Two films were shown at AFI Fest. One, Selma which had mostly dropped off the pundits’ lists and was being considered a major dark horse by pundits at various predicting sites. Early on I had Ava DuVernay listed for Best Director and was tweeted something like, “you’re so cute with your predictions.” They meant I was advocating for Selma long before it would be seen. And that was true. But the majority of the pundits weren’t. They were predicting Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper to be a strong contender. After both films screened it was pretty clear that Selma had the edge over American Sniper. Pundits quickly shifted their predictions. American Sniper looked better “on paper” than Selma did. Lower expectations heading into Selma made way for a delightful surprise. Heightened expectations heading into American Sniper made the film obligated to live up to hype.
The short history of Oscar watching goes something like this. In the early days before the blogs, around 1999, Oscar watching was mostly done by magazines who would put out predictions only in late November or preferably late December. November seemed early. Then the blogs happened. My site and Tom O’Neil’s site were online right about then. My site’s job was to watch the Oscar race from the beginning of the year on through to the end in hopes of figuring out why only the year end films were selected for Best Picture and why it seemed like such an odd assemblage of “Oscar movies.” As I rolled out each Oscar year I watched the internet change around me. I watched blogs themselves come into prominence and I remember making my site into a blog from a simple HTML magazine. I watched as all of the major outlets came online and realized their bread and butter was the Oscar race so before long they all had awards coverage (for better or worse, most conclude worse). The LA Times, even the NY Times. Oscar predicting itself was, for a very long time, about what “they” would do, not what we wanted them to do.
Now, it is a whole industry that reaches all over the internet — it is still hated by journalists and film critics. It is still the backdoor mistress of high profile sites and has never been taken all that seriously by anyone. But the big question, are we right or are we wrong? The answer: we are mostly right but when we’re wrong we rarely learn from our mistakes.
In a wide open race for Best Picture, like we’re seeing right now, it has brought out the advocacy in nearly all of the otherwise self-described “objective” pundits like Anne Thompson, Scott Feinberg and Dave Karger. Arguably, the only truly objective pundits I see when I look over the list for potential Best Picture nominees is Steve Pond and Susan Wloszczyna. Over at Movie City News, David Poland and Pete Hammond are still mostly objective.
Advocacy means that this year, unlike last year and the years prior to it, anything might happen so why not try to influence what will happen. Anne Thompson is firmly in the corner of The Grand Budapest Hotel. She knows it’s a dark horse long shot but she’s holding fast hoping other pundits will look at her list and think, huh, she could be right there. Ditto for Dave Karger who is the Unbroken guy. Look at this latest (pre Selma/American Sniper) Gurus chart:
Unbroken has not been seen by anyone. Only footage has been seen. Angelina Jolie has only made one movie before this and yet, Karger leads the charge that it will win Best Picture. Back at Gold Derby, many have followed Karger’s lead because everyone knows he’s one of the best. But that “best” comes with a caveat. Any person who knows even a little about how the Oscar race works knows that on paper many films are a winner, just like under water, Shelly Winters was “a very skinny lady” in The Poseidon Adventure. My daughter and I have a joke where we say great things about ourselves followed with “dot dot dot ONLINE.” “I am a really successful writer … ONLINE.” “I am really popular with men … ONLINE.” “I am incredibly political and outspoken … ONLINE.”
Picking a film no one has seen to WIN is a fool’s errand. I’ve never seen it come to fruition. Even back when Titanic stormed the Oscars many believed LA Confidential was the winner. And neither of those would have been predicted before they were seen and reviewed. So now, at Gold Derby here are the experts who have Unbroken at number one to win: Tom O’Neil, Ed Douglas, Thom Gier, Tariq Kahn, Scott Mantz, Karger and Paul Sheehan. Over at Gurus, only Dave Karger.
Believe me, we’ve all been through this before — almost every year there is some poor film that becomes the “defacto frontrunner.” Expectations are set way too high and thus, the film can never be judged on its own terms. We all know this but this practice continues as we speak.
Scott Feinberg knows the Oscar race well, as does Thelma Adams, and yet both of them have lost their minds and are putting down Citizenfour, the Edward Snowden doc, as a Best Picture contender. This is blatant advocacy as they clearly love the movie and hope it’s that popular. Mmmm. Thing is, if March of the Penguins couldn’t get in for Best Picture this one sure as hell can’t. For one thing, you have to assume everyone voting is in Snowden’s corner – trust me, they ain’t gonna be. They might have been hippies once but these guys will look at Snowden with mixed feelings. Yes, he revealed some important information but on the other hand he did the country tremendous harm. Was he an American hero? Some think yes, some think no. It is the darkest of the dark horse picks. Maleficent has a better chance of getting chosen for Best Picture. That’s advocacy that might produce results somewhere along the line. I do not criticize them for it but when I look at their predictions, that’s what I’m thinking.
I don’t know what is motivating the otherwise objective Mr. Karger to hold so true to Unbroken, a film he hasn’t even seen. I know that there’s advocacy involved with Jeff Wells picking Birdman to win Best Picture at Gold Derby and on his tracking charts. He’s trying to make Fetch happen and it might. I myself am an admitted advocate and have been for years now and everyone knows where my alliances lie. Though I want Gone Girl to be a multiple nominee at the Oscars I also think it could be, given that it is theoretically headed for a $180 box office take. To me, that’s a no-brainer. But I know, “they” won’t go for it. “They” didn’t like it, etc. No one looks at my predictions and takes them that seriously because they see me as an advocate. Many pundits want to be seen an objective because that will make them more right which will make them more trustworthy.
I advocated hard for 12 Years a Slave last year, Lincoln the year before, Hugo the year before that, and of course, am notorious for throwing myself on the sword of The Social Network. I try to advocate for what I truly believe is the best, and I feel uncomfortable spending all of these months in resigned surrender to what “they” will do. If Unbroken is great I will be the first to cheer Angelina Jolie on.
The dirty little secret about Oscar watching is this: it doesn’t matter what any of us personally thinks about a movie. What matters is a whopping, big ass consensus of people who like stuff. They can’t be swayed to drink the Kool-aid. All we can do is try to get them to notice a movie, to pick it out of the screener pile to watch. We can’t make them like what they don’t like and we can’t make them vote for anything because they should (although that’s debatable with 12 Years a Slave).
What influences voters more is the rolling consensus that starts to take shape with the critics – mainly, New York, the National Board of Review and Los Angeles. The Golden Globes can help boost movies into the race too. Then the bigger, more important consensus groups announce and those are the guilds – the producers guild is the most important of those because it is the ONLY GROUP that works off a preferential ballot with more than five nominees. Then the DGA – and the DGA this year is going to be announced after Oscar ballots are turned in so it won’t be an influencer yet again. The Screen Actors Guild also matters.
But all of this debating and column writing and predicting only marginally influences anything or anyone. It gives a working roadmap, perhaps, of what the Oscar movies might be. MIGHT be. The stars, filmmakers and publicists do the rest – they shake hands, do interviews, act nice, let voters pet them and admire them and the winners are chosen from there.
The first big thing that’s about to happen is that the New York Film Critics will pick their winner to start the race off. For the past two years they’ve picked a movie that wasn’t being predicted to win or that had been widely seen. American Hustle and Zero Dark Thirty have been their past two. Most of the time, their winners go on to be nominated for Best Picture, give or take a United 93.
Next comes the National Board of Review which does exactly the same thing as the NYFF as their Best Picture winner often goes on to be nominated for Best Picture, give or take a Quills. People complain that the National Board Review aren’t “real critics” but by this point does it even matter anymore?
That the films designed for the race so far seem less exciting has opened the door for more exciting films to be talked about, like Selma, which appears to have shaken up the Oscar race.
The films that seem to be Best Picture contender sure bets right now are:
Boyhood
Birdman
Gone Girl**
The Imitation Game
The Theory of Everything
Selma
Whiplash
And that might end up being your Best Picture lineup. Then…
The longer shots/question marks:
Interstellar
Foxcatcher
Grand Budapest Hotel
Mr. Turner
A Most Violent Year
American Sniper
The unseen movies that could shake up the race:
Unbroken
Big Eyes
Into the Woods
The No Way, No How/When Pigs Fly*:
CitizenFour or any documentary
Any animated film
*worth noting, when the Academy had ten slots for Best Picture, they nominated animated films for Best Picture – even then, no documentary got in.
*Pundits are trigger shy about Gone Girl because they’re assuming Academy members won’t “like” it – but any you’d have to be insane as an Oscar predictor not to see this film as one of the strongest heading into the first part of the race. If it is rejected by the Producers Guild and Directors Guild perhaps then it will be seen as “too much” for “them.”
