Good Grief -- NBR Prediction Time

[Mister Tee]

I'm not remotely prepared for the season to kick into high gear (don't even ask me about Christmas), but NBR voting is, I believe, tomorrow, and choices announced Thursday, so time for prognostication.

Last year was wildly atypical for NBR -- a far darker best picture than usual, and an alphabetical rather than ranked list of runners-up. My analysis presumes they'll revert to more historic traditions in both cases.

The archetypal NBR best film is a period piece on some no-longer-controversial liberal-ish issue -- Gandhi/Driving Miss Daisy/Good Night and Good Luck. But they'll settle for pure sentiment on occasion (Shine or Finding Neverland), or period without political content (the Ivory films, Sense and Sensibility). The Reader comes first to mind, on the overall criteria. Maybe Frost/Nixon, too -- though it depresses me to think of 1977 as "period". But I'm thinking the group that swooned for Shine and Forrest Gump will be the one critics' group unable to pass up Slumdog Millionaire.

Other standard characteristics? The number two film is often a big, sweeping canvas made by an auteur-aspiring director -- English Patient and Mr. Ripley, Traffic, The Aviator, Babel. Benjamin Button seems to fit that bill most readily (and may get Fincher the directing nod, as it has some of those others). Other slots are usually taken by clear best picture favorites (Milk, Doubt), old fave directors (former best picture winners Luhrmann and Eastwood), and one or two off the wall, best picture no-hopers, like last year's Bucket List. For no good reason, I'm focused on Vicky Christina Barcelona and Burn After Reading to contend for that slot.

As for the acting prizes, always watch out for the multiple credit performer, and, though they haven't done it in a while, there was a time they loved honoring several supporting performers from the same film (as in Binoche and Scott Thomas for English Patient).

All that said, my probably-hopelessly-wrong slate:

1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. Frost/Nixon
4. Milk
5. Revolutionary Road
6. Doubt
7. Burn After Reading
8. Australia
9. Changeling
10. The Reader
(alternates: Vicky Christina Barcelona; Happy Go Lucky)

Best Actor: Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Best Actress: Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road) and (The Reader)
Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, James Franco & Emile Hirsch (Milk)
(or, if they go for a single, Heath Ledger)
Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis (Doubt)
Best Director: David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Doubt
Best Original Screenplay: In Bruges
Best Animated Feature: Wall E
Best Foreign Film: The Class
(runners-up: A Christmas Tale, I've Loved You So Long, Tell No One, Reprise)
Best Breakthrough (Male): Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)
Best Breakthrough (Female): Sally Hawkins (Happy Go Lucky)
(Almost Forgot) Best Documentary: Man on Wire



Edited By Mister Tee on 1228245877