2012 Awards Season Guide: 13 Oscar Contenders to Look Out for in December
By: Brad Brevet
In the Land of Blood and Honey
I have heard this is a tough film to watch and I
have also heard it may serve as the surprise film of the Oscar season.
Granted, the people I heard this from aren't exactly the best Oscar
handicappers, but I heard it nonetheless.
In the Land of Blood and Honey is Angelina Jolie's directorial
debut set during the Bosnian War and centered on a love affair between
two people from different sides and as the war moves forward their
relationship grows darker. Personally, I'm interested in seeing it just
because Jolie directed it as it definitely doesn't look like an upbeat,
good time at the cinema. Whether it's a legit Oscar contender remains to
be seen.Potential Oscar Nominations for… Best Picture, Score (Gabriel Yared), Cinematography
By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Posted Thursday, December 1st, 201114 Weeks To Oscar: Down To The Real Nitty Gritty
After the speed bumps of NYFCC, NBR, and the two coasts of indie prematurity, we’re a week away from the start and end of the first serious wave of awards that will continue to define a fairly well-defined season to date.
There are two major battles underway. The first is for the number of Best Picture nominees, as well as which films will fill the slots. Because of the restructuring of the Academy voting procedure, being #1 in the hearts and minds of at least 10% of Academy voters is more important than ever. If you don’t have 550 #1 votes coming your way, you just don’t know what might happen.
Looking at the Gurus o’ Gold charts, only 2 films have been voted into the Top 5 by every voter in the group, The Artist and The Descendants. War Horse has one non-5 voter, who places the film in the 7 slot. And it gets more slippery from there. Hugo, which is tied for #6 on this week’s chart, has only 2 Gurus putting it in the Top 5 and 7 of 13 voters have it placed at #9 or worse, making it an unlikely nominee in their minds at this time.
I’m not just trying to promote Gurus here… I think that the ambivalence fits the season so far.
The Tree of Life has a lot of love out there and is in our Top 10… but only 4 gurus put it in the Top 7. Everyone voted for The Help… all within the 3 – 7 range. At 7, it might not be getting in. At 3, it’s a lock.
I would say that we’re down to 14 possible Best Picture nominees. And past the Top 3, there is room for movement. If you ask embargoed members of NYFCC and HFPA, two of the three groups to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo first, you will hear that the film is already dead. True? Not true? Won’t know until later this week (aka tomorrow). Is holding Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the best idea ever, allowing it to take a strong position amongst the contenders before anyone has a chance to grow disenchanted with it… as almost all of these films have suffered over time? Don’t know. Still need to see the movie. (Next week.)
And what of “The Angelina Jolie Movie,” which currently has not a single vote on the Gurus chart? Premieres next week. And it will be almost impossible for the film to make an Oscar dent outside of the below-the-line categories. It may be a great film… but a first-time director will be more than hard pressed to overcome the arrogance of throwing the movie into the ring at the very end of the process… even if almost every journalist wants to sit at the director’s feet and purr. Unknown actors and the Bosnian War are trouble. The film would have to be twice as good (whatever that means) as any previously released film to overcome the handicaps… even if HFPA will nominate her film just so they can have her on the red carpet in a blood red dress.
I expect that the lack of intense, singular passion at the top of the group – Artist/Descendants – will end up making the nomination count lower than not. Probably 7. Why? Because in order for #2s (and possibly #3s) to be counted, those movies at the top need to have at least 19% of the vote. Will one of them make that? Will two? Not sure either is there at this point.
And same at the bottom of the vote, where they go to the #2s for ballots whose $1 choices represent less than 1% of the vote. It seems to me that even longshot films like Drive and Beginners and J Edgar might well put together 55 or more #1 votes out of 5500+ potential voters… almost on directly connected voters alone.
The way I see this season, a lot of the films that won’t make the cut will have more than 1% of the vote. So I would argue that fewer “recounted” ballots will happen this season because things are so evenly spread out.
