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.
The Leading 5:
1. Viola Davis, The Help
2. Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
3. Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn
4. Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
5. Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Outsiders: Charlize Theron, Young Adult; Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Felicity Jones, Like Crazy; Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia; Keira Knightley, A Dangerous Method
The Governors Awards were a crucial opportunity for the year's Oscar hopefuls to unofficially declare their intents (or at least their studios and/or distributors' intents) to campaign, and the Index class of 2011 (including Davis, Close, Swinton and Mara) was most definitely represented. Streep, meanwhile, didn't need to stand in front of a giant Oscar to prove anything -- she just needed to finally have someone get a look at The Iron Lady, which found true believers in the UK. Well, sort of: The Guardian's Xan Brooks called director Phyllida Lloyd's biopic about Margaret Thatcher an "often silly and suspect picture" but raved about Streep as its "one secret weapon":
Her performance is astonishing and all but flawless; a masterpiece of mimicry which re-imagines Thatcher in all her half-forgotten glory. Streep has the basilisk stare; the tilted, faintly predatory posture. Her delivery, too, is eerily good - a show of demure solicitude, invariably overtaken by steely, wild-eyed stridency.
The Telegraph's David Gritten adds: "Awards should be coming Streep's way; yet her brilliance rather overshadows the film itself."
There is, of course, good news and bad news about such qualified praise, the good news being that at least Streep has something to show for a week when Viola Davis rode the Oprah wave in front of God, the Academy and everyone. The bad news is that anything breathlessly labeled "first review" is due a merciless treatment by those critical afterthoughts in Los Angeles and New York who come second, third or worse. Such pettiness is a sad fact of Oscar season, but even if it weren't, the other bad news is that if Leonardo DiCaprio -- who's never won an Oscar, let alone two Oscars -- may not withstand J. Edgar's poor showing to get over the Best Actor hump, then why should Streep hang on in Actress? This is a congested year in both Lead acting categories, so look at it from a sports perspective: There's a reason why MVPs don't come from losing teams, and too many members of the actors' branch know this.
Nevertheless, we'll deal with that if and/or when it happens. Streep's entitled to her boost -- as is Swinton, who attended a jam-packed SAG screening of Kevin this week in New York. The reception was through the roof, she was in typically adventurous and articulate form, and most importantly, Swinton stressed her pride in having helped shepherd Lynne Ramsay's film to the screen in recent years as a producer. With this being the culmination of more than decade's worth of acting/producing work that finally yielded Julia, last year's I Am Love and now Kevin -- and all the bill-paying roles in between -- Swinton is hinting publicly that a long hiatus might be in order. That's a compelling tack to take opposite the Davis/Streep orthodoxy and the fluid fortunes of Close and Theron; why threaten to retire when you can simply say, "I've done everything I want to do -- for now -- and I just want to be able to savor it"? That's art.
Speaking of retirement...
The Leading 5:
1. George Clooney, The Descendants
2. Jean Dujardin, The Artist
3. Michael Fassbender, Shame
4. Brad Pitt, Moneyball
5. Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar
Outsiders: Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Michael Shannon, Take Shelter; Ralph Fiennes, Coriolanus; Woody Harrelson, Rampart; Demian Bichir, A Better Life; Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March
Brad Pitt may or may not have intended his professed three-year plan as a legitimate awards strategy (i.e. "You never know if I'll ever be as good in anything else as I was in Moneyball, so cover your ass, Academy..."), but while he was yakking about hanging it up, Dujardin was putting in the hours where it counts: With the Academy and with the press. "True," Scott Feinberg observed, "he still can't speak much English, but that hasn't kept him from attending virtually every possible gladhanding opportunity, just like Roberto Benigni and Marion Cotillard in years past, and things worked out quite nicely for them." No kidding. Fassbender made himself slightly scarcer, splitting himself on his media run for both Shame and A Dangerous Method but partying with Shame director Steve McQueen at the Governors Ball.
And while even Descendants skeptics like Movieline's Stephanie Zacharek put in a good word for George Clooney, it's tough to argue with Grantland's Oscar oracle Mark Harris about a "Clooney vs. Pitt vs. DiCaprio contest":
[It] has a slight whiff of "Which of the three richest, handsomest, most popular boys in the school are we going to choose as class president?" They are, in short, the 1 percent -- and this is not an ideal year to be in that category. At another Oscar moment, the now-widely-reprinted news that DiCaprio took only one-tenth of his usual fee to make J. Edgar might get him some traction. This year, people are more likely to note that one-tenth of his usual fee is $2 million, which means that the notion of personal sacrifice should probably be left out of the argument.
I'm not suggesting that all of these guys don't have good chances at nominations. In fact, one of them might win. But what's missing here is, perhaps, the sense of urgency, importance, or sheer pleasure that impels voters to carry an actor all the way to the finish line.
Amen. That said, I have an increasingly hard time believing that Rampart and Coriolanus's bare-bones qualifying-run strategies are going to do the trick for underdogs like Harrelson and Fiennes, or that even a performance as affecting as Shannon's can overcome the too-little-too-late anemia of Sony Classics' campaign for Take Shelter. If DiCaprio falls out, then it's likely Oldman's slot to lose, if only because for Oldman, "It's time" means time to simply be nominated -- a career first. Who wouldn't get behind that?
The Leading 5:
1. Octavia Spencer, The Help
2. Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus
3. Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
4. Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
5. Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Outsiders: Sandra Bullock, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Jessica Chastain, The Help; Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter; Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life; Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids; Keira Knightley, A Dangerous Method; Judy Greer, The Descendants; Mia Wasikowska, Albert Nobbs; Emily Watson, War Horse; Marion Cotillard, Midnight in Paris
While Spencer shed tears last Saturday in Hollywood, Redgrave was actually onstage in London, where she helped honor her Driving Miss Daisy co-star James Earl Jones with an honorary Oscar of his own. The next night the Academy was honoring Redgrave herself in London -- led by Streep, no less, who made her film debut in Julia, for which Redgrave won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1978 only to deliver her infamous pro-Palestinian acceptance speech scolding "Zionist hoodlums" in the Middle East:
"Our privilege as actors," Streep said, "is that we get to love each other and get paid for it, like prostitutes. But when Vanessa won the Oscar, and caused a cataclysm with her speech, that was a little lesson in bravery. Fame is not just a commodity, you can use it to make a difference."
So all is forgiven? Either way, not a bad plug. Woodley and Bejo, meanwhile, hit the circuit Stateside and enjoyed the benefits of being in this month's two most formidable awards challengers. Neither, however, had quite the encounters McTeer has had: From Albert Nobbs's own Hollywood coming-out party to the ceaseless cognoscenti chattering of Jeffrey Wells, Anne Thompson and others, the erstwhile Oscar nominee is largely believed to have stolen Nobbs from its awards-craving leading lady/co-writer Close. Until McCarthy or Chastain can find sustained traction like that going into the critics/guild awards stretch, it could be a tough nominee narrative to overcome.
The Leading 5:
1. Christopher Plummer, Beginners
2. Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
3. Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
4. Albert Brooks, Drive
5. Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Outsiders: Nick Nolte, Warrior; Armie Hammer J. Edgar; Patton Oswalt, Young Adult; Corey Stoll, Midnight in Paris; Jim Broadbent, The Iron Lady; Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method; John C. Reilly, Carnage; Philip Seymour Hoffman, Moneyball; Tom Hanks, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Yawn. The Hammer praise slipped and plunged down the same sheer-faced abyss where J. Edgar went to die, but that was fun while it lasted. What more is there? That some rotten Academy precedent officially prohibits celebrated Artist canine Uggie from earning Oscar recognition? Seriously, I've got nothing.
Read all of this year's Oscar Index columns here.
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