26 Jan Film Fund-amentals: The Oscar Point Spread

The Academy Awards are a bit like a hot dog. They’re popular, largely lacking in any nutritional value, and nobody needs to know how they’re made. That may be the real reason why they’re called the Oscars.

But the Academy Awards are still viewed as the gold standard in the film industry. To be honest, there is never much rational thinking involved in the Oscar nominations. More critical effort goes into the annual Razzie nominations than anyone has ever placed in the Oscar race. But people don’t line up to watch the Razzie Awards, even though they are more likely to have seen those nominated movies than anything at the Oscars.

Over the years, the battle between “art” and “commerce” has been the central irony of the Academy Awards. Harry Cohn summed it all up ages ago when he told Frank Capra that “the Academy will never vote for that comedy crap you make. They only vote for the arty crap.” Now, they only vote for the kind of small indie movies that they don’t want to make. It is not clear if anyone in Hollywood actually watches these movies, but they’re just about the only flicks that will get anywhere in the award process.

The announced nominees for 2010 is an exemplary tribute to this contradiction. The King’s Speech (made for a very modest $15 million) leads the way, closely followed by True Grit and The Social Network (made for $50 million and $40 million, which is still lunch money in modern Hollywood). Even more interesting are the nominations (including Best Picture) for The Kids Are All Right and Winter’s Bone (with budgets of $4 million and $2 million, these movies wouldn’t have paid for one day of filming on most Hollywood productions).

So once again the low and modestly-priced movies are the honored titles, even though the main focus of the industry is to screw them over in favor of tent pole flicks about heroes in PVC tights (all filmed in 3D). No wonder so many of us are becoming more jaded than a priest taking Charlie Sheen’s confessions. The result is just weird, lurid and utterly pointless.

But that’s OK. The Oscars were never designed to make any sense (heck, the Academy only exists because of the old studio moguls’ failed attempt to bust the emerging Hollywood trade unions back in the 1920s). The show is primarily a bread-and-circus fest for movie fans, most of whom have not even been inside a theater within the past year (the current stats on viewing habits in the US are actually getting that bleak). It is also a chance for people to see clips from movies they were not planning to watch. These days, the Oscar presentation is better used for drinking games and office betting pools. So here is my proposed breakdown of the main awards.

The Best Picture award is a remarkably easy call. The King’s Speech is British. It has a bunch of British aristocrats. They all have fancy British accents. It’s even a period piece with some history on the side. For God’s sake, just give them the award and be done with it.

Best Director: Joel and Ethan Coen. Obviously the Academy is more enamored with True Grit than was the foreign press core at the Golden Globes. However, that may have to do with something unrelated to the film’s artistic merit. Though it is still tempting to refer to the Coen Brothers as young Turks, they have actually been around for three decades and have produced an impressive (if truly eccentric) body of work. Besides, the Academy tends to go for old guard directors, and all of a sudden, the Coen Brothers are the old guard guys in the pack. Oh my, how time flies….

Best Actor is more of a split decision. Often, this is a category that favors the more established and mature talent. Unfortunately, Jeff Bridges is the main man who fits this bill, and he’s already got one. There’s no law that says the Oscar can’t repeat two years running, but it would be extremely unlikely. This may bring it down to a split between Jesse Eisenberg and Colin Firth. By old guard Hollywood thinking, Eisenberg successfully portrayed their worse nightmare (the Satanic digital universe). But Firth is a more seasoned (and once again, British) performer with a nice solid (and very British) track record. So I suspect that Firth has the lead (did I mention that he is British?), though if the voting gets split between these two, it could end up going to Javier Bardem simply because his haircut in Biutiful is a heck of a lot better than what he wore in No Country For Old Men.

This has a potential influence on the Best Supporting Actor category. Geoffrey Rush should be a shoe in for The King’s Speech, but the Academy may not feel like going totally British. OK, actually Rush is Australian, but he sounds pretty British. In that case, the other major candidate is Christian Bale. OK, Bale really is British, but he sounds sort of American and we all know that Batman is a Yank. The rest of the logic is simple. Bale has a crushingly monotonous sense of intense presentation that can easily be mistaken for heavy duty method acting. Rush simply acts (extremely well, but he doesn’t make it look like heavy labor).

When it comes to actresses, the Academy is a bit like Hugh Hefner. They like ’em fresh and young. But since Hailee Steinfeld most likely has a lock on Best Supporting Actress, they may feel like going toward an established (that is, older) figure for Best Actress. Besides, Annette Bening is a straight playing gay, and that almost always clicks with the Academy (don’t believe me, just ask Tom Hanks). If there is a surprise, it may come from Jennifer Lawrence. It’s an outside chance, but it is possible.

So place your bets. Oh, one last word of warning. The method I used for these selections is based on a rigorous system of blind guesswork. If I’m wrong, you lose. To be honest, you would almost be better off with a Ouija board.