..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal

9 Weeks To Go
14 Days To The Close Of Nominations

The silence is about as loud as it’s going to get.

Did you hear the whistling through the graveyard on Saturday as The National Society Of Film Critics made an honorable and deeply irrelevant Best Picture nod to American Splendor. Let’s wish the film luck at the Independent Spirit Awards.

After that, the NSFC delivered nothing close to a surprise. Bill Murray and Charlize Theron as the Best Actors and Mystic River and Lost In Translation as Best Picture runners up are all likely Oscar outcomes, and have been marked as such for a while. Clint Eastwood will surely be nominated as Best Director, though he is an unlikely winner in my opinion. Peter Sarsgaard and Patricia Clarkson may well come up nomination short at Academy time, but these are the NFSC’s only choices that could have some impact on the Oscar races.

But other than that… silence.

Looking at MCN’s gathering of year-end Top Ten lists for insight is interesting. If you eliminate the impossible - but hugely critically acclaimed - Best Picture candidates, American Splendor (too small), Finding Nemo (too animated) and Capturing The Friedmans (too real), the top five films are Lost In Translation, Lord of the Rings: The Return of The King, Mystic River, In America and Master & Commander. There is no reason to believe that the critical view will be the Academy view. Last year, the top five critics picks were left at the Oscar altar.

Right behind Master & Commander - eliminating 21 Grams and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 as options - is Cold Mountain, the film which we have all be assuming is a lock for a year. After that, the legit Academy options get further displaced. House of Sand & Fog is at #7 among the likelies and #15 overall. Whale Rider is at #8/#17, Seabiscuit is at #9/#20 and Big Fish is at #9/#23. Rooting for The Last Samurai? #53 of the chart.

The box office is a fairly unreliable barometer, especially after the date change this year. If you want to know how different things are right now, look at last year. This weekend last year, two of the films that would go on to Best Picture nominations were in limited release - The Pianist in 90 theaters and The Hours in 11. This was the weekend of Chicago’s second expansion, pushing to 304 theaters. Gangs of New York was closing in on $50 million and Rings was at a wimpy $260 million.

Of course, the truly analogous weekend to look at would be last year’s January 17-19 weekend, one weekend and a few days from the close of nominations. That weekend, four of the five eventuall nominees were in the Top Ten, even though Chicago and The Hours were still in limited runs (557 and 402 respectively). The Pianist, still on just 258 screens, was doing more than $1 million a weekend.

This year/this weekend, even if you included The Last Samurai as a major competitor, there are only three real contenders in the Top Ten. Rings is still on top of the charts. Cold Mountain will be somewhere between last year’s Chicago and Gangs numbers, with around $44 million by the end of this weekend. Big Fish and House of Sand & Fog will each pull down something near $2 million this weekend, literally more or less, and eerily reminiscent of the numbers for Antwone Fisher and Adaptation. Master & Commander is the only other serious contender charting on Friday’s Top 20 estimates and it is still pulling over $1 million a weekend in its eighth weekend… an older title than any of the nominees turned out to be last year.

What does that mean? Life ain’t fair.

In a more accurate, now endlessly repeated word… inconclusive.

When people get to their offices Monday morning, we will be 12 days away from the end of any relevant chase of the Oscar. Cue loud clock.

Monday: PGA nominations, which mean fairly little. Tuesday: DGA nominations, which could hurt a potential nominee like Sofia Coppola, but not bury or make anyone. Look for 4 of 5 to get an Oscar nod. Wednesday: LAFCA finally votes.

Saturday are the BFCA awards, which will probably assert the power of Lord of the Rings - as will the private dinner in New York for the NYFCC on Sunday night - but could be a key for a borderline film like In America, which will present itself as a family on TV in E!’s strongest markets, New York and L.A. (Coincidentally, that’s where the Oscar voters are.) But then again, Peter Weir and Paul Bettany will be there for Master & Commander, Mrs. Bettany (Jennifer Connelly) and Sir Ben Kingsley will be there for House of Sand & Fog, and Team Seabiscuit should be out in force.

On the 15th, the SAG nominations, which are surprisingly unreliable as predictors. And Saturday the 17th, Academy balloting closes. Au revoir.

Of course, hindsight will be clearer and people everywhere will explain what went right and wrong with their plans and projections. But before we get to hindsight, I have to say, there don’t seem to be any major surprises coming. Any of the second group of Best Picture candidates getting nominated would not be a shock. Bill Murray, Sofia Coppola, Johnny Depp and Naomi Watts are all a little pins & needle-y. Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, Alec Baldwin and Patricia Clarkson carry the banner for the indies… probably unsuccessfully by the standard of nominations… but they would all be pleasant surprises.

Tick tock.

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The Rankings: January 4, 2003

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20 Weeks To Oscar: Week Ten
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week Nine
20 Weeks To Oscar: Critics Week Special
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week Seven
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week Six
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week Five
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week Four
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week Three
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week Two
20 Weeks To Oscar: Week One
21 Weeks To Oscar
23 Weeks To Oscar
29 Weeks to Oscar

- by David Poland