Handicapping the Best Picture Race

Later, Dave and I will be posting predictions for 20 out of 24 Oscar categories (the short films being impossible for anybody, and foreign being crazy obscure this year). For now, these are my thoughts on what to do with Best Picture, which just got a whole lot murkier with Atonement's Golden Globe Win.

The Eat My Hat with A-1 Sauce Lock

No Country For Old Men

The Coen Brothers' masterpiece looks completely unstoppable. Virtually every guild has nominated it, even technical ones like sound mixing and art direction, which points to a sure-bet nomination. There's no question in my mind about this one.

The Proven Contenders

There Will Be Blood

Michael Clayton

Both are looking like pretty safe bets, winning Guild nominations from pretty big indicators like the Director's, Editor's, and Producer's. And they have the numbers one and two candidates for Best Actor, which makes them hard to overlook (Day Lewis leads Clooney by a whole, whole bunch though.)

So that's three pictures on my list. The rest is.. up in the air, to say the least. We've got five movies for two slots, so let's break them down one by one. We'll go alphabetically, to be fair.

Atonement

It's good to remember that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is actually only about a 90 member group. And any member can block the induction of a new one, for any reason, so it's a very odd, exclusive club of people from all over the world. And with the Globe awards themselves robbed of any glamor and ad revenue, and no opportunity for the winners to bask in the speeches and publicity of a victory, Atonement's Best Drama win doesn't seem like it guarantees anything.

The real reason I'm not sure about Atonement, though, is because Joe Wright and company have no Guild support. At all- the director's snubbed them, the producer's left them off, the actors, the editors- just Art Direction and Cinematography. But, the names of all of these guilds end with "...Of America," so it's the foreign members of AMPAS that I think can get this film nominated.

The BAFTAs, the British Oscars, announce nominees tonight (around 3AM EST), and if Atonement leads the field there, I'll have to add it to my five.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

I wish I had seen this already. I almost drove to Chicago last weekend, just because it's playing there now, and not in Milwaukee until Febuary 1st. So I'll have to make my Oscar Predictions blind. Either way, it keeps gaining steam in the awards circle- could it be this year's Letters From Iwo Jima?

The Producer's liked it (more than Atonement), the Director's Guild, the Writer's Guild, the Editors and Cinematographers. Julian Schnabel even upended the Coens at the Globes for Best Director. Does this mean it'll edge something else out? Or will will Schnabel's nomination be it's reward?

Into the Wild

This film also puzzles me (I also still haven't seen it, because I just never got up the enthusiasm.) It's got all the Guild Awards that Atonement is missing (Directors, Editing, Writers), but the Producers left it off, and so did the Golden Globes. And I know they're a small group, but they nominated seven movies for Best Drama and not this one. Wha?

But then, Into the Wild and No Country are the only two films of all these to get a Screen Actor's Guild nomination, and actors are the largest voting block of the Academy. So the case for this is strong. I mean, the SAG nominees are never five for five right, but they're never one for five, either.

Juno

Another head scratcher- Producer's Guild yes, Writer's Guild yes, but it loses the Comedy or Musical GG? Will it live up to the way-too-numerous Little Miss Sunshine comparisons and get nominated, or will it only get the Original Screenplay statue it's sure to win? Can a film whose director is completely overshadowed by the film's screenwriter and star (heck, I've even read more about the hamburger phone than Reitman) really score a Best Picture nod?

Some sort of intuition tells me it'll make the field of five for the sake of variety, since it's far different than most of the other front runners in tone, and it's the most commercially succesfull out of all of them. Maybe it pushes out Into the Wild?

Sweeney Todd

Another film in the Atonement boat, with absolutely no love until the Globes win. Does that really mean it gets into the BP race? Without a probable large foreign support, I think not. I can't see this overcoming the multiple snubs of Tim Burton in directing races, and Depp in acting races (at least ones without "Musical or Comedy" categories) to be a strong contender.

For the record, this means I consider other things like American Gangster, 3:10 to Yuma, and Charlie Wilson's War dead in the water, and not worth breaking down. We'll see what happens when I'm forced to make concrete predictions soon.

Links-

Producer's Guild Nominees
Screen Actor's Guild Nominees
Writer's Guild Nominees
Editor's Guild Nominees
Art Director's Guild Nominees
Cinematography Society's nominees
Cinema Audio Society Nominees
Golden Globe Nominees/Results
BAFTAs Home