What, No Revolutionary Road?

Update: WHOA. I am very sorry that I didn’t put Slumdog on this list. It was a dumb, tired person mistake after waking up at 4am.

Just because we’re all too excited to contain ourselves, doesn’t mean we should assume that any of these early awards are definitive of how the Oscars are going to go. As I said in the comments, what we’re seeing now are critics, and in the case of the BFCA, a much larger cross-section of all types of people. Into the Wild led the nominations last year but it was mostly shut out at the Oscars. The guilds are far more reliable in an unpredictable year like this one, where the movies came out late and there is no consensus, particularly, among the early critics’ groups. It’s a long process, the first of which are the critics’ awards.

But it’s safe to assume, at this point anyway, that The Dark Knight is headed for a Best Pic nomination — or, at least, safer to assume. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the whole thing flip in the Dark Knight’s favor. But it’s too soon to know that. Great news for Benjamin Button and Milk, however. So Best Picture is pretty close to looking like:

Slumdog Millionaire
Milk
Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
The Dark Knight

And a fifth slot still to be determined. I don’t see it any other way in terms of the locks at this point. Now, if the SAG nominates both Doubt and Revolutionary Road for its ensemble prize (along with Milk, Frost/Nixon, TDK, Button, etc) it’s going to be doubly tricky. Remember, Revolutionary Road, Defiance, Doubt haven’t opened yet. Neither had Button but the point is, these nominations are not designed to occur in a vacuum, where it’s one person’s opinion only; no, we need reviews and public response to help shape how we perceive a film. So, the late releases of these films probably hurt them more than anything else. Just a few quick thoughts for the day.