Screw Christmas. Forget Hanukkah. To hell with New Year's. There is only one holiday we celebrate in the dank, windowless labs of Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, and that is Oscar Night. Thus the latest edition of Oscar Index, offering all the festive year-end joy you can possibly stand. Let's get to it!
[Click the graphs for full-size images.]
The Leading 10:
1. The Artist
2. The Descendants
3. The Help
4. Hugo
5. Midnight in Paris
6. War Horse
7. Moneyball
8. The Tree of Life
9. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
10. Bridesmaids
Outsiders: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; The Ides of March; Drive; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; My Week With Marilyn; Margin Call; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2
First things first: As usual, the Oscar Index reflects buzz and chatter among the awards cognoscenti. But honestly? Bridesmaids is not going to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. OK? It is not going to happen. The only reality I take away from reading such suggestions at Gold Derby is that the likes of Tom O'Neil, Dave Karger, Peter Travers and a handful of others claiming to be that site's "Oscar experts" are in fact garden-variety lushes on their 146th glass of egg nog at the office holiday party. Back away!
Yes, it drew a Best Picture - Musical Comedy nomination at the Golden Globes -- because that's what the Musical/Comedy category is for. Bridesmaids is a very funny and successful (if overlong, but hey) film, and this is the Golden Globes. It is not the Academy Awards, where it would face the likes of The Tree of Life, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which we'll get to in a second) and even The Ides of Freaking Golden Globe-Hustling March in the scramble for a Best Picture Oscar nod. Not to be a snob about it, either -- the numbers don't even add up! Let Steve Pond explain:
It'll take about 60 first-place votes (actually, closer to 50) to get through the first round. Even if it does that, it'll need about 250 votes to get a nomination -- and with a new system that severely limits the opportunities to move up if you don't have the votes right away, those 250 votes are going to have to come from the #1 and occasionally #2 spots on the ballot. Even the people who like it don't like it that much, it's not gonna happen.
Thank you! Anyway, you will no doubt hear many more rumblings of this sort emanating from the awards conversation in the weeks to come, and they'll all dutifully echo the talking points found at places like The Carpetbagger ("In the coming weeks, as nominees for the Writers Guild and Producers Guild awards are announced, the volume of affection for Bridesmaids in Hollywood will be revealed..."), and culturally speaking, you'll think, "Huh! What if?" But logically speaking -- hell, mathematically speaking -- there is only one appropriate response, one you will find yourself repeating and repeating throughout the bleary-eyed days to come: Give me a fucking break.
Now that that's out of the way, what are we to make of the true impact of last week's Golden Globe Award nominations on this year's Oscar race? It's the ageless question, really, resulting in the equivalents of everything from ruminative chin-scratching to dismissive jerk-off motions. Honestly, as THR's Scott Feinberg and I discussed in his podcast this week, there's only so much you can slam the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. So what if they sold a table to recognized the team behind The Ides of March? The film is good! Why shouldn't it wind up back in the mix, however compromised we consider its HFPA loyalties?
Moreover, why shouldn't we read the continued wide-scale oversights of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close -- an 0-fer among both the SAG Award and Golden Globe nominations -- as an indication of its stillbirth in the race? The campaign's defensiveness is clear from the inside out; after all, less than two weeks ago we had producer Scott Rudin blowing off the awards-bait speculation as irrelevant ("It's a movie, not a worm on the end of a hook," he told the NYT). Then two days ago, not long after ELAIC's less-than-optimal Academy screening ("[I] can't see it advancing much if that's the kind of reaction it's getting from members," one voter told Pond), along comes another NYT piece laying out just how ELAIC can backdoor its way into Best Picture contention with the minimum amount of time and votes. Never mind the intellectual dishonesty of it all; this the Oscars we're talking about, not the Nobel Prize for Economics. Just take a moment to breathe in the panic as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and War Horse launch into the holiday-movie consciousness while the ELAIC crew still fiddles with their fuse. I mean, it's almost Christmas, and we're still talking about Bridesmaids, for Christ's sake.
Meanwhile, Moneyball enjoyed a slight boost, with more love for Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill nudging it just over Pitt's other Best Picture hopeful The Tree of Life. Elsewhere, it also bore noting that no film since Braveheart has won a Best Picture Oscar without first earning a Best Ensemble nomination from the Screen Actors Guild. That's not especially good news for Hugo, which nevertheless retains all the signs of a sure Academy nominee. But with The Help collecting seven total acting nominations between SAG and the HFPA, a momentum shift is afoot. And I know what you're thinking, Team Bridesmaids -- "But what about our ensemble nomination?" What about it? You're drunk. Go pass out, already. You won't remember any of this in 2012, and I promise not to remind you.
The Leading 5:
1. Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
2. Alexander Payne, The Descendants
3. Martin Scorsese, Hugo
4. Steven Spielberg, War Horse
5. Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Outsiders: Bennett Miller, Moneyball; Stephen Daldry, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Tate Taylor, The Help; Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive
Congrats to Miller for his first Index appearance of 2011-12, which, despite Allen's redoubtable hold and the perennial lurking of Daldry and Fincher, I doubt will be the Moneyball filmmaker's last. Other than that, this "race" is about as allergic to interesting as it's been all year.
The Leading 5:
1. Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
2. Viola Davis, The Help
3. Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn
4. Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
5. Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Outsiders: Charlize Theron, Young Adult; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene; Felicity Jones, Like Crazy; Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia
Oscar oracle Mark Harris had the key insight this week for all the acting categories, effectively singling out those who went three-for-three in the Critics Choice, SAG, and Golden Globe nominations as the most formidable to date. Which is sort of stating the obvious until Harris reminds us about the last time this happened -- 2010, when Mila Kunis drew recognition from all three bodies for Black Swan only to be snubbed by the Academy. Womp woooommmp. And then it's still stating the obvious: Streep, Davis, Williams and Swinton are about as close as you get to locks with a month still remaining before Oscar-nomination morning.
Among them, Streep bolstered her campaign this week with a profile on 60 Minutes, which performed the neat trick of getting The Iron Lady in front of casual moviegoers while impressing the fence-straddling, over-45 voting bloc that Harvey Weinstein needs to woo away from Davis. Meanwhile, one observer asked if Williams -- a precursor-awards darling (who also happens to be Streep's Weinstein Co. stablemate) -- should actually be the frontrunner for My Week With Marilyn. Davis continues to have her supporters as well, though Team Nobbs wins the week's Big Balls prize for awards-campaign audacity after scheduling their New York premiere directly opposite that of The Iron Lady. Incredibly Close, indeed! Ugh, forget it.
The Leading 5:
1. Jean Dujardin, The Artist
2. Brad Pitt, Moneyball
3. George Clooney, The Descendants
4. Michael Fassbender, Shame
5. Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar
Outsiders: Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Demián Bichir, A Better Life; Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March; Michael Shannon, Take Shelter; Woody Harrelson, Rampart; Ralph Fiennes, Coriolanus
Pitt is on a roll, still plugging away on the campaign trail while pundits like Harris and Jeffrey Wells make a persuasive case for not only a nomination, but also a win. Pitt's secret weapon? Try The Tree of Life, writes Harris:
[A]t this time of year, I always want to tell the voters, "Forget everything you've heard so far and just vote for greatness wherever you find it." As an example, I'll cite the single best piece of screen acting I saw this year: Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life. So far, this performance has not figured in the Best Supporting Actor race at all. It should. [...] Nobody in the Supporting Actor category did more nuanced, layered, complicated work this year. But instead of being at the center of the discussion, his performance is on the fringes, because the system has decided that Pitt will be "taken care of" with a Best Actor nomination for Moneyball. He deserves that nomination. He deserves this one even more.
Perhaps so. Politically speaking, neither Moneyball nor Tree of Life's studios wants Pitt anywhere near Supporting Actor: Sony doesn't want him sharing the category with his co-star Jonah Hill in a competing film, and Searchlight, knowing that Christopher Plummer already has Supporting Actor locked up, doesn't want to indirectly juice Pitt's Best Actor chances against their guys Fassbender and Clooney.
Fassbender, meanwhile, came back a bit with his Golden Globes nod but still breaks even after his SAG snub a week ago. In sadder news, this may be goodbye for Oldman after his Globes love went to the twice-nominated Gosling, though we saw the same thing happen last year with Biutiful's Javier Bardem -- who also went 0-fer in the BFCA/SAG/HFPA triathlon. So nobody panic just yet! Except you, Woody Harrelson. Panic all you want. That said, if Bichir's supporters continue to seem more intent on credit for his SAG recognition than the continued recognition of Bichir himself, then hell, maybe Harrelson could come back. It's early! Focus, people!
The Leading 5:
1. Octavia Spencer, The Help
2. Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
3. Jessica Chastain, The Help
4. Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
5. Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Outsiders: Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids; Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus; Sandra Bullock, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter; Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life
I mean, McCarthy couldn't even buy a nomination from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and yet we're yammering on and on about Bridesmaids' influence and Best Picture promise? Get out of here. Chastain's continued ascent, on the other hand, is just the latest sign of how seriously people who matter take The Help. And by, "people who matter," I mean "sentient beings with a blood alcohol level under .35."
The Leading 5:
1. Christopher Plummer, Beginners
2. Albert Brooks, Drive
3. Jonah Hill, Moneyball
4. Nick Nolte, Warrior
5. Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
Outsiders: Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Ben Kingsley, Hugo; Corey Stoll, Midnight in Paris; Patton Oswalt, Young Adult; Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Kevin Spacey, Margin Call
Now that Plummer has acquired his Movieline karma, truly nothing can stop him.
Read all of this year's Oscar Index columns here.
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