The Los Angeles Film Critics will announce tomorrow — and soon the Golden Globes and SAG. And that will pretty much be it until the Oscar ballots go out on the 17th of December. Between the time they are turned in and nominations announcements, the DGA and PGA will announce. So we will have no idea what movies are the consensus pick by the Academy. We have a good sense of how they will go. The Gurus of Gold have a pretty good track record, but get better as December winds down. Let’s take a look at this week’s:
It’s a goodly race so far this year, looking like the least predictable in a while. One straight shooter remains Anne Thompson — who says, as we’ve been saying, that it’s down to Lincoln vs. Zero Dark Thirty. Two movies about settling things. Or not. Two movies about fixing something that feels permanently broken. Bravery, heroism – America at war. So far, 2012 is one hell of a year for film. If it does come down to these two movies, they are both equally deserving. And in fact the votes might split. I suspect Zero Dark Thirty will make a decent amount of coin, too, being that it’s about the Bin Laden raid. No film, though, is going to beat Lincoln at the box office.
$90 million and still only in 2,000 theaters, Lincoln is on track to make bank. It might even edge upwards of $130 mil. Sure, Oscar winners aren’t always about box office, but all the better when a movie no one thought could make that much money, does. It renews faith in American audiences that if you build it, they will come.
Let’s take a look back at the Gurus around this time of year.
On December 6 of 2011, the Gurus had all 9 of Oscar’s Best Picture nominees lineup up:
1. The Artist
2. War Horse
3. The Decendants
4. Hugo
5. Midnight in Paris
6. The Help
7. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
8. Moneyball
9. The Tree of Life
December 7 of 2010, the Gurus already had nine out of ten Best Picture nominees lined up:
1. The King’s Speech
2. The Social Network
3. Inception
4. Toy Story 3
5. True Grit
6. Black Swan
7. The Kids are All Right
8. The Fighter
9. 127 Hours
10. Rabbit Hole <–Winter’s Bone was at number 11. The previous week it tied with Rabbit Hole but Rabbit Hole pulled ahead. I had Winter’s Bone down and not Rabbit Hole, for what it’s worth.
December 8, 2009 is somewhat embarrassing. We had Up in the Air, which ended up getting completely shut out of any wins at the Oscars, on top to win. And Precious at number 2. In MY defense, at least I had The Hurt Locker at 2, though I did have Nine at number 4 and An Education completely off my list. But that shows you how different our perceptions were that Bigelow could even win back then. Things changed after Jim Cameron won the Golden Globe. We had 8/10 right back then, even as wrong as we were.
1. Up in the Air
2. Precious
3. The Hurt Locker
4. Invictus
5. Up
6. An Education
7. Nine
8. Inglourious Basterds
9. Avatar
10. A Serious Man
December 9, 2008 the Gurus had all of the Best Picture nominees – EXCEPT ONE. Two people, Eugene Hernandez and Glenn Whipp had The Reader at number 5, neither (correctly) picked the Dark Knight.
1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. Milk
4. Frost/Nixon
5. The Dark Knight
