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The Nominations
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2.06.03
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12.26.02
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..News
..Nominations
..Oscar Race Charts

..Gary Dretzka
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal

..Scoreboard
..Charts

Four Days After
March 27, 2003

It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place
Except you and me
So set 'em' up Joe, I got a little story
I think you should know
We're drinking my friend, to the end
Of a brief episode
Make it one for my baby
And one more for the road

It’s been a bit like a tough love relationship this year. Oscar is completely irrational. But there is an irresistible beauty to the whole thing. His family might be crass or insensitive at times. The willingness of some to throw enormous dowries at the folks is stunning. But still, we all hope for some degree of romance when the ceremony takes place.

Indeed, Sunday night could not have gone much better under the circumstances. The partial lack of a red carpet seemed to bring some sanity to what has become a pre-show freak show. Steve Martin struck deeper wells with his surgical incisions than Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg would ever manage with their machine gun broadness. (Not that the lust gags weren’t a little broad… so to speak.) And the show offered unexpected surprises, not only making us wonder from the start, but like a well written screenplay, setting us up with a run of Chicago wins that seemed sure to make a sweep and they twisting the tale at the end with Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director to The Pianist.

My original idea for this final 15 Weeks To Oscar column was a “What Have We Learned?” piece. But I must say, all bets are off going into next year. The fourth quarter-century of Oscar starts with a reset button in the form of the one-month date shift.

Away from all the heat around the Miramax campaign effort, a slightly different perspective occurs to me. Miramax was obviously playing the Oscar game all the way back in the summer. But they were not working the press as early as the rest of the players. There was a real distinction between what they played at the Toronto Film Festival and their major Oscar push. DreamWorks played Catch Me If You Can as close to the vest and it didn’t work. Paramount was almost as close to the vest with The Hours and it did, at least in terms of nominations.

But this next Oscar season puts a new dynamic in play. Waiting for Christmas may be waiting too late. If Oscar nomination voting closes on January 9, to beat the Golden Globes out of the box, Thanksgiving weekend suddenly is the same in relation to nominations as Christmas has been for years.

A movie like Master & Commander can have a beachhead set by the 1st of December. It is, of course, impossible to know whether a $100 million and a lot of critics using the word “epic” about M&C will make the bar for the Christmas release of The Alamo so high that it cannot be overcome in the two weekends before polls close.

The December 5 slot, which has generally been avoided by the studios, fearful of Thanksgiving hangover, may suddenly become a prime Oscar launching pad. Can you say “The Last Samurai?” I don’t think that anyone would expect Warner Bros. to chase that slot again after Analyze That opened to a soft $11 million in that slot this last year. Anything less than $20 million for Samurai’s opening would be unfortunate. But it is a brave new world.

If I were Columbia, I would be flip-flopping Mona Lisa Smile - which is sure to be in play for at least acting Oscars - with their Nancy Meyers movie with Nicholson and Diane Keaton, which has a better Oscar pedigree and fewer exploitable elements. More to the point, the Nancy Meyers film targets a somewhat older audience than Lord of the Rings: The Return of The King, so it’s good counter programming, opening two days after Rings. But Mona Lisa Smile needs to play both ways to get Oscar momentum as more than an “actors’ film.”

The Christmas Day showdown between Peter Pan and The Alamo can’t help either film, drawing women to one theater and men to another, even though both films seem to be likely to work for both sexes. The only problem with moving off of that date for Pan is that Universal is so loaded up with strong holiday films next year that they really have nowhere else to go. And for Disney, moving closer to The Last Samurai seems self-defeating. I expect Miramax to go limited with Cold Mountain, so that’s a non-issue.

See how quickly I got sucked back in there?

Just one note before I move along… if I were Miramax, I’d be moving Jersey Girl away from Love Actually. I don’t care how good either film is… Ben-Lo might hurt the Richard Curtis comedy a little, but if both films are good I’m quite sure that Love Actually will bring on the hurt, bring on the pain. No matter what you think about Oscar, Leo-fest Catch Me If You Can has done more than double what Leo-fest Gangs of New York has done. Which result do you really think that The Weinsteins would prefer?

The other seismic shift is going to take place at the trades, which will theoretically lose a full third of their Oscar advertising revenue because of the date shift. Can the price of trade ads go much higher? And will studios feel compelled to find alternate means of accessing Academy members?

We can start bashing the potential dirty tricks campaigns now. The Alamo, The Last Samurai, Seabiscuit and Master & Commander will not be 100% historically accurate. (Maybe they will be, but they are movies and will probably not be.) Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King is a fantasy film and they never actually give the award to fantasy films. Remember Hook? Mona Lisa Smile is just reheated Maggie Smith. They never give Oscars to romantic comedies. In America is too much of a weepie. Cold Mountain is too dry and because of the Miramax backlash, they are going out with a half-loaded gun.

Yadda, yadda, yadda… it is still and forever about the movies. The investment in quality will not be quite as costly this year. Most of the major players will be spending. And there will be movie stars aplenty. But the art divisions are loaded for bear as well. This could turn out to be one of the greatest movie years in history. You have giant pop movies like The Matrix, The Hulk and the massive climax to The Rings trilogy. You have strong production years coming from Searchlight and Focus… again. Sony Classics, Miramax and Paramount Classics will have some great pick-ups.

Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Jack Nicholson and Eddie Murphy, coming off of a likely hit in Daddy Day Care, will all be in films between mid-November and the end of the year.

You have Warner Bros. chasing their own in-house version of the Roger Rabbit franchise with Looney Tunes: Back In Action. You have Quentin Tarantino’s first film in years. You have The Coen Bros. latest. You have Ridley Scott doing a small, clever picture. You have Danny Boyle with what may be the first mainstream DV hit. You have top notch work from Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears and Jim Sheridan.

You have a big summer drama that isn’t meant to be a dark as last year’s big summer drama forgot to be. You have a big bang, bang Bay movie… admit it… you’re kind of looking forward to some new fangled explosions. You have Sayles and McG releasing female-driven films on the same summer weekend. You get to see Meg Ryan in a Jane Campion sex movie and Dick Donner doing Crichton without stars.

We will all survive From Justin to Kelly. It should be a very good year.

15 Weeks Of Summer will start April 24. Festival coverage will probably turn up (10 Weeks Of Filler?) in the fall.

Thanks for joining me for the last 16 weeks. Next year’s Fifteen Weeks To Oscar starts on November 13, 2003. Issues about Oscar 2004 will turn up in The Hot Button. I try to restrain my first serious speculation about contenders until Late September/Early October. But besides Seabiscuit, serious Oscar speculation starts as we start to preview films on the way to Telluride and Toronto.

Well that's how it goes, and Joe I know your gettin'
Anxious to close
Thanks for the cheer
I hope you didn't mind
My bending your ear
But this torch that I found, It's gotta be drowned
Or it's gonna explode
Make it one for my baby
And one more for the road

That long, long road….

Email David Poland