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January 2, 2002
13 Weeks Away: 12.26.02
14 Weeks Away: Part 2
14 Weeks Away: Part I
15 Weeks Away: 12.12.02

It' s time for The Great Settling....

I stole that phrase. But it's so good, that it deserves to be memorialized in print and used forever. There should be dailies and weeklies and monthlies using it as a headline tag. Of course, it will never happen because media is not interested in the settling... only the shaking.

In the last couple of weeks and in the next two weeks (and four days) before The Golden Globes, Academy members have done and will do what we in the media tend to forget about... they will see many of the movies that we are buzzing about. By the time the Golden Globes are handed out, most minds will have become more focused on their favorites.

The Golden Globes show will spark interest in a handful of movies and performances... and not just by way of the winning nominees, but by way of the performances in the ballroom - and thus, on TV - that night. Will Nic Cage show up and be gracious and charming? How will Brody and Nicholson perform in victory or defeat? What will the mood be at the Chicago table? What will happen if Diane Lane or Nicole Kidman grab the Best Actress award away from the expectant hands of Julianne Moore?

In addition, the next two weeks will bring a marketing push based on critics' Top Ten lists. And most would say that they are irrelevant... except to get people to view their DVDs and cassettes.

There are currently 103 lists on MCN's Big Board O' Critics and there will probably be another 7 or so put up before it's over. Are there 50 major critics missing from the list? Apparently. According to Miramax, the first company to really mine the year-end lists for cumulative ad copy, there are 80 lists from "top critics" that have Gangs of New York in the Top Ten. Yet, of the 103 critics currently on the MCN scoreboard, only 30 mention Gangs. That puts Gangs in the 10 spot, which isn't bad. But it's not great ad copy either. Only 4 critics in the 103 picked Gangs as the top film of the year. Two of the four are quoted in recent ads. Why they aren't quoting Richard Roeper, 1 of the 4 who voted the film #1? I don't know. A.O. Scott, who gave the film a #8 vote, is quoted. But then again, Richard Corliss (#2 vote) and Michael Wilmington (#3) aren't quoted either.

It's interesting that the film to get the most #1 votes is Talk To Her, with 9, followed by Lord of the Rings (7) and a four-way tie between Far From Heaven, Chicago, Y tu Mama Tambien and The Pianist (6 each). It's distinctly possible that as many as four of these six films will end up being nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Equally interesting, only two of these six are in the overall Top Five (Far From Heaven & Talk to Her).

Does this mean that critics just don't matter? Does it reflect on the tastes of the Academy membership? About Schmidt and Far Form Heaven are at the top of the #2 vote charts (with 10 each)... does that suggest Oscar doom, where voters only get one choice per category?

It's all part of The Great Settling.

ALSO: The Best Director list has got me a bit whipped. Why? Well, the expected annual outcome is that the directors of four of the five Best Picture nominees get Best Director nominations. But, while there are a lot of candidates to suck up the fifth slot, there are more than the normal number of directors who could drop out.

WIth due respect to excellent work, only Peter Jackson, Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg (with Minority Report) have made classic "director's movies" that are in contention this year. So many of the other Best Picture contenders are really "writer's movies" this year, particularly Adaptation and About Schmidt. Far From Heaven, which I saw as a director's movie, is being pigeon-holed as a gimmick movie these days. Chicago is such a theater piece that it feels more transferred than directed, no matter how unfair that is. The Hours feels like an actor's movie more than any great shakes in the directing department.

While Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers, Gangs of New York and The Pianist have reasonable Best Picture aspirations, I expect only two of the trio to make it. That leaves three slots and three directors to get dragged into nominations along with their movies. Whle the DGA often reaches out with nominations for directors who don't make the Oscar cut, their annoncement - on January 21 - could be bellweathers for some of these directors, particularly Spike Jonze, Rob Marshall, Alexander Payne, Todd Haynes and Steven Spielberg. A lack of support for any of these five could essentially end their chances of getting Oscar nominations. Jonze has been DGA nominated before (for Being John Malkovich), but Payne, Haynes and Marshall have not. Validation from the DGA would help them all. And I believe that Spielberg's best chance is for Minority Report and the DGA would legitimize that effort, even though it is unlikely that the film has even a remote shot at Best Picture at this time.

The next edition of 15 Weeks to Oscar will appear next Thursday.

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