..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Week Thirteen - 45 Days to Go
Everything Old Is New Again

What's really left to say with less than 72 hours left before the last Oscar ballot is postmarked?

If there is anything interesting about the season so far it is that as split as the critics seem to be, the Guilds and Critics groups with shows have fallen into a remarkably narrow range of selections. There are a few more to announce, including WGA this morning, but PGA, DGA, HFPA, and BFCA have nominated the same five films and SAG has embraced four of those five, the outlier being The Queen, the only foreign made film in the group.

Even before this week's guild nominations, what did the Guru o' Gold have as their Top Five? Dreamgirls, The Departed, The Queen, Babel, Little Miss Sunshine

Want to rage against how uninventive the Hollywood establishment is? Well our MCN Top Ten chart of critics TopTens ranks The Five at 2, 3 7, 8, 11… so even the critics are pretty much on board (as it amazingly turns out they are every year).

We have seen The Year of The BioPic, The Year of The Indie, and The Year of the Upset, 2006/07 has proven to be The Year Of The Inevitable.

Of course, there are the anomalies.

United 93 has won more critics groups awards than any other film, but none of the awards groups seem prepared to embrace the film.

The Queen, featuring dominant actress award getter Helen Mirren, is expected to get more than 5 nominations. But the movie starring the male equivalent of this season, Forrest Whittaker, The Last King of Scotland, will be fortunate to rack up 2 noms.

Just scant days after Letters From Iwo Jima won LAFCA, Clint Eastwood got two Golden Globes nominations and nods for both Best Picture and Best Director at the Critics Choice Awards, the absence of the film from PGA, SAG, and DGA has suddenly flipped him right back into the persona non grata file.

But the most astonishing thing about this group of five films, if they remain The Five on January 23, is that only one of the films will have been released later than October 27.

The last time that happened was 1995, when Apollo 13 (6/30), Braveheart (5/24), Babe (8/04) and Il Postino (6/16) joined December 15 release Sense and Sensibility as the Best Picture nominees.

In the process of looking at the situation, I went back and looked at the potential Oscar movies that were released that year in November and December and it's pretty amazing, really. Remember, we were at the height of the Miramax machine years.

There were a bunch of hopefuls that simply came up short on quality: Grumpier Old Men, Sabrina, White Man's Burden, and Wild Bill.

Then there were the small quality movies that just never got any traction: Restoration, Othello, Cry, the Beloved Country, Georgia, and The Journey of August King.

There were the arthouse films that got a lot of attention, but still no BP nom: Richard III, The Crossing Guard, and Carrington

There were the films that were "just too commercial" or never found an awards rhythm: Waiting to Exhale, The American President, Home for the Holidays.

And finally, there are seven titles that a lot of people really thought were in the running (whether delusional or not): 12 Monkeys, Casino, Dead Man Walking, Heat, Mr. Holland's Opus, Nixon, and Toy Story.

Are you feeling the déjà vu I'm feeling? A futuristic thriller about a world with a troubling future and a man trying to get his balance in it all, a Scorsese, a Mann, and a Stone. There is also a powerful piece on morality that got narrowed into being "about the performances," a feel-good drama that just couldn't get Oscar traction, and a cartoon that people absolutely adored.

The funny thing about looking at that season is that of the five nominees, the only one that sticks out as an oddity is Il Postino. And really, the only other film that scrapes against my personal preferences is Apollo 13… yet that nomination seemed inevitable and utterly appropriate.

Still, for me, 12 Monkeys, Casino, Dead Man Walking, and especially Heat are as good, if not better, than anything else on that list.

But more to the original point of this column, it is always amazing to notice how many things in awards season are consistent trends and how many - the majority - are not. The next year, 1996, only one major studio had a nominee. In 1997, there were three, the n in 98, 2 and in 99, 4. In 2000, there were three December releases and two spring releases in the running..

You never really know.

The last straight out comedy that won Best Picture was Annie Hall, 29 years ago. But that doesn't make Little Miss Sunshine an impossibility. The violence of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Gladiator, Braveheart, and Silence of the Lambs seems to disprove the violence issue for The Departed… though none of those involved ironic, snarky violence. Just last year, a drama with multiple storylines won the Oscar… could Babel make that two in a row? The last Queen to win was Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love, though a Brit-a-Thon, like The Queen, won just two years before that. And since Gigi, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music, and Oliver, it was 34 years before another musical, like Dreamgirls, won

But someone is going to win.

And everyone else is gonna lose.

So maybe, as the turmoil quiets and the nominations bore, we can sit, and breathe, and actually discuss the movies.

Ah, the movies.

Being a know-it-all or a know-nothing doesn't matter. Either way, you get an opinion.

January 23 can't get here soon enough because February 25 can't get here soon enough either. And awaaaaay we go…

The Charts
Best Picture
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Screenplay
Best Director

Week Thirteen: Outside Looking In
Week Eleven The Great Settling
Week Ten: The Search For Meaning
Week Nine: Inside Out
Week Eight: The Season That Couldn't Shoot Straight
Week Six: Dreamgirls Wake
Week Five: Isn't It Romantic?
Week Four: The Rules - Episode One
Week Three: Channel #2
Week Two: Hope Floats
Week One: Ready, Steady ... Gold, Cat, Gold!
The August 11 Preview

- Email David Poland