Oscar Index: Get Ready For the Upset of the Century!
The Nominees:
1. Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
1. Melissa Leo, The Fighter
3. Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
4. Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
5. Amy Adams, The Fighter
Notes: Perhaps the biggest story of the week emerged when Melissa Leo busted out with her own independently financed Oscar-campaign/career-enhancement ads. "This entire awards process to some degree is about pimping yourself out," Leo told the NYT. "I'm confident my fans will understand the ads were about showing a different side of myself."
Reaction was pretty sharply divided in the end, with the generally disapproving Pete Hammond citing Leo for going "rogue" and Movieline's own Dixon Gaines lamenting the aesthetic judgment of using "a ticky-tacky photo from a Sears' Portrait Studio of her lolling around the pool in Don King's hand-me-down fur coat." David Poland argued that despite her heart being in the right place, "Melissa screwed up." One Academy voter reportedly told Tim Appelo that "[s]he lost my vote." That triggered a defense from Sasha Stone:
Just to state one more time for the record: everybody campaigns for the Oscar. Only they don't do it directly the way she did. They do it hiding behind very powerful and skilled publicists. Notice how when David Lynch does it it's considered funny and quirky but for Leo? A 50 year old fighting to continue to get access to interesting roles? She's an embarrassment. I'm not saying she deserves to win or not; what I am saying is that she doesn't deserve to NOT get it because of this.
Meanwhile, Scott Feinberg logged his own impassioned statement on Leo's behalf (I probably wouldn't have called it "IN DEFENSE OF MY FRIEND, MELISSA LEO," but hey), and a few others seemed to appreciate someone explicitly expressing desire for not only an Oscar, but also a richer, wider range of roles.
Fine, but here's the thing: She was already the frontrunner -- in a narrow race, no less. The last thing she needed was to call attention to how unstable her perceived lead is (or was) -- how the next generation is nipping at her heels, and how this Oscar could conceivably send a message that Leo has what it takes to really deliver in Hollywood. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, justifiably so or not. And while it's nice to know Leo outwardly wants it more than, say, Mo'Nique ever did, this is not the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role Who'd Like More Leads if You Can Be Bothered to Keep Her in Mind. It's Best Supporting Actress, and the public exploitation of her nomination for personal gain while she's still in the running -- "pimping yourself out," in Leo's own words -- is just gauche.
I mean, if anybody should be taking out ads for herself around Hollywood, it should be Jacki Weaver. But look at the critical industry inroads she's making instead behind the scenes -- securing U.S. management with Elevate, signing up with ICM (which also represents Leo, for what that's worth), even jamming herself in the second row of the aforementioned nominee group photo amid heavy-hitters Bening, Bridges, Portman, Bardem and Aussie compatriot Nicole Kidman. (Where's Leo in that mix?)
Team Jacki loyalties aside, I'm just saying: There's screen discipline, and then there's Oscar discipline. Seriously: What Academy Award winner has ever gotten away with a garish stunt like this? This year, between Leo and Banksy, we may have two -- and one of them is a professional vandal.
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: Nothing to see here. Hawkes gets the SNL bump with the rest, Bale remains out in front. Only two indexes left! See you next Wednesday!
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Comments
Not for nothing, but 127 Hours is really getting shafted this awards season. What a tremendous film! I came out of that actually feeling something more than "What a nicely crafted movie about people I don't care about", which is what I felt after both the masterpiece theater and the facebook movie.
The SNL bit about Franco's overexposure was dead on, but he does such an extraordinary job, I'm a little depressed about the lack of exposure he's getting this awards season.
That being said, I'm all about the Black Swan surprise upset, let's make that happen.
(Barring a Piranha 3D write-in upset)
what do the colors mean?
some of the ones not connected to a face aren't listed
This completely underlines the problem with using Rotten Tomatoes for comparisons. It's not an average score, but what percentage of film critics gave the film a positive review. So 95 two-star or B- reviews, and 5 one-star or C reviews could give a film a 95%. Much more accurate is Metacritic's rating system, which gives a number (1-100) for each review, then averages it. On Metacritic, The King's Speech a very good 88. The Social Network, a meteoric 95 (which is higher than even Toy Story 3's 92). There's a much more obvious distinction when you bring better math into the picture (and a single point means a lot more here than it does on Rotten Tomatoes too).
Frankly, it'd be criminal in the Pulp Fiction vein to give Best Picture to King's Speech over Social Network. Yeah, King's Speech was good, but will it be remembered a decade from now? Of course not. Reward the performance(s) but not the formula, which we've seen a million times. Reward a film that doesn't follow the formula, which is most certainly not Black Swan (79 on Metacritic), which was a fairly conventional plot with a few whack-job additions. Reward Social Network or 127 Hours, two movies that shouldn't have worked, but DID work due to great scripts and great direction. Both of which will be remembered long after The King's Speech has been forgotten.
But...but...Black Swan wasn't even good. Natalie was indeed good, but the movie is a mess.
Points taken. Like I said, I don't regard RT or Metacritic or any aggregator as some unassailable barometer of a movie's worth. But they do suggest the inaccuracy (or at least the overreaction) of those who'd suggest that the Academy-critic divide is as wide as it's ever been, or that critics tend not to share a groupthink similar to the one they like to piss on among Academy voters.
As for the respective long tails of TKS, TSN, BS and 127, I can't disagree with you. Yet while I'm not one to say "The Academy will vote like this because..." (it's not a borg, after all, and anyway, who the fuck really knows?), history shows its bias toward instant gratification.
Which makes me all the more confident that _Black Swan_ has a shot -- Portman's performance aside, it is ultimately the most empty-caloried treat of the bunch. Of course it's this way by design; Aronofsky's primary achievement rests in compelling a subset of "serious" moviegoers to believe he has made a "serious" postmodern riff on _Swan Lake_. When, of course, he's made little more than an exploitation flick. (Which I loved! But still.)
The colors are associated with the different films/talent who've been in the race over the last four months. Short of littering the bottom of the graph with discarded contenders (The Town, Robert Duvall, Sam Rockwell, Chris Nolan, among many others), I'd recommend going back and checking out previous editions for a look at how the race has tracked since September.
Oscar Index Archives
The colors are associated with the different films/talent who've been in the race over the last four months. Short of littering the bottom of the graph with discarded contenders (The Town, Robert Duvall, Sam Rockwell, Chris Nolan, among many others), I'd recommend going back and checking out previous editions for a look at how the race has tracked since September.
Oscar Index Archives
Excellent points, and I wouldn't really be surprised if it did win as the Academy is far too overpopulated with members in the Acting branch, and they often vote for movies with a lot of ACTING over movies where the acting doesn't show.
Still, one has to hold out hope that the new rules and younger members HAVE changed the Academy and that last year wasn't an aberration. Avatar was the one that supposedly had heat during the voting process yet The Hurt Locker still won. But maybe it won because its closest competitors - Avatar and Inglourious Basterds, rumored to be the real second-place finisher - weren't the ACTING showcases the Academy has adored over the years.
That said, I can't buy into it. I still think there are plenty of voters out there that will say, "I KNOW Clive Owen will get his Oscar, Natalie Portman will get her Oscar, so let me give a little love to The Social Network." And last year's Hurt Locker/Inglourious Basterds voters are more likely to vote for that over the more conventional choices.