
5. Michael Douglas, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Outsiders: John Hawkes, Winter's Bone; Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right; Armie Hammer, The Social Network; Ed Harris, The Way Back
Notes: Honestly I should probably swap Ruffalo and Douglas, but all this Steak Eater business has me petrified of any sudden, Kids-friendly moves! And anyway, Christian Bale, everybody. Vegas probably won't even lay odds on this "race" come February.