20:10 "A Difficult Person?" Oscar Trivia!

As we close out the film year, another couple of moments from the 20th minute & 10th second of 2010 cinema.

In this scene from Mother and Child, Karen (Annette Bening) has agreed to have coffee with an interested co-worker Paco (Jimmy Smits), who keeps asking her out. Having finally caved, she keeps stressing that it's not a date even though we sense that she likes him.

Paco: I just can't seem to say the right things around you. And I'm trying believe me.

Karen: What do you mean?

Paco: I just feel like I keep putting my foot in my mouth every time I talk to you. I... I just don't know why. Look I'm sorry forget I said that. I don't know what I'm talking about.

Karen: I'm not a difficult person.

Paco: No, I don't mean that.

Karen: You're not comfortable with me.

Paco: No, I am.

Karen: My words are too harsh for you.

And just like that she's out the door, their non-date barely begun. If Mother and Child, had been filmed with a different tone (for better and worse, it's stuck being emphatically sober throughout), this might have been a tragicomic scene. Karen IS a difficult person, her own worst enemy when it comes to her heart and what she needs from others. She likes the guy, but she's always ready to be hurt and therefore never ready to open up.

Do any of you remember when Mother and Child played in Toronto in 2009? There was briefly Oscar buzz suggesting that if it was released in time, Annette Bening would undoubtedly be one of the Best Actress nominees of 2009. Instead the film was held until 2010. It opened in the summer and in the shadow of The Kids Are All Right was quickly forgotten. I have one close friend to this day who swears she's way better in Mother and Child than she was in The Kids... (I don't agree but it's definitely fine work). Given that this performance has its champions, it makes you wonder. If Mother & Child won an Oscar qualifying release in 2009, would it have made a difference for her 2010 Oscar bid. So much of each Oscar competition is a complex set of factors including the very real power of "momentum". (Or was Natalie Portman in Black Swan one of those performances that was just going to win no matter what?)

Though my study suggesting that 50something actresses just don't win the big prize has gotten a lot of attention, I don't think it's impossible. It's just that the decks are stacked against them. Still, the ranks of actors with 4+ nominations and no wins is very slim.

Can Bening win if she follows up The Kids with another popular role right quick? Did any of Jeff Bridges' luck rub off on Bening at the Oscar nominee luncheon? It's been 21 years since her first nomination.

Very Frequently Nominated Actors Who Waited The Longest To Win

1. Jeff Bridges (won on his 5th nomination, 38 years after his first)
2. Geraldine Page (won on her 8th nomination, 32 years after her first)
3. Paul Newman (won on his 7th acting nomination, 28 years after his first)
4. Shirley Maclaine (won on her 5th acting nomination, 25 years after her first)
5. Al Pacino (won on his 8th nomination, 20 years after his first)
6. Gregory Peck (won on his 5th nomination, 17 years after his first)
7. Susan Sarandon (won on her 5th nomination, 14 years after her first)
8. Kate Winslet (won on her 6th nomination, 13 years after her first)
9. Susan Hayward (won on her 5th nomination, 11 years after her first)

Waited The Longest Never Won Despite 4+ Nominations

1. Richard Burton (7 nominations over a 25 year period) deceased
2. Charles Boyer (4 nominations over a 24 year period) deceased
3. Agnes Moorehead (4 nominations over a 22 year period) deceased
4. Irene Dunne (4 nominations over an 18 year period) deceased
5. Rosalind Russell (4 nominations over a 16 year period) deceased
   
6. Thelma Ritter (6 nominations over a 12 year period) deceased
7. Montgomery Clift (4 nominations over a 14 year period) deceased
   
8. Deborah Kerr (6 nominations over an 11 year period) deceased
9. Barbara Stanwyck (4 nominations over an 11 year period) deceased
   
10. Arthur Kennedy (5 nominations over a 9 year period) deceased
11. Claude Rains (4 nominations over a 7 year period) deceased
    

Only 10 Living Actors Have 4+ (Acting) Noms Without a Win

1. Peter O'Toole (8 nominations over a 44 year period)
2. Albert Finney (5 nominations over a 37 year period)
3. Glenn Close (5 nominations over a 6 year period)

4.  Seven other living actors have four (acting) nominations without a win: Warren Beatty ♥ Annette Bening though Beatty has a directing Oscar.  Plus: Jane Alexander, Ed Harris, Marsha Mason, Julianne Moore and Mickey Rooney

Will any of them ever win?

As we can see from the lists above, it's pretty rare not to be a winner if you're in the 5+ nomination club. Only 7 actors in Oscar's 83 year history have ever won 5 nominations without winning the gold. Chances seem good that if Close, Bening, Harris or Moore are ever nominated again, they'll win. The problem is being nominated again. It gets harder and harder to find good roles as an actor ages.

The 83rd Oscars. Complete Winners List / Biggest Loser Stat

PICTURE The King's Speech
DIRECTOR Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
ACTRESS Natalie Portman, Black Swan
ACTOR Colin Firth, The King's Speech
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Melissa Leo, The Fighter
SUPPORTING ACTOR Christian Bale, The Fighter

Your Acting Winners. I hope Melissa Leo is telling Amy she owes her 200 dollars.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY David Seidler, The King's Speech
FOREIGN FILM Denmark, In a Better World
FILM EDITING Angus Wall & Kirk Baxter, The Social Network
CINEMATOGRAPHY Wally Pfister, Inception
ART DIRECTION Alice in Wonderland
COSTUME DESIGN Alice in Wonderland
MAKEUP The Wolfman
VISUAL EFFECTS Inception
ORIGINAL SCORE The Social Network
ORIGINAL SONG "we belong together" Toy Story 3
SOUND MIXING Inception
SOUND EDITING Inception
ANIMATED FEATURE Toy Story
ANIMATED SHORT The Lost Thing
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Inside Job
DOCUMENTARY SHORT Strangers Among Us
LIVE ACTION SHORT God of Love

Tallies: THE KINGS SPEECH: 4; INCEPTION: 4; SOCIAL NETWORK: 3; THE FIGHTER: 2; ALICE IN WONDERLAND: 2; TOY STORY 3: 2;  BLACK SWAN: 1.

Best Picture Nominees Without A Win: 127 HOURS, THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, WINTER'S BONE and TRUE GRIT which becomes one of the biggest "Oscar Losers" of all time with a 10/0 tally. Only The Color Purple and The Turning Point beat it with 11/0 in nominations to losses.

Best Picture Title Cards

♪ Tradition.... TRADITION.
This is beautiful even if 65% of the movies were undeserving of the Best Picture of the Year title. [via]

We'll undoubtedly be adding The King's Speech to this tonight, though we know which movie* is really deserving. You can vote for it at the Best Picture chart.

*whichever you want it 2 B -- opinions are magic that way!

Oh My Link

Kenneth in the (212) spends an evening with Lisa Kudrow to discuss The Comeback. Jealous!
The Guardian wonderful piece on AMPAS membership. This had me in stitches

Now 72, Mother Dolores still retains her Academy membership and every year receives copies of the latest Oscar-nominated films from Ampas, thus making her the only fully ordained nun to adjudicate on the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino.

Low Resolution Joe hands out his 2010 Movie Awards. Fun
Movie|Line Stu bravely predicts Annette Bening AND Jacki Weaver to win. My god, I'd be so happy... but doesn't he know about Oscar's ageism?

Scott Feinberg examines the pitches of nominated performances. All the Oscar narratives have been done before.
The Fug Girls fall hard for Brenda Song (of The Social Network)
Hero Complex James McAvoy talks about the bromance between Magneto and Professor X in X-Men First Class
Movie Morlocks revisits Vincente Minnelli's On A Clear Day You Can See Forever with Barbra Streisand. Did you know that it lost 60 minutes on the cutting room floor?
In Contention the foreign film oscar category still isn't fixed.

Finally, have you been following Movie|Line's Oscar index? They've now added time lapse animation to their charts and it's strangely hypnotic (and mnemonic) to watch the rise and fall of certain candidates. Here's one example, which is particularly instructive given the volatility: Best Supporting Actress. Watch the Black Swan pair jump in and out and up and down and note how at the last minute everyone is rising back up as it gets strangely competitive for so late in the game.

I guess this means they're predicting Hailee Steinfeld for the win but recognizing it as a very tight three-way race. Make it not be so Oscar gods. Make it not be so.

Calling the Splits

Serious Film's Michael C. here to ask an inconvenient question. As predictions are being finalized around the web it becomes clear that a large bloc, if not a majority, of pundits are predicting a picture/director split with The King’s Speech taking picture but David Fincher claiming the director trophy. 

No doubt there is some wishful thinking at play by those still stinging from The Social Network’s flame out at the guilds awards. “Okay, maybe those Philistine voters will deny Social Network the big prize but how could they bypass an established master like Fincher in favor of Tom What’s-His-Name?”

The King Speaks. (The king being Fincher. His movies do rule.

I don’t mean to throw cold water on a plausible scenario that I would much prefer to a Speech sweep, but the burning question is this: When has a picture/director split ever been predicted? The answer: No time I’m aware of.

Here are the 6 times in the last 30 years picture director split along with the expected winners going into the ceremony:

2005 - Crash/Ang Lee
Brokeback Mountain was widely favored to win both prizes. There was, to be fair, an inkling of a Crash win here and there, but the vast majority called it for Brokeback early on.

2002 - Chicago/Polanski
The conventional wisdom that the only thing preventing a Chicago sweep would be the urge to give Scorsese an overdue win for Gangs of New York. Instead we got a Polanski win predicted by exactly nobody.

2000 - Gladiator /Soderbergh
Pundits thought they saw a spilt coming this year as most predicted DGA winner Ang Lee to repeat at the Oscars but popular favorite Gladiator to take top honors. They were half right. Traffic’s Soderbergh blindsided Lee. 

1998 - Shakespeare in Love/ Spielberg
Do we need to go over this one again? Private Ryan was thought to be a lock for both prizes.

1989 – Driving Miss Daisy /Oliver Stone – The smart money was on Born on the Fourth of July to take Picture along with director. Miss Daisy pulled an upset.

1981 - Chariots of Fire/Beatty
If anyone was going to upset the epic Reds in the top category it was assumed to be box office hit On Golden Pond, not tiny, foreign Chariots of Fire.

And here are two more widely predicted splits that never happened:

2006 - Little Miss Sunshine or Babel /Scorsese
Many imagined that voters would be satisfied looking elsewhere for picture after finally giving Scorsese his due. Nope. They genuinely loved The Departed.

1995 - Apollo 13/Gibson
The prevailing mood was that DGA winner Apollo 13 would take picture and, since Howard missed a director nomination, the acting branch would carry Gibson to a directing trophy. Braveheart took them both.

Fincher supporters can take solace in the fact that splits appear to favor big name auteurs in the directing category, or that we're due for a split since they seem to occur about every five years. Other than that, history suggests either the most obvious of outcomes or a wild card that nobody sees coming.  

My knowledge of what was predicted gets hazy before the 80's. Is there some precedent for a Speech/Fincher split I'm missing? Let me know in the comments.