Oh, wow. Five months of awards coverage flies by so fast, but believe it: The ballots are in, the tuxes are tailored and the jewels are being rented as we speak. And the 2011 Academy Awards are right around the corner. This means, of course, one final trip to Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics for the final Oscar Index of the 2010-11 season. Get the Kleenex, and let's see what there is to see...
[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: The most you can say about the last seven days of Oscar science is that a year that once seemed so preordained has plunged into a mess of last-minute hype, grandeur and not just a little frustration. The least you can say, meanwhile, is that even the most devastated TSN allies are almost all falling on the side of TKS for Best Picture, so at least we have this grudging certitude to work with. Experts at both Gold Derby and Gurus O' Gold have TKS running away with it, with Sasha Stone making the terrible reality of it all achingly clear: "There is no reason to assume it won't win. Except for that tiny needling truth that it isn't the best film of the 10."
There might be one reason it won't win, however: As Stone also notes, only A Place in the Sun and Traffic won Oscars for editing, screenplay and director while failing to win Best Picture. That's an intense stat made all the more potent by last weekend's Eddie Award for Best Feature Editing going to -- wait for it -- The Social Network. We could call that a kind of historical momentum, but then there is the continued progress of TKS in such high-profile venues as 60 Minutes, where, on the last weekend of voting, correspondent Scott Pelley had a heartfelt word with Colin Firth and showcased the original letters and diaries Lionel Logue kept from his relationship with King George VI. The integration of specific lines and details from the archives performs a minor counterbalance to folks like Christopher Hitchens, who loudly continued to rail against TKS's accuracy, motivation and point of view. And let's not forget this fun fact: No film about the U.K.'s royal family has ever won Best Picture.
Ultimately these are niggling factors, with the Oscar ballots in hand and the show four days away. But in the awards cosmos, where the idea of TKS having shared a set with a gay porn flick makes me not laugh but rather contemplate the calculus of imminent and unwanted publicity, it's hard not to believe everything counts. It's not hard to believe, however, it's too little too late for The Social Network and all its devotees.
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: I have to go back to the earlier statistic about editing, directing, and screenwriting if we're to make any sense of the directors' race. Again, only twice has the film that won all three awards lost Best Picture. But what if TSN doesn't even get that far? Judging by The King's Speech's clean sweep at PGA, DGA and SAG, by what rationale are we actually believing Fincher -- who is nowhere to be found on the scene while shooting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- is the front-runner here? A BAFTA Awards win? Really?
Really. Steve Pond, who actually filled out and mailed in a sample Academy ballot full of his ideal picks (including, in this category, Darren Aronofsky), explains:
Even if you disregard the fact that BAFTA splits picture and director far more often than the Oscars do, the move reinforced what I keep hearing from Academy voters. Many of them - probably even the majority, among ones I've talked to about this - fully expect that Fincher will win the Oscar for directing even while his Facebook flick loses Best Picture to the royal drama. [...] Remember: the picture and director ballots are counted differently now, and it's almost certain that The King's Speech is far too big a consensus movie to lose the top prize. So if Fincher wins here (I'm still on the fence about it), it'll be the closest thing his picture will have to a moment of Oscar glory.
A-ha! Still on the fence! Fence sitting was indeed a popular activity among the Oscar cognoscenti this week; Stone, as per custom, both predicted nominees that would win and selected others that she wanted to win, going with Hooper for the former and Fincher for the latter. Pete Hammond, who called the race for Fincher, acknowledged he'd been "vacillating" and echoed Pond's advisory that certain Academy members want to the "spread the wealth" among the year's most acclaimed films.
I don't know if I buy this; considering Hooper's relative visibility and TKS's unrelenting surge over the last month, I just can't see a split. It's all or nothing for this bad boy. Even Scott Feinberg's resident Academy-voting commentator refused to separate TSN and Fincher_ on his ballot, and yet another Academy member confessed taking The Fighter and David O. Russell. This kind of thing implies that if we're to accept the Academy's presumed methodological groupthink, they'll avoid a split where they can. And that means that if TKS is all-powerful in Picture, than Fincher should probably duck and cover in Director.
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: Here's another fence-sitting category. I personally have changed my tune about this one -- I think Bening, too, has ridden a wave of notoriety and Academy goodwill over the last few weeks that will wash Portman away -- but this isn't really about my picks. It's about guys like Hammond, Robert Osborne and Tom O'Neil pointing out the potential insurmountability of the Bening legacy:
Portman has behaved most graciously throughout this awards season, of course, but there are several good reasons why she could be tripped up by Bening, who is: 1) a three-time past loser overdue to win; 2) a member of the academy's Board of Governors; 3) a heterosexual star who plays gay, which earned Oscar gold for Sean Penn (Milk) and Tom Hanks (Philadelphia).
Still more evidence points to valuable votes being siphoned off to the likes of Michelle Williams and Nicole Kidman, suggesting either a Portman-Bening split that might let someone like Williams or, less likely, Jennifer Lawrence through to a shocking win. We all remember 2008, right? Ellen Page vs. Julie Christie? And it finally wound up with Marion Cotillard? Anyway, Vegas is barely offering a front runner at this point, and the Index does show the awards orthodoxy remains fixed behind Portman. But if you want to actually win your Oscar pool this year, going for Bening is about as informed an upset as you can pick. Just saying!
The Nominees:
1. Colin Firth, The King's Speech
2. Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
3. Javier Bardem, Biutiful
4. Jeff Bridges, True Grit
5. James Franco, 127 Hours
Notes: OK, now this one is over: All 43 out of 43 pundits surveyed in the last week agree Firth will win his first Academy Award on Sunday. Moving on...
The Nominees:
1. Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
2. Melissa Leo, The Fighter
3. Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
4. Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
5. Amy Adams, The Fighter
Notes: While Melissa Leo spent even more time in the last week defending her Glamour Shots ad campaign, Hailee Steinfeld quietly climbed to the top of one prestigious set of power rankings and out in front of Sasha Stone's own Supporting Actress picks. "I won't be surprised if True Grit turns up in unexpected places, but one place it seems likely to show up in is this category," she writes. "Steinfeld has a lead performance here, so it tips the advantage in her favor. She plays a very likable, heroic little girl. The only other 'likeable' character she's up against is Helena Bonham Carter, and she could win also."
Very true! Anne Thompson laid out a detailed case for HBC's Oscar ascendancy, attributable in no small part to herself being due to win, The King's Speech's seasonal domination, her recent BAFTA victory, and her generally self-deprecating wit that represents the direct opposite of Leo's shameless self-promotion. Both women are inveterate cinematic presences, which the Academy historically has been know to prefer -- at least way more than screen rookies, a class to which Steinfeld belongs and who've only won eight times in 73 years of the Supporting Actress category. Then again, I've said it before about adolescent actresses who rise up once in a generation for this award: The Steinfeld force is strong, and I wouldn't bet against it come Sunday.
That said, I'm still personally picking Jacki Weaver. After all, I think we can all agree that this year's Best Supporting Actress will win by a slim margin of votes after a fierce three-way competition. In that scenario, it would seem to me that Weaver and Adams stand to benefit the most. Keep hope alive, folks!
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: Oh, man. Has Rush really made this late run? Indeed, writes Scott Feinberg:
I know it's a gamble, but if The King's Speech has anywhere close to the Academy support that my colleagues and I are hearing it does, then it will also carry along some other close categories on its coattails, and none is more obvious than Rush because you cannot love The King's Speech without loving both of the performances at its center.
I know that it's incredibly rare for an actor or actress to win with the BFCA, HFPA, and SAG but not with AMPAS, but keep in mind that it does happen every once in a while -- three times, in fact, over the last decade. One of those three times was four years ago: Eddie Murphy (Dreamgirls), like Bale, was a first-time best supporting actor Oscar nominee with a checkered personal history who had also largely refused to campaign for the best supporting actor award, and he wound up losing to an older and more likable actor (Alan Arkin) who had been campaigning hard on behalf of his performance in a more popular movie (Little Miss Sunshine,which may have had fewer total nods than Dreamgirls but had the one that mattered, best picture).
The argument against this appears to be that Rush has won already, but I don't know what the hell that means; if Oscarlessness is such an influential prerequisite to winning, then we should all prepare to coronate Annette Bening -- two decades Natalie Portman's senior -- this year's Best Actress. Same with Carter, for whom TKS's supremacy elsewhere signifies a competitive edge over Leo: "My thinking," writes Sasha Stone, "is if they love The King's Speech enough to give Tom Hooper Best Director, Rush's win should be a cake walk." Precisely. The bulk of pundits remain faithful to Bale, but like I said about Bening, this is no longer the long shot it used to be. Pick accordingly.
In any case, I thank you for keeping an eye on this feature for the last five months (!) of awards madness. It's been a pleasure and a thrill reading and chatting with all the awards-culture observers out there -- the professionals, the amateurs, the deep thinkers and close readers, the irascible and challenging, the wits and the wild cards. You all know who you are, and I appreciate each and every one of you. Now bring on the Oscars, already!