Oscar Preview Time: The Tentative Release Dates

I was more than a little surprised to read this week that the Weinstein Company had chosen a summer release date for their Sundance pick-up Fruitvale whilst Fox Searchlight went with the Weinstein-like December 27th for Steve McQueen's Twelve Years A Slave. While summer is by no means a bad move for Fruitvale (movies without stars, instant hooks, or famous directors need time to build) and Fox Searchlight can sell a movie to Oscar with any date, it's weird to see the Weinstein Company go this route; Harvey Weinstein is more than a little responsible for the modern "DECEMBER OR BUST!" fanaticism that awards campaigns live by. For a moment I worried that they might have no faith in Fruitvale at all.

It's never been true, of course, that you have to release a movie in December to be an Oscar player but the important thing in regards to release dates is that it feels true to the studios which is why we get movie gluts every year 'round Christmas. ANYWAY... that's just the two most recent release date announcements. Here's what's coming our way -- a monthly calendar after the jump -- that might conceivably have Oscar dreams of some sort or another. (Feel free to add to the list in the comments so I can finally get around to the first Oscar predictions of the year!)

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Happy Oscar Eve!

Is this really happening?"
-Anne Hathaway winning the Golden Globe 

Yes, yes it (finally) is. The Oscars are less than 36 hours away. Eeeee! I'm SO eager for this film year to be over but I'm also just so excited for the Oscar ceremony. It's not that I'm a Seth MacFarlane fan -- the choice of host is always one of my areas of least interest -- but that so many categories are genuine cliff-hangers. Particularly these six (adapted screenplay, production design, supporting actor, director, and both sound categories!). Wheeeee

I was trying to finish up my own awardage but now I'm being yanked away by CNN International for an Oscar segment later this afternoon (stage fright!) so while I make a damn fool of myself talking Foreign Film please to enjoy these links and this video in my absence.

links 4 fun
ABC Australia I did a little segment on Oscar Acceptance Speeches with their host Julian Morrow. 
The Playlist shameless Ben Affleck-related product placement 
Movie Dearest wonders what the Best Picture nominees would have been like in another era. Madonna as Fantine. HEE!
Deadline in 50 years time will Oscars 2012 still look as rich and argument worthy as Oscars 1962?

Today's Must Watch
Ryan Gosling getting embarrassed and giggly when he sees his own face on dish towels...

Final Oscar Predictions

This article has been cross-posted at Towleroad

Yesterday on Kathy Griffin's new show she began with an Oscar monologue and brought out a gold trunks-clad model with his hair cropped tight and his body sprayed gold. I'll let it slide that he wasn't actually bald but he stood with his legs spread far apart and his hands behind his back. 

Had he never seen an Oscar statue before?

UR DOING IT WRONG! 

As you may have guessed I hold the Oscars sacred. You might call it my religion. I've been watching them since I was a little kid and as an adult I have spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over them and even made something of a career out of it. [A struggle!]  But never before in my life have I had such a hard time predicting the winners.

Oh sure, Argo will win Best Picture and Daniel Day-Lewis who many of us first fell in love with as a blonde gay punk working in that Beautiful Laundrette will win for becoming President Lincoln but elsewhere in Oscar's 24 Categories there's an awful lot of room for pundits to embarrass themselves this year!

Best Director, for one, is baffling. The tech prizes look like a very bloody battle between at least three pictures (Anna Karenina, Skyfall & Life of Pi). And so on. AFTER THE JUMP my Oscar predictions. If I get everything wrong please forget we ever spoke of this! 

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Funny Linky People

Drama
Mashable on the glory of the Oscar envelopes. May they never go digital 
The Village Voice Nick Pinkerton remembers the late great critic Andrew Sarris 
The Advocate ten reasons to watch the Oscars on Sunday. (I linked to the most succinct universal one!)
MovieLine taxi cab survey of who will win the Oscars. It's not the names that will  be called out when the envelopes are open. (New Yorkers apparently still think Lincoln is going to sweep!) 

Horror
THR a director votes on the Oscars. In detail. (I know you've probably read this already but just in case... there's a lot to discuss) 
Salon will Jack Nicholson be presenting Best Picture yet again on Sunday night? (As I've long complained and long tried to help them the Oscar producers never have any imagination in this one area)
Slate announces that the musical genre is never coming back by essentially changing the argument of what people who say it's back mean when they say, "the musical genre is back!" Yes, agreed, the movie musical genre will never be what it was back when it was the most popular genre and everyone knew the showtunes. But do not agree that it's not back. We've had a steady clip of musicals ever since that glorious one two three punch of Hedwig, Dancer in the Dark and Moulin Rouge! got the ball rolling again just over a decade ago.

Comedy
The Onion "Johnny Depp now made entirely of scarves and bracelets"
Happy Place the six types of people who watch the Oscars - this is a fun concept but it leaves out too many types... including Oscar Fanatics who are busy cataloguing it all in their head to reference for years and years to come. Hypothetically speaking. I've heard those people exist.
Vulture Best Picture as pie charts. I didn't want to like this -- i wasn't in a snark mood -- but they're funny 
Babble six year olds judge the Oscars by their posters... kids say the darndest things. Some are alarmingly accurate but I love that Les Misérables is about faeires and Argo is an earthquake... teehee. My favorite might be Silver Linings Playbook...

This is a movie about building things and it's a happy, good movie. The two people are inventors that invent things that have to do with fish because of all those little scribbles that look like fish. They work together. He's also really, really tall and she likes to wear her hair really, really high.

Hee. I would totally see a movie about Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence inventing fishy paraphenalia. She's right that Bradley Cooper is tall ~ 6'1"!

Making Peace With "Argo". How Many Oscars Will It Win?

When Best Picture locks up each year -- which usually happens sooner than February 2nd so we should count our blessings that this year had more drama! -- the best thing that one can do is find a way to make peace with it. I've followed the Oscars long enough to know that when your absolute favorite in a category wins you should feel rapturous but treat it like its as rare as Brigadoon since you might never see it's like again. The trick to staying sane (not that I've actually mastered this, mind you) is to enjoy the annual awards festivities without caring about the winners so much as the journey to crown them. In its better moments the awards season circus provides plenty of entertainment, delectable star-gazing, and even the occasional conversational or critical insight into what makes particularly movies great or what makes people love particular movies despite their unfortunate lack of greatness.

I've learned to enjoy it when anything in my top ten each year wins something since, in most years, actual favorites are not crowned. It's harder though to enoy your non-favorites winning when they're solidly in the middle of the pack or when a particular forthcoming win defeats something clearly masterful.

Which brings us to Argo...

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