Everybody wants to rule the world.
Maybe the worst thing about the Oscar race is how we build up contenders to impossible heights before the season has begun. I feel it necessary to remind everyone this time of year what Oscar predicting used to be and what’s it’s become. I can do this since I showed up right at the beginning, fifteen years ago when the only Oscar predictions online came from Zeusefer, Tom O’Neil’s Gold Derby and the print happenings, including Kenneth Turan at the LA Times, and probably Anne Thompson when she worked at Premiere. Siskel and Ebert also famously did them.
The difference between then and now, other than Oscar season “starting” the March after the Oscars, is that many pundits freely predict films that not only they haven’t they seen, but films that no one has seen. This creates, year after year, unrealistic expectations for films out of the gate. The reason being, it sets up the dynamic for the scrappy underdog to win the whole thing. To me, that seems to defeat the whole purpose of rewarding “best.” The big win has very little to do with the film that will have the best chance at a lasting legacy heading into the future but, rather, with a kind of a virus that catches hold and doesn’t really pass until the Oscars end.
To that end, the job of publicists and studios now is to “manage expectations.” Because once anyone starts even mentioning films “in the conversation” that translates to “Oscar buzz” and before you know it, people are walking around saying “I hear that movie is supposed to be big with the Oscars this year — huh, really? THAT?” You can see how fast word travels and how expectations rise too high too fast. No film can really live up to them unless they’re Schindler’s List or Return of the King. Even Titanic, after all, had lowered expectations heading into the race.
That’s why the hype machine is being tamped down a bit on George Clooney’s Monuments Men. The word is that it’s a jaunty, breezy thriller like oh, I don’t know, another movie that was a jaunty, breezy thriller that, oh, I don’t know, WON BEST PICTURE LAST YEAR.
Add to that, Clooney, Nazis, a period piece, you can see how that movie would zoom right to the top of the the lists of Oscar watchers. Clooney opted out of directing Argo to direct Monuments Men. Though he’s been hit and miss with garnering enough Oscar favor to bring one of his films to a win, if he passed over Argo for this you have to figure it’s a good one. Moreover, Clooney and Co. had the HFPA out for a set visit, as well as Jeff Wells, which means it’s going square to the heart of Oscar season. But I don’t think Clooney, or Sony, would be wrong to try to tamp down expectations. This is our own problem — and one filmmakers shouldn’t really have to deal with — but they do now have to manage our expectations. It’s an unfair aspect to an ever evolving industry but it is a reality.
No one is going to enjoy The Monuments Men much if they think it’s going for Oscar’s big win. In fact, that is almost a surefire way to get people to think your movie ain’t all that. The movies that tend to take the race are those that (supposedly) no one sees coming. The ideal model for this is Slumdog Millionaire, which had the added benefit of having an “Oscar story” that had it nearly going straight to video before audiences could see it. This almost happened with Silver Linings Playbook last year. But once it hit Toronto the hype machine went into overdrive, effectively killing its chances to be that little movie that could.
So the Oscar race went like this: Spielberg’s Lincoln, the film that should have won, but voters, for whatever reason, didn’t “like” it enough so they looked for an alternative. Zero Dark Thirty? Yeah, no. Silver Linings Playbook? Nope. Life of Pi? Almost, but no. Argo? Bingo. They anointed it around the time the Broadcast Film Critics and Golden Globe voters did, which was exactly the same time the Academy “snubbed” Ben Affleck. The narrative, plus the likability of the movie, plus the underdog status of the contender equaled Oscar gold.
How to make that work in your favor this early is very nearly impossible, but Clooney and Co. are doing what they can to thwart those expectations. Meanwhile, The Monuments Men might show up a little later in the year but doesn’t look to be positioning itself on the fest circuit.
Another reason Clooney might not be trying, or wanting, to crowd the Oscar race prematurely is to make more room for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. It just seems like something Clooney would do, especially since he was deeply involved with making that film a success, meaning, he took time to work through script issues with them long after he’d stopped working on it as an actor. I just have a feeling he might not want to cock-block Cuaron’s film, which he might want to see earn Oscar recognition.
On the other hand, Clooney as director is way overdue for a big win. I know several high profile bloggers who are calling it right now for either Monuments Men or American Hustle. Either way, it can’t really hurt the film, I figure. It’s a win/win for Clooney.
But what can Oscar bloggers do to help stem the tide? Not much. You can’t put that genie back in the bottle. It’s already out there. Even if several of us decide not to go all in for building up sight unseen frontrunners, there are many more people who will rush in to make those predictions. Why does it matter? Who knows. The Oscars have become a profitable industry in and of themselves, beyond buying ad space on Hollywood Reporter and Variety as they used to do.
Moreover, the Oscar race now stands apart from the sea of branded tent-poles that are coming out of Hollywood. Any good movie now must be guided towards the Oscar race, whether it’s considered a frontrunner or not. The mere whiff of Oscar will drive ticket buyers to see it. Oscar buzz does still count for something, even on the smallest possible scale.
Someone on Twitter asked me if I thought there would be any surprise Best Picture nominees and the answer to that is, well, no. Not really. You either see them coming from a mile away (The Artist, No Country for Old Men) or else you see them at Telluride or Toronto. Even films that might have been deemed surprises in another time and place fifteen years ago will show up on prediction lists months before. Even a little movie like Beasts of the Southern Wild might seem like a surprise to some, but if you were reading this site you would have known it was anything but.
Last year, this is how the first ever Gurus of Gold list went:
1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. Les Miserables
3. Lincoln
4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. Beasts of the Southern Wild
6. Argo
7. Anna Karenina
8. The Master
9. Life of Pi
10. Django Unchained
11. Amour
12. Silver Linings Playbook
13. Cloud Atlas
14. Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
15. Flight
By September, heading into Toronto, the list was becoming clearer. Obviously, after Toronto Silver Linings would climb and Cloud Atlas would drop off. But many of these films had not yet been seen by the time this list went out. Not Django, not Anna Karenina (I don’t think), not Les Miserables, not Zero Dark Thirty, not Lincoln. I could be wrong but I suspect we all saw these films a bit later.
The year previously, the gurus chart around this time was:
1. War Horse (sight unseen)
2. The Ides of March (sight unseen)
3. The Artist (seen at Cannes.)
4. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (sight unseen)
5. The Descendants (not yet seen? Telluride.)
6. Midnight in Paris (seen)
7. J. Edgar (sight unseen)
8. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (maybe seen in the UK?)
9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (not seen)
10. Tree of Life (seen at Cannes)
Missing: The Help, Hugo, Moneyball
And previously:
1. Inception (seen)
2. The King’s Speech (seen)
3. Toy Story 3 (seen)
4. The Kids Are All Right (seen, Sundance)
5. The Social Network (seen)
6. Black Swan (not seen)
7. True Grit (not seen)
8. Another Year (seen, Cannes)
9. 127 Hours (not seen)
10. Winter’s Bone (seen, Sundance)
Quite optimistic of us to put Inception at number 1, eh? Missing from this, The Fighter.
And the year before that, the Gurus top 15:
The Hurt Locker
Invictus
Nine
Up
Up in the Air
Precious
An Education
The Lovely Bones
Bright Star (I actually did add this to my list but too late perhaps)
A Serious Man
The Road
Amelia
Capitalism: A Love Story
Avatar
The Informant!
Inglourious Basterds
Julie & Julia
District 9
Where the Wild Things Are
Star Trek
The Tree of Life
500 Days of Summer
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Missing: The Blind Side
In looking back over these years, when the jump to ten Best Picture nominees made it decidedly easier to predict the Best Picture race, the Gurus often miss the more popular entertainment that can sometimes make the jump, like The Help, like The Blind Side.
The Gurus will be going up this year, once again, some time before Toronto. How accurate will they be?
It will probably go something like:
American Hustle
Monuments Men
Nebraska
Wolf of Wall Street
Foxcatcher
Captain Phillips
Saving Mr. Banks
12 Years a Slave
Inside Llewyn Davis
Gravity
And then:
Osage County
The Butler
Before Midnight
Fruitvale Station
Labor Day
Dallas Buyers Club
All is Lost
That is my best guess, but we’ll find out soon enough.
I have been predicting Oscars every single year on mypopular cable television show in New York since 1988.
This year is shaping up to have a good sized crowd of enjoyably mediocre to basically good movies without a single major film to capture critic and/or audience devotion. That makes for crowded fields filled with “in contention” and an anybody can win depending on how the votes split scenario. I would dearly love to be wrong and get excited about something, but after the intensity of last year, this one just feels meh. Maybe we all just needed a rest.
It’s sad to say, but this has been one of the worst years for American cinema in quite some time.
Clooney overdue for BD? He just doesn’t have that kind of history. Now how about Peter Weir, Ridley Scott or Michael Mann? Those directors have done several outstanding pictures and no Oscar.
“Right out of the Luis Buñuel’s guide on How to Whore Yourself Around to Awards Voters”
Brilliant.
Has the studio officially declared whether Dern will be campaigned in the lead or supporting? I keep seeing his name in both categories, but I’m not sure which to predict him for. Driving me NUTS.
I saw “The Butler” today. It’s a good thing that they don’t give Oscars to casting directors. I’ll be generous to Liev’s portrayal of LBJ, but the rest of the actors playing presidents were TERRIBLE.
a first hot review of The Counselor
http://tiny.pl/hzrm5
Octavia Spencer should be in the sidebar for Fruitvale Station. Strong contender.
I feel like Inside Llewyn Davis is going to be nominated from watching that recent trailer. And I’m not even the Coen Brothers’ number one fan.
Predicting the Gurus of Gold list = new high? or new low?
Can’t decide.
😉
LOL
And Labor Day or The Invisible Woman will come in strong at the end of the season, and I have a feeling the The Invisible Woman could win Best Picture(yes sight unseen).
The only thing I’m sure on in the best picture race right now is that Inside Llewyn Davis will be nominated for Best Picture. And I’ll take Sashas word on Nebraska as an oscar contender. I think The Monuments Men, August:Osage County, or American Hustle wins. And I think Prisoners, Rush, The Counselor, The Hobbit, and The Grandmaster will end up becoming Oscar contenders.
Clooney as director is way overdue for a big win.
Exsqueeze me? I thought overdue meant you’d been passed over when you deserved to win many times. He’s made 4 meh movies so far. Overdue, my ass.
Agreed. Couldnt have said it better.
Not sure about […] the so-called meh movies (so far) — need to know which ones exactly we are discussing….
Anyway, I agree with Antoinette that Clooney as director being overdue for a big win is a bit of stretch. He’s made good films as director at least, but to associate the term overdue with him – well, I don’t know.
I was just about to post the exacts same thing. That statement is bizarre to me. Why exactly is he overdue, other than the fact that he is “George Clooney”?
I like Clooney, but as a director, so far he is average/competent at best. The only one of this films that really deserved any Oscar recognition was Good Night and Good Luck. In no way is he overdue for a director Oscar, in fact I wold say he has been extremely lucky with the amount of Oscar noms he already has – in multiple categories.
Clooney plays the Oscar shmoozing game better than just about anyone right now but with regards to overdue directors, he would be very far down my list.
Totally agree with this. I’m a Clooney fan. And I’ve loved all of his directorial efforts (even Leatherheads) . But there’s no way he’s overdue in that category. No way. There were two years he was in the conversation, 2005 with Good Night, And Good Luck and 2011 with The Ides of March. You’re not overdue when you’re losing (or not being nominated) against the likes of Lee, Spielberg, Allen, Malick, Payne and Scorcese. If he knocks Monuments Men out of the park (and maybe even one or two more) and has nothing to show for it, then we can talk overdue.
The entire article is solid save that one line. LMAO. I thought Good Night, and Good Luck. was excellent, but he was up against Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain that year, so there was no way. Otherwise, he’s by no means overdue.
Btw, Sasha, Anna Karenina had been seen by this time last year. It was released in the UK in September, I seem to remember.
LOL I thought the same thing just how is Clooney overdue for a directors oscar? Is he really considered one of our finest directors? Not to mention he has already won two Oscars one for producing Argo and another as supporting actor.
American Hustle
Monuments Men
Nebraska
Wolf of Wall Street
Foxcatcher
Captain Phillips
Saving Mr. Banks
12 Years a Slave
Inside Llewyn Davis
Gravity
If you put Osage instead of Captain Philips, its my top 10 also. Osage will obviously make the top 10. I really dont think the gurus will be that naive to predict that not a single Weinstein will become a Best Picture nominee under this new rules. The Butler is getting The Help’s reviews. It will need box office and the failure of other high profile projects just like The Help.
Alexi, I was just wondering that… if anyone was talking up Nebraska except Sasha. Haven’t had time to read other blogs or follow any of the pundits on my Tweeter feed for months. I will definitely make time come October and beyond though!
I want to like Nebraska for no other reason than I practically live in Omaha (work for/attend Creighton University) and am pretty much predisposed to rooting for Alexander Payne. And you can’t count him out of an Oscar race lately. But I really haven’t heard a lot of buzz except for Dern’s performance.
I feel like Argo won because it is the most “rewatchable” of all the nominees. Silver Linings Playbook was great but too “rom-com-y.” Zero Dark Thirty (my favorite of last year) is excellent but sprawling. I liked Life of Pi but it was too heavyhanded with its religious elements. Les Mis was worth seeing again but only for the people who liked it the first time. Lincoln is wonderful but dry. So that pretty much opened room for Argo.
I haven’t seen enough this year but I hope Mud can make it near the major categories. Maybe if McConaughey can’t get into lead for Dallas Buyers Club he can get into supporting for Mud. Star Trek into Darkness was the best summer tentpole I saw this year. Even if Monsters University is lesser Pixar, it is still better than its competition (The Croods, Despicable Me 2) and if nothing better comes out this year, I say give it the animation Oscar too.
Won’t McConaughey be supporting for Wolf of Wall Street? Or is that a teensy role? I’ve only seen the trailer.
McConaughey’s role is small in ‘Wolf of Wall Street’. Jonah Hill has by far the biggest supporting role (he’s in the whole film pretty much), and his role is the most showy. He plays DiCaprio’s best friend and business partner, and it’s very different than anything Hill has done previously. I still think he may be the sole acting nominee for the film.
There some distinct differences between Monuments Men and Argo though. Sony has a full plate while Argo’s was WB’s main horse. The other thing was that Argo was at TIFF while Monuments Men is not currently scheduled for any festivals.
Also, I do find it strange that American Hustle which pretty much filmed same time as Monuments Men already has an awards team set up but Monuments Men does not. Nothing solid, but it smells.
Off topic —
Coincidence 1: In “Come Back to the 5 & Dime,” Karen Black’s character mentions Eydie Gorme. The both died mere days apart.
Coincidence 2: I hadn’t realized that Ben Affleck and JLaw, both Oscar recipients this year, were born on 08/15.
Btw, the “Baby Jane” quote (I can’t remember from which article earlier this week) is: “But you ARE, Blanche, you ARE in that chair!”
You never know. “Monuments Men” could turn out to be the next “The Good German.”
Lincoln was never gonna win. It just wasn’t that good. Argo was a superior film.
Not sure if trolling or just bad taste…
My guess is both “A” and “B”
Nobody is predicting Nebraska and The Butler in best pictures but here. Keep dreaming!
1) Never bet against Alexander Payne.
2) The Butler (while looking too sentimental for my tastes) has a better shot than you think at a best picture nod. There probably won’t be other nominations besides that and acting but you’ve got Oprah. She is as powerful as Harvey Weinstein.
3) Lesser films have been nominated, critically speaking of course. Extremely Loud, The Reader, The Blind Side…yep The Blind Side.
We are talking about the Gurus, not your preferences, right? No other oscar blogger is predicting Nebraska and The Butler in best pictures. That’s a fact. Why don’t you go arguing with those oscar bloggers? And I never question that Oprah can buy anything!
The reason other bloggers aren’t listing the Butler in their predix is they’re betting August: Sausage County to be The Weinstein Company’s big competitor this year. Right now on Gold Derby they have American Hustle and AOC as their two early favorites. But I have a feeling AOC will be a lame duck and TWC will have to throw its might behind The Butler instead.
Add to that an oscar-nominated director (Lee Daniels), oscar-winning actors (whitaker, fonda), Oprah Winfrey and a potential BO success à la The Help or The Blind Side (two movies shunned by bloggers in their early predix) and you end up with a clear favorite to take the soccer-mom-friendly BP slot.
The next few weeks will tell us which film TWC will support depending on LDTB’s BO and AOC’s reception with the critics in Toronto.
I appreciate this because Oscar handicapping is so ubitiquous now but there is seldom any effort to promote smaller or more challenging films. There also is a financial hurdle for Oscar campaigns, which is why the same names get bandied about year after year.
Moreover, Clooney and co. had the HFPA out for a set visit, as well as Jeff Wells
And barrfff….that made me throw up a bit of ice cream in my mouth.
Right out of the Luis Buñuel’s guide on How to Whore Yourself Around to Awards Voters…and Jeff Wells?