It’s not just hurricane season and the holiday shopping rush that seem to get longer every year. The 78th annual Academy Awards won’t be handed out until March 5, but Hollywood is already overrun with Oscar fever – and the prognostication game is in full swing.
The slew of year-end movie awards and nominations that were announced last week – the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco critics’ groups, the Golden Globes and several others – are just the beginning of an endless procession of best-of lists and prizes that studios will use to shore up marketing plans for their winter films.
But the awards will also be instrumental to Oscar campaigns designed to grab the attention of Academy members, waving them around as proof that their movie really is the best of the year. By April, only the winning filmmakers will remember – or care – which film that shadowy, mysterious entity known as the National Board of Review anointed as the best of 2005 (answer: “Good Night, and Good Luck”). But you can bet Warner Independent Pictures will trumpet that prize as loud as they can – just one of the many ribbons George Clooney’s admittedly fine, if somewhat overrated, drama has earned.
The proliferation of awards, both meaningful and not, does help provide a picture of what next year’s Oscar derby will look like. Here’s a highly opinionated rundown of how the Academy Awards race is starting to shape up:
The sure things: If the Oscars were handed out tomorrow, “Brokeback Mountain” would be poised for a sweep, having received top honors from both the New York and L.A. critics (two groups that rarely honor the same film) and snagging seven Golden Globe nominations, more than any other film. Ang Lee, your Oscar awaits.
But the Academy Awards are still three long months away, which can be an eternity when you’re being buffeted by praise and adulation. Last December, it was “The Aviator” and “Sideways” that were basking in hosannas and seemed guaranteed to tussle over the Best Picture prize, until Clint Eastwood sneaked into the ring and delivered his “Million Dollar Baby” knockout.
No such heavyweight is lurking offstage this year. But the “Brokeback” buzz is already so strong, the movie is in danger of peaking too early. If Academy voters have grown tired of hearing about it by ballot time, they may decide the film has gotten enough acclaim and vote another way. Yes, it’s unfair, but it has happened before.
Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” is a technological marvel that will land many, many technical nominations. But it could also crash the Best Picture race, especially in a year where the leading contenders are all either small, low-budget movies or serious downers.
Movies like “Capote,” which boasts career-high work from Philip Seymour Hoffman, or “Walk the Line,” which has an equally fine performance from Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash (and has enjoyed surprisingly strong box office), could pull an upset. Hoffman and Witherspoon are also the early favorites for Best Actor and Best Actress, and both performers are keeping a low profile – for now. They’ll come out of hiding as the Oscar ceremonies approach, because winning an Academy Award isn’t just about quality: Precise timing also helps.
The contenders: Also biding his time is Steven Spielberg, who had previously said he would be doing little publicity for his drama “Munich” other than his recent interview with Time magazine, allowing the movie, about the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics massacre, to speak for itself. Expect that to change in the coming weeks, especially since “Munich” is already stirring up controversy (New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser, for example, slammed the film as “startingly anti-Semitic,” which isn’t only inane, but outright stupid).
But “Munich” hasn’t fared very well thus far on the awards circuit either, with only the Washington, D.C., critics showing it much love (it even struck out with the Globes, landing only a pair of nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay). It may be that a lot of the early award voters did not have the chance to see the film (the movie was shot this summer and only started being shown to the media two weeks ago). Whatever the reason, Spielberg is going to have to join the fray if he wants his film to have a shot.
Even the normally press-shy Woody Allen has been making the rounds, no doubt due to the fact that his new film, “Match Point,” happens to be sensational. Judging by the early support for the film (four Globe nominations, including Best Picture), Allen is practically guaranteed a Best Screenplay nomination – and possibly more. Thus far, distributor DreamWorks Pictures has been coy about the fact that Allen, who has become box-office poison, wrote and directed the movie: You need a magnifying glass to find his name on the film’s newspaper ads, and the trailer currently showing in theaters flashes his name on the screen for about a tenth of a second, hoping you won’t notice. If “Match Point” racks up some Oscar nods, though, the Woody connection might be played up.
Paul Haggis’ “Crash” is bound to have a lot of support within the Hollywood-centric ranks of Academy members, who will no doubt find the movie’s facile and self-congratulatory take on L.A. race relations profound. But the only good thing about “Crash” was its performances: Don Cheadle and Matt Dillon are two early favorites to grab a Best Supporting Actor prize.
Oscar voters probably won’t let “Good Night, and Good Luck” slip by without a few big nominations. Despite the movie’s limitations, its liberal message is a perfect fit for Academy tastes. And although it came out during the summer and was a box-office disappointment, look for Ron Howard’s excellent “Cinderella Man” to stage a surprising comeback at the Oscars, especially – hopefully – Best Supporting Actor candidate Paul Giamatti, whom the Academy has yet to ever nominate for anything.
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The maybes: David Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence” is one of the best-reviewed films of the year, but it is also chock-a-block with gory violence and pitch-black humor, two things that Academy members aren’t always fond of. Fernando Meirelles’ “The Constant Gardener” would have been a stronger contender if it hadn’t been released way back in August, but the movie is striking and complex enough to overcome that hurdle.
Terrence Malick’s “The New World” hasn’t gotten much awards support thus far – it scored a total of zero Golden Globe nominations – but Malick is viewed as something of a god in Hollywood, and his last film, “The Thin Red Line,” landed seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) after being snubbed by the Globes in 1999.
The Sundance hit “Hustle and Flow” failed to fulfill its potential at the box office, but Terrence Howard’s performance as a pimp-turned-rapper was one of the finest of the year – and shouldn’t be ignored. Noah Baumbach’s divorce drama “The Squid and the Whale” is the kind of small movie that normally slips under the Academy’s radar, but its recognition from the Globes (three nominations) and the L.A. and New York critics’ groups (Best Screenplay) should help get it noticed. Stephen Gaghan’s political thriller “Syriana” is one of the year’s most ambitious and serious films, but it is also dauntingly complex, and Academy members, who once nominated “Chocolat” as one of the year’s best, favor movies that are soft and easy to swallow, like pudding.
Dead in the water: Sorry, Rentheads, but “Rent” turned out to be a non-event as a movie. “Memoirs of a Geisha” wears its Oscar hopes on its kimono sleeves, and will doubtlessly score some technical nominations (cinematography, costume, score). It might even sneak into the Best Picture race (see “Chocolat,” above), but its chances of winning any major awards are less than zero. Sam Mendes’ “Jarhead” was a brave attempt at a different kind of war picture that failed, and Oscars don’t celebrate courage alone. And the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway smash “The Producers,” which won a trunkload of Tony awards, was once bandied about as a potential Best Picture nominee – until the film started screening. Oy.
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Rene Rodriguez: rrodriguez(AT)herald.com
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AP-NY-12-23-05 0938EST
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