As we race toward O-Day, Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has worked tirelessly to parse the latest input, insight and insanity to arise in the build-up to the 83rd Academy Awards. It hasn't always been pretty, but it's as close to empirically accurate as you're going to get without a peephole at PricewaterhouseCoopers. And this week we've been especially busy. To the Index!
[Click the graphs for larger images]
The Nominees:
1. The King's Speech
2. The Social Network
3. Black Swan
4. True Grit
5. The Fighter
6. Winter's Bone
7. Inception
8. The Kids Are All Right
9. Toy Story 3
10. 127 Hours
Notes: If I'm being honest, the last week in Oscarology didn't really yield that many revelations. The world still thinks The King's Speech is the movie to beat overall, with insiders rolling out everything from statistical analyses to the implied endorsement of no less than Queen Elizabeth II to put further distance between Speech and its perceived closest competitor The Social Network. Marshall Fine, meanwhile, implored his peers to stop whining, already about either film's standing; two full weeks of voting remain, after all, and anyway, he added, "I'd be worried if the Oscars picked The Social Network. To me, that would be the true harbinger that [David] Fincher's film isn't the great leap forward that so many touted it as being."
Fine's piece is also interesting insofar as it illuminates one of the biggest myths of the race to date: That, as another pundit noted this week, The King's Speech over The Social Network signifies some devastating rebuke of critical culture. "[Critics] have been rendered irrelevant once again -- and so we're back to the great divide, which is how it was when I started watching them back in 1999," wrote Sasha Stone. "The film is usually well reviewed, just not the one the critics liked best." In fairness, she's talking about the results of critics' awards vs. industry awards, but even that defies some pretty crucial context. For starters, critics associations are relatively tiny bodies that go through rounds and rounds of voting, often fraught with the kind of real-time politicking and grudges that we awards-beat folks try to impose on the Oscar race itself yet which, because the guilds and Academy vote member-by-member, does not and cannot exist. I mean, good luck finding an Academy member who can even understand his or her Best Picture ballot.
Furthermore -- and not to ascribe some definitive critical faculties to Rotten Tomatoes, but the site seems germane since we're all so obsessed with the Academy's own alleged hive-mind function -- why should critics feel so disenfranchised to see a 95%-approved film (e.g. King's Speech) win Best Picture over a 97%-approved film (Social Network)? If that's the case, why are we not going to war on behalf of Toy Story 3 (99% approved) or True Grit (tied at 95% approved)? Must this really be a two-horse race at this point? And if so, who's ultimately responsible?
Seriously -- I'm asking. Of course we onlookers must assume some blame (particularly those who continue to state the obvious well after it's already been stated), as must usual suspect Harvey Weinstein, who has so exquisitely calibrated his Oscar machine you'd think a slave gang of Scientologists spent thousands of man-hours crafting it to his exacting specifications. A recent profile in Vanity Fair accompanied a kind of hypnotic industry inculcation affecting thousands of guild voters at a time. One can only assume Michael Moore's lawsuit against Harvey is a strategically timed smear (by Moore himself, I should add -- not Sony, which likely has its hands full enough figuring out if/how the ongoing Winklevi brouhaha impacts TSN) and that TSN's "love fest" with Mark Zuckerberg has its own campaign advantages. David Fincher and Scott Rudin, meanwhile, have become increasingly hands-off -- at least publicly. Make of that what you will.
In short, the supposed TKS/TSN death match has resulted in a tired awards orthodoxy with its heads up its asses. Let's shake it up, people! I propose this alternative: Black Swan will sneak in and win Best Picture. You heard it here first. Upset of the century! And why not? I mean, screw the guilds, seriously: SAG's ensemble award has predicted fewer than half of the eventual Best Picture winners, and the PGA hasn't done a whole lot better at two-thirds. The DGA Awards are a formidable predictor of the Academy's Best Director, sure, but even in the case of all three going one way -- as they did in 1995 for Apollo 13, which Braveheart eventually beat at the Academy level -- shockers occur.
And laugh or scoff all you want, but when I see things like the Gold Derby Film Awards reflect a kind of user-generated groundswell for a movie like Black Swan -- whose gross is easily outpacing the also-R-rated King's Speech and will surpass Social Network's own in the days ahead -- I can't help but wonder how that voting body overlaps with all the random others. Who's influencing who? What is Fox Searchlight up to while Harvey hogs the spotlight? If our emotional reaction to King's Speech qualifies it for awards glory, then what does our emotional and visceral reaction to Black Swan worth?
Again, I'm really asking! Well, that and predicting. Call it a hunch. I feel good about it. Last thing: I cannot believe the exposure Winter's Bone received last weekend in Saturday Night Live's most high-profile, even historic spot. Boner jokes or no, this is good for at least a temporary Index spike.
The Nominees:
1. Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
2. David Fincher, The Social Network
3. Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
4. Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit
5. David O. Russell, The Fighter
Notes: Upset of the century! Regardless of what happens in Picture, I still don't think Hooper has the Academy juice to win this. But I also think Aronofsky, not Fincher, will wind up as the prime beneficiary of any backlash. Attribute this in part to a Fincher/Hooper vote-split, as well as to the texture and electricity of Natalie Portman's awards-favored lead performance over Colin Firth's more conventional qualities. And don't start bitching about apples/oranges etc.; we're talking about what movie directors like, not what they rationalize.
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: Yawn. Lawrence experienced the "Wayne's World" bump as well, and I guess Annette Bening was literally front-and-center in this week's Oscar-nominee luncheon -- as much a visibility coup as anything she can accomplish at this point. But it's still Portman's world.
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: Annnd it's still Firth's world as well. Franco, too, might_ have felt the SNL boost were he not portrayed on "Weekend Update" as an overextended, overexposed space-case who may or may not even be qualified to host the Oscars, let alone win or be nominated for one. Ugh, it's come to this? Is it Feb. 27 yet?
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.
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!