..Scoreboard
..Charts

..News
..Nominations
..Oscar Race Charts

..Gary Dretzka
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride

The Nominations: 2.11.03 Pre-Nominations: 2.10.03 7 Weeks Away: 2.06.03 8 Weeks Away: 1.30.03 9 Weeks Away: 1.23.03 10 Weeks Away: 1.16.03 11 Weeks Away: 1.09.03 12 Weeks Away: 1.02.03 13 Weeks Away: 12.26.02 14 Weeks Away: Part 2 14 Weeks Away: Part I 15 Weeks Away: 12.12.02

February 13, 2002

6 Weeks To Go

There’s a certain sense of ennui around L.A. this week.  The real joy is in New York City, New Zealand and Paris.  And even then, the Rings family has to feel a little roughed up, Polanski can’t come to the party and Harvey Weinstein seems to be overshadowing (enter your own joke here) his films, one of which he shares with Scott Rudin, a balance of image that could become the one truly fun story of this year’s awards season.

Personally, I still haven’t recovered from the 5 a.m. alarm on Tuesday morning.  There have been a lot of nice things about the last 48 hours, including the best traffic day ever at MCN, but the rain has kept on dripping and so have Oscar reactions.  It didn’t take long to dissect the carcasses of the films that weren’t nominated.  And the biggest question remains... who cares?

It’s a funny thing about the Oscar race.  I do care.  It is fun. And when the films you love are rewarded, the feeling is good… much more so than the negative feeling when the “wrong” films are rewarded.  It’s not cool to care, but it’s fun.  I have no rooting interest in The Raiders or The Buccaneers, but I still enjoyed the Super Bowl this year.  Same deal.

In doing the charts for this week’s column, I found one category that is actually going be interesting.  There is no clear leader in the Original Screenplay category.  At first, you think it might be Gangs of New York, but no, that seems iffy.  Even though the film is the only Best Picture nominee to have an Original Screenplay nomination, the combination of mixed feelings about the film and real questions about whether it should be in the original category makes you wonder.  Pedro Almodovar’s screenplay for Talk to Her and Alfonso & Carlos Cuaron’s screenplay for Y tu Mama Tambien seem like “happy to be nominated nominations.”  Somehow I don’t see Academy members – as opposed to branch members who voted for the nominations – voting for a screenplay that requites translation.  Far From Heaven is more of a visceral experience than a wordy one.  That leaves the lifetime achievement award for Nia Vardalos’ My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  Hopa!

The Best Foreign Language race will also be interesting. Hero could be a secret weapon. But City of God, which is not nominated, continues to rankle.  Turns out that the vote that kept the film out of the NY Film Festival was unanimous.  And while that does suggest to me that the festival that left Amelie out a year before continues to be a bit out of touch, the responsibility certainly shouldn’t be placed at the foot of any one person.

I’d love to give you the old razzle dazzle, but I really don’t have anything more to say today.  I smacked enough dumb Oscar spin around at The Hot Button yesterday and it really is time to breath and gather a little perspective.  So brevity will be my weapon of the day. 

We’ll always have O’Toole.

Email David Poland