Oscar Index: So an Artist and a Horse Walk into a Bar...

Good news and bad news this week from Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics -- the good news being that a handful of critics organizations and awards bodies have helped to draw the year's noteworthiest (i.e. Oscar-baitiest) titles and talent of the season into their sharpest relief yet. The bad news: Sharp relief remains a total mess, with the fields in most major categories wide open heading into December. Which is the way we like it, right? Right? Ugh. To the Index...

[Click the graphs for full-size images.]

The Leading 10:

1. The Artist

2. War Horse

3. The Descendants

4. The Help

5. Midnight in Paris

6. Hugo

7. Moneyball

8. The Tree of Life

9. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

10. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

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

First things first: Anyone who tells you the Gotham Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, New York Film Critics Circle Awards and tomorrow's National Board of Review Awards have no impact whatsoever on the Oscar race is either misinformed or deeply in denial. I know: I used to be one of them myself, hewing to the austerity and imperviousness of the Academy Awards, especially by such starfucking hat-passers as IFP and Film Independent. But when FIND executive director Dawn Hudson wound up hopping to the Academy's CEO gig earlier this year, it was roughly my 843rd sign in the last five years of the institutional insularity that binds such awards-culture monoliths. People can inveigh about the NYFCC's own austerity and rectitude, but let's face it: If I knew I could A) jolt a film like Moneyball to awards life after two months in hibernation and B) get Brad Pitt to come to my party, I'd give the movie my Best Actor and Best Screenplay awards, too. These guys didn't even see one of the movies long regarded as the season's biggest wild card (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) just so they could vote first in the derby, and what for? So they could perpetuate the awards narrative that Harvey Weinstein initiated back in May?

It's all connected -- profiles, visibility, timing. Check out Oscar oracle Mark Harris's painstaking analysis this week for his view, or Mike Ryan's narrower breakdown of if/how the NYFCC has recently tended to move the Oscar needle. Look at this week's select honorees at the Gothams (not to mention Scott Feinberg's helpful follow-up). I mean, Charlize Theron? Gary Oldman? I love both -- especially in their new films (hint hint) -- but we are ultimately talking about deploying any and every means available to cling to the neurons of an aging, overstimulated voting elite of 6,000-plus for the next two months. Can your organization do it better than my organization? Give it your best shot. And so on... and so on...

Anyway! As noted, the awards bustle paid off most nicely for The Artist and Moneyball, the latter of which also had Pitt and fellow nomination-hunter Jonah Hill conveniently, simultaneously out and about on the campaign trail. The Tree of Life, for which Pitt split his NYFCC Best actor nod, also benefited from tying Beginners at the Gothams. (I repeat: The Tree of Life tied Beginners -- a distinction that one may think might invalidate the Gothams entirely were it not for the fact that the awards cognoscenti have spent the last 48 hours writing about them.) The Artist, meanwhile, will take its critical approbation and Indie Spirit nods (which are supposed to be for American films, but whatever), but it'll really take its $52,500 opening-weekend per-screen average. Alas, the disturbing news arrives via Nathaniel Rogers:

Everyone predicting a win for The Artist before the nominations are even announced should consider the following list and sobering fact: No movie about movies has ever won Best Picture. [...] You'd think that Hollywood's High Holy Night, which is one big self-congratulatory spectacle, would embrace movies about movies and they do to a point. But perhaps even Hollywood's notoriously fulsome egos feel sheepish about taking it all the way. Do they fear it would be overkill, the back-patting night of nights morphing into something far more orgiastic, a daisy chain of self regard?

Excellent questions! In a semi-related development, movie-love nostalgia showcase Hugo came out strong as well in limited-wide release, portending, in the words of one wag, "early rustlings of a longer-running sleeper success, the kind of success that happens infrequently in Hollywood and even more rarely in the family film realm." Combined with staggeringly strong reviews, that success would almost certainly secure Hugo's spot in the Best Picture coterie.

It's a tandem War Horse doesn't need nearly as desperately, but kudos to Steven Spielberg for not taking any chances on a holiday weekend when his most formidable competition was raking in the accolades and cash. The filmmaker and Disney unveiled his latest for press and industry insiders at a handful of screenings in NYC and L.A., plus a public sneak preview (and a Web Q&A) attended by Spielberg himself. The feedback among the Oscar orthodoxy was incredibly strong, with influencers like Steve Pond, Sasha Stone, David Poland, Kristopher Tapley, Anne Thompson and numerous tweeting others ("Wept through last half of WAR HORSE. Beautiful story of hope and love in the worst of times," wrote Devin Faraci) going to bat for it as the formidable Best Picture contender we always knew it would be. For the prosecution, meanwhile, Jeffrey Wells dismissed Tapley's analysis in particular (which downplayed critics awards, incidentally) as "one of the basest insults to the Academy membership I've ever read." Now that's when you know you have a real contender.

One last thing: How about Patrick Goldstein's idea of a luxury tax for studios lavishly pushing the likes of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2?

By publicly identifying the biggest spenders, a luxury tax could serve as a disincentive for crass studio excess. It might also help level the Oscar playing field. The vast majority of recent Oscar best picture nominees have been films that were either financed by a major studio or one of its specialty film divisions, which, if necessary, can draw on the resources of the parent conglomerate. (The 2007 best picture nominee Babel from Paramount Vantage is a good example.) Given the new formula for picking best picture nominees, if Warners' ad spree earns Hallows 5% of the first-place votes for best picture, it could knock a smaller movie out of the running. Even though indie movies can still earn a best picture win, as Summit's The Hurt Locker did in 2009, most Oscar insiders say that when it comes to vaulting your film into the awards season conversation, money talks.

Love it! Except this whole thing about penalties going to causes like the eventual Academy museum or film scholarships for underprivileged kids is a clear misappropriation of funds that should be going to the Consider Uggie campaign. Thoughts?

The Leading 5:

1. Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

2. Steven Spielberg, War Horse

3. Alexander Payne, The Descendants

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

As usual, their films' rising tides generally lifted the filmmakers' boats -- or the inverse, as evidenced by The Descendants and Alexander Payne. According to NY Post critic and NYFCC member Lou Lumenick, Payne's film never received more than 17 points in any round of Best Picture voting, and the director himself never broke through a top-three cluster of Hazanavicius, Scorsese and, uh, Lars von Trier. Thanks for playing, Lars! Mr. Spielberg will take it from here.

The Leading 5:

1. Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

2. Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

3. Viola Davis, The Help

4. Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

5. Charlize Theron, Young Adult

Outsiders: Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin; 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

Streep's redoubtability was affirmed this week by authorities from the NYFCC to the even tougher Steve Pond, who had the most specific, persuasive comments of the week regarding the front-runner:

I didn't care for the movie [...], but Streep is undeniable as Margaret Thatcher - and if the first images of her in the role made her look like a nomination waiting to happen, the performance certainly delivers. Streep supplies not only the uncanny mimicry that was no doubt inevitable, but also the real sense of a woman for whom intransigence was both calling card and Achilles' Heel. And it certainly helps that Streep's old-age makeup is brilliantly effective. In J. Edgar, Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer never appear to be anything but themselves acting through layers of makeup; in Iron Lady, Streep absolutely appears to be an 80-year-old woman, and the makeup is essentially in allowing her to disappear into the character.

Which is a good thing, since Streep's Weinstein Co. stablemate Michelle Williams did her own share of disappearing last week as the titular sexpot in My Week With Marilyn. Critics were over the moon -- to an extent. "My Week with Marilyn has a TV-biopic sheen, and you could dismiss it easily -- except for the fact that Michelle Williams, as Marilyn, both anchors the movie and upends it," wrote Movieline's own Stephanie Zacharek. "Miss it and you'll miss one of the finest performances of this year." That pretty much harmonizes with most impressions from around the critical ranks. Viola Davis stayed in focus with a Performer of the Year announcement from the Santa Barbara Film Festival, with a glitzy awards-season luncheon on the books for this Friday in New York. It's what the Help star has to do just to keep up, especially with Swinton preceding her in the Manhattan whirlwind and Theron taking home honorary hardware at the Gotham Awards.

Of these four, though, thanks in part to eligibility restrictions and not just a little politicking, only Williams made the cut -- along with Olsen -- at the Indie Spirits. And right now, all I can think of was a very pregnant Natalie Portman on the Spirits stage last February, accepting her Best Actress trophy the night before she became an Oscar winner. Coincidence? Delusion? We'll see...

The Leading 5:

1. Jean Dujardin, The Artist

2. George Clooney, The Descendants

3. Brad Pitt, Moneyball

4. Michael Fassbender, Shame

5. Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Outsiders: Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar; Michael Shannon, Take Shelter; Woody Harrelson, Rampart; Demian Bichir, A Better Life; Ralph Fiennes, Coriolanus; Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March

Pitt enjoyed one of the sharpest boosts enjoyed by anyone in this category all season, thanks in part to NYFCC, Moneyball loyalists like Anne Thompson ("The movie is going to show serious staying power in this Oscar marathon for several reasons. First, it's well-reviewed. Anecdotally, it's popular among Academy voters, who regard Pitt's performance as one of his career best"), and Pitt's endlessly endearing talent, glamor and campaign-trail sangfroid:

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill sat for a q & a [...] with Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger after a screening of Moneyball at Sony Studios. I'm not ignoring what they said or the still-potent pleasures of the film, but the standout moment was Pitt's gentle handling of a strange, inappropriate confession from a gloomy guy in the left-front row who said he'd been feeling depressed and was "contemplating suicide." Everybody in the room whispered "what the fuck?" but Pitt took it in stride and offered a nice brotherly reply. Cool-hand Pitt delivered a common-sense riff about the up-and-down-ness of things, and in a relaxed, no-big-deal sort of way. He gave the guy a little "chin up" and "I know it's tough but it'll get better." The sound system was really echo-y so it's hard to hear much but Pitt said that "life is cyclical...when you're up and you're up and when you're down you're down...it is tough, man...it's tough...but man, it's cyclical."

Can Clooney work like that? Can DiCaprio? I mean, we know Uggie can, but still. This is getting good!

The Leading 5:

1. Octavia Spencer, The Help

2. Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

3. Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus

4. Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

5. Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Outsiders: Jessica Chastain, The Help; Sandra Bullock, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; 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

Another congested week in Supporting Actress commenced almost immediately after last Wednesday's Oscar Index, which Jeffrey Wells misread as being in the tank for Octavia Spencer. Which I guess is unacceptable? "All that matters is whether or not a supporting actress's performance has sunk in... period," Wells wrote. "Not if she's been charming or funny or histrionic or anguished, but whether you felt her soul or not." Huh. Speaking of "period," someone sure is on his!

For the thousandth time, you guys, these aren't my picks. I spend a lot of time parsing trends and perspectives (and then writing about them, God help me) in the hopes that readers might look past the pretty pictures for a fuller understanding of the awards race. With the exception of Jessica Chastain -- whose NYFCC win (for three films!) I am overjoyed for and most definitely yielded a bump -- I couldn't care less about any of the actresses listed above. I can't even get into the conversation about what Chastain should be nominated for if she's so fortunate. Take Shelter seems the likeliest strictly in campaign terms; The Help would put her up directly against Spencer, and Tree of Life would mean her campaigning opposite Fox Searchlight stablemate Woodley. But does it matter? Ultimately I'm with Kristopher Tapley: "It should be a no-brainer: The Help," by miles. Yet there's confusion. But whatever." Exactly! Just get her to the Kodak Theater on time, and everyone should be happy. Moving on...

The Leading 5:

1. Christopher Plummer, Beginners

2. Albert Brooks, Drive

3. Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

4. Jonah Hill, Moneyball

5. Kevin Spacey, Margin Call

Outsiders: Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn; Corey Stoll, Midnight in Paris; Nick Nolte, Warrior; Patton Oswalt, Young Adult; Stanley Tucci, Margin Call; Jeremy Irons, Margin Call; Armie Hammer J. Edgar; 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

True, Brooks had a much-needed strong showing with the NYFCC, while Hill stayed visible (see our Pitt anecdote above) and Branagh tumbled from the front of the pack and into the darkest, coldest recesses of his co-star's shadow. But nothing quite sums up the week in Supporting Actor -- hell, the week in allllll awardsdom -- quite like this Twitter exchange from the Gothams:

You think? New Spirit Awards nominee Stoll is a comer, and quite possibly for real: Still pounding the pavement two months after speaking with Movieline, Sony Classics even managed to nab Midnight's Ernest Hemingway a plum spot narrating the authors' letters at an upcoming JFK Library reading/screening event. Of course, Stoll isn't close to threatening Plummer -- he's not even close to threatening Uggie -- but the way things are going, he might be this year's Jacki Weaver by the time January rolls around. Good for him.

Read all of this year's Oscar Index columns here.

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