The Film Experience

Before we begin, please to note: the four Oscar category acting charts are not yet updated. Everything else is for the purposes of this discussion.

• That was exciting. Now... breathe!
With the fall film festival trifecta (Telluride, Venice, TIFF) behind us, the fourth and noisiest early rung in the climb to Oscar (the first being Sundance, the second being Cannes, the third being anything else that happened from January through August (i.e. summer box office, media & audience response to early offerings), we are well on the way towards Oscar nominations. It's important to note that while many over-eager pundits begin to declare winners in all sorts of categories at this stage, that's silliness. We should be focusing on the battle for nominations (still days away) until they're announced. Many things can still happen and do regularly happen in October through January which alter that who might win landscape each year. And, a crucial reminder: you can't win if you aren't nominated!

six more topics to discuss after the jump

• Many Mysteries Remain
The biggest question mark remains the handful of potentially big titles that haven't yet widely screened in their finished form or at all including The Revenant, Joy, The Big Short, and In the Heart of the Sea. For instance at this time last year no one had seen American Sniper, A Most Violent Year or Selma which between them gobbled up quite a lot of the late year conversation about what would be nominated and what should win Oscars and predicting their fates was a fool's errand. American Sniper became a phenomenon that shocked everyone at the box office, Selma had more campaign / precursor trouble than expected but corralled plenty of praise, and A Most Violent Year quickly receded into that vastly over populated purgatory of interesting pictures that just come out at the wrong time of the year (too late in this case but late December is not the only wrong time to open - it depends on the picture) and proved an ill-fit, personality wise, for the boisterous Oscar party that was already raging. Some films never leave that purgatory (I'm still waiting for late December 2006's The Painted Veil to escape) and others become classics that people years from now will be pissed about and scream "Why wasn't this nominated for This and This and That?!?"

• Spotlight is a Strong Contender
It's absolutely true. Not here to argue. But is it the only contender that could hope to win Best Picture? Hell, no. While it's a very likeable and accessible journalism drama, it has weak spots that competitors could well exploit (like a lack of conflict in the narrative). It even has pure strengths, like it's low key resolve (it's far closer in temperament to Michael Keaton's stoic boss than Mark Ruffalo's exciteable investigative reporter) which its competitors could nevertheless frame as weaknesses given the nature of Oscar races. This race is not over. But you can safely expect the movie, its screenplay, and Thomas McCarthy in Best Director to be nominated.

• Is Sicario?
I've been arguing for months with my predictions that it is. When the public embraces a drama to the tune of big box office (which could very well happen with this one when it goes wide) a reward they generally reserve only for animated features / visual effects extravaganzas and sequels in the past several years, Oscar will not be able to not notice it.

• Either/Ors are Upsetting
We'll get to this in the acting categories soon enough but there are very aggravating Either/Or situations on the horizons. People love to pit similar-genre'd movies against each other whether they're easy to compare (Truth vs. Spotlight) or whether they're in fact very different (Mad Max vs. The Martian). We'd like to declare that is a very silly impulse and Oscar can like multiple things of the same ilk (take the infamous Farm Wives of 1984 Best Actress Year or the War Dramas versus English Royals Best Picture Wars of 1998) but when the good stuff is in genres the Academy is resistant to by their nature (say, sci-fi/adventure) it's a different story. In a perfect world The Martian's surprisingly effortless high entertainment factor (it's going to be a huge hit) would not distract people from Mad Max Fury Road's heavy-breathing brilliance but in this world...

And as for "Women's Pictures"... despite AMPAS's attempts to diversify their voting body when it comes to race and age, they haven't solved their anti-woman problem. That's undoubtedly because sexism runs so deep in the movie industry which produces many more stories about men and often reduces women to "supportive other on phone/at home. And probably because sexism runs so deep in general culture that even a lot of women think stories about men are more important than their own. So, getting to the point: do Brooklyn, Carol, Joy, Suffragette, Mad Max Fury Road, Inside Out, and Room -- all female-centric narratives that might very reasonably hope for Best Picture traction given their topic/team/success/reviews -- cause each other problems this year? I weep to confirm but... probably. See, that's seven pictures right there in a contest that only has room for five to ten. Despite women making up 50% of the population, you have to go all the way back to 1977 to find a year that was inarguably female-dominated when it came to the Best Picture Shortlist. The nominees that year were Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Julia, The Turning Point, and (the only "boy" movie) Star Wars. Stories about men never have to worry about "are there too many stories about men this year?"

• Eye Candy
We've already talked about Best Original Song which is sounding strong but there's lots of eye candy this yearm too. 2015 already looks and sounds spectacular. The choices in score and sound and costumes, cinematography, and production design already have more than enough worthy candidates to fill every nomination slot (between The Martian, Sicario, Mad Max, Ex Machina, Room, Cinderella, Inside Out, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Victoria, Far From The Madding Crowd, and a dozen more this is not even close to an exaggeration) and yet we're not done watching the movies. May the various Oscar branches take their ballots seriously this year!

• The Danish Girl is still a strong contender... for nominations.
People make this mistake every year but festival fervor is not a direct correlation to real world fervor. Clint Eastwood's Mystic River is always a good throwback example. It was well liked at Cannes 2003 but nothing about that bow indicated that it would become the #2 Oscar film of that year. The real world is different than festival world. Repeat on loop. At TIFF this year Anomalisa and Beasts of No Nation were among the titles winning "total masterpiece" critical jerkoff competitions. The Danish Girl however, which will be a much bigger deal both with the public and at the Oscars than either of those, was dismissed in many quarters as "oh, it's desperate for Oscars." Wanting to win Oscars is no deterrent to winning Oscars. It's a very handsome production, starring actors everyone* likes, with an Oscar winning team behind the scenes, and a "right now" topic even though it's a period piece. Anomalisa, on the other hand -- and I realize this is not even an apples and oranges comparison but uh apples and rhinoceros -- if you translated the fervor to awards play it would have Titanic like possibilities. But it does not. It's too small, too weird, and too Charlie Kaufman's navel without the expansive outside-the-navel transcendence of something like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It should be very ecstatic if it even wins 2 nominations (Animated Feature + Screenplay). The Danish Girl will surely be considered a disappointment if it receives less than 6 (though it has a great shot at the craft categories). But The Danish Girl might have trouble actually winning any Oscars. But that's a topic for January post-nominations, no?

*yes yes, YOU don't like Eddie Redmayne at the moment because he stole Michael Keaton's Oscar. But we're speaking in broad generalizations and he's very popular right now.