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

30 Weeks To Go
Oscarbama or McAdemy Awards?

Are we really starting The Oscar Season with just 22 movies in serious play… really 12 that look like serious Best Picture contenders… and Che’ just floating out there, waiting to land?

It’s kind of crazy, really. 

This time last year, we were looking at 40 legitimate possibilities, at least.

I chose to wait another five weeks until doing my first Oscar chart for the season this year. In some ways, it's counterintuitive. Studios continue to start their awards work earlier, even though they are talking a lot less about their game this year than in years before. But there was also some sense last year of the shark being jumped (or the fridge being nuked, if you prefer)... that everything has become examined beyond sanity. And that much of the hubbub just doesn't matter.

At this point of the year, we are all guessing, particularly this year, where there have been no serious Best Picture contenders landing so far.  (Sorry, Dark Knight fans, but while Heath Ledger has a decent shot at this point, the movie does not.)  In order to be in this game, you need to know what product you have to aim at the target about now. 

Fox Searchlight did a last minute turn as Juno became their clear film of choice at Telluride… but they were at Telluride with it.  And the Eastwood backdoor entries are back again this year, but with an official place on the schedule.  There still could be a backdoor surprise effort, like the Weinsteins' Scott Rudin movie, The Reader… but probably not.  (The one 2009 title that screams “They could make December!” is DreamAmount’s The Lovely Bones, though Par needs Benjamin Button to make a LOT of money and awards talk will help and DW’s side of that mountain is pushing The Soloist hard as they exit the auditorium.)

As is normal at this time of year, it’s the usual suspects out there, though one also must acknowledge that unlike previous years, there are not a lot of other films that seem to be positioned to be passed over for the vets.  How many years have we spent talking about Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott, Ed Zwick, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant, Jon Demme, Sam Mendes, Joe Wright, Clint Eastwood, Mike Leigh, Fernando Meirelles, and the Coensas we start down this road? 

Is David Fincher really “the new boy on the block?”  Can Soderbergh become The Comeback Kid by bringing Che’ back to life after it was so viciously attacked at Cannes?  Even John Patrick Shanley still carries the scent of Moonstruck on him.  Really, John Hillcoat -  who we will all have to pray won’t get The Harvey/Bob Treatment, since his work is so iconoclastic in some ways that it seems all too easy to unbalance with too many editing room demands – is the only really new kid having just the brilliant and underseen The Proposition on his American-released feature resume. 

Even in an oddly empty season, the same players seem to be playing.  Fox Searchlight is the only one that seems to really be sitting this one out.  But Paramount Vantage, which is all but out of business, has three movies that it’s pushing.  Universal has a strong play again with Frost/Nixon and a slightly questionable one with The Changeling.  Warner Bros has their regular late Eastwood – even though they aren’t distributing the earlier one – and fill their Departed slot with Universal’s question mark from last year… is this the Ridley & Russell Oscar return movie?  Focus has a potential monster with a gay undercurrent in Milk while their tradition of soft Brit-driven dramas goes on at Vantage with Keira Knightley’s The Duchess and at DW with Joe Wright's The Soloist.  (Maybe they only like the ones where the two are combined.)  And Miramax has a hard road with three difficult dramas.  Though Mike Leigh has broken through before, Meirelles is a genius who has always pushed Academy members too hard for their comfort zone, and Doubt will have to break away from the stage enough to feel like a “real movie.”

Joining the game, after feeling like they were out for a bit, are Fox (Australia), Lionsgate (W.), and yes, The Weinsteins, who picked up a 2929 film, The Road, and may manage to get the in-house Daldry picture, The Reader, in on time.  The Reader also happens to be the last picture made by Mirage under Pollack and Minghella.  But, the in-control producer on board is Scott Rudin, who always has a lot of awards pictures out there and probably doesn’t want this one to threaten Doubt or his beloved Revolutionary Road (which also stars Kate Winslet).  And for that matter, Rudin is probably appalled with the idea of an appeal for The Reader being made by invoking two lost Oscar-winning filmmakers... especially Pollack, for whom Rudin went well out of his way to keep the keep the press at bay as Polack dealt with his illness and efforts at recovery. (On the other hand, certain people who are not on the east side of a certain street that borders Times Square would probably love to get into that battle and put The Old Man in his place in a direct head-to-head battle.) 

The thing is that with this small a field, it seems like The Movies will become more important than The Hype from very early on.  If we weed out half a dozen titles as mediocre by the middle of October, there won’t be much left to fight about.  It’s a very split season this year.  Still unseen movies are either out by October 17 (The Secret Life of Bees) or they are waiting until November 11 (The Road) or later. 

There are probably six December releases of potential contenders this year (Rod Lurie’s Nothing But The Truth is still date dancing).  Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, Will Smith’s Seven Pounds, Fincher’s Benjamin Button, Streep & PS Hoffman in Doubt, Eastwood’s second, Gran Torino, and Mendes’ Revolutionary Road are all classic examples of movies that can afford December releases, because they will all demand attention from Academy members and not just get lost in the shuffle.  And for the first time in a long time, none of these movies is the true front runner… yet the five best Picture nominees could all, in theory, come from the month of December.

The election could also be a major part of what the season ends up looking like.  Will the Academy electorate be turned on or off by the presidential election?  Will W. be a movie – assuming it’s good – that says something profound and sticky about how we make our choices or will it be a one off?  Will an Obama win or a McCain win make the long-view story of Frost/Nixon feel like old news or a fresh discussion of revisionism?  How will those two movies bounce off of one another?  And how will Milk, a story of a likeable  progressive being killed by a moody guy who doesn’t want to move forward, play against these themes? 

Many people don't believe in Doubt, the stage drama turned movie, directed by the author, whose career as a director sputtered years ago. But I wonder about Driving Miss Daisy, a creaky bit of stage nostalgia that charmed its way right past the politically challenging Born On The Fourth Of July, the powerfully emotional and entertaining Field of Dreams. Of course, this was in the middle of The Reagan Era, a year after Reagan went out and Bush I took office, three years before Bill Clinton, for whom the two losing films were representative took office. (It's tough to link any awards-giving mood to Clinton's elections, as Schindler's List and Titanic were bulldozer candidates.)

What is the Obama movie and what is the McCain movie? Are most of the movies "Obama movies" and the second Eastwood, Gran Torino, about an aging veteran teaching a young whippersnapper a lesson, the only real "McCain film?" I don't know.

Can a light film, like Rachel Getting Married, shock people and emerge amongst a palette of very dark-minded films?  Will Australia be the old-fashioned epic to knock off the personal epic of Benjamin Button or will the more modern epic of Body of Lies win the day? 

And what if 10 of these movies just aren’t up to the task? Suddenly, any really good movie with someone pushing hard would be in position to get in.  (The Happy Go Lucky theory.)

My prayer is that most of the movies will be worth the effort and that come December 1, we will be seriously talking about more than 10 movies as major contenders.  The more great movies in the world, the better.

And the less that we in the media spend week after week chewing over the same small stories, digging and figthing for any scrap of originality... well, we experienced how exhausting and divisive that kind of fight could be during the Democratic primary this year. Let's, please, not do that again.

The Best Picture Chart

- Email David Poland