Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Oscar Winds Are Blowing...

I've worked hard over the years to insure that this is more than just an Oscar blog. There's lot of love for movies outside of the film year we're living in. But... but... it's awfully hard to resist the "All Oscars! All the Time!" siren song that starts wailing through every film industry speaker when Thanksgiving approaches. So I figured I'd finish revising the Oscar pages. There's more soon, particularly in regards to the foreign, animated, documentary and costume races, but for now there are tweaks. Here's the index of predictions.


I've gained faith in Nine (more on that once the embargo breaks) and I've lost some faith in Invictus and The Lovely Bones (generally speaking, I'm suspicious of the annual films that hide) but I've curiously regained a little for Avatar which climbs the charts in a few areas and which remains the film I'm predicting as having the highest nomination count without a corresponding Best Picture bid. Even if it's great -- and James Cameron's name augurs well for that -- it's still a sci-fi picture. Having had a few conversations with industry folks (including AMPAS members) over the past week I'm starting to think I've underestimated A Serious Man which is Avatar's inverse prediction wise (i.e. the projected Picture nominee with the least amount of nominations). And it may mean nothing but one voting producer and his wife that I chatted with were both nuts for Sam Rockwell in Moon. Who knew? Not that producers can nominate actors, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

As ever the Golden Globes and the NBR have a lot of power to set the tone IF (and only if) they go with anyone that's not already a sure thing or give an obvious cold shoulder to someone who is. Can't wait to see what happens next...

PICTURE / DIRECTOR / ACTOR / ACTRESS / SUPPORTING ACTOR / SUPPORTING ACTRESS / FOREIGN FILM / COSTUME DESIGN / ANIMATION / VISUALS / AURALS
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