December 17, 2002

I'm doing this column a bit early because there is so much to say before the Golden Globe nominations. I will do a second column on Thursday afternoon, after the GG's stabilize the tone for the next month or so.

Critics awards are an interesting part of the Road To Oscar. They can be prescient, frivolous and irrelevant all at the same time. They are an effective tool for pointing out should-be candidates, far more so than insuring success for could-be candidates.

As the field of awards continues to evolve, the significance of many of the awards continues to deteriorate. The National Board of Review consists of fewer than 100 members, very few of who have anything to do with the film business. Industry whispers that only 20 members really make the decisions about the group's nominations continue. The spread of nominations across the widest possible spectrum remain suspicious. And the avoidance of some titles each year seems to be direclty correlated to the ridiculously early release of the group's selections… designed with obvious deliberation to grab attention that is wholly undeserved on any basis except for timing.

And now, we have confirmation that AFI's awards nominations, actually given a berth on network television last year, are generated by a committee of 13 people. The motivations behind these "awards" was made clear by the reduced effort put forth now that CBS has dumped their banquet from the prime-time ranks. The only reason for these awards in the first place was to create a network slot to compete with NBC's Golden Globes. After all, what significance dies AFI actually have, beyond being a well-respected school and archive? Why isn't ABC airing the NYU Tisch School Of The Arts Movie Awards? (Damn! I might be lighting a flame there… Scorsese hosting, with Spike Lee screaming insults from stage left and Christine Vachon producing the whole thing in black & white.)

AFI failed to deliver on the star power that they had promised the network. But perhaps we should be celebrating that failure. This well-intended organization has taken a course of building its profile by going beyond its good works (like the AFI Film Festival) and whoring its good name, no less dramatically than National Lampoon has by allowing Artisan to slap its name onto the already financed and produced Van Wilder as a marketing ploy. (Nikki Finke wrote about the current efforts that degrade the N.L. legacy in her LA Weekly column last week.)

The only reason we have AFI tributes and "100 Best" lists is to sell AFI. Yet, in a slow news month, we all tend to print the AFI Best of 2002 list as though it was somehow more legitimate than a poll of our 12 most politically minded movie friends.

But enough about the jolly jokers of awards groups. There have also been a significant number of legitimate critics awards doled out since last week's column.

The film that has probably been propelled into an Oscar slot by the degree of unanimity is Far from Heaven. Winner in New York and runner-up in Los Angeles, the high-pedigree film has got to be firmly planted in the heads of Academy voters. The greatest challenge of the publicists who push for Oscars is to get the Academy to pay close attention and to see their films. Far From Heaven is assured of that now. And if it were to fail to get a nomination for Best Picture, it would have to be considered a stinging rebuke.

The second award that jumps out at you is Charlie & Donald Kaufman for writing Adaptation. Again, winner in NY, runner-up in L.A., Adaptation is so clearly the best piece of screenwriting of the year, it is assured an Oscar nomination. Although I fear that an Oscar win will be blocked by some other film that gets across-the-board momentum.

Daniel Day-Lewis has become a lock for a Best Actor nod, along with Jack Nicholson. Julianne Moore is right there with Far From Heaven, with New York and the BFCA making sure that Diane Lane is not forgotten along the way.

Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher, Patricia Clarkson in Far From Heaven and Edie Falco in Sunshine State are all freshly minted candidates for acting nominations, though this is not shocking in two categories where there is always the sense that anything could happen, given that there are so few great roles for women. (I considered Toni Collette's turn in About A Boy to be in the race even before Boston gave her a nod.)

The movie that seems to be gaining momentum, but has only gotten heavy attention from the Boston Film Critics so far, is The Pianist.

The biggest surprise so far is that there are so few surprises. Y tu Mama Tambien remains a popular film to fete, although it is out of the Oscar race for all intents and purposes. (Remember, NY actually spearheaded a Crouching Tiger effort for Best Picture by giving the film its Best Picture award… no such high-profile praise for Mama this year, though lots of love.) The BFCA, whose tastes tend towards the mainstream (much like the Academy), is not far off the mindset of any of the critics groups so far. L.A. love for Al Molina (and a great performance) got him a slot. And BFCA (of which I am a member) has Chicago and Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers and Road To Perdition in its Top Ten… but Far from Heaven and Adaptation and About Schmidt and The Pianist are there too.

There is a very small pool this year. There still may be a surprise or two. But don't expect to do any gasping.

One quirk that is assured… the BFCA's list of 10 nominees cannot be replicated by the Golden Globes, since 8 of the 10 nominees are categorized as Drama for the purposes of HFPA. (My earlier commentary is here.) So while Chicago and Adaptation are pretty much assured of Globe slots in Comedy/Musical, there will be three new titles that no one, except perhaps NBR, has yet honored. Things are looking up for Lovely & Amazing, 8 Women and Secretary.

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I feel that I should put in a little reminder that seems to elude many people who are discussing the Oscars… branches nominate. Outsiders tend to think of the Academy as monolithic and talk about choices that The Academy makes, for instance, to honor African-Americans last year. (More on this specifically below.) So it's easy to forget that each branch nominates its own and that the group only nominates in the Best Picture categories. (Documentary, Foreign Language and Animation have even more circuitous processes of nomination.) There seems to be at least one glitch each year, but the DGA and WGA nominations match Oscar for a reason… a majority of the voters are the same.

Back to the black thing… I think it is narrow-minded, and pretty close to racist, to try to shrug off last year's awards as a political statement by Academy members. The wins for both Denzel Washington and Halle Berry were classically Oscar without any race baiting at all. In Denzel's case, it was his fifth nomination and his first Best Actor win, a natural step up from his Best Supporting Actor win twelve years earlier. And I still believe that had Russell Crowe not punched that guy at the BAFTA Awards, he would have been swept in by the wave for A Beautiful Mind. As for Berry, where were the sniggering comments when Hilary Swank won two years before for her breakthrough role in Boys Don't Cry? Swank was an actress who had been sold on her looks. Swank got naked in her role. Berry was up against two great performances in lighter roles (Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman) and two older actresses in smaller and less overt roles than Berry's, and who have gotten a lot of accolades over the years (Judi Dench & Sissy Spacek). There was nothing really surprising about the win. I guess the coincidence of both actors turning up in the same year seemed like a plot. But a lot of us tend to lose the trees for the forest during Oscar time. And I don't think that's fair in this case.

Another edition of 15 Weeks to Oscar will appear on Thursday afternoon, after the Golden Globe nominations are announced.

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