| November 26, 2020
I was as generous as I could be. 38 movies seems to be the maximum that could be in contention for everything but Shorts, Animation, International, and Documentary. This includes 6 titles that are not currently scheduled to premiere this year, in theaters or out, or which have no announced their awards ambitions.
Now… remove, if you will, the 15 titles that everyone reading this knows do not have a chance in hell of getting within a mile of Best Picture or Screenplay or Director and the 6 that may well not join this dance, and your entire Oscar season is a battle between 17 movies, the vast majority of which have not been seen outside of their production teams.
Meanwhile, New York, which has been months ahead of getting the COVID issue settled… they seem to be about to tighten things back up as cases and positivity rates are on the rise again. And The PGA, which announced their Oscar-connected date today, has not publicly acknowledged whether movies with have to play in theaters in NY and LA this time out.
I’m going to just shut my big mouth now and leave you with this question… Does this look like any kind of Oscar Season to you?
Ammonite
The Assistant
The Broken Hearts Gallery
Cherry
C’mon C’mon**
Coming 2 America
Connected
Da Five Bloods
Downhill
Dune
The Father
First Cow
The 40-Year-Old Version
Greyhound
Hillbilly Elegy
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
I’m Your Woman**
The Invisible Man
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Mank
Minari
Next Goal Wins**
News of the World
No Time To Die
Nomadland
On The Rocks
One Night in Miami
The Outpost
Penguin Bloom**
Pieces of a Woman
Promising Young Woman**
Respect
Soul
Stillwater**
Summerland
Tenet
The Trial of The Chicago Seven
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
The White Tiger
| November 26, 2020
22 Weeks To *Oscar: The Politics
| November 24, 2020
It’s The Most Wacky Awards Time Of Year
| November 18, 2020
| September 8, 2020
DP/30 Audio: Bombshell, Jay Roach
| December 13, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jonathan Majors
| December 4, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
| December 4, 2019
I guess that probably means we’ll be back to just 5 nominations this year
Any given year there are about twenty films worthy of best picture, assuming you limit the field to actor-driven dramas, as is customary. This does not mean that there are twenty films at the level of, say,……Roma, but twenty or so that are about as good as the median-quality BP nominee. I think that you could rustle up 6-8 from this list that would be as good as the average nominee,. For instance, you could have a closing shootout between Mank and Ma Rainey, Fincher and Wolf, that would stir up all kinds of PR, and twitter fights. Add in Sorkin, Chloe Zhao, Spike and Lee Daniels… this starts to look close to normal., at least as far as quality goes.
And, I could imagine a distanced Dolby ceremony restricted to nominees, the presenters and their families. That should be enough to have a pretty good red carpet, too.
Won’t The Boys in the Band be eligible?
I’d love to see a push for Tracee Ellis Ross in The High Note, possibly in Supporting, since Dakota Johnson has the protagonist arc.
How about no awards this year?
I haven’t, and won’t, see any of these films. My streaming is classics only. There is way too much classic streaming for me to care what streamed new this year. I am indifferent to Oscars but enjoy the live audience and presenters. Zoom presenters/”winners” over streamed dull films. Not so much.