The First Hopefuls List

[flipp525]

The reviews for The Women are almost uniformly abysmal, so I doubt anyone will emerge from that film with a potential nomination.

Bad News!

I think it's good news. It might lead more to seek out the much better original film, which most reviewers are sagacious enough to point out.

[Hustler]

The reviews for The Women are almost uniformly abysmal, so I doubt anyone will emerge from that film with a potential nomination.

Bad News!

[Penelope]

The reviews for The Women are almost uniformly abysmal, so I doubt anyone will emerge from that film with a potential nomination.

[Hustler]

The Women? Please.

Have you seen it? Does Annette Bening have any chance?

[Reza]

'The Dark Knight' gets nominations for Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing.

Rather excessive don't you think?? I guess not!

[flipp525]

The Women? Please.

[OscarGuy]

Point taken. However, they stand as the biggest pinnacles (and yes, I meant Shrek 2) of box office power since Jurassic Park.

I guess my problem is I need to see how well it performs with critics and guilds. After all, some in the Academy may feel the shameless re-release of the film isn't necessary since it will be hard to forget it was out (unlike Braveheart, which might have been forgotten as mostly was Rob Roy, the infinitely better picture of the style that year). The Academy has shown a resistance in recent years to avoid studio baiting. Look at the collapse of Miramax and Weinstein Company. I think some in the Academy are tired of their ballots being cast before they cast them and have rebelled in certain situations to avoid a film in competition. The studios say "you must honor this" to which the Academy says "no we don't". Not perfect corollaries, but Dreamgirls and Cold Mountain are two such recent examples.

Those were smaller, "prestige" pics, but they were nevertheless heavily pushed by the studios and ended up suffering in the nominations because of it, even though they would have performed well within the Academy of the 1980s (a la Out of Africa)...at least Cold Mountain would.

[Zahveed]

Dammit Wes, you beat me to it.

[Zahveed]

Shrek barely got any. Spider-Man barely got any. And those films all had big box office takes that rivaled Star Wars and sit higher on the adjusted for inflation list than Dark Knight does.

*cough cough*

24. The Dark Knight - $512,829,000
25. Shrek 2 - $503,040,600
26. Grease - $501,716,900
27. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - $499,549,600 *
28. Love Story - $495,586,900 *
29. Spider-Man - $491,952,000

[MovieWes]

Well, Shrek and Spider-Man don't sit higher on the inflation adjusted list than The Dark Knight. Shrek 2 (which is the one I'm assuming you're talking about) sits at $503 million and Spider-Man is at $491 million, whereas The Dark Knight is at $513 million and counting. But I get your point. Jurassic Park, on the other hand, swept the tech categories and there's no telling how well it would've done with the Academy had Spielberg not released Schindler's List the same year. 1993 was largely seen as the Year of Spielberg, and Jurassic Park was a part of that. If it wasn't for Schindler's List, I think that there's a very good chance that it would've joined Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, and E.T. as one of Spielberg's mega-blockbuster Best Picture nominees. But it still won 3 Oscars, which is a pretty nice haul.



Edited By MovieWes on 1221225998

[OscarGuy]

I'm not that interested in the tech categories right now. I really only briefly glossed over them. Didn't even notice I hadn't included Dark Knight in most of them. I'll give it Sound Editing, but I don't know about Cinematography...all the complaints I was hearing were that it didn't really do anything visually, which is the fault of the cinematographer in most cases. I think the cinematography was fine, but hardly anything to write home about. But, I'm sure there will be people on the bandwagon, but before Titanic, there was Jurassic Park which picked up a whole three nominations, even though it did win all three. Shrek barely got any. Spider-Man barely got any. And those films all had big box office takes that rivaled Star Wars and sit higher on the adjusted for inflation list than Dark Knight does.



Edited By OscarGuy on 1221192116

[Zahveed]

Good to see 9 in your hopefuls, OG, but I have to agree with the other Wes on The Dark Knight issue. It's still early though and I'm sure this list is going to drastically change.

[Sabin]

'The Dark Knight' gets nominations for Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing. 'Australia' is a muddled mess, gets technical nods.

[MovieWes]

So let me get this straight... you think that The Dark Knight is only going to get two nominations total? Ledger and sound mixing? That's it? Not even sound editing? Not even cinematography, even though Wally Pfister got nominations for both Batman Begins and The Prestige? It's the second film to ever cross $500 million, it's a cultural phenomenon unlike anything seen this decade, and pundits are talking it up as a possible Best Picture contender, and you think it's going to receive a grand total of 2 nominations? I can understand that you don't think it's going to be nominated for Best Picture, but for it to not even make much of an impact in the technical categories is just silly. Too silly to even contemplate.

It will get, at the very least, 4 tech nominations. It's just too big for them to ignore.

[OscarGuy]

I have posted my second update to the list including Romania's official entry listed, though not evaluated...and my foreign film list is really just a bunch of wild guesses at this point.