Oscar Chart Retinkering
Sunday, December 16, 2012 at 12:01PM 
FWIW, I've been cleaning up the Oscar charts this weekend to fix up the Foreign Submission Charts (every year the announcement of the foreign finalists sneaks up on me and renders much of that work moot!), the multiple categories of short films, animation and documentary as well as reflect the finalist changes in the various score and song rulings. I've also cleaned up the Visual and Screenplay categories. Picture and Director charts didn't require much attention since their two of the only categories that seem to be locking down... though you'll notice I'm still assuming that the rowdy bloody messily entertaining Django Unchained isn't making the inroads that the Globes suggest.
But as for Actor and Actress, Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor charts who the hell knows? In all four categories the final shortlist looks blissfully hard to predict after this Week of Precursor Madness (the math of heralded buzzy performances just doesn't add up to 20 nominations!). I love it when this happens because sweet Jesus it's rare.
Reader Comments (40)
Hooper won't be nominated for Academy Award. Reviews aren't spectacular, he wasn't nominated for Golden Globe - so he isn't "lock" after all. Academy likes musicals less than Globes and DGA. At least nowadays. They didn't nominate Luhrmann, Condon, and they didn't reward Marshall. And Haneke? Really? They didn't nominate Farhadi last year - so why Haneke now? And if Hooper isn't nominated - than "Les Miserables" aren't frontrunner. :P
I love it as well!
A rare gift in the acting categories.
Best Actress especially! 2008, 2009, 2010 were so predictable it almost hurt.
2011, with the exception of the Swinton/Mara interchange, was almost equally boring.
The Oscar Nominations day will finally be EXCITING!
someone -- OH, you're one of THOSE people wishing ill towards Les Miz. And you probably haven't seen it yet (sigh). Sasha is infecting everyone. Anyway... You're right that Hooper is no lock. I forgot to update the "current status" but PIC / DIRECTOR are updated now.
Yavor -- exciting and nerve wracking. I fear for so many of my darlings on January 10th!
This year's nominations will be a lot of fun. Actress and Supporting Actor are of particular weirdness. The Actor/Supporting Actress categories are the kind of six-contenders-five-nominees situations that I look forward to every year - but this year, the questions include, will we have Hunt without Hawkes (which would be weird) or Adams without Phoenix (which would be equally weird)?
My one wish: That in this weak-but-actually-strong year for actresses, they don't nominate Helen Mirren. Pretty much any combo they make without her would be amazing roster no matter who else winds up on the outside.
Hey Nathaniel- You might want to update AMY ADAMS chart as she had a win... LAFCA. I don't see it on there? Are you not counting LAFCA wins?
@Nathaniel: Yes, I haven't seen "Les Mis" yet but I have nothing against it right now. I have nothing against Hooper, Jackman, Hathaway or musicals - so if "Le Mis" is really great - than let it win. But as for now I think that "Argo" and "Lincoln" are frontrunners, "Les Mis" and "Silver Linings Playbook" being behind them.
Nathaniel, I've seen Les Miz and wish it all the success in the world this Oscar season, it's an incredible achievement. BUT---Russell Crowe's Javert is going to make it an uphill climb for every category except Best Supporting Actress. If all the actors indeed had to audition, and they rehearsed for weeks and weeks, how is it that he wasn't fired (or something)? Hooper shot himself in the foot by not rectifying that casting mistake and inflicting that unfortunate performance on the audience.
It's the actor category that is giving me the most angst in that I am truly swimming against the current. Two of my least favorite actors: DDL and Phoenix are the most highly touted. It isn't that I think they are bad actors, they aren't. It is that I don't like their "style" of acting. It all feels too "look at me acting" rather than being involved with all the characters that surround them and creating a unified work. Though he doesn't truly have a filmography to back it up, Hugh Jackman just glows in scenes where he seems to be totally involved, listening and responding within a role. Les Miserables is the film that I hope will let others see what so many found in The Fountain, Prestige, Australia, Wolverine, Real Steel and even the rom-coms. All were flawed films in some way, but the actors that work with him testify, that this is truly a generous, great actor and I genuinely hope he walks off with Oscar and has other magnificent films in his future.
First of all, I think you're deluding yourself if you think The Master still has a better shot at a BP nomination than Django Unchained. You better believe that the Weinsteins are going to ride that pony hard from its Golden Globes surprise to the Oscar nominations, and they already have Silver Linings Playbook in there—they're not gonna have three BP Oscar campaigns going at once. (As it is, if Django really pops, they could put everything on that and SLP is no longer a safe bet.)
I'm also thinking at some point you're going to lose your nerve and push John Goodman out of the top tier for Best Supporting Actor. Waltz and DiCaprio have nowhere to go but up now, and you're probably the only one still holding on to this. People are sharply divided on Goodman's performance, and I understand he doesn't campaign. (On the other hand, Paramount doesn't have much else on which to spend its Oscar-campaign budget this year.)
But I write mostly to suggest that perhaps it is Jessica Chastain, not Jennifer Lawrence, who is the presumptive Best Actress frontrunner now. This is not based on the merit of their relative performances—like the rest of the unwashed masses, I can't have seen Zero Dark Thirty yet—but instead based on other, mostly exterior factors. Several points:
•Lead vs. Co-lead. Lawrence shares the movie with Cooper—is secondary to him, really—but Chastain is THE star of her movie.
•Drama vs. Comedy. We all know which one the Academy favors, especially for leads.
•Momentum. The buzz on ZDT began with the first critics awards and will only build once it's released this week—and then again in January when it goes nationwide. SLP, on the other hand, peaked long ago. It may have even peaked in Toronto. You need an acting tour de force to transcend your movie's buzz (and possibly box office), and Lawrence is good but that's not what she delivers.
•Body of Work. Remember last year when we didn't know if Chastain would get nominated for The Help or The Tree of Life, or maybe even Take Shelter? LAFCA pretty much threw up its hands and gave her its Best Supporting Actress for all six(!) of her movies last year, which also included The Debt—where she was really the co-lead. Lawrence, on the other hand, has only given two awards-worthy performances, and she's been nominated for both of them.
•Age. Jennifer Lawrence is 22. The youngest Best Actress winner ever was 21-year-old Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God), and she had an acting trump card to play: Disability. Otherwise, Oscar's twentysomething actress recipients are towards the higher end of the decade: Reese Witherspoon and Natalie Portman were both 29 when they won; Jodie Foster, 26. Oscar also prefers that its twentysomethings have a decade or so of starring work behind them, as Witherspoon (1996's Fear and Freeway to 2005's Walk the Line), Portman (1994's The Professional to 2010's Black Swan), and Foster (child star!) each had. But Lawrence's work only goes back a couple years. Perhaps the only other exception in recent memory is 25-year-old Hilary Swank—easy, Nat, easy—who had a spotty acting career prior to winning but who, like Matlin, had her own acting trump card in Boys Don't Cry: Woman Playing (Trans) Man. (Sure, there are more exceptions the further you go back in time—Liza, Barbra—but once you go that far back you can't be certain if it's not a completely different Academy than it is today.)
Once an actress enters her thirties, though, the Academy is more flexible about bestowing a newer star with an Oscar—and Jessica Chastain is 35. Emma Thompson won at 33 for her fifth movie in three years, Howards End; Cuckoo's Nest was the third movie role for Louise Fletcher, 41. Marion Cotillard may have had a considerable acting résumé at 32, but she was practically unknown in Hollywood prior to winning for La Vie en Rose—and that's "new" enough for them. (Is it a subtle, maybe even unconscious recognition by the Academy that movie roles typically start drying up for actresses after 40? Perhaps.)
Of course, this isn't an exact science. But I suspect that the only reason you're keeping Lawrence in the pole position is left over from her front-runner status prior to anyone's having seen ZDT, those days when you openly asked if Lawrence was going to win by default because there didn't seem to be any other competitive performances out there. (Ahhh, good times.) Had the two performances come on the scene at the same time, I wonder if you'd still have Lawrence in the #1 position.
It is exciting this year! I can't for the life of me settle on who is going to be left off of Best Actor. I honestly think only Daniel Day-Lewis is a complete lock. And Best Actress.... no one beyond Lawrence and Chastain are really locked. I feel like I'll do poor in my predictions this year-but that's an exciting thing!
Interesting Russell Crowe interview where he talks about the other cast members at the end (roughly the 4:30 mark). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnAhVVPUdGU
J.P.: re: John Goodman - I think supporting actor is too weird right now to discount him. You've got a likely four (Arkin, Hoffman, De Niro, Jones), two of whom (Arkin and De Niro) and aren't total locks. Then in the race for the last spot(s), there's Bardem and McConaughey with obvious strikes against, and the Django boys, who are competing against each other. I think the safest bet is DiCaprio, but I see clear room for John Goodman, or maybe Ewan McGregor (due to the Jolie shout-out.)
At any rate it's an interesting race. (And I'm with you on Django being ahead of Master, but best picture is its own weird and crazy race).
Mike in Canada: Not saying toss John Goodman out completely. Just don't think he's at #5.
J,P.: I hear you. Those spots 5-9 on Nathaniel's chart have a very tiny difference of likelihood between them, and if one of the second tier gets in, it might not even be at John Goodman's expense. Fun times.
Jamie: It's a great interview with Crowe and he is a great actor. If only he'd been able to sing that role...
I'm so excited , and not just for the new Almodovar. Im excited we have such a deep field of worthy possible nominees in the best actress field. Specially since early in the season everyone kept saying ot was a weak year. '
Now if somebody can somehow erase Mirren's unremarkable work from all ballots i'd be happy with any 5 from Nathaniel's top 10 plus Emayatzy Corinealdi and Melanie lynskey.
Yeah I don't see it either how De Niro is a lock and Hoffman is not. Then you also have Goodman ahead of those Django boys esp with Leo who won NBR.
I dreamed a dream when Alan Arkin was not nominated for another decent performance.
I can't believe Keira Knightly doesn't get any awards support this season. Poor Knightley has to face three British dames this year.
Mikhael & Others -- if I were the type of pundit who only predicted based on EXACT things that had occurred (like the Django boys getting Globe noms) I would be useless at a pundit... there are a gazillion blogs that can chart out who has won what.
if you don't try to think up other possibilities (like Goodman) and see a little into the future -- even if you're 100% wrong about it -- you can never be the type of pundit who calls longshots successfully as I have been in years in which I predicted Laura Linney, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Pedro Almodovar and the like when other people wouldn't predict them because they didn't have the precursors. I correctly predicted all of those and I'm proud of that record but you cant predict longshots correctly if you don't risk going against the precursor grain.
I've seen Django Unchained and I honestly would be kind of surprised to see Christoph Waltz translate that Globe nod to an Oscar run. There will be voters who object to category fraud (not many but still). There will be voters who prefer Leo. There will be voters who prefer Jackson. There will be voters who think he's just doing Hans Landa again with lesser results. And there will be voters who just don't like the film. The only way that this film is even remotely "Oscary" is that a very famous director made it. It's kind of an exploitation flick like Death Proof: Super violent and weird and having laughs about itself. I'm not saying it's not enjoyable. I'm just wondering how it would impress Oscar voters exactly? It's as irreverent as Inglourious Basterds without the self-control or the automatic prestige pull of WW II.
Mikhael -- as for the DeNiro above Hoffman thing I stand by it. I think SILVER LININGS is too popular not to insure that DeNiro makes the lineup (the Globe snub is simple politics since he pissed them off) while THE MASTER is working against Hoffman to some extent. DeNiro has everything that Hoffman's got in terms of reputation (One of the Great Living Actors, etcetera) that gets him default points and he's getting points for trying again even though I personally think that is a terrible reason to give someone extra credit ;) You shouldn't get extra credit for being decent in a movie again just because you've been phoning it in for so long but there you have it. ;)
murtada -- i wonder if even Helen Mirren looks at the field of contenders and thinks "Jesus, stop voting for me!" will she grimace like Cate did at her Elizabeth II clip?
Hoffman was nominated for Charlie Wilson's War. Now that he is freaking AMAZING again of course he is gonna be nominated.
(but they have ignored some of his best work. You may be right about his unlockedness)
I'm actually wondering if Hawkes is the weak link this year. His film never really popped, it peaked (if it peaked at all) maybe a little too early while Cooper's film is starting to peak at exactly the right time, and I know some people think it's too early to call him "Academy Award-nominated actor Bradley Cooper," but this same time last year we were saying the same thing about Jonah Hill, weren't we?
I haven't seen SLP, so I can't say if he deserves it or not, but I hope Hawkes makes the final 5.
Hey Nat,
Maybe I just didn't see it, but Lincoln isn't on your Art Direction list anywhere. Definitely think Rick Carter will get another nod for his fine work in the film.
I go along with your BActor and BActress noms except... Mirren
Supporting actors NOT Arkin ( doing the same old same old ) and Goodman ( better in Argo )
Supporting Actress Dowd instead of Kidman
a) Rust and Bone is based on two short stories by Craig Davidson. You have it as original.
b) Yavor, best actress 2008 became predictable after the nominations, but if you had told me that Sally Hawkins, after winning New York, LA and the National Society along with the Globe would MISS a nomination, I would have had you committed.
c) I'm VERY interested in how Amour plays out this season. It's nowhere near Oscar bait. It's tonally very ascetic. It's an uncomfortable sit. On top of that, I can imagine it hitting too close to home for AMPAS - people who are at that age where death/dying are actually more than theoretical situations.
d) Les Miserables strikes me like Cold Mountain. Oscar bait all the way, but enough lesser reviews and momentum keeps it from hitting the AMPAS sweet spot. Still a boatload of nominations and the new system means that picture's still locked for a nomination, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Hooper miss out.
e) Supporting actor strikes me as being a VERY open field after Jones.
Nathaniel: You left off Alan Alda for The Aviator. It really felt like you were the only one making that call that year.
That's the comparison I was looking for, thank you Arkaan. Yes LES MISÉRABLES is starting to look a bit like Cold Mountain, lesser reviews diminishing its potential potency with the Academy.
I still think it'll get a lot of nominations because it's "important and serious enough", like Chicago or Cabaret, so I guess BP, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway are very assured. Screenplay and Director very shaky, I can see both sitting out. However, I don't know why but if I feel much safer predicting Hooper in than Lee or O'Russell so Hooper will probably bump one of them out.
Getting the DGA nomination is absolutely crucial for Tom Hooper. If he misses, he is out of the Oscar race. Even Bill Condon was able to sneak in there, and he still missed at Oscars. Plus, you know there has to be some members of the Academy who will be hesitant to nominate him again after The King's Speech just two years ago, where he beat more established industry vets like Fincher, the Coens, Aronofsky, and Russell. I like the Cold Mountain parallels--although I think it's undoubtedly clear that Les Miz will receive a best picture nomination due to the new voting system. I also don't think Hugh Jackman is as locked as he seems--likely, but if Richard Gere can miss for a best picture musical WINNER than Jackman can too, particularly considering that reviews aren't as spectacular as many were predicting (although it's still very early).
For best actor, I just can't fathom a lineup missing Joaquin Phoenix. I agree with Nathaniel in that it is highly likely that many voters will rank him number one on their ballots...no idea who he would replace. Probably either Hawkes or Jackman, although it's weird to imagine their supporting actress co-stars nominated without their leading men.
I'm very curious to see how Beasts of the Southern Wild goes over with Oscar. I could easily see Wallis overtaking Mirren in the best actress race but at the same time Riva and Weisz are formidable contenders. I think Beasts will go over much better with the Academy than Amour, but will they feel inclined to nominate a six-year-old girl over much more established vets?
Aaron - one advantage Jackman has is that he is one of the strongest players of the movie, whereas Richard Gere was arguably Chicago's Achyles' heel. Zéee and Zeta-Jones - even Latifah - acted circles around him. He was.. charming but not more than that. A typical Gere performance. Reliable.
re: Phoenix could totally be this year's Fassbender. Shame was alienating because of it's view of sex and sexuality. The Master is alienating because.... it's just wierdly opaque.
re: Hooper
You feel comfortable predicting him over Lee and O'Russell because Hooper rather it the AMPAS sweet spot right away, whereas Lee took longer (and experienced more unusual snubs than most) and O'Russell's just wierd and SLP seems to be the light drama/comedy that "directs itself."
"(the Globe snub is simple politics since he pissed them off)"
Really? What happened?
Stu - watch his speech from last year's Cecille B. de Mille award.
J.P., going way back to the 1943 Oscars, Jennifer Jones won the prize for her debut* performance in The Song of Bernadette on her 25th birthday.
*Jennifer, while being billed with the "introducing" term, actually had made several B pictures four years prior under her real name Phylis Isley, but Selznick wanted her to have a fresh start and gain buzz with the perfect role and a new name. It is one of the best performances by an actress I've ever seen.
Jorge - Thanks!
By the way, Katsuhiro Otomo's Combustible just won an award at the Japan Media Awards and it helped it get nominated for Best Animated Short. Can you kick out Eagleman Stag (even though it was somewhat good) or Driped out of your Best Animated Short predications and put Katsuhiro Otomo's Combustible as a replacement for one of them? I have a picture right here for it. Right here: http://www.google.com/search?q=katsuhiro+otomo+combustible&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=7rTPUN7AHYmQiQKjnIDICA&biw=1024&bih=672&sei=97TPUKPjL8TcigLBlYCoDw#biv=i|0;d|UzgiT7YWGLje2M:
Also don't forget to put Django Unchined in your predications, cause that film got Oscar attention by how Golden Globe nominations it got and Quentin Taratino's announcement of retirerment. Also it looks good as Inglours Basterds and Leo might win for this movie.
Alex -- no way am I dropping EAGLEMAN STAG. It's so great! I'm hoping the animator's agree. also I am not convinced that Oscar will love Django Unchained as much as the Globes did but we'll see.
Nathaniler -- Fine, but try to add Compustible in the next predications and replace Dripped with it. Katsuhiro Otomo is a great animator and may get nominated for this due to his win at the Japan Media Awards and any short that wins there, gets nominated and win. Beshides Japanese animation is very good and Katsuhiro Otomo deservies to be nominated and is trying.
Just watched Prometheus again. So true about Fassy. It would be great to see some of the dark horses in that category get some action: Michael Fassbender, Dwight Henry, Ezra Miller and Michael Pena. 4 great underappreciated performances that deserve stronger consideration than the obvious big 5. Do DeNiro, Hoffman, Arkin and Jones really need more Oscar attention?