Tallied up the numbers late last night as soon as we hit 2300 votes. Interesting how consistent you guys have been all year in your sustained enthusiasm for the top dozen titles. The 5 films at the pinnacle of this chart emerged within the first hour of voting, and barely varied in position as other titles found traction and shuffled in the rankings. The relative percentages for the top 3 titles held true all weekend long.
[Curious footnote, and maybe a significant reflection on the nature of polls in general: Wednesday when the poll was first posted, Appaloosa languished near the bottom with very few votes. After a few new Appaloosa stills became available and we featured them on Friday, the movie began to climb. No hype required. Just the enthusiasm and interest generated spontaneously by you guys in the comments was all it took to raise awareness and lift the status of a film that had been previously overlooked. Something to keep in mind when cabal news pundits base endless arguments on transitory political polls over the next few weeks.]
Full list of titles and vote percentages, along with a few more musings after the cut.
As for these tentative Oscar contender results, my gut feeling is that these top half dozen are almost too good to be true. If those titles still reign undiminished at the end of the year, it’ll be the first time I’ve been excited by all 5 Best Picture nominees since forever. One or two of them seems destined to be nudged out by whatever more middlebrow “safe” and traditional movies comes along.
The other major factors to consider are the films I failed to list in the poll. What international knockout will be this year’s La Vie en Rose or Le Scaphandre et le papillon? What adorable Indie will surface as the season’s Juno or Little Miss Sunshine? I know some of our readers have probably already seen these more elusive movies, or have a good inkling what they might be. Soon we’ll need to broaden our focus to start examining the many promising possibilities outside the box.
The Dark Knight, Revolutionary Road, Australia and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button look really solid right now, with Doubt, Milk,, Changeling, WALL·E and Frost/Nixon playing musical chairs for the remaining openings. If those manage to hold on to the top spots, not only does it mean you guys are geniuses for seeing them as far back as February — it would also be the dictionary definition of “predictable.” So I think it’s almost more fun to think about where we’ve gone wrong.
You can still vote if you missed the poll, but the screen grabs of the poll results are a snapshot of where things stood at 10 p.m. Sunday night.
18 Responses for "Top Oscar Contenders, Poll Results"
I have a really funny feeling in my special area for Appaloosa. It could just be the thought of Viggo playing a total bad ass since…the last movie he came out in…maybe it is time for him to make a romantic comedy.
[Meant to mention. If anybody missed the poll last week, you can still vote. It's always interesting to see how rankings can shift around in the very last stages of these surveys.]
Alfredo, I credit your Appaloosa cheerleading last week with being almost single-handedly responsible for its rise on the charts.
(I’m assuming you always play responsibly when you do things single-handedly
)
“One or two of them seems destined to be nudged out by whatever more middlebrow “safe” and traditional movies comes along.”
That statement’s got Milk written all over it.
As for this year’s Diving Bell and Juno, I’m not quite sure about the foreign film front. The only truly great foreign films I’ve seen this year are Tell No One and The Band’s Visit (and I’m pretty sure the latter isn’t up for consideration this year). Tell No One might have a shot, but it’s not the kind of foreign film that usually gets recognized. Now, on the Juno front, for some reason I see the film Towelhead as a possible contender for this distinction. Something about the poster and the plot description I read. I’ve also heard that its apparently really f*cked up. Honestly, I hope that it winds up being Synedoche, New York, but I also have a hunch its gonna get snubbed (the Children Of Men of this year).
Ryan, thanks, I’ve been doing lots of things single-handedly lately…sigh
On the foreign film front, I have very good vibes about Gomorrah.
Hi Ryan,
You’re absolutely right. We’ve yet to spot this years la Vie en Rose or Juno. And they’re bound to turn up. Although I expect the safe, middle brow option would have become apparent by now.
However whilst they’re going to take a screenplay, performance, costume and mabye even best picture nom it’s unliklely they’re going to be able to sweep the board in the way an epic like Australia or Benjamin Button could. We were asked to vote on where the highest tallies would fall – not on the potential best pictures.
Over the last 3 years we’ve had Juno, Iwo Jima and Munich with very low nomination tallies but they still were up for best picture. On the other hand there’s the possibility of pulling a Dreamgirls or Memoirs of a Geisha and having lots of noms without a best picture nod.
Of course any of these projects above could be dreadful when we actually see them, or they could just not be what the academy are looking for this year, and I’d be extremely surprised if the top five we’ve chosen end up being the Academy’s top five sight unseen.
Better get this poll back the week before the NBR kicks the season off, when nearly every contender is in the public domain, and only then can we even begin to have a good guess.
Cheers
BJT
“Tell No One” is not eligible. It came out in 2006 in France, and already had its US debut during last years Oscar season.
Wow. Of those five top vote-getters, I expect exactly one to make the Best Picture lineup. The Dark Knight.
It could be that my radar has gone walkies after all these years, but Benjamin Button, Revolutionary Road, Australia and Milk all give off varying degrees of Shipping News vibes. You know, the scenario where the film looks like a shoo-in on paper, ahem, shame about the movie itself.
Benjamin Button still looks to me to be too goofy for the Academy. Burtonish. Australia is a camp classic waiting to happen. Just look at the hubristic ambition of that title. Baz Luhrmann taking himself seriously does not inspire confidence. And Milk seems likely to go all squishy with hero-worship and forget to be interesting.
I dunno. Revolutionary Road could still hold on.
Why is The Changeling not in second place? It’s going to happen, y’all.
Another post since the editing widget isn’t cooperating with me:
The previous post makes it sound like I was mistaken about what the poll asked. But since the BP nominees are often among the biggest nom-getters, I sort of conflated the two.
Thanks for the Tell No One info, I wasn’t aware the movie was so old. I live in LA and wasn’t aware of this movie until early summer so when and where exactly was the film released in 2007?
well some early reviews for Revolutionary Road just hit the net and say the movie is “great” and an Oscar shoe-in.
Going simply from Cannes “buzz” and reviews and such, I’d guess several of those leading contenders will fizzle into nothing come awards season. I hope The Dark Knight can hold through but I certainly wouldn’t call it a shoe-in at this point. It would take a massive push to secure a BP position given the fickle nature of Oscar voting.
I have a good feeling that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Batman’s The Dark Knight will be public’s choices for this year’s Academy Awards. I just saw trailers on-line to Frost/Nixon. It interests me because I like Ron Howard. I think he deserved it for A Beautiful Mind. I think he was wonderful on Andy Griffith. He is a talented director and know’s his limitations. I don’t think there will be any violent/war movies nominated this year. The Departed and No Country for Old Men were too gory for the Academy. I hope Revolutionary Road and The Duchess are successes.
I hope Role Models gets nominated. Comedy needs to be recognized. Viggo Mortenson should win one for either Appaloosa or The Road. Winslet and Di Caprio will get nominated for best actor and best actress.
“Australia is a camp classic waiting to happen. Just look at the hubristic ambition of that title. Baz Luhrmann taking himself seriously does not inspire confidence.”
The last thing that trailer suggested to me was that Luhrmann had started taking himself seriously. And Moulin Rouge was a camp classic waiting to happen … that did indeed happen. Camp isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I can see it turning out to be a bad film, but that’s a different thing.
On another note, I’m surprised how few people voted for Happy-Go-Lucky – but then it was a poll for MOST noms, wasn’t it?
as long as doubt gets the major nominations for streep, hoffman davis and adams…
I think Doubt will definitely be THE heavy hitter in the acting areas this year (maybe along with Revolutionary Road?). Therefore, that very well could secure it a BP nom.
I also don’t think Milk is going to have the legs some of these others have. Its just one of those films that doesn’t manage to excite me…at all. Going by gut instinct on that one.
As for Synecdoche, it still might surprise us (holding on to that hope). Kaufman for screenplay and Hoffman for actor are obviously possibilities, but after reading the script and seeing the clips, I think art direction, cinematography, score and maybe even director (I really think Kaufman will turn out to be one of the greatest directors of this decade) are all conveivable possibilities. Don’t count it out of the running yet!
And, lastly, what ever happened to The Fall (tech noms) and Burn After Reading (script and acting)?!
Oh, I think Australia will be the film to beat this year. Camp Classic is a cheap shot. I think it will be nominated for 10 or more Oscars.
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