Oscar Index: Hurricane Meryl Makes Landfall; Artist, Hugo Surge Toward Top

The bleary-eyed minions at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics have shoved off for the long holiday weekend, leaving it to me to sort out the hectic awards scramble as we head into the third month of this year's Oscar Index. And by "hectic," I do mean hectic, with a lead change at the top of two categories, a neck-and-neck tie atop another and plenty of feverish competition foreseen in another. Read on for a closer look.

[Click the graphs for full-size images.]

The Leading 10:

1. The Artist

2. The Descendants

3. War Horse

4. The Help

5. Midnight in Paris

6. Hugo

7. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

8. Moneyball

9. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

10. The Tree of Life

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

What a run for The Artist, which followed last week's concerted effort to upstage The Descendants with this week's total eclipse. It was pretty much pure Weinstein mojo: It all started Monday night at the Academy when the mogul roped in Charlie Chaplin's granddaughters Carmen and Dolores -- all the way from Paris -- to "host" a screening on the film's behalf. "The Artist holds a special importance for us because we had the privilege of intimately experiencing the culture of black and white silent films which forever left its mark upon us as artists," the Chaplins said in a joint statement announcing the screening, which was also attended by director Michel Hazanavicus, co-star Bérénice Bejo, Uggie the dog (who, Pete Hammond noted, "was forbidden by the Academy from taking part in the Q&A") and a significant cross-section of both guild and Academy membership. "The film has a universal dimension crossing boundaries of language, challenging our expectations, and breaking commercial convention by returning to the purest form of film-making."

Damn. The Descendants, meanwhile, fought back a bit with a superb box-office showing in limited release, but that wasn't enough to repel a developing backlash among critics and awards pundits alike. Even with 91 percent positive reactions on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the intense, concentrated distaste of detractors like J. Hoberman ("[I]t's being touted by industry savants for a Best Picture Oscar because it's the sort of movie that, in resolving a tragically irresolvable situation, encourages audiences and studios to feel good about themselves. [...] The pathos is as unearned as the protagonist's privilege") and our own Stephanie Zacharek ("There's nothing surprising or affecting about it. Not even Clooney, who works wonders with the occasional piece of dialogue, can save it") among others hinted at the film's possible perceptual shortcomings among awards voters (especially writers and directors) persists.

Meanwhile, Grantland's Oscar oracle Mark Harris -- himself not a Descendants fan -- weighed in with a typically clear-eyed glimpse at the film's curse of seasonally high expectations:

Whatever you think of The Descendants, it probably should not have had to open with the burden of what the New York Times' David Carr used to call all of us "Oscar ninnies" having spent months announcing that it's a front-runner, or of reviews that bandy about words like "perfect" and in one case even suggest that "perfect" sells the movie short. Very few films [...] can keep from buckling a little under the adjectival decoration that's lavished on them during awards season. They're like racehorses weighed down with garlands before they even get out of the starting gate.

And it only gets worse. If you think The Descendants has it hard, consider the challenges faced by War Horse and The Iron Lady and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which don't open for a month and will have to pass through literally dozens of awards announcements before you can actually buy a ticket.

Well, yes and no. For a guy whose awards column debuted in mid-September, Harris doth protest a smidge too much. He knows as well as the rest of us the business we are in, and studios know exactly what they're getting into by planting their prestige crop for a late-fall harvest. It's never pretty when a freeze hits, but under ideal conditions you'll be eating all winter.

But he also alludes to a crucial point about what we can gain from a -- gasp! -- year-round awards harvest. It's no coincidence, for example, that Warner Bros. has exhumed Contagion for a late Oscar bid; the studio's J. Edgar is toast, they're hiding Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for as long as it can (we'll get to that in a second), and it's not like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 stands a legitimate chance at nominations outside a few craft categories. Harris himself suggested this tack two months ago, largely because he had the benefit of having, you know, seen the film.

That's why The Artist may be Harvey Weinstein's boldest stroke of genius ever. By acquiring a Cannes Film Festival darling way back in May, the buzz was already out. No coastal interests would face hurt feelings for being shut out of a first wave of November/December screenings; no life-or-death premieres would ensue at Venice, Toronto or AFI Fest. The worst that could happen would be peaking too early, but even that wasn't an awards-season dealbreaker. After all, Harvey entitled awards influencers and prognosticators -- who loathe, more than anything, acknowledging they could ever have a wrong read on a film -- to stand by their sight-unseen darlings J. Edgar, War Horse or Extremely Loud all the way through December. As the darlings fell off, which they always do, those observers could naturally come back and sat they were behind The Artist all along. Which, technically, they were. Everybody wins.

The flipside, again, is when the studios get their prestige release dates right. I give Warners a lot of credit for withholding Extremely Loud from the New York Film Critics Circle's advanced voting deadline -- not because I have anything at all against the NYFCC (of whom Stephanie Zacharek is a member), but because the decision -- assuming the studio and producer Scott Rudin stick to it -- expresses old-fashioned faith in a product to speak directly to its audience, up to and including the Academy. Rudin, Weinstein and Extremely Loud director Stephen Daldry did something similar with The Reader back in 2008, which was rushed into a qualifying run without any interest in the December awards circus. The last word mattered more, and that investment paid off with five nominations and one win. On the other hand, the principals may just be protecting a surefire also-ran -- a noble gesture in itself, at least from the perspective that finds The Descendants overexposed and limping into December. Either way, it beats the reverse-psychology strategy of suggesting your movie has "too much anal rape" for the Academy -- but only by a little.

Of course, all of this overlooks the dizzying ascent of Hugo, which goes head-to-head with The Artist this week in terms of both hype (e.g. two NYC guild screenings last weekend, attended by everyone from Martin Scorsese to Sacha Baron Cohen to Chloe Moretz and more, followed by a Manhattan megapremiere) and hosannas (e.g. a critical reception only slightly off the stunning pace of The Artist's own). Not to be outdone, DreamWorks and Disney are sneaking preview screenings of War Horse into 10 cities this weekend, with Steven Spielberg attending a Q&A in New York on Sunday night -- and that's not even counting the industry previews unspooling over the next few days. All of this commences what we might as well call War Horse Week, which will culminate in the film's junket and world premiere on Dec. 4. I'll let you know how that's going when we reconvene here next Wednesday, assuming I haven't narcoleptically tumbled into some desk-borne stupor by then. To be continued...

The Leading 5:

1. Alexander Payne, The Descendants

2. Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

3. Steven Spielberg, War Horse

4. Martin Scorsese, Hugo

5. David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

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

Despite the increasingly public face, charm and acclaim Hazanavicius brings to The Artist -- to say nothing of the staggering creative accomplishment his film represents -- he's still "Michel Hazanavicius." That's totally surmountable in a profile sense (ask Tom Hooper), but there's something about some of the reported responses to The Descendants' Academy screening last week -- "Clearly, it is the type of film that will probably stick with you and people will think back on," one viewer mentioned, while another added, "I wouldn't read it as they think it's the best of the year; more likely positioning it as one of the top contenders" -- that suggests a faction perfectly happy to wait and see how each film fares commercially and against the rest of the remaining 2011 contenders. Thus I'm not ready to downgrade Payne yet, but nothing suggests he's especially safe up there. In any case, try as he and Hazanavicius and Spielberg and Fincher (especially Fincher) might, there may be no slowing Scorsese down if Hugo takes off with audiences. He's already got James Cameron in his pocket. Who's next?

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