..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

10 Weeks To Go
The Last Oscar Column
(Until January 3)

Well, we're down to where we were a month ago!

Back on November 15, I wrote: "It's also an unusual year because so many of these films are so good.  Everyone has personal favorites and films they just don't like, but if you run down the list of the dozen or so films still in play, it seems like you are going to find almost everyone giving a "thumbs up" (quarter to Roger) to at least two-thirds of the titles.  That is remarkable, really."

Has that changed?

Charlie Wilson's War got kicked around.  Into The Wild didn't get love from the Globes, but was embraced by SAG.  The Globes nominated 14 competitive releases, if you include the two foreign language films that are considered to be contending for Best Picture and a variety of craft noms. 

You can find a fight whether arguing about Juno or There Will Be Blood.  When many if us gave up on a well deserved nominations for Ryan Gosling and Nancy Oliver for Lars & The Real Girl (hated by most of the Blood/Jesse James/Zodiac-ites), Gosling got nods from BFCA, HFPA, and SAG.  Can Team Kimmel make that into an Oscar nod?

Can The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Kite Runner overcome resistance to them based on the language spoken in them, a road bump even before voters consider the films as films?  Just how big are the passionate core groups for many of these films, which are relatively small? 

I am pretty comfortable that the four films I am pretty sure are getting into the final 5 will actually be there.  But I wouldn't bet you money on it.  I mean, it's hard to imagine No Country For Old Men not getting in, but in the last pre-Oscar nod poll of the Gurus o' Gold, 100% of Gurus said that Dreamgirls was in and 93% of Gurus thought Letters from Iwo Jima would come up just short.  No one knows until they know.

This year, it's simpler ... no one knows.

But even if we really are down to one slot for Best Picture still in play, it is a season of great pleasure.  Even the movies that you or someone else hates is likely to have a significant constituency that loves the film.  And with 15 films really worthy of consideration, even within the limited notion of what an "Oscar movie" is, there is a lot of good film to sink our teeth into.

The oddest thing about those season, for me, is that I find myself changing my mind about how close the films that are struggling a little more really are.  One day, it seems that Juno is right there, with too many people loving it for it to be denied.  The next say, people are talking about it being too clever for its own good and more commercial than Oscar.  Into The Wild feels intensely capable of making the leap .. but it continues not to find a foothold to assure its place at the table.  Talk to voters about The Diving Bell and The Butterfly and you get a lot of admiration ... but not a lot of "that one gets my vote." 

A couple of weeks ago, Viggo Mortensen's trip to Los Angeles to promote Eastern Promises wasn't all that important to the season ... suddenly, he is a serious contender for a Best Actor nod again.  The great Catherine Keener has gotten a need heartbeat as well.

This is one of the few years where it is easy to imagine the DGA nominations being off of Oscar's Top 5 by at least two directors.  With due respect, if you have Paul Thomas Anderson's work in There Will Be Blood and in Julian Schnabel's work in The Diving Bell & The Butterfly and a living legend like Sidney Lumet delivering a vibrant, rough film at 83, and Todd Haynes bending time and personality in I'm Not There, and Ridley Scott delivering the highest caliber of commercial cinema in American Gangster, are they really going to go for a Joe Wright or a Jason Reitman?  And will they embrace a first-timer like Tony Gilroy?  Can anyone miss the stride that Sean Penn, who has always been a very serious director, however you feel about the output, has made with this picture? 

This is a season where the cinematography nomination would not be out of line if limited to three people, two of whom would be Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton) and Roger Deakins (No Country For Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James).  And how could anyone other than Janusz Kaminski - the most underrated 2-time Oscar winner on the planet - get the fifth spot for his remarkable work in The Diving Bell & The Butterfly, done almost completely in-camera?

One of my favorite dichotomies of this season is off-chase, the media and the WGA.  On one side, you have the media scrambling for advertising dollars more aggressively than ever.  On the other hand, you have a significant portion of the industry shut down by a strike and that union's apparent intention to shut down, if they can, the two largest awards shows while letting the rest slide, even hiring writers.  But after seven weeks, the media is already getting a bit bored of strike stories and it really hasn't dipped into the Oscar hype until recently, when the question of who would cross a picket line came up. 

Of course, I felt that the Oscars should have been delayed or reduced in the face of the start of the Iraq war, which started on March 20, 2003, three days before the Oscars.  There seems little chance that the men who made that call then would allow their show to be shut down by a picket line or anything else.  And in a surprising twist, Jon Stewart, who will host again this year, is going back to work on his heavily writer-driven show on Comedy Central.  So this friend of the WGA and WGA seems likely not to make a stand around the show.

The hope is that the strike will be over before the Oscars ... even before the Globes.  But there is not a lot of hope out there.  But one thing is clear ... people see Oscar as something altogether more significant than the other shows.  The Globes could be decimated and then we could still see Oscar come in strong with talent, although the effort to avoid red carpet embarrassments could change the look of the opening hour of pre-show ... which was already enough to choke on. 

But we're two full months away from Oscar.  That's a lot of water under the bridge when so many people are out of work.  Let's hope both sides return to the table when they return form the holiday with the spirit of settlement in the air.

Then bring on the triviality!!!!

The Charts

Last Week's Charts
December 6, 2007
November 29, 2007
November 15, 2007
November 8, 2007
November 1, 2007
October 25, 2007
October 18, 2007
The Post-Toronto Chart - September 21, 2007
The Pre-Toronto Chart - September 6, 2007
The First Chart - June 21, 2007

- Email David Poland