Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Ray Pride

William Goldman has never been more accurate. Nobody knows anything about what the Oscar race will look like this year. We can make guesses. We can balance and weigh things, but from Harvey Weinstein focusing on his next step (while Team Miramax wonders what they will be doing for Christmas), to DreamWorks and Fox pretty much staying out of the game after strong summers, to Warner Bros. having enough contenders to choke a marketing department (and talking about possibly adding another), it is a funky year in the old town.

And we haven't even dealt with the checkerboard success/failure of the new encoded DVD players that are supposed to fix the screener problem - when many of the Academy voters still can't get the clock on their VCR to stop blinking.

Things have, over the years, tended to clear up after the Toronto Film Festival. But not this year. We got a few answers, but we also got more questions to ponder.

This is still an early look at the awards, so there is some room for flexibility. The actors, actresses, writers and directors are all "Top Fived," with extended lists of contenders below. But for Best Picture, where there is not a single lock or even a Ziploc, I looked at the list and laid it out based on "big" versus "small" movies, in this case defined by Ray's reported $40 million budget, which keeps that film in the "small" category.

With 14 major contenders still in play for the five slots, the six films with budgets over $40 million… none have been seen. The nine films under $40 million… all have been seen. And that kind of tells you how quickly studios have adapted to the new Oscar season schedule.

You will also notice that of the films over $40 million they all belong to Warner Bros. and Columbia, The Aviator being paid for primarily by WB and now distributed by Miramax. Even more interesting, especially after last year's whining that the majors were conspiring to slow their Dependent art arms, is that only 31% of the serious Best Picture contenders (of any cost) are from majors… and there is not a single major contender for Best Picture that is from a true indie.

Lions Gate has a few contenders - led by Beyond The Sea and the election-dependent Fahrenheit 9/11 - and Newmarket has The Passion of The Christ, so the door is not closed. But the notion that majors are out to kill their own subsidiaries at the Oscars may finally have its legs cut out from under it.

Of greater concern to the indie-minded than the Oscar situation this year should be the Independent Spirit Award situation, where more of the major "indies" will be out of contention because of the rules that top budgets off at $15 million and the rules against films that are not American. Of the 14 films on my current Oscar Best Picture list, only Kinsey even qualifies for Indie Spirit consideration, so far as I can figure. How can you have an indie movie competition that wishes to be the strong shadow of the Oscar that has no room (out of specialized awards) for Bad Education and I Heart Huckabees?

(Speaking of which, shouldn't Fox Searchlight's next wave of pushing the long-running and cult-y Napoleon Dynamite be a faux Oscar campaign? And don't the Hesses have a shot at Original Screenplay - remember, it is just writers nominating - for real? Sweet!)

The scariest thing about the Best Picture race is that if I were really being tough at this stage of the game, the entire list of real, hard-core contenders would be eight deep, with more than half of those films still not having been seen. So if more than one or two of the big, still-unseen studio movies fall out, the scramble to get to five nominees could make for one of the most exciting races ever. Or if all five (or four of the five) are as strong as their pitches, it could be the most boring Oscar race ever.

One more thing is clear. It is going to be the best year for Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes in a long, long time. The Phantom of The Opera and Beyond The Sea are pretty much locked in there. And I would expect Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, Bridget Jones 2, The Life Aquatic, Napoleon Dynamite, Sideways and maybe Shrek 2 and/or The Incredibles to be in a death-grip battle for the last three slots.

So, Toronto didn't do much for anyone this year. My personal feelings about Beyond The Sea aside, it played with that audience and it might play with Academy members… God knows, Spacey knows how to work the room. Ray is too long and it is not damning with faint praise to say that it is right in the same arena as What's Love Got To Do With It?, which got just two acting nods. Sideways stepped up, but could suffer what will now be known as In America Syndrome. Kinsey played strong and the fact that there was not a lot of screaming about the film at the fest - in part because they didn't junket - may well work in the movie's favor as the awards season ramps up.

A tale of two seasons it shall be. And no one will know anything for sure until the big dogs get into the hunt. Be vewy qwiet… weeer hunting Oscars…

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September 23, 2004

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