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December 17, 2009
20 Weeks To Oscar - 13 Weeks To Go
One of the most interesting elements of this season is the lack of backbiting so far.
I know. Some of our favorite hysterics are all about the rage. But every nasty aside she quoted in her blog entry about nasty gossip was old news or false news. And there is a huge difference between a conversation about a real issue with a movie or a little sniping over an event that seemed unusual and a sustained campaign against a movie on dubious grounds.
In the season that Lord of The Rings: Fellowship of the Rings was nominated, there was endless chatter from the three consultants that New Line wasn’t employing about how a fantasy film couldn’t even be nominated, much less win. Then, a sequel could never be nominated. By the time Return of the King was the early obvious winner of Best Picture and everything else it was nominated for that year, anyone who might have tried to float that premise was laughed at in the face. So no one tried.
As for the A Beautiful Mind attacks… well, there are no real biopics this year. Julie & Julia is biographical, but isn’t a soul-searching exploratory. A Single Man is based on a personal story, but not one that many people know or will explore. Invictus is so gentle on its subjects that it read as metaphor, not an attempt to push a fact up a hill. And no one is out there fighting for Leo Tolstoy’s image as a bore, combating The Last Station.
But most importantly… none of these films is a threat to win anything. Some will get big nominations. Some will not. But none of these four films is going to steal anyone’s supper. The most muscular is Invictus, if only by pedigree. But how does anyone ramp up an anti-Clint campaign, aside from the classic “he’s already won too much!”
Posted by dpoland at December 17, 2009 11:59 PM
Comments
I'm confused by your Best Actor chart. I don't want to just say it's nutty, but I really don't understand the presence of Peter Sarsgaard anywhere near the conversation, and why is Colin Firth (SAG & GG nominated) still so damn second-tier? Not to mention Plummer ambiguity that should no longer exist. I'm counting on you to make this all make sense.
Posted by: BurmaShave ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 18, 2009 01:43 AM
Your charts are very conspicuously missing Saoirse Ronan, who gave the single best female performance of 2010, in Lovely Bones.
I know no one cares about this movie, but what do we think of Stanley Tucci's performance? It's a SA front-runner, everyone loves the actor, and he was certainly menacing... but I think he was hampered by the awful, obvious hair and makeup, which made him look like a jowly Judd Nelson with a Jeffrey Dahmer fright wig and 1979 pervert glasses.
He was watchable in every second and a terrifying enough villain... but something about it kind of reminded me of Jeff Bridges' weird collection of ticks in "The Vanishing."
Posted by: LexG at December 21, 2009 06:54 PM
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