Oscar Index: Descendants, Artist, Help Set for Ménage à Trophy

Welcome back to Oscar Index, your weekly awards-season rundown from Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. And to be honest, there's not so much to run down: Descendants this, Artist that, some minor acting bumps and nudges... relatively quiet, truth be told. Now that I've totally sold you on this latest installment, let's check out the races!

[Click the graphs for full-size images.]

The Leading 10:

1. The Descendants

2. The Artist

3. War Horse

4. The Help

5. Midnight in Paris

6. Moneyball

7. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

8. Hugo

9. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

10. The Tree of Life

Outsiders: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn; Margin Call; My Week With Marilyn; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; J. Edgar; Shame; The Ides of March

Theatrical audiences will finally get a chance this week to see what all the Descendants fuss is about -- and there is quite some fuss, with the critical consensus favoring Alexander Payne's latest in a way that previous installments of the Index pretty obviously foretold. A few key exceptions (including that of our own Stephanie Zacharek) stand out, which may actually lay the groundwork for a backlash as we head into two key dates: Nov. 23, when The Artist debuts in limited release; and Nov. 28, when the New York Film Critics Circle selects its award winners for 2011. If The Descendants can make it out of that space with its supremacy intact, not even dissenting votes by the National Board of Review or LA Film Critics Association can derail much of its momentum headed into December.

Don't believe me? Check out Harvey Weinstein's recent PR blast for The Artist, a fusillade of magazine features, critical plaudits and word-of-mouth events featuring talent from the film. "How am I going to market a black-and-white silent movie?" he replied to New York Magazine's inquiry into that very subject. "I'm praying. I'm going to church and to synagogue. And if that doesn't work, I'm going Buddhist. And if that doesn't work, I'm going Islam. Saturdays and Sundays are very busy in the Weinstein household." That followed critic Kenneth Turan -- not exactly whom you'd call an awards-season maven -- stumping for The Artist in the LAT. Meanwhile co-stars Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are in New York this week meeting the press, wooing awards voters and courting good will in a release cycle otherwise reserved for George Clooney and company. It is on.

In other developments, one lone War Horse devotee came out for the film this week, while the punditocracy basically agreed that J. Edgar -- the patron saint of lugubrious box-office poison -- was done for in the Best Picture race. (They're apparently holding out for Best Actor, but I'll get to that.) With Warner Bros. down to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as its remaining Oscar question mark, at least one observer went in for a closer look at the studio's campaign for its Harry Potter finale. In short: Don't bet on it, but don't underestimate it. You have to continue to feel pretty good about Margin Call, which more awards-watchers and even distributor Roadside Attractions finally made a public point of standing behind.

But arguably the film with the most mobility is The Help. Oprah Winfrey made sure of that last weekend while collecting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian hardware at the third annual Governors Awards:

""When I saw The Help, that is my story. My grandmother was a maid, her mother was a maid, her mother before her was a slave. My mother was a maid. My grandmother's greatest dream for me was that I would grow up in a family and have a career where she used to say, 'I hope you get some good white folks. I hope you get some good white folks like I have. I have good white folks.' And the only picture I have of my grandmother is of her holding a white child in her maid's uniform. So the journey from Kosciusko, Mississippi, where nobody ever even imagined it possible that you could be anything other than a maid who had some good white folks who would give you clothes and would let you take food home on the holidays, it's unimaginable that I would be standing before you, voted by the Board of Governors."

Damn. Assuming Academy members don't already feel like an Oscar for Oprah is an Oscar for The Help, few endorsements possess nearly as much heft. Of course, this isn't Oprah's Book Club, either, so wait and see, I guess.

The Leading 5:

1. Alexander Payne, The Descendants

2. Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

3. Steven Spielberg, War Horse

4. David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

5. Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Outsiders: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Stephen Daldry, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Bennett Miller, Moneyball; Tate Taylor, The Help; George Clooney, The Ides of March; Tomas Alfredson, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Clint Eastwood, J. Edgar

Meh. Though you know what's interesting? Check out this comment from an astute Awards Daily reader, who points out that in all the screening information and campaign-consideration literature currently being disseminated to voters from Sony Classics, nowhere in the Midnight in Paris section will you find Woody Allen's name. Not for Director, not for Original Screenplay... nowhere. It's the most specific statement yet (this year, anyway) of Allen's disinterest in even being in the conversation about Academy Awards. But who wants his spot? Scorsese has the edge in the wake of Hugo's big week, and Taylor enjoyed a boost thanks to Oprah, but if I've said it once, then I've said it a thousand times: Never count out Daldry.

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