Hoo boy. A dramatic and turbulent week in awardsdom made for some long hours at Movieline's Institute for Kudos Forensics. Our researchers persevered, however, yielding the latest edition of Oscar Index for your review, enjoyment and/or comment. No wagering, though!
[Click the graphs for larger images]
The Nominees:
1. The King's Speech
2. The Social Network
3. True Grit
4. The Fighter
5. Inception
6. Black Swan
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. Toy Story 3
9. 127 Hours
10. Winter's Bone
Notes: Where to begin? Let's see. How about here: Everybody chill the f*ck out about The King's Speech, already. Sheesh. I remember a couple weeks ago when Sasha Stone elaborated on The Social Network's unprecedented run through the critics' awards; she and I and the rest of the punditocracy all but handed TSN its Oscar laurels, certain that its lead was insurmountable. Then came the nominations -- 12 to 8, advantage TKS -- and mild queasiness set in. But no reversals! Then came Stone with The Call: "I am planning on predicting that Tom Hooper wins the DGA award on Saturday." Kristopher Tapley followed a few days later. They didn't go totally out on a limb; after all, the PGA Awards had already anointed TKS Best Picture, and the Academy-guilds overlap suggested a Hooper upset over Fincher would be surprising but not necessarily mindblowing.
I digress (more on director in a bit), but the takeaway remains the same as last week: It's a long race, and it's closer than you think. Stuff you never thought could happen can happen and will happen. Some folks on the beat are far more experienced and educated than others, but anyone who insists he or she has the answer is, in reality, the most clueless one in the bunch. Of course acknowledging that fallibility or vulnerability might look or feel like some kind of brand-tarnishing weakness, but consider the alternative: Mass panic, as evidenced in the torrent of shock that washed away so much of peaceful, quiet Oscar Village after The King's Speech's DGA and SAG two-fer last weekend. Jeffrey Wells descended into savagery ("Devotees of eternal cinematic Movie Godz justice are tonight contemplating the drinking of hemlock, the inhaling of lethal gas and leaping from high cliffs."), while sad, sad Tom O'Neil stood looking at the soggy ruins of his little pundit castle and dabbed a single tear before the SAGs: "Attention all Oscarologists: Time to go back to your laboratories and concoct some new theories. Just when you thought you'd finally figured out those crazy Oscar voters, they fooled you again."
Excuse me? Oscar voters haven't voted! The aforementioned guild overlap aside, there are literally hundreds of thousands fewer actors and directors in the Academy than in those guilds combined, and they don't even have ballots in their mailboxes yet! And still, allll the experts who so resolutely looked forward to a TSN victory have jumped ship (well, many of them, anyway) and all but renounced their faith in the Oscar process as whole. "I said on my last Oscar Poker podcast that if Tom Hooper won the DGA I would quit," wrote Stone, who foresaw the Hooper win in the first place. "The reason being, not out of disgust -- it is their choice, their club, their statuette. But because it would show that I learned absolutely nothing in the 11 years I've been doing this website. And that is absolutely true: I know nothing." Oy vey. Then this from Scott Feinberg: "I now have just as little cause to project The Social Network as others did when they were projecting The King's Speech before this past week's developments." Exactly! If their pick was good enough for them to stick with despite everything then, why isn't TSN good enough for the rest of us to stick with now?
In the end, this isn't the time to gloat if you had King's Speech and pout if you had Social Network. And it isn't the time to wonder if it's 1941 or 1956 all over again. It's the time to regroup and focus on the only award that really matters, if only because it's one for which we scan all this data and conjure so many historical flukes to begin with. In the scenario where The Social Network wins Best Picture and Director, nothing about the current awards landscape -- other than a gaggle of so-called experts desperately trying to land on the right side of history as opposed to influencing it -- is anything we haven't seen before. Stone apparently would disagree -- "This is the first film in Oscar history to win that many [preliminary] awards and not win Best Picture" -- but again, no one has voted for anything yet, and we have no idea if or how the Hooper/TKS guild showing might galvanize an Academy that has shown increasingly arty, sophisticated tastes over the last four or five years.
So float all the theories you want about Speech's ascendancy, sling all the mud you can at the new front-runner, and indulge all the hindsight you can muster. You may be right! But if this week has shown us anything, it's that you never know. Either way, everyone -- deep breaths! We've got three more weeks of this crap.
The Nominees:
1. Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
2. David Fincher, The Social Network
3. Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit
4. David O. Russell, The Fighter
5. Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Notes: "Fincher -- period." And with those two words alone on Saturday morning, Scott Feinberg curtly attempted to predict the DGA Awards outcome. Haven't we all been there? In any case, much vexation and confoundment and condescension ensued! Take "gobsmacked" EW critic Lisa Schwarzbaum for example:
What were those DGA voters thinking? My conclusion: They weren't thinking; they were feeling. And they were feeling because of incalculable help provided to the director by two geniuses ineligible for an award in this or any other year to come. I'm talking, of course, about Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. [...] I recently rewatched the movie to study the exact musical architecture involved in Alexandre Desplat's discreetly hardworking score. So if/when you see it again, try to imagine what the drama would be like without Beethoven or Mozart stepping in to do heavy emotional lifting in these four crucial moments...
Ah, yes -- the old blame-the-awards-upset-on-the-music-cue trick. Because the director rarely chooses music cues, or wants his/her audience to "feel" anything, right? And because awards bodies have a history of rubber-stamping mediocre directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick (combined DGA/Oscar wins: zero) on the mere strength of their music cues. Wait, what? Anyway, Lisa, now it's my turn to be patronizing and urge you to keep up the good work.
David Poland, meanwhile, was irritating in the same vein:
I am regretting writing this as I write it... I have enormous respect and admiration for Tom Hooper. I like the guy. And unlike other directors in the race, he has been generous with his time and thoughts. It also SUCKS to begrudge someone who has won an award their pleasure from that moment. But... Seriously? The inherent ambition of at least 3 of the other 4 nominees is simply on another level. I have no problem when people vote for a movie they like or love, but this is directors voting for achievement in direction. Hooper did excellent work and is responsible for a movie people love. But the list of people who could deliver with that cast and script vs the singular visions of the other films...
Oof. I'm regretting it, too, David. [Cue shrug, close tab.] Others were far more gracious in acknowledging the unequivocal truth that Hooper is indeed the race's front-runner: "The King's Speech is all heart," wrote O'Neil, while Tim Appelo cataloged a few of the traits, skills and life lessons that helped Hooper climb within sight of the pinnacle of feature-film directing. For example, check out Hooper's approach to directing and filming his principal actors:
"I'd start out with a closeup and -- oh God, he's doing something amazing with his hand which I'm missing. Then we'd go a bit wider. Then I'd go, God, I love that, but I'm missing the silhouette his body's making, so I'd go wider still, to explore his body language.
"So it made me think about Colin's body language. Was there a way he could create a silhouette specific to Bertie? Was there a way of deconstructing the confidence with which Colin naturally stands, 'cause he's a big strapping lad of six foot three and, and, and, and [Hooper sometimes repeats words rapidly, a bit like stuttering] creating a sense of a man who folds into himself, crumples into himself? Who on a sofa will sit in the corner as if to use the arm of the sofa as a kind of friend, as a security blanket?"
"In some ways there's this process of transference that goes on, where you see what one actor is bringing and could I bring the other into the language of the first so there's an equilibrium going on in the style of both. And managing those exchanges of action, of, of, of their, of their, of their essences, is kind of very interesting."
DGA aside -- which is largely composed of TV directors, from whose ranks Hooper emerged less than two years ago to direct his true feature breakthrough The Damned United -- what actor wouldn't recognize that process onscreen and be inclined reward it come awards time? I mean, if voter perception comes down to that or David Fincher's exacting 99 takes, can we really say we're that surprised?
In any case, Guy Lodge notes that the last time a DGA winner lost at the Oscars, Roman Polanski sneaked in over Rob Marshall for the 2002 Best Director prize. Whether that speaks to the Academy's aversion to recognizing screen newcomers over old-timers, or whether it was a political statement, or whether it was an earnest meritocratic recognition, or whatever it was, Fincher should take heart. He's hardly out of this.
The Nominees:
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
Notes: Is it me or is Portman's run just seeming too... perfect? I don't know if it's all the tumult in the other categories, or just an urge to start trouble, or some specific, empirical factor like Bening's career-emphasizing campaign ads, but I just feel like Portman's lead is slipping. Could this category ultimately come down to who has the more impactful, elegant Awards-Season Trading Card? OK, never mind. Just throwing it out there.
The Nominees:
1. Colin Firth, The King's Speech
2. Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
3. Jeff Bridges, True Grit
4. Javier Bardem, Biutiful
5. James Franco, 127 Hours
Notes: My favorite bit of Oscar-related arcana this week came from the mouth of Paul Bettany, who actually admitted he had first crack at the role of King George VI in Speech. News flash: He regrets turning it down! But he says had a good reason: "I had been working for five months steadily and my son missed me and I missed my son. Both of my sons and my wife [...] I regret not working with such amazing, amazing actors and directors and writers. But no, I have to do the right thing by my family every time." Aww! Anyway, now Firth has to thank Bettany's family (including wife Jennifer Connelly) when he wins. That is all.
The Nominees:
1. [tie] Melissa Leo, The Fighter
1. [tie] Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
3. Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
4. Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
5. Amy Adams, The Fighter
Notes: While polling readers to gauge the SAG award-winner most vulnerable to an Oscar defeat, O'Neil himself chooses Leo as the likeliest upset. I couldn't agree more; Steinfeld is one of those once-in-a-generation talents -- and by once in a generation, I literally mean that an adolescent won Best Supporting Actress in 1974, 1994 and now... 2011? Oh, and another thing about Steinfeld: She's awesome, and you don't hear anybody going around lamenting her scenery-chewing or bombast or terrible hair or whatever. (If anything, she's a resilient young woman who emerged from her blood feud with Lea Michele all the more powerful.) There's the outside chance of Carter sneaking in as well should King's Speech continue its tear, and I will never give up on Jacki Weaver, but! This is the Oscar Index, not idle speculation or a Team Jacki rally. Awards science must prevail.
The Nominees:
1. Christian Bale, The Fighter
2. Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech
3. Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
4. John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
5. Jeremy Renner, The Town
Notes: Basically everything I just said for Leo applies to Bale, with the modest qualification that Rush is slightly past the upstart-adolescent phase. Well, that and I simply can't see The Fighter emerging empty-handed on Feb. 27. Nevertheless, the fearless Sasha Stone has called her shot for Rush as part of a King's Speech sweep, and as we know from earlier, she's been wicked accurate before. We shall see...