Best Picture & Best Director. Final Notes
Friday, February 18, 2011 at 1:27PM 
David FincherWith the Oscars just nine days away it's time to finalize the Oscar pages. I started with Best Picture and Best Director. I'm betting on a split with David Fincher taking the gold for The Social Network but The King's Speech taking Best Picture. Splits are not common as you know, but the BAFTA reaction could be telling. And could The Social Network really have burned through ALL of its awards pull before Oscar night? It's got to win something beyond Screenplay right?
The Best Picture page also has updated box office results and extremely useless trivia like number of animals abused, limbs lost, batshit crazy mothers and sex scenes and more that can be found in the ten-wide Best Picture field.
On the director's page I've theorized about what got Tom Hooper, Darren Aronofsky, David O. Russell and Joel and Ethan Coen nominated (for entertainment purposes only... though I'd love to hear if I missed any reasons for the nods). Useless trivia: If you fused all of the directors together statistically you've got a 48 year old white American guy with 7 fairly cerebral films under his belt enjoying only his second adventure at the Oscars.
David Fincher, Directors, Oscars (10), Tom Hooper
Reader Comments (12)
Great work as usual Nathaniel, my only complaint is in the "snubs" section of the Director page, how could you not mention Nolan? After his Globe/BCFA/DGA noms, how can he not be considered a major snub for Director?
Well... I did allude to that in the "how they got nominated section" albeit with snark.
That "Not Chris Nolan" sentiment is likely in the double digits with these clowns.
What is the fourth lost limb? I can only recall three (Aaron's arm and both Winter's Bone hands)...
Noecitos - True Grit
I *really* find it hard to believe that Tom Hooper will win an Oscar this year. I'm predicting a picture/director split as well.
Inception is not the best picture of the year
Inception is not the most original movie of the year
Inception is not a special achievement in directing this year or any other
Christopher Nolan is a false prophet
Christian Bale is the heterosexual fan boy/man gay fantasy and nothing more
/34tfull --- i don't feel Nolan was snubbed either (qualitatively speaking... but it's still very obviously a snub in the Hollywood way that these things go.
Christopher Nolan was very much robbed, and "Inception" was a SIGNIFICANT work of art that he should have been properly recognized for in best director.
I'm loving all this trivia, and I'm still trying to figure a few of them out. Are we counting Ree's mom and Nic as being "batshit crazy"? And where was the attempted dog abuse?
Also, for BP-nominated sci-fi movies, you left off E.T. and, depending on your genre definitions, Dr. Strangelove. (It ends with an apocalyptic nuclear war, so I call it sci-fi.)
andreas -- no the batshit craziy moms are black swan, winters bone, inception and the fighter.
oh and ET was just a typo. the number is right but not the list ;)
Give or take Dr. Strangelove, Inception is the only sci-fi Best Pic nominee not to score an editing nod...which is the one category besides VFX and Sound where it really merits attention. WEIRD.
I think that 40% for the Coens should read "They're not Chris Nolan" lol