It’s been a little while and the dust stirred up by the Oscar nominations has settled. We’ve all had a chance to catch our breath and get our bearings following the shift in the landscape from what appeared to be an impending route for The Social Network to what now appears to be a freight train by way of The King’s Speech. Looks can oftentimes be deceiving, but are they in this case?
There’s been a lot of sniveling going on from Oscar bloggers that are in full support of The Social Network and even doomsday prospects tossed around by Sasha Stone from Awards Daily and Jeff Wells from Hollywood Elsewhere. Talk of how the Academy is reaching back to the early ’90s for their Oscar winner as both Stone and Wells seem to have conceded the race to The King’s Speech. Both seem to believe, as I do, that Oscar bloggers and critics have a certain effect on the race. It just seems we all overestimated the weight of that effect.
Many of us thought The Social Network‘s unprecedented critical onslaught would lead the film to victory from September 2010 to February 2011. Interesting enough, if that were the case I would also think the whining that has followed the Oscar nominations, Tom Hooper’s win at the Directors Guild Awards and The King’s Speech‘s win from the Producers Guild would be a bit of a turn off to Academy members looking for guidance.
As it stands, I’m happy to see such a shift as I had grown bored with the race. I like seeing different movies winning from different groups. It’s the reason the unanimous love for Social Network from the critical base seemed so silly. Variety is the spice of life and sites like this exist because of difference of opinion, not because we all love the same thing. What it boils down to for me, is this is one year where just being nominated is a realized accomplishment.
Just imagine, had Christopher Nolan been nominated for Best Director there wouldn’t have been much for people to complain about. I was the only one lobbying heavily for Another Year and my complaints would’ve been lost to the wind. And based on the voting on this site it would appear the Academy was pretty much right in line with public opinion on their ten Best Picture nominees.
Everything said, I just updated my entire batch of Oscar predictions with many of them remaining the same as they were following the Oscar nominations, but a few notable shifts. My Best Picture race still has The King’s Speech as my pick to win and The Social Network at number two. But the more I begin thinking about the preferential voting process the more I begin to think I may move True Grit into the #2 slot.
I imagine The Social Network will get plenty of #1 votes from Academy members, but after that, I imagine those that don’t vote it #1 will place it somewhere around the #8 slot. The opinion on this film tends to be either you think it’s great and the best film of the year or just good and one of the better films of the year. In a preferential voting process that does not benefit your film. Instead, you would prefer a whole slew of #2 and #3 votes with a few #1 votes peppered in there and when it comes to that idea both The King’s Speech and True Grit seem to be the better picks.
The guilds obviously love The King’s Speech as evidenced by the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild and the Producers Guild. The Academy obviously loves True Grit as evidenced by the Jeff Bridges nom, the Coen brothers being nominated for screenplay and direction and the fact it was the film to earn the second highest number of nominations (10) behind The King’s Speech‘s twelve. As such I suspect both will be in the majority of Academy members’ top five when it comes time to fill out the ballot.
This curiosity also has me wondering about the Best Director race, a race I have now switched my allegiance to Tom Hooper over David Fincher as my pick to win. I just couldn’t leave Fincher at number one with the way the race has gone in a year that has pretty much taught a lot of us a lesson. It’s a matter of reading the tea leaves and looking at the history of the Oscars and their choices and what those guild wins mean. Everything I see adds up to Hooper.
I still have The Social Network winning for Best Film Editing, an award where the winner has gone on to win Best Picture six of the last eight years. It’s a gut call here and I’ll admit a bit of a preference call as I thought the editing in The Social Network was one of its highlights, but I will also say the Eddie Awards could change my mind on the 19th. I also kept Aaron Sorkin as my front-runner for Best Adapted Screenplay (even though there is now talk of a possible Toy Story 3 upset) and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are still my picks to win Original Score, but I’ll admit that latter prediction seems a bit shaky at this point.
Elsewhere, I shook things up a bit at the top of the charts from my previous predictions in the Actress, Art Direction, Costume, Sound Mixing and Original Song categories.
Yup, I am now firmly in the Natalie Portman (Black Swan) for Best Actress corner. I wavered for about a week moving Annette Bening (The Kids are All Right) into that slot, but Portman’s win at the SAGs sealed it. There isn’t much more for me to say other than my quick gut instinct fooled me for a second, I expect Bening to go home on February 27 with an 0-4 Oscar record.
Next, over the weekend the Art Directors Guild named The King’s Speech (Period Film), Inception (Fantasy Film) and Black Swan (Contemporary Film) as their winners. Of the three only The King’s Speech and Inception are nominated for Oscars and this was one of two categories I moved Disney’s Alice in Wonderland out of the #1 position and replaced it with Speech at #1 and Inception at #2 and moved Wonderland to #4 with True Grit just above it at #3.
The other category I moved Alice was in the Costume category, giving the top slot to Mary Zophres for her work on True Grit. The only way I’ll switch this now is if the Costume Designers Guild gives me reason to on February 22 where I’ll primarily be watching the Period Film nominees and will likely go with the winner, be it Grit or Speech. The only way I’ll go back to Alice is if it wins for Fantasy Film and The Fighter takes the Period Film category, a scenario I don’t see happening.
In Sound Mixing I moved Inception to the top, costing The Social Network another potential win, but the Cinema Audio Society could have me changing my mind depending on who they award on the 19th. And finally, in Best Original Song I’ve decided to go with “We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3 over my previous choice for “I See the Light” from Tangled.
The one category I didn’t even think to change was Best Animated Feature.
Over the weekend the 38th International Animated Film Society’s Annie Awards were handed out and if you’ll remember, these are the awards Disney and Pixar boycotted complaining about the voting process among other things such as the fact DreamWorks Animation pays for membership and Disney doesn’t. And guess what, How to Train Your Dragon dominated the night, winning 10 Annie Awards to Toy Story 3‘s zero. Do I see this as affecting the race? No, and yet there has been talk of a Dragon upset, but it isn’t coming as a result of the Annies. Instead upset talk began because of the Visual Effects Society Awards as Carolyn Giardina at The Hollywood Reporter discussed recently if you care to give that argument any weight (because I don’t).
With all that said, you can check out all my predictions right here, but my Oscar tally currently looks like this:
- The King’s Speech – 5 Oscars
- Inception – 3 Oscars
- The Social Network – 3 Oscars
- The Fighter – 2 Oscars
- Toy Story 3 – 2 Oscars
- True Grit – 2 Oscars
- Barney’s Version – 1 Oscars
- Black Swan – 1 Oscars
I’m sure you agree with some of my predictions and disagree on others and I would love to hear your reasons. Over the last few years this seems to have turned into a group effort and we’ve done rather well and I’d love to see how far we’ve come.
The categories I’d like to hear your thoughts on the most are Best Director, Best Screenplay (Original and Adapted) and Original Score. Try to drop your allegiance and love for any of the nominees and look at it entirely objectively. It’s a hard thing for all of us to do and I am still doing it with categories like Film Editing and Score, but sometimes you just think the best is the best, and who could ever argue with that?
