The State of the Race: Fumbling At Last Towards Final Oscar Predictions

“You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn’t annihilate human nature.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

As we quickly glance behind to see 84 years of Oscar history already, each one of those years full of stories, moments of madness, glorious victories, regrettable choices that happened in an instant to reward films and actors that, for what looks like a minute, thrilled the privileged few enough to earn their vote, we wonder — will this year be any different? It sure feels different. It even smells different.  When Argo wins Best Picture we will sift through through the wreckage of this year and find yet another movie that was plucked out of Telluride or Toronto that ran the gauntlet, came out the other side unscathed — one that flew under the radar so that it never became anyone’s imaginary whale, or controversy du jour. It succeeded for the reason Oscar movies always succeed: it entertained.

Or we might look back on 2012 and think, how could we ever think any movie could have beaten Lincoln? As it closes in on $150 million, the Spielberg film is officially a phenomenon. Its greatness throughout the country confirmed, and yet here within the beast, Lincoln comes with much baggage. Steven Spielberg himself, loved by many but also diminished somehow by his 30 years of entertaining crowds, has made his best film in 20 years.  But others mutter it’s too boring and too talky and it reminds them of CSPAN and who cares anyway? Sure, if you don’t care about the 13th amendment, the past, present and future of African Americans in this country, you ain’t going to care about Lincoln.  You probably could get more women talking about 50 Shades of Grey than slavery in 2012.  But oh, what a film.

Or in ten years we might look back on 2012 and say, of course Zero Dark Thirty was going to win. How could it not have? It won all of those critics awards — it was such a great follow-up to The Hurt Locker and a woman was about to make Academy and DGA history? How could we not have known? We didn’t know because Zero Dark Thirty has now been branded as a pro-torture, pro-right wing CIA fantasy flick and no amount of protesting seems to stop the tsunami of hate directed at the filmmakers.  Of course, in the end, this could work in their favor — sometimes the worm can turn back around the other way and people feel like propping Bigelow and Boal up.

Or in the end will it really just come down to good old-fashioned human emotion? Will Les Mis ultimately prevail and those whose faith in it can rejoice? Cynicism won out, at least so far with Les Miserables. It isn’t a film that can play with a straight face, not to this crowd.  Even still, could a split year with heavy dramas give way to the musical? It isn’t entirely impossible.

The great thing about 2012 is that, for the first time in a while, it’s a wide open Best Picture race.

Add to that, a year where Oscar voters were grabbed by their shirtcollars and yanked into the modern era of online voting.  Age didn’t seem to be a factor in figuring out their ultra-secure, Anonymous-proof voting system because nearly everyone who chose to vote online seemed to have trouble.  If you didn’t put in the right password in the allotted time you had to then wait 24 hours to reset. If you were voting on the last day you wouldn’t have those extra 24 hours.  No one will ever know how many voters didn’t get to vote but if it’s any comfort, every year many ballots aren’t gotten in on time, even when there was plenty of time.  And can you imagine the outcry if the Oscar ballots had been hacked?

The films themselves are a vibrant array one of the best years for Oscar movies. What do we mean by Oscar movies? They come either from organic buzz, like Beasts of the Southern Wild, or they are positioned early by the studio, primped and groomed by publicists for Oscar season. In years past, most of those have been failed but noble efforts that never ignited the critics much, or the fans. Oscar voters turned towards indie fare, resulting ultimately in an odd dynamic where the Oscar race happened with movies most of the general public had not seen. Ratings tanked.  That won’t be the case this year as most of the films that will be up for the Best Picture win are going to have made, at the minimum, $100 million.  Many people will have seen them, which will make for a TV broadcast more viewers care about. It will funnel money back into the studio system, which is really the thing the Oscars were designed to do.

The BAFTA added the latest twist in an awards race full of twists and turns. Because they greatly altered their voting this year for the first time since 2000 (when they switched their awards to precede the Oscars), that led to both Steven Spielberg and Tom Hooper being shut out of the Best Director race. Why? Because usually the whole membership does the nominating.  They release a shortlist which had asterisks by names that received the most votes from members in that branch — the whole of the membership would then pick final nominations from that refined list.  It’s quite possible both Spielberg and Hooper might have gotten in if the whole of the membership voted on the long list.

Everything we thought we knew about what the nominations meant before this year and all our knowledge of BAFTA history must now be thrown out. We’re flying blind again, as we are with all of the Oscar precursors this year.  Applying this system to previous years might also have amounted to directors being left off the list. Or it could also be that Lincoln is decidedly American and the Brits just don’t really get it. After all, they got rid of slavery a long time before we did. Perhaps, what Lincoln did, who Lincoln was, means less to them than it does to us.  Or perhaps they figured Spielberg and Hooper were givens and that they ought to put their votes where they thought they would matter more — or maybe they just didn’t like Lincoln, those British directors. Who knows. No one can say for sure where the tide is turning until one of the movies in the race wins something significant.

The way it looks right now only three can: Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln

Only Argo has a solid green light all the way down the line. Zero Dark Thirty is missing the crucial SAG ensemble nod, and now Spielberg misses the BAFTA. In all other ways, though, these films have an equal shot at the win.

Human nature is such, however, that not seeing Spielberg’s name — I imagine by now Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere has tripped the light fantastic in his ongoing take-down effort of Lincoln — in itself becomes some kind of ripple effect. Seeing his opportunity to stick the harpoon into that imaginary whale, Wells will delight in this, as will many, very likely, who are hoping to see a different film win Best Picture. Don’t ask me to explain this phenomenon. It is merely human nature. We are a warring people, we gather on teams and we want to win. I have found, after 14 years, it has very little to do with what is really the best film of the year.

Right now, Movie City News has Lincoln in the top slot. Editor David Poland sent out the notices before the DGA announcement. Some of those predictors had switched their vote for Les Miserables to Lincoln, though some switched to Argo.  No one put Les Miserables at number one. But now that Tom Hooper got a DGA nod, that puts Les Mis back in the game not just to get nominated for Oscar, but to win.   That makes me wonder whether it will get back into the number one slot at Movie City News by any of those pundits.  Over at Gold Derby, die hard Les Miserables devotee’s faith never wavered. Les Mis began in the number spot and there it remains, even today, even though Lincoln still leads their overall predictions. Similarly, with Spielberg out at BAFTA watch for a healthy number of pundits to switch their prediction from Lincoln to Argo.  The next headline you will see, I predict, will be “Argo now predicted to win Best Picture,” which brings us back to Telluride.

What the DGA proved, though, is that if there were five nominees for Best Picture: Argo, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty.  I believe four more will be added to the list, Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained, Moonrise Kingdom, and Beasts of the Southern Wild. If there is a tenth it could be Skyfall or Amour. I feel like I’ve written that very same sentence about twenty times now as the race has unfolded. Les Miserables and Silver Linings Playbook seemed to be fighting it out for that fifth slot until Django Unchained came along and that very likely took away some of Silver Lining’s votes.

Django also came too late in the game. Because ballots were due so soon in the season, Les Miserables negative buzz hadn’t fully taken hold and Django’s positive buzz is also coming late in the game. Django’s box office is increasing while Les Miserables is tapering off. But that could change in the coming days.  Oscar nominations could continue to push Les Miserables back on top, especially if enthusiasm and love shut down the bad reviews and negative buzz — hey, it could happen. It’s a long shot but not impossible.

So the obvious headline was “The Weinstein Co out of the Best Picture race for 2012.” Stats-wise, that could prove true. But dig a little deeper and you see a winning studio with too many good films.  They had three and they were all good: The Master, Django Unchained and Silver Linings Playbook. The David O. Russell dramedy won the Toronto Audience award so they really had no choice but to push it. And yet, a Tarantino movie, or even a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, is an event onto itself.   So you tell me, is it a failure to have backed those three films just because they aren’t in the Best Picture race? I don’t think so, especially considering what did get in.

The awards race fools us into thinking that film awards are greater than film achievement. If you’ve been reading me for a while you will know what I think about that and I hope you agree: the achievements are the films themselves. The awards must chase after them in hopes that they can somehow catch their fire.  The awards voters sometimes get lucky and pick something wildly great. Most of the time, though, they pick the thing that troubles them the least.  The good part about that is 2012 is a great year for movies so in a way, there is really no losing this year.

“As the preacher said, I could make shorter sermons but once I get started I get too lazy to stop.”

That brings us to our final predictions for the 2012 Oscar year.  My friends, it has all come down to this.

Still, only two films have hit the significant guilds for Best Picture:

SAG=Screen Actors Guild, WGA=Writers Guild, PGA=Producers Guild, DGA=Directors Guild, CAS=Cinema Audio Society, ADG=Art Directors Guild

Lincoln–SAG ensemble, WGA, PGA, DGA, CAS, ADG,CAS
Argo — SAG ensemble, WGA, PGA, DGA, ADG, BAFTA

After that, you have the only film to hit all of the industry awards, though without the all-important SAG ensemble is:

Zero Dark Thirty – SAG, PGA, DGA, WGA, ADG,CAS, BAFTA

Life of Pi – PGA, DGA, WGA, BAFTA

After that, Les Miserables – SAG ensemble, PGA, DGA (not eligible for WGA), ADG, CAS, BAFTA

Silver Linings Playbook–SAG ensemble, PGA, WGA

I am predicting these in order of most likely to win.  I may change up my predictions though. Just be warned.

78 correct out of 98 possible

Best Picture
Lincoln
Argo
Zero Dark Thirty
Life of Pi
Les Miserables
Silver Linings Playbook
Django Unchained
Moonrise Kingdom
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Alt. Skyfall in the 10th slot, Or The Impossible
8/9

Best Directing
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Ben Affleck, Argo
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained
Alt. Tom Hooper, Les Miserables
2/5

Best Actor in a Leading Role
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables
Denzel Washington, Flight
John Hawkes, The Sessions
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
Alt. Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
4/5

Best Actress in a Leading Role
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone
Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Alt. Emmanuelle Riva, Amour
4/5

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
Alan Arkin, Argo
Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
Dwight Henry, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Alt. Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master, Leonardo DiCaprio, Django
4/5

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Sally Field, Lincoln
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Amy Adams, The Master
Ann Dowd, Compliance
Alt. Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy
4/5

Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
Django Unchained
Zero Dark Thirty
Amour
Moonrise Kingdom
Middle of Nowhere
Alt. The Master
4/5

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Lincoln
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Life of Pi
Silver Linings Playbook
5/5

Best Animated Feature
Frankenweenie
Brave
Wreck-it Ralph
Paranorman
The Painting
4/5

Best Foreign Language Film
Amour
The Intouchables
A Royal Affair
Beyond the Hills
War Witch
3/5

Best Documentary Feature
The Gatekeepers
Searching for Sugarman
How to Survive a Plague
The Invisible War
The Imposter
4/5

Best Music (Original Score)
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Argo
Lincoln
Life of Pi
Cloud Atlas
Alt. Anna Karenina
3/5

Best Music (Original Song)
Skyfall
Suddenly
Song of the Lonely Mountain
Freedom
Learn Me Right
2/5

Best Film Editing
Argo
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty
Life of Pi
Silver Linings Playbook
Alt. Les Miserables
5/5

Best Cinematography
Life of Pi
Skyfall
Django Unchained
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty
Alt. Argo
4/5

Best Art Direction
Anna Karenina
Life of Pi
The Hobbit
Lincoln
Les Miserables
Alt. Cloud Atlas
5/5

Best Costume Design
Anna Karenina
Lincoln
Les Miserables
Django Unchained
Hitchcock
3/5

Best Makeup
Lincoln
The Hobbit
Les Miserables
2/5

Best Sound Mixing
Skyfall
Django Unchained
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty
Les Miserables
3/5

Best Sound Editing
Skyfall
The Dark Knight Rises
Django Unchained
Brave
Lincoln
Alt. Life of Pi
2/5

Best Visual Effects
Life of Pi
The Hobbit
The Avengers
The Dark Knight Rises
Cloud Atlas
3/5