The State of the Race: Harry Potter, Woody Allen and Other Oscar Potentials

It is easy, as was recently done on Twitter, to dismiss Harry Potter’s Best Picture chances.  If the process was run the way last year’s votes were handled — the clusterfuck that was 2010 — Harry Potter would have a great chance at finally getting a Best Picture nomination after seven successful films of the beloved and revolutionary JK Rowling book series.  But now, things have evolved once more so that there is no need to fill up ten slots with films that the Academy members don’t deem worthy just for the sake of having ten.  2009 would have been, for example, a better year for ten slots than last year.  However, last year’s slate was one of the best Best Picture lineups the AMPAS has ever seen in any year.

For whatever reason — who knows the reason — they’ve decided that a film must get at least 5% of number 1 votes to get in.  That means, if the film has NO number one votes at all it can’t get in no matter what.  But I believe that the number 2s and 3s do factor in eventually — added to a pile of, say, 2% number 1s.  Confused yet?  I can’t wait to hear them read the nominees.  Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be a very pretty picture but I’m keeping an open mind.

The one thing that is so strange about the fixation on number 1 votes is that you might start seeing movies that people LOVED versus movies that they kind of liked.  The Best Pic ten seemed to reward films that would never have made anyone’s number one (Kids Are All Right, Winter’s Bone) actually had a chance in the Best Picture race.  But that might not have been what the Academy had in mind when they expanded the list.  They didn’t necessarily want to reward “little” movies; they wanted to include big blockbusters like The Dark Knight, which was shut out of the race. But last year didn’t quite work out that way. Inception probably would have gotten in anyway.  Christopher Nolan has Best Director clout with them because, despite the fact that he makes genre films, he is thought of as a writer who makes money thinking outside the box.  Nolan was the only reason anyone would have even considered The Dark Knight at all for a Best Picture nomination.

The Harry Potter series has always had the problem of lacking a single consistent, visionary director behind all of the films.  Compare this with Peter Jackson, who is the main reason the Lord of the Rings films went to Oscar all three times.  If there isn’t a director to celebrate — usually the director is the star of the Best Picture race except for last year — it’s hard to imagine the film feeling “important” enough for the Academy to go for it in terms of number one votes.

But — here is the key to the whole thing: follow the money.  It’s never going to be honored for its story – let’s face it, adults just don’t care.  It isn’t prestigious-seeming enough to be honored because it’s not about British royalty or politics or whatever.  It doesn’t have the visionary directing to which the Academy has become accustomed — like Darren Aronofsky, for instance.   Most importantly, it doesn’t have any characters you feel sorry for –starving Indian children, stuttering kings, poor people in the Ozarks addicted to meth.

The key to Harry Potter’s inclusion will be the staggering amounts of money it and the films behind it have made. If it starts to edge close to The Dark Knight’s numbers, it becomes too big to ignore.  Size matters with mostly male, mostly middle-aged voters.  Even a Michael Bay film would have to be seriously considered if it flirted with those kinds of numbers.  Remember – the Oscar race is about many things, but one of those things — front and center — is money. So if we’re heading upwards of $600 million domestically I think they will have no choice but to celebrate its success with a Best Picture nomination.

And think about this for a second: on what planet will anyone look back on 2011 and not see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 as one of the best films of the year?  It’s an easy call.  Is it one of the best “Oscary films”?  That’s a different question, and one with a depressing answer.  For far too long the Academy have had genre phobia and have been conditioned over several decades to look at only one kind of film deserving of the Best Picture title.  This has left them not only far, far behind in terms of how people think about movies, but it has all but selected them out as being any sort of influential force.  What they seem to underline every year is the notion that there is one kind of Oscar movie.  This has really gotten worse in the past thirty years, not better.  With a few notable exceptions – The Departed, No Country for Old Men and The Hurt Locker — they have skated down that middle for far too long.  Oh, if only they could see that horror, comedy and sci fi have turned out some of the best films ever made.

Meanwhile, the one film that does seem to have a firm place in next year’s Oscar race — even give the 5% rule — is Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.  Again, follow the money.  Woody Allen has just turned out his biggest moneymaker ever.  But more than that, the film is enjoyable, nostalgic not just for the time and place it celebrates (Paris in the 1920s), but for the Woody Allen of old.  A friend gave me a copy of Getting Even and I happened to read the story “A Twenties Memory” and it is so similar to Midnight in Paris, but different enough to show how he has changed since the early 1970s when the book was published.

I don’t see how you look back on 2011, even with most of the “Oscary movies” not yet out of the gate, and ignore Woody Allen’s best film in years.  But we are not in the full swing of things yet and if we’re dealing with films that have to have 5% of number one votes it’s going to be tricky figuring out what they LOVED as opposed to what they just kind of liked.

What films are coming up to look out for this summer?

Sarah’s Key, opening July 22.    Weinstein Co. distributing, Holocaust drama starring Kristen Scott Thomas
The Guard, opening July 29 – Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, crime thriller. Sony Pics Classics.
The Whistleblower, August 5th with Rachel Weisz, Samuel Goldwyn
The Help, August 10th, with maybe a nod for Viola Davis, Dreamworks
One Day, August 19th, with Anne Hathaway, Focus Features
Higher Ground, August 12th, directed by and starring Vera Farmiga for Sony Pics Classics

And after Summer is put to bed, Oscar season starts in earnest.  Fasten your seat belts…