A week after its stirring season debut, Oscar Index returns to the scene with the latest scientifically observed developments in the 2011-12 awards race. Indeed, Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics has issued the results from its latest zeitgeist biopsy, and they look... inconclusive. Naturally! It's September.
Nevertheless, ready as so many prognosticators seem to be to issue grains of salt with their preliminary awards analysis, it hasn't slowed the torrent of data rocketing forth from the cognoscenti. Let's get a look at the latest:
[Click the graphs for full-size images.]
The Leading 10:
1. War Horse
2. The Descendants
3. Moneyball
4. The Ides of March
5. The Artist
6. J. Edgar
7. The Help
8. Midnight in Paris
9. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
10. The Tree of Life
Outsiders: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Iron Lady, A Dangerous Method
Last week's Index almost directly coincided with word that the Academy was revising its rules for campaigning. To wit, no star-studded receptions! No Twitter badmouthing! Limited Q&A's! "We want to do everything we can to put the focus back on the work," AMPAS COO Ric Robertson told Steve Pond. Right. I really wish this meant great things for the masterful Melancholia and every deserving candidate on Sasha Stone's "For Your Consideration" list, but it's another toothless bit of Academy regulation that obviously can't even take effect until after nominations are announced -- by which time it's too late for "the work" that's already been buried by critics' awards, top-10 lists, and the Golden Globes, whose HFPA administrators never encountered an awards-season gravy boat they didn't nearly drown in.
Furthermore, as Scott Feinberg observes, this just drives the active campaigning underground -- not that there weren't already inky Weinsteinian currents of power and influence traversing the awards substrata, but this rule change just means that voters shouldn't be surprised when they order a pizza and someone from The Artist delivers it. Or, even likelier, someone from The Artist delivers a pizza that a voter didn't order. ("Je suis vraiment désolé! Vous n'avez pas commandé une pizza? Eh bien, tenez quand même, avec les hommages de monsieur Harvey Weinstein et L'Artiste," etc. etc.)
Of course this doesn't slow War Horse's brisk gallop through the dawn-speckled Oscar landscape. (There's even a new, corresponding dawn-speckled poster. Well played, DreamWorks!) The latest editions of both Gold Derby and Gurus O'Gold have the year-end Spielberg entry reigning over the likes of the upsurging Descendants and even more upsurging Moneyball, whose opening-weekend windfall complemented its impressive Academy screening and far-flung social-media approbation. (Bret Easton Ellis and Jerry Seinfeld seemed especially jazzed in this week's edition of Twit Wit.) The aforementioned Artist also enjoyed a boost from the likes of Stone, who persuasively reminded us all:
And then there's The Artist. The Weinstein gem is the snake in the grass, as they say, driven home by a conversation I had with David Poland. [...] Some are wondering if it will even get nominated -- it's time to put those thoughts to bed. The film that has been carried through strongly from Cannes, Telluride and Toronto is The Artist and it will be a very strong force to be reckoned with. The Artist has it all - it is a movie about movies. It is a movie that is the kind of movie audiences turned to during the Depression to feel better about their own lives. "The trick," said Poland, "is whether the movie can make any money." Unlike the 1920s, getting audiences to pay for a silent, black-and-white movie seems like a daunting task.
"Y a quelqu'un qui a commandé une pizza?" Ahem.
Also of note: Gregory Ellwood's pronouncement that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, like War Horse, is the other present-day Best Picture frontrunner sight unseen ("Hanks, Bullock, Daldry, Rudin, a boy loses his father during 9/11. Until it isn't, it is"), and the awesome, awesome, awesome new, extended trailer for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. "There are two things that Oscar voters adore," writes Tom O'Neil. "1) overdue, cool directors with edgy new films and 2) movies based upon books that have a fanatical following." The latter is most definitely true, and may also benefit Extremely Loud (based on the bestseller by Jonathan Safran Foer). But there's a third thing that Oscar voters adore as well: Heart-squeezing war movies directed by Steven Spielberg. That's War Horse's royal flush to the others' two pair -- or at least that's how it looks on paper.
The Leading 5:
1. Steven Spielberg, War Horse
2. Alexander Payne, The Descendants
3. Clint Eastwood, J. Edgar
4. Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
5. George Clooney, The Ides of March
Outsiders: David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Stephen Daldry, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Bennett Miller, Moneyball; Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Tomas Alfredson, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Tate Taylor, The Help; David Cronenberg, A Dangerous Method
Taking the data from the Best Picture races and entering it into the Director-race algorithm, our Kudos Forensics researchers came up with the graph above. I think it's mostly accurate, if only because Ides of March slipped a bit and Fincher and Daldry have that awards-darling mojo that keeps them ranking over a guy like Miller -- Moneyball's ascendancy notwithstanding. Clooney is clearly the filmmaker in the most danger of tumbling from the competition, with Ides slowing a bit behind War Horse and Descendants and Michel Hazanavicius whipping up pizzas in the Weinstein kitchen enjoying a nice boost from the pundit ranks.
The Leading 5:
1. Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
2. Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
3. Viola Davis, The Help
4. Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
5. Charlize Theron, Young Adult
Outsiders: Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn; Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene; Keira Knightley, A Dangerous Method; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Emma Stone, The Help; Felicity Jones, Like Crazy
Here we go again with the unseen films. (Speaking of which, if, like a normal person, you've ever second-guessed the sensibility of reading tea leaves that haven't even sprouted yet, does Awards Daily ever have a roundtable chat for you!) The conventional wisdom hasn't budged much from the Streep/Close/Davis/Swinton hierarchy, though early signs -- including a rogue Gold Derby expert and a very Oscar-friendly career tribute at the forthcoming Gotham Awards -- indicate that Theron might make a legit run in the Jason Reitman/Diablo Cody reunion Young Adult. Olsen also had plenty more momentum than Knightley in early rankings from more than one prognostication pool; don't expect her to go anywhere but up as Martha Marcy May Marlene's Oct. 21 release date approaches.
The Leading 5:
1. George Clooney, The Descendants
2. Brad Pitt, Moneyball
3. Michael Fassbender, Shame
4. Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar
5. Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Outsiders: Jean Dujardin, The Artist; Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March; Woody Harrelson, Rampart; Tom Hanks, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Michael Shannon, Take Shelter; Damian Bechir, A Better Life; Michael Fassbender, A Dangerous Method; Tom Hardy, Warrior
I hate to keep going back to this, but listen: I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my ass. The Index comprises carefully calculated metrics gauged from thoroughly fluid data including hype, word of mouth, conventional wisdom, common sense and a range of intangibles. So it was with some surprise that I regarded the, uh, surprise that regarded last week's rankings for Best Actor. I mean, what the hell kind of awards orthodoxy goes over the moon for a performance like Fassbender's in Shame, watches Fox Searchlight -- a.k.a. the most fearsome Oscar predator not named Weinstein -- snatch it from the height of the Toronto Film Festival market, and then turns around and says, "Oh, he's not in the running"? Don't be daft! Of course he's in the running! You guys put him there! And the current consensus that the Oscar is Clooney's to lose for Searchlight's Descendants just helps confirm the schema sketched out here for you a week ago: The studio bought the competition.
So give each some credit, I guess. In fairness, some observers (Sasha Stone and Kristopher Tapley, for example) already have, while others still yammer on about the three-way race between Clooney, Pitt and DiCaprio. Or maybe, despite Moneyball's great opening, it's not Pitt's year. Let Mark Harris explain:
[T]o me, his road to a win is almost unimaginable; in fact, even his road to a nomination is challenging. The reasons are twofold: (1) This isn't the kind of performance that the actors' branch thinks of as capital-A acting, and (2) Pitt is not the kind of actor voters have recently been especially eager to nominate.
That's not just a gut feeling; it's a quantitative reality! In tribute to the bottomless appetite for statistical analysis that gives Moneyball's protagonist one of his reasons for being -- and also because after four weeks, I figure it's time to justify the "metrics" part of "Oscarmetrics" -- I did a little number-crunching to see if I could back up my hunch that this might not be an Oscar performance. Taking as my sample the past 50 nominees for best actor (from 2001 to 2010), I looked for commonalities in the roles that got them nominated. Six trends stood out [...]
Read the rest at Grantland. Don't let my lab coat and pocket protector fool you: I wasn't so convinced. But you may be!
In other news, the B-movie stalwarts at Millennium paid $2 million for Rampart, meaning that either studio new kid (and awards-campaign veteran) Mark Gill thinks he can turn mogul Avi Lerner's stinky genre ship around or you'll be watching Woody Harrelson's searing work at 2 a.m. next week on Showtime. I wouldn't expect miracles, to be honest, and at this point, neither would roughly 90 percent of the pundits out there. Dujardin went along with the Artist bump, while Oldman is also to be feted at this year's Gotham Awards -- which in itself means nothing but a trophy and some free cocktails, but hints at some worthwhile Oscar portent: "The 'career tribute' portion of their ceremony has included at least one future Oscar nominee every year since 2004," writes Nathaniel Rogers at The Film Experience. "With so little information (i.e. clips or photos) on Charlize's work in Young Adult, we have to assume that Gary Oldman is in the best position currently to continue that trend." Plus Oldman's never been nominated for jack, so while most seem to agree that such a cutthroat year probably isn't his to win, it's almost certainly his to make the cut.
Meanwhile, enduring favorite Gosling hopped into Harrelson's old spot, sublime underdog Michael Shannon caught Take Shelter's release-week wave and the underdoggiest of underdogs, Damian Bechir, creeping in thanks to Summit's aggressive screener campaign on behalf of A Better Life. Oh! And who can forget the least-burning question question of the week: "Is Sean Penn crashing the Best Actor race?" Hint: No.
The Leading 5:
1. Octavia Spencer, The Help
2. Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus
3. Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
4. Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
5. Jessica Chastain, The Help
Outsiders: Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids; Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter; Keira Knightley, A Dangerous Method; Judi Dench, J. Edgar; Mia Wasikowska, Albert Nobbs; Emily Watson, War Horse; Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs; Sandra Bullock, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Now we're talking! After a week that looked about as well-stocked as a pumpkin patch on Nov. 1, experts are lobbing in everyone from Dench to Watson to Bejo to run with Spencer and Redgrave. Huzzah! It's still probably the latter pair's race to lose, but watch for Bejo in particular to creep in closer to The Artist's release. Also, check out what producer Lynda Obst -- an influential Hollywood woman who always evinced smart, solid awards-season taste in her annual exchanges with New York film critic David Edelstein -- had to say this week about the "Bridesmaids bump." If the ladies in the Academy's actors' branch relate, it could mean very good things for McCarthy:
It came at a moment when any movies for women, women's comedies -- forget dramas, there are no dramas for anybody -- but women's comedies, women's thrillers were going to get put by the wayside forever. Women's projects were dying everywhere. That's why the opening of Bridesmaids was so critical for every woman in features, why its success was attended with such profound interest by every woman writer, producer and director in town. [...]
There are suddenly projects for women! I'm pitching one right now that is a female-based comedy and people are really responsive to it. And then my directing debut, which was dead in the water at New Line, went from having no momentum to having momentum, the weekend right after Bridesmaids opened. Bridesmaids meant that the idea of being able to make a movie about women was resuscitated.
Get to work, Universal! In this field, you could still have a phenomenon on your hands come February.
The Leading 5:
1. Christopher Plummer, Beginners
2. Albert Brooks, Drive
3. Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
4. Nick Nolte, Warrior
5. Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Outsiders: Jim Broadbent, The Iron Lady; John C. Reilly, Carnage; Philip Seymour Hoffman, Moneyball; Armie Hammer, J. Edgar; Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method
Meanwhile, Hill got the Moneyball bump in this category. Like it matters.
[Thanks to Jillian Murray for the French translation -- Ed.]