It is refreshing the critics still hold some sway -- especially since Dave Poland prefaced every critics' group handout this year by saying they were "irrelevant".
Has anybody read Poland's site in the last day? He's really showing his petulant child side. After months of promoting Dreamgirls -- after adamantly declaring "Dreamgirls WILL win" -- yesterday he offered a spoiled "I don't care, and if you think I do, you don't know my reality". Poppycock. We all I care; it's why we write about these things incessantly. (I certainly care how Children of Men did). As BJ wrote elsewhere, you keep it in perspective, as just a diversion from real life, but caring in the moment is the point. Does Poland think he's fooling anyone?
Anyway, back to the critics: this does show that New York, while it's lost its automatic-best-picture slot status, has the power to get a film into consideration. The United 93 directing nomination continues a streak whereby the NY winner, even if denied best picture, gets a directing slot (The Player, Leaving Las Vegas, Mulholland Drive, now United), or, minimally, screenplay (Topsy Turvy, Far fom Heaven).
Best Picture and Critics
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This may be just the antedeluvian in me, but I can never take any of those other critics' groups entirely seriously because, you know, they came along way too late. (I still think of LA as whippersnappers, for only emerging in '75) This isn't to say some of the others aren't capable of decent taste (Boston, yes; Broadcast, certainly not). But I don't think of any of them as agenda-setters, the way NY, especially, was for my entire lifetime. Every NY winner, for about 50 years, was deemed an automatic best picture candidate -- which meant films that pushed the aesthetic envelope, like Z, Five Easy Pieces, A Clockwork Orange, showed up at the Oscars and were widely seen. Even when the group flirted with foreign films in the early 70s -- films that, due to the calendar than extant, weren't eligible till the following year -- Cries and Whispers got a best picture nod, and both Day for Night and Amarcord got director/screenplay nominations after they'd been forgotten by most.
But once the Oscars started ignoring NY winners -- with The Player, in '92 -- the field of what could conceivably be nominated began to shrink. Movies like Leaving Las Vegas, Topsy Turvy and Far from Heaven are no more out-there than those 70s nominees...but no one even imagines films like that securing slots today. So, we're left watching piffle like Little Miss Fuggedaboudit touted for best picture, and Iwo Jima, United 93 and Children of Men are reduced to fighting for the scrap of a lone director nod.
Of course, we can always hope for a last-minute miracle, to stave off BJ's scenario. But I think the tight deadline has made a big surprise far less likely.
But once the Oscars started ignoring NY winners -- with The Player, in '92 -- the field of what could conceivably be nominated began to shrink. Movies like Leaving Las Vegas, Topsy Turvy and Far from Heaven are no more out-there than those 70s nominees...but no one even imagines films like that securing slots today. So, we're left watching piffle like Little Miss Fuggedaboudit touted for best picture, and Iwo Jima, United 93 and Children of Men are reduced to fighting for the scrap of a lone director nod.
Of course, we can always hope for a last-minute miracle, to stave off BJ's scenario. But I think the tight deadline has made a big surprise far less likely.
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Answer: The Departed.The Original BJ wrote:Quick. You're trying to predict the Oscars a year in advance. Which is the most likely Best Picture nominee? A World War II film directed by Clint Eastwood? The first major film about 9/11, which receives ecstatic early reviews? Or a quirky comedy about a road trip to a beauty pageant?
By focusing on the "major" critics groups, we ignore at our peril the "minor" groups where The Departed is doing quite well: Boston, Chicago, Florida, and the Southeastern. I know they fall outside your premise, but it doesn't yet mean the critics are irrelevant.
Honestly? I think it just means this is a quirk. Don't sound the death knell yet.
The Broadcast Film Critic's Association is sure to pick an Oscar nominee. And even though they're only a few years old, I think we have to start regarding them as a "major" critic's group, unfortunately.
"What the hell?"
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So, according to Oscar bloggers (around here and elsewhere), the 5 Best Picture nominees are set: Babel, The Departed, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen. All are Globe Best Picture nominees. All have done very well with the Guilds.
Are all of them unstoppable? No, but their nearest competitors seem rather distant. Letters From Iwo Jima broke fast out of the gate, scoring two major Best Picture prizes and nods for Director/Picture (or its equivalent) at the Globes. But then it was shockingly nowhere to be found with the Guilds. United 93 picked up another critics prize, but was shut-out at the Globes and just barely made a blip at the Guilds. Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth seem to be hot faves of the moment, but have arrived too late with too little pre-release fanfare.
Thinking about the struggles of these critics faves, I started to think...when was the last time NONE of the winners of the major critics groups (NYFCC, LAFC, NSFC, and NBR) went on to Best Picture nominations? I started thinking off the top of my head, got pretty far back, then had to check...
And I found an answer that, quite frankly, ASTONISHED me. Since LA's existence, there has ALWAYS been at least one match from the four. Since National Society's existence, there has ALWAYS been at least one match from the three. Since New York's existence, there has ALWAYS been at least one match from the two. And so the oldest winner of NBR not to make Oscar's list is . . . 1933's Topaze.
Of course, some may be picky with details. In Which We Serve went on to an Oscar nomination the year AFTER it had won NBR and NYFCC prizes. And some may want to throw out the picks of populist-skewing NBR (which isn't REALLY a critics group anyway.) But even if you do that, the ONLY year that Oscar's Best Picture list doesn't feature at least one critics' winner is '74, when prizes went to Amarcord/Scenes From a Marriage (NBR chose The Conversation, and I have a feeling that had LA been around, they would have gone with Chinatown or Godfather II.)
I don't mean to be spewing endless statistics like one of Tom O'Neil's minions. But I did want to point out that, should the Best Picture lineup go as many expect it will, this would mark a rather phenomenal break with decades of tradition, IMO. Of course, perhaps one of the critics' winners WILL make the list, and make this entire post moot. But I don't know. United 93 needed to show up a bit more throughout the precursors. The Guilds REALLY stalled Letters From Iwo Jima. And why even mention Pan's?
I'm very interested to know what anyone else thinks this means. What strikes me as particularly odd is that, this year, the critics haven't made wild, out-there picks. (Not that they typically do, but these films are even more accessible than, say, Mulholland Drive or Far From Heaven.) True, two of the three winners are subtitled, but they're populist genre films by big-name directors, one of whom is a screen legend, the other a foreign filmmaker firmly entrenched in the Hollywood machine. The other winner may not have ignited the box office, but it was a high-profile film about the defining event in our nations' recent history. These winners aren't The Death of Mr. Lazarescu or Inland Empire. Nor are they too-low-for-Oscar picks like Borat. They're perfectly Oscarable films that seem in for some big disappointments on nomination morning.
Quick. You're trying to predict the Oscars a year in advance. Which is the most likely Best Picture nominee? A World War II film directed by Clint Eastwood? The first major film about 9/11, which receives ecstatic early reviews? Or a quirky comedy about a road trip to a beauty pageant? I hope what sway the critics have had over the past 70 years of Oscar lasts just a little bit longer.
Are all of them unstoppable? No, but their nearest competitors seem rather distant. Letters From Iwo Jima broke fast out of the gate, scoring two major Best Picture prizes and nods for Director/Picture (or its equivalent) at the Globes. But then it was shockingly nowhere to be found with the Guilds. United 93 picked up another critics prize, but was shut-out at the Globes and just barely made a blip at the Guilds. Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth seem to be hot faves of the moment, but have arrived too late with too little pre-release fanfare.
Thinking about the struggles of these critics faves, I started to think...when was the last time NONE of the winners of the major critics groups (NYFCC, LAFC, NSFC, and NBR) went on to Best Picture nominations? I started thinking off the top of my head, got pretty far back, then had to check...
And I found an answer that, quite frankly, ASTONISHED me. Since LA's existence, there has ALWAYS been at least one match from the four. Since National Society's existence, there has ALWAYS been at least one match from the three. Since New York's existence, there has ALWAYS been at least one match from the two. And so the oldest winner of NBR not to make Oscar's list is . . . 1933's Topaze.
Of course, some may be picky with details. In Which We Serve went on to an Oscar nomination the year AFTER it had won NBR and NYFCC prizes. And some may want to throw out the picks of populist-skewing NBR (which isn't REALLY a critics group anyway.) But even if you do that, the ONLY year that Oscar's Best Picture list doesn't feature at least one critics' winner is '74, when prizes went to Amarcord/Scenes From a Marriage (NBR chose The Conversation, and I have a feeling that had LA been around, they would have gone with Chinatown or Godfather II.)
I don't mean to be spewing endless statistics like one of Tom O'Neil's minions. But I did want to point out that, should the Best Picture lineup go as many expect it will, this would mark a rather phenomenal break with decades of tradition, IMO. Of course, perhaps one of the critics' winners WILL make the list, and make this entire post moot. But I don't know. United 93 needed to show up a bit more throughout the precursors. The Guilds REALLY stalled Letters From Iwo Jima. And why even mention Pan's?
I'm very interested to know what anyone else thinks this means. What strikes me as particularly odd is that, this year, the critics haven't made wild, out-there picks. (Not that they typically do, but these films are even more accessible than, say, Mulholland Drive or Far From Heaven.) True, two of the three winners are subtitled, but they're populist genre films by big-name directors, one of whom is a screen legend, the other a foreign filmmaker firmly entrenched in the Hollywood machine. The other winner may not have ignited the box office, but it was a high-profile film about the defining event in our nations' recent history. These winners aren't The Death of Mr. Lazarescu or Inland Empire. Nor are they too-low-for-Oscar picks like Borat. They're perfectly Oscarable films that seem in for some big disappointments on nomination morning.
Quick. You're trying to predict the Oscars a year in advance. Which is the most likely Best Picture nominee? A World War II film directed by Clint Eastwood? The first major film about 9/11, which receives ecstatic early reviews? Or a quirky comedy about a road trip to a beauty pageant? I hope what sway the critics have had over the past 70 years of Oscar lasts just a little bit longer.