NBR Loves "A Star is Born" and "Beale Street" but names "Green Book" Best of the Year
Tuesday, November 27, 2018 at 4:16PM by Nathaniel R
Mahershala and Viggo are all dolled up and ready for awards shows
The National Board of Review announced its winners today for their January 8th gala at Cipriani 42nd Street. While NBR no longer signifies the kick-off to precursor season (with the Gotham and Spirit Awards announcing so early each year) they're still a significant bellwether or rather they're a bell ringing, alerting everyone that you can't hide from awards season; it is upon us! This year Green Book, A Star is Born, and If Beale Street Could Talk were their three obvious favorites, the only films to take multiple prizes.
THIS YEAR'S PRIZES, WHAT THEY MIGHT MEAN, AND SOME STATS AFTER THE JUMP...
THE HEADLINE CATEGORIES
Stats referenced below are, unless otherwise noted, solely confined to the past 20 years
FILM Green Book
This year NBR chose a film just finishing its first wide weekend at the box office (the NBR likes being 'in the moment' as we've previously discussed). The NBR choice for Best Film goes on to a Best Picture nomination 85% of the time, though it should be noted that that is not all that hard these days with the 'up to 10' Best Picture nomination rules now in play with Oscar. It's rare though for a Best Film winner at NBR to win Oscar's Best Picture. The only times NBR and Oscar have shared a #1 in recent history was a back-to-back situations a full decade ago with No Country For Old Men (2007) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008).
I've been kind of annoyed at how blatantly media sites are twisting the truth about Green Book's reception. Mark Harris has a thoughful essay about the movie and its awards chances up at Vulture but the headline itself (which usually isn't written by the article writer) is quite less than factual, saying in the past tense that it "flopped".. But has it? It's obviously pitched to older audience members who don't necessarily rush to movies in the first week and it had a solid per screen average in its first wide weekend: i.e. not great but not terrible either. It also wasn't expensive to make with a budget of just $23 million. Our suspicion is that it will have legs and become a minor success financially. That's quite different than "flopping". It reminds of the rush to declare The Greatest Showman a flop last Christmas just because it's opening weekend was just $14 million on an $84 million budget (it placed #4th that weekend with a per screen average of just $4,794). The movie went on to gross $174 million in America alone. Opening weekend receipts are often predictive of a movie's success but when they're not it's almost always because of one of these three things or a combination thereof:
1) awards
2) holiday seasons
3) word of mouth primarily involving a non-media obsesssed over audience.
DIRECTOR Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born
Bradley is feeling like a safe bet for a nomination if not a lock, which is not usually the case here. This is a category in which the NBR typically throws a lot of curveballs sometimes selecting men who clearly have no shot at a nomination. The ratio of winning this to receiving an Oscar nomination in recent history is 40%. Honestly we'd respect that (there's no reason for organizations to exist if they're only trying to "predict") IF their occassional oddball choices weren't often also of questionable quality.
ACTRESS Lady Gaga, A Star is Born
80% of winners here go on to Oscar nominations though it should be noted that their winners in Best Actress who dont go on to Oscar nominations are often very clearly someone who almost made it -- in other words, they tend to stick to the frontrunning contenders here. Either of which could be the case with Lady Gaga since she'll either be a nominee or a major snub, given the months of hoopla.
ACTOR Viggo Mortensen, Green Book
85% of winners here go on to Oscar nominations, though their rare outside-looking-in winners are typically much further left field choices without much hope of Oscar heat, unlike in Best Actress where they seem like surefire nominees until they aren't. Mortensen surely falls under the 85% category. He's a safe bet.
One of many prizes for Regina? We'll have to wait and see.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
50% of their winners go on to Oscar nominations, with just 5% of their winners also winning the Oscar. They've often made interesting choices in this category, two of the more famous examples being the marvelous Lupe Ontiveros in the little seen Chuck & Buck or comic genius Catherine O'Hara (who has strangely been ignored by most awards bodies over her career) as a failed Oscar hopeful in For Your Consideration.
SUPPORTING ACTOR Sam Elliott, A Star is Born
80% of their winners go on to Oscar nominations, with 20% also winning the Oscar. Giving two and half acting awards (heh - you know thats why Bradley wins Best Director so they can have two Best Actors) to A Star is Born is quite a statement though.
BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace
BEST ENSEMBLE Crazy Rich Asians
Though Oscar does not have an ensemble prize, the most famous ensemble prize belongs to SAG (aka the Screen Actors Guild Awards) and though they began their awards with the 1994 film year, for some reason they waited until the 1995 film year to add "ensemble" to their film prizes, so the NBR has actually been giving out ensemble prizes for a longer time. In the past 20 years, the NBR and the Screen Actors Guild have had quite different taste in cast performance. The NBR winner only goes on to a SAG cast nomination 50% of the time and there have only been four shared winners: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003), No Country for Old Men (2007), The Help (2011), and Hidden Figures (2016).
Crazy Rich Asians would be a fun SAG option and we suspect SAG will nominate it their nominations are often a bit less "end of the year" related than other awards bodies, presumably because they vote earlier. There has also been theorizing over the years that some SAG voters vote based on 'how fun would it have been to be part of that cast?' given the comparatively joyful nominations (to other acting prizes which tend to swing always in favor of heavy drama).
MORE PRIZES
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Paul Schrader, First Reformed
BEST ANIMATED FILM Incredibles 2
BEST FOREIGN FILM Cold War
BEST DOCUMENTARY RBG
BEST DIRECTORIAL DEBUT Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade
SPECIAL PRIZES
NBR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION 22 July and On Her Shoulders
WILLIAM K EVERSON FILM HISTORY AWARD The Other Side of the Wind and They'll Love Me When I'm Dead
THEIR "LISTS"
TOP 10 FILMS
- Ballad of Buster Scruggs
- Black Panther
- Can You Ever Forgive Me?
- Eighth Grade
- First Reformed
- If Beale Street Could Talk
- Mary Poppins Returns
- A Quiet Place
- Roma
- A Star is Born
TOP 10 INDEPENDENT FILMS
another honor for 'WE THE ANIMALS' -- we're so pleased it's doing well
- The Death of Stalin
- Lean on Pete
- Leave No Trace
- Mid90s
- The Old Man & The Gun
- The Rider
- Searching
- Sorry to Bother You
- We the Animals
- You Were Never Really Here
TOP FIVE DOCUMENTARIES
- Crime + Punishment
- Free Solo
- Minding The Gap
- Three Identical Strangers
- Won't You Be My Neighbor
All of these titles are eligible for Best Documentary at the Oscars
TOP FIVE FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS
- Burning (South Korea)
- Custody (France)
- The Guilty (Denmark)
- Happy as Lazzaro (Italy)
- Shoplifters (Japan)
Do you think Italy is regretting their choice to send Dogman instead of Happy as Lazzaro to the Oscars this year? It keeps popping up on such lists. France of course SHOULD have submitted Custody which is very well loved. What possessed them not to?
What do you think of NBR's choices this year?
Reader Comments (57)
guys guys guys!
A Star Is Born was a truly wonderful, infiltrated with life movie. Gaga was really good in it as well.
We don't have to hate Gaga in order to compliment Glenn Close or vise versa.
Close definitely needs to win Best Actress.
I love Amy Adams. But I'm not getting the overdue part. She's still young, and several of her Oscar nominations weren't even deserved. So this idea that she HAS to win this year has proven to be confusing.
Amy Adams is overdue.
Arrival is the case-in-point argument for this. Hollywood has always been more receptive to her B+ work than to her A+ work (see also: Enchanted). That's why she has a million Oscar nominations and nothing to show for it. Half the time she's not been the Best Supporting Actress in her own movie, much less the year.
When you combine her very good work (Doubt, The Master, The Fighter, American Hustle, Nocturnal Animals) with her great work (Arrival, Junebug, Enchanted) you have a career that more than warrants an Oscar. It's just never gonna happen if Hollywood doesn't get it together.
So yeah, sight unseen, I hope she wins for Vice.
Agreed that Adams is definitely overdue. It's been 13 years since Junebug (!) and she's been one of the most consistently excellent actresses working over that time (and before really...brilliant in Psycho Beach Party and Drop Dead Gorgeous!) That said, I don't think she'll win if Regina King is as good as people seem to think she is in her film.
I almost prefer what they did last year when they went crazy for The Post. I thought it was absurd, but at least they were not trying to please everyone.
adri -- i'm sorry but I object to your interpretation of A STAR IS BORN. The tragedy of A STAR IS BORN in multiple iterations is not that a man isn't on top. it's that two people who are very much in love are never at the same place in their careers and showbusiness is so competitive that it can bring out the worst in people in terms of compare and despair. All that plus alcoholism is of course it's own tragedy. It has nothing to do with a man being superior.
signed, unrepentant lover of multiple versions of A Star is Born (which are all about how awesomely talented a woman is and how fucked up her husband's addictions are), Nathaniel
Re: Amy Adams ... That "Arrival" snub is still a head-scratcher. I think that might be her very best work. I went in to that film not really expecting much, and it is probably one of my favorite films of this decade. I felt a sense of wonder watching it that I don't feel at the movies very frequently. I think it's a very special film and a very special performance.
Re: Kidman's Oscar win ... I actually don't think there was a sense that she was overdue at the time. She had only earned Oscar's attention only recently (one year prior), and she was in her 30's. Despite the lack of major critic's awards, it was an incredibly well-received performance in a unique film that a lot of people who saw loved. There were a few "it's just a prosthetic nose" naysayers, but I remember when that film came out a lot of folks that were previously cool on her thought she was a revelation.