Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by mlrg »

I agree with the comparisons to Bridges and Firth. I don't think however that Oldman is winning the Globe. His past dismissal of the HFPA will probably hurt his chances. If in fact he wins it, then it's an open freeway to the Oscar. If not (and if Day Lewis wins on Sunday as I'm predicting) then it will be a fun race.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by FilmFan720 »

OscarGuy wrote:Unlike Michael Keaton, Mickey Rourke, or Sylvester Stallone (albeit in support), who were frontrunners who failed to take the brass ring, Oldman has more than a couple of performances that people cite as being great ones. Therein lies the distinction, IMO.
Plus, those were comeback stories, where once well-regarded actors had disappeared and come back with a gangbusters role. Oldman has never gone anywhere. He has consistently built himself a resume as a great cinematic actor, just one who usually has been consistently wonderful in big ensembles. He feels to me much more like a Jeff Bridges or Colin Firth than any of those actors...and it is probably his time.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by OscarGuy »

I would argue, and I've seen industry professionals argue this as well, he is thought to have been robbed of nominations for films like Sid and Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears (nominated at BAFTA), and has given numerous performances that have garnered acclaim even if not awards traction. He's well respected in the industry and is well liked by the public.

Unlike Michael Keaton, Mickey Rourke, or Sylvester Stallone (albeit in support), who were frontrunners who failed to take the brass ring, Oldman has more than a couple of performances that people cite as being great ones. Therein lies the distinction, IMO.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by OscarGuy »

My apologies for including Brody in that list. Excluding him does strengthen that particular argument, though.

http://www.cinemasight.com/awards-histo ... r-tallies/

Here's a list of citations.

Oldman has DC, NY Online, Dallas Fort Worth, St Louis, Southeastern, Phoenix, and Nevada
Chalamet has New York, LA, Boston Online, Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, and Florida

That's based on everything up to 12/24. I haven't updated yet, so those numbers are three precursors off.

Oldman picked up the Online and North Carolina critics, so Oldman is actually ahead by 2. Kaluuya won the third.

And Anonymous, Most Promising awards are completely immaterial. When was the last one who won one of those awards also won the Oscar and has it ever happened in Best Actor?

Adrien Brody, Eddie Redmayne, and Jean Dujardian are the only relative newcomers to win Best Actor that I can really find and all of them were not up-and-coming actors. Brody had appeared in 20 films before The Pianist, Redmayne was in 12, and Dujardin was in 23.
Chalamet has 7, so is closer to Redmayne than anything, but Redmayne's win was for a major biographical character and went through a classic Oscar transformation on screen to win.

I know everyone is trying their best to craft a scenario where Chalamet is the frontrunner, but without any evidence to the contrary (Globe or SAG win), you're putting the cart before the horse.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by Franz Ferdinand »

OscarGuy wrote:Sure, the Academy could turn over a new leaf, but Gary Oldman is an acting legend. He's spoken of as if he's a god who has been maligned and underrewarded by most of the Hollywood establishment. Had his Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy performance not been so subdued, he might have won for that. Yet, this is a major bombastic performance, one that the Academy used to recognize quite frequently and has that Capital A acting that they still recognize.
No doubt he is a legend, but is there more to his Oscar track record - as hard as it is to believe that he only received his first nomination in 2011, that is also a fact, and it was for a majorly subdued performance, almost an anti-Oldman. Unless I'm way off, it always seemed to me that the consensus on him is half "ACTOR" and half "thespian genius", if not slightly more in favor of the former. Is his front runner status a symptom of a weak year (or weak stretch of years), a rote falling-in-line for an acting legend not entirely beloved but certainly "due"?
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by flipp525 »

OscarGuy wrote:Affleck, Dujardin, Bridges, Day-Lewis (Blood), Penn (Mystic), Brody, Washington, Crowe, Spacey, and Benigni are the only ones not playing historical figures to win in the last 20 years and only three of those were in the last ten years.
Adrien Brody played Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist who was a real person.

I also don’t think that Oldman and Chalamet are tied for citations. That doesn’t sound right.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by anonymous1980 »

OscarGuy wrote: only seven Best Actor awards (the same as Oldman),
But if you count "Best Breakthrough Performer" awards, Chalamet has won more awards than Oldman.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by OscarGuy »

There are two factors working against Chalamet that I think people aren't taking into account.

First is that Call Me by Your Name has been underperforming precursor season. I adore the film and it's one of the most acclaimed films of the year, but it has one Best Picture award, one Best Director award, only seven Best Actor awards (the same as Oldman), no supporting actor awards, only 5 Adapted Screenplay awards (one less than The Disaster Artist), and that's it for awards. On the nominations front, it lags behind Get Out, Lady Bird, Three Billboards, and Dunkirk in Best Picture nominations, Guadagnino has an anemic 4 Best Director nominations, Chalamet has fewer than both Oldman and James Franco, Armie Hammer is a distant third in supporting actor with Stuhlbarg two below him, a tie for most Adapted Screenplay citations, 1 for Original Score, 2 for Film Editing, 4 for Cinematography, and that's it. If you compare to last year's well regarded gay drama Moonlight last year, these results are bad.

I know not everyone watches all the precursors and disregard most of the regional ones, but if the film can't perform better with significantly better average reviews (MetaCritic has it at 93, behind four films, Faces Places, A Fantastic Woman, Dunkirk, and Lady Bird), it's 12th on Rotten Tomatoes (based on adjusted score, which is a bull shit metric, IMO, since it puts Thor, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Coco, Baby Driver, Logan, and Wonder Woman above it), but in terms of actual scores, its 97 is which is behind Get Out, The Big Sick, Lady Bird, I Am Not Your Negro, My Life As a Zucchini, God's Own Country, BPM, several documentaries, and a number of other films, and tied with Coco and Mudbound, and a bunch of other films that aren't competing this year.

The second factor that works against Chalamet is his age. If you read my Oscar Statistics article (http://www.cinemasight.com/oscar-statis ... he-oscars/), you would recognize how tough it is for actors under the age of 30 to get Oscar nominations. Average ages of nominees and winners is over 40. Less than 6% of all Best Actor nominations go to actors under the age of 30 with only one actor in Oscar history, or 1.1% of winners, being in that age range.

Sure, the Academy could turn over a new leaf, but Gary Oldman is an acting legend. He's spoken of as if he's a god who has been maligned and underrewarded by most of the Hollywood establishment. Had his Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy performance not been so subdued, he might have won for that. Yet, this is a major bombastic performance, one that the Academy used to recognize quite frequently and has that Capital A acting that they still recognize. DiCaprio, Redmayne, McConaughey, Firth, Bridges, Penn, Day-Lewis, Whitaker, Foxx, Washington...these are all actors who either gave big, broad performances that were questionably good, or were such major names that that fact may have bolstered their candidacies. Several of them also played historical figures. Affleck, Dujardin, Bridges, Day-Lewis (Blood), Penn (Mystic), Brody, Washington, Crowe, Spacey, and Benigni are the only ones not playing historical figures to win in the last 20 years and only three of those were in the last ten years.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by Precious Doll »

Big Magilla wrote:
Sabin wrote:'Darkest Hour' plays to the blue hairs pretty well. The biggest reason why he might not win is the blue hair purge that's been occurring since #OscarSoWhite.
Are there really blue-haired old ladies any more? The last time I saw one up close was an elderly teacher in the late 1950s.

I know the term hung around to describe the type of theatregoer Neil Simon and his ilk wrote for in the 1960s, but the old ladies who actually used blue rinses must all be dead by now. They'd have to be well over 100 years old. A 70 year-old blue-hair in 1965 would be 123 this year.
In Australia we used to call them 'the blue rinse set', though I haven't seen one since probably sometime in the 1990s.

They have been replaced by overweight women who don't give a shit about their hair, wear shoes/scandals without heals, little or no make-up and dress very casually for their moviegoing outings.

I'd like to think too that older voters in the Academy are getting a lot more broadminded and free thinking these days. After all we are talking about people like Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, etc.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

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Sabin wrote:'Darkest Hour' plays to the blue hairs pretty well. The biggest reason why he might not win is the blue hair purge that's been occurring since #OscarSoWhite.
Are there really blue-haired old ladies any more? The last time I saw one up close was an elderly teacher in the late 1950s.

I know the term hung around to describe the type of theatregoer Neil Simon and his ilk wrote for in the 1960s, but the old ladies who actually used blue rinses must all be dead by now. They'd have to be well over 100 years old. A 70 year-old blue-hair in 1965 would be 123 this year.

Darkest Hour is the type of film that would appeal to that age group, but the number of old people for whom The King's Speech seemed like yesterday in 2010 are dropping off the planet at a faster clip now. Besides which, the older Churchill of John Lithgow in The Crown was a better performance that more voters will likely have seen. Still, they may feel inclined to vote for the actor providing the most traditional performance. I'd watch the Golden Globes very carefully. If Oldman wins there, he may still be the one to beat, but if he loses, be prepared to see Adrien Brody's record as the younger Best Actor winner put in mothballs.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by The Original BJ »

Everyone's thoughts on the Best Actor scenario are very compelling and well-reasoned.

My main prediction dilemma at this point is the following: after seeing Darkest Hour and Call Me By Your Name, my assumption based on what Oscar voters would think was that Oldman would have the prize in the bag, and Chalamet's chances were hopeless. At the same time, if you asked me who I'd prefer, well that's easy: Chalamet over Oldman without a second thought. So the question is...are there more people in the Academy who think like me, most of you, and most of the critics? Or are there more people in the Academy who think like what I think people in the Academy think like?
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by Precious Doll »

Also, Crowe had won the year before and he was not and is probably still is not an actor the Academy are in any hurry to give a 2nd Oscar to.

Another thing in Oldman's favour is his film is performing better at the box office than his nearest competitor Timothy Chalamet's Call Me By Your Name. I realise that Call Me By Your Name has yet to go wide in the U.S. but those screen averages for 115 screens are pretty weak.

Actually, a number of highly touted Oscar contenders seem to be underperforming but that is also the sign of the times in relation to cinema attendances.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by Sabin »

Some good points that hadn't crossed my mind...

One thing working in Denzel Washington's favor for 'Training Day' was Russell Crowe acting like a total asshole in the lead-up to Oscar night. Gary Oldman is a bit of a right-winger with a history of bad temperament, so any Trump comments might pop his life raft.

You write that Gary Oldman would be lucky to get a nomination in 2008 or 2012. But it's neither of those years. More and more of our best actors are wasting their time in superhero blockbusters. For the third year in a row, Best Actor looks pretty scant and there's one guy who appears far ahead of everyone else. Both times this has happened, the front-runner won. Working in Gary Oldman's favor is the fact that even if his performance doesn't play to critics, it will play to older members of the Academy. I think that is something that Gary Oldman absolutely has working to his benefit. 'Darkest Hour' plays to the blue hairs pretty well. The biggest reason why he might not win is the blue hair purge that's been occurring since #OscarSoWhite.

He's not a lock, but he's the front-runner. Or favorite, whichever phrasing you prefer.
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by Mister Tee »

Sabin wrote:I agree. Gary Oldman is a weak front-runner, but he is the front-runner. He’s our third in a row. Nobody thought that Leonardo DiCaprio did career best work in ‘The Revevant,’ and Casey Affleck gave a very atypical Oscar performance in ‘Manchester by the Sea.’ Gary Oldman, on the other hand, gives as typical an Oscar performance as I’ve ever seen in a film not terribly beloved that is unlikely to receive a Best Picture nomination. To find a Best Actor winner that was in a Best Picture hopeful, one has to go all the way back to...2009. And before that, 2006, 2001, 1995...which is to say, it happens somewhat infrequently.
Like okri, I did a bit of a double-take at your last sentences, and presume you meant "wasn't" rather than "was".

Things that make those other examples different:

Whitaker in 2006 and Cage in 1995 COMPLETELY ran the important critics' prizes in their years. (And Leaving Las Vegas seemed to be a best picture contender till it shocked everyone by missing the nomination; in a year of up-to-10, it would clearly have been cited.)

Bridges in '09 and Washington in '01 weren't as critic-dominant, but they did both win LA, so they had credentials for the win beyond "they've been around for years and ought to win sometime".

The main thing with all four of these guys -- also applicable to Julianne Moore in 2014 -- is that the Oscar buzz for them didn't arise until people had seen the performance. The bizarre thing about Oldman is, he was viewed as a much stronger candidate -- by those who think in such terms -- on paper, before anyone watched his movie, and has been struggling to meet that expectation.

In that sense, DiCaprio two years ago is the strongest analogy. He, too, was seen as The Sure Thing half a year out, and the fact that the performance didn't get any particular raves (or old-line critics' prizes) wasn't able to stop the Oscar Industrial Complex from making him a going-away winner.

But even there, you have elements that make his case stronger than Oldman -- chiefly, the fact that (god knows why) The Revenant became an extraordinary box-office success and a major Oscar juggernaut at the nominations level. If Oldman's vehicle were stronger, I'd be more inclined to understand his candidacy. The chief things he seems to have going for him are, everybody's been planning on him winning, and there's just nobody else in sight without his own issues. (In 2008 or 2012, to pick two years, he'd be lucky to get a nomination.)
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Re: Pre-Christmas Look at the Top Races

Post by Sabin »

Correct. And corrected.
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