[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8uUrl42Jo[/youtube]
The Carpetbagger ain’t buying the Wall-E hype for Best Picture. I agree that it’s a crazy long shot but I can also imagine voters putting it down as one of their favorites of the year. The impossible is always probable at this stage of the game, though, and all you’d need is a DGA nod for Andrew Stanton to start buying it. The Bagger is down on Dark Knight and Wall-E for Best Pic, but agrees that Slumdog, Frost/Nixon, Benjamin Button, and Milk are locked in. But there’s is that pesky fifth slot into which Doubt, Revolutionary Road, or The Reader could slip in. There ain’t a whole lot of strong choices once you remove those gigantic pieces of the pie taken up by Dark Knight and Wall-E. You’d have to be a very stubborn voting body to ignore either or both, as we’ve said over and over again. Still, they favor dramas, preferably period pieces. The Reader, Doubt and Revolutionary Road all fit that bill, as does Defiance.
Here’s a funny factoid for you. You have to go back to 2002 to find a year when there wasn’t at least one Independent Spirit feature nominee among the film nominees. The only two with the remotest shot would be Rachel Getting Married or The Wrestler. The latter has a shot at being the one. More than any other film, I keep hearing people talking about how much they loved that movie. It could mean something, it could mean nothing.
