The King's Profanity Free Speech?

Was Harvey Weinstein just missing his old Harvey Scissorhands moniker (culled from his love of demanding cuts from the movies he'd bought from his days at Miramax)? A couple of days ago the story was making the rounds that The King's Speech would be reedited to get a family-friendlier MPAA rating. I ignored it because it seemed like a publicity stunt but like all good publicity stunts (if that's what it was) it stuck in my head. It's such a strange idea, to reedit a movie while it's playing. But perhaps it's no stranger than the R rating the film won in the first place. The last time I heard the naughty F word used so innocuously in a movie was Four Weddings and a Funeral when there was a string of them for comic effect when people were running late to one of those multiple weddings -- I don't remember which.  Or is just yet another publicity stunt to keep people talking about The King's Speech about which maybe there's not that much to talk about as it's entertaining but not exactly deep or as editorial ready as its main rivals to Oscar glory?

Between this and Blue Valentine I'm really beginning to wonder if the MPAA wasn't actually dissolved a year ago and is now just a front organization for the Weinstein Company's publicity department.

12+ Nominations. An Elite Club Gets a New Member.

How many films have been nominated for 12 or more Oscars in their calendar year? Only 25 across the eighty-three years of Oscar history. The King's Speech is the latest initiate of this very exclusive bunch. The films, along with their number of noms/wins, in chronological order are...

• Gone With the Wind (1939) -13/8
• Mrs. Miniver (1942) -12/6  
• The Song of Bernadette (1943) -12/4
• Johnny Belinda (1948) -12/1
• All About Eve (1950) -14/6
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) -12/4
• From Here To Eternity (1953) -13/8
• On the Waterfront (1954) - 12/8 
• Ben Hur (1959) -12/11  
• My Fair Lady (1964) -12/8 
• Becket (1964) - 12/1 
• Mary Poppins (1964) -13/5
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) -13/5
• Reds (1981) -12/3
• Dances With Wolves (1990) -12/7 
• Schindler's List (1993) -12/7 
• Forrest Gump (1994) -13/6 
• The English Patient (1996) -12/9 
• Titanic (1997) -14/11 
• Shakespeare in Love (1998) -13/7
• Gladiator (2000) -12/5 
• The Lord of the Ring: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) -13/4
• Chicago (2003) -13/6
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) -13/3
• The King's Speech (2010) -12/???

 

Biggest Winner Among the Nom' Gobblers:
Ben-Hur nearly made a clean sweep, winning all its categories but Adapted Screenplay which went to the romantic drama Room at the Top instead. Ben-Hur is tied with Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with most wins of all time... but curiously enough of the three-top Oscar earners only the fantasy epic made a clean sweep of it winning in every single one of its categories.

Biggest Loser Among the Nom' Gobblers:
Johnny Belinda which took home only one Oscar for best actress (Jane Wyman). Beckett also took home only one prize but it had a huge disadvantage in that 1964 was the most monotonous year ever nomination-wise with three (!) films clearing the obscene 12 nom hurdle. Most years don't even get one film that dominant. My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins in an infamous singing duel to the death devoured 13 Oscars between them. Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious!

CHARTS
But what you really want to know his how many of them won Best Picture, don'tcha? Well, I bolded them above so that's 15 of the 25... with 1 undetermined.

So let's do a pie chart...

God I love pie charts. And pies.
[Tangent: omg. I gotta start thinking about the Oscar party menu]

What does all this mean for The King's Speech?
Well, you'll be the judge of that in the comments, won't you? If you're just eyeballing those pie charts, and not really think about the particulars of this race , the likeliest scenario is that The King's Speech wins Best Picture and four to five other Oscars. But that seems like a lot, doesn't it? With a film as strong as The Social Network hanging around.

Before this rather shocking tally (seriously sound mixing, and cinematography???) most armchair and professional pundits assumed it was heading to only two sure wins: Actor & Screenplay with a lot of competition coming for its expected nominations in Costuming and Art Direction. But given the charts above -- not too mention the 12 nominations -- I'd say we underestimated its pull. Can it steal Best Picture from The Social Network? That would be Grand Theft Oscars.

Related Reading: Best Pictures From the Outside In
and current Oscar Race articles 

5 Things We Learned on Oscar Nom Morning...

Some of which we already knew but that's splitting hairs.

With 24 official Academy Awards categories and somewhere over 108 nominations announced each year (a few less publicized categories vary in number of nominees from year to year), there is always a lot to parse out on Oscar nomination day. Tuesday, January 25, 2011 was no exception as Mo’Nique, last year’s supporting actress winner for Precious, read out the nominees bright and early in that inimitable voice of hers. You can see the full list of nominees here (more info to come over the next few weeks). With so much to discuss, it’s necessary to break it down into manageable talking points.

5. Genre Bias Remains

Black Swan opened to sensational reviews, huge precursor favor and robust box office in December. The film even had to ramp up its expansion plans to capitalize on demand. In the end, it was still a horror films (of sorts) in which a ballerina sprouts wings and loses her mind. On Oscar nomination morning, it missed in key categories in which most people expected it to show. Inception opened to fanatical reviews and gargantuan box office, ending the year as the only member of the year’s top ten box office hits to be aimed at adults. In the end, it was still a sci-film (of sorts)...

READ THE REST AT TRIBECA FILM
for the other 4 talking points including a peculiar Sundance Festival  trick.

...that is if you're not completely burnt out on Oscar articles.

And if yah are... uh oh Blanche!

Producer's Guild Loves Bertie, Disses Zuck

True Blood's Joe Mangianello presents an awardThe PGA (the producers not the golfers) have chosen The King's Speech as the best produced film of 2010. [Dumb joke] No word yet on which film the golfers prefer... maybe True Grit with all those wide open spaces or The Kids Are All Right with its landscaping subplot? [/Dumb joke] Stammering Bertie's win may come as a surprise to the producers of The Social Network who are very used to winning things for their exciting film about the billion dollar rise of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Why it's almost as if the Producers Guild have been reading all these speculative premature blog pieces "can TKS take it from TSN?" and decided that since they were producers of entertainment... they ought entertain by raising the stakes.

I'm not sure that this makes it a dead heat but it definitely raises one eyebrow. Que?

This Year's Prizes:
Theatrical Motion Picture: THE KING'S SPEECH
Animated Feature: TOY STORY 3
Documentary Feature: WAITING FOR 'SUPERMAN'
Episodic Television Comedy: MODERN FAMILY
Episodic Television Drama: MAD MEN (third consecutive win)
Longform Television: THE PACIFIC
Non-Fiction Television: DEADLIEST CATCH
Live Entertainment and Competition: Television THE COLBERT REPORT

and the honorary non-competition prizes
Milestone Award: JAMES CAMERON
Norman Lear Achievement (Television): TOM HANKS and GARY GOETZMAN
David O. Selznick Award (Film): SCOTT RUDIN
Visionary Awards LAURA ZISKIN
Stanley Kramer Award (which usually goes to a film, not a person): SEAN PENN

Amy Adams and Helen Mirren presenting...

For what it's worth...

here are the last 20 PGA winners and how they fared with Oscar
2009 The Hurt Locker (won)
2008 Slumdog Millionaire (won)
2007 No Country For Old Men (won)
2006 Little Miss Sunshine (lost)
2005 Brokeback Mountain (*sniffle*)
2004 The Aviator (lost)
2003 The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King (won)
2002 Chicago (won)
2001 Moulin Rouge! (lost which we knew it would but god bless them for going there.)
2000 Gladiator (won)
1999 American Beauty (won)
1998 Saving Private Ryan (lost)
1997 Titanic (won)
1996 The English Patient (won)
1995 Apollo 13 (lost)
1994 Forrest Gump (won)
1993 Schindler's List (won)
1992 The Crying Game (lost)
1991 The Silence of the Lambs (won)
1990 Dances With Wolves (won)
1989 Driving Miss Daisy (won -- this was the first year of the PGA prize)

Or, in the past 21 years, Oscar lines up 66% of the time. If you can find a pattern with the losers, you're my god. I can't see any patterns. All kinds of films win or lose, from big to small to American to British.

In other news: Amy Poehler and Justin Timberlake were there. Funny thing is, this is EXACTLY what happens when I talk* to Amy Poehler.

* ...and by "talk to" I mean watch her on Parks and Recreation. Aren't you glad that show is finally back?

What do you make of The King's Speech win here? A fluke or a real and present danger for Zuck and company come Oscar night?

Links Episode #2,011

Tang Wei acting againPop Matters Jane Fonda is here to talk fitness -- not the movies! Though the first question does both. Interesting interview from Matt Mazur.
Carpetbagger Sundance has a new 'it' girl Felicity Jones
Asia Scene visits Tang Wei on the set of her new film
Nicks Flick Picks kicks off his Best of 2010. Yay!
The Hollywood Reporter Anthony Hopkins for the Hitchcock bio? Ewww.
Pop Matters "10 things i'm already sick of in 2011" heh. some people can't ever be pleased.
Kenneth in the 212 Jake Gyllenhaal on the Q train. I love seeing celebrities in the subway. It's so rare. One spots them far more frequently above ground here in NYC.
Your Movie Buddy what... you don't wanna stay in the Star Gazer Suite from Blue Valentine? Why the hell not?

Finally, have you been reading all the pieces about whether or not The King's Speech can defeat The Social Network? Some subjects just take on a life of their own whether or not they're yet relevant. Some say it can, some say it can't but you know what I think it all comes down to? What their nomination tallies are like come Tuesday morning and how large The King's Speech's box office (and roughly parallel, the audience fervor) grows. These are the principle reasons why I haven't jumped into the debate. The competition for Oscar is an entirely different race, after the nominations. Don't you think?