Ridiculously Early Best Picture Predictions

With a little over 20 weeks until the Academy Award nominations are announced, here are my ridiculously early attempts at predicting the Best Picture nominees, in order of likelihood.

The Odds-On Heavyweight Favorites
The 800-pound gorillas everyone is betting on.

1. The Aviator

There’s always a lot of pressure on the perceived favorite going into Oscar Season. Sometimes they stay the course (A Beautiful Mind) and sometimes they fizzle out (Cold Mountain). Although last year, Harvey Weinstein blamed the abbreviated Oscar schedule and the late December opening date for Mountain’s chilly reception, I don’t expect the December 17th berth of The Aviator to cause it to get the same Cold shoulder from the Academy (it was a ludicrous excuse – all that debacle proved was that poor Harvey needs more than a month to turn his shit into Shinola).

I see four potential roadblocks for The Aviator. The first is bio-pic overload fatigue, which I touched on in my last column. The second is if there’s some controversial debate over the film’s historical accuracy, such as the one that (may have) sidelined The Hurricane as a contender, and threatened A Beautiful Mind. The third is if voters resent the way Martin Scorsese was shoved down their throats in 2002, and how Harvey and others tried to guilt trip them into giving the filmmaker everybody loves a de facto “lifetime achievement” award for directing a movie nobody loved. And finally, the fourth potential roadblock for The Aviator is if the movie sucks – however, this one is the most easily overcome (see Gangs of New York).

2. Alexander

As the only large-scale epic in contention this year (weighing in with a measly $30 million budget hardly qualifies The Passion of The Christ as large-scale), Alexander would seem to be a shoo-in since the Best Picture race tends to favor historical epics. Still, I’ve got this nagging feeling that it might not make the cut – I’m not sure if it’s Oliver Stone’s 12-year absence from this category after a remarkable 3-for-6 run between 1986 and 1991 or if it’s Colin Farrell as a blonde, but for now I’ll keep it in the top five.

Small, but Scrappy
Not quite the behemoths of the top two, but that may prove to be a blessing.

3. Ray

Advance buzz was hot before the body was even cold, and now that it’s not just a tribute but a eulogy, it’s even hotter. Whether it makes it or not rests largely on how well Jamie Foxx can make us both forget and remember the legend – a paradoxically challenging task, indeed.

4. Proof

Why this intimate stage-adaptation and not (the more widely predicted) Closer? Well, since they (pretty much) match up in pedigree in front of and behind the camera, it comes down to Proof dealing with weightier issues (and though I’m not positive, being less shocking and offensive to older voters). The biggest hesitation I have about putting it in the top five is that I don’t know if a) Harvey will be pushing this one as hard since he’s adopted a sure thing in The Aviator (and might want to focus all his efforts on getting at least that one in after getting none last year), b) Harvey’s attention will be further divided by a push for Fahrenheit 9/11, and c) Harvey will even be synonymous with Miramax by the time this movie rolls out in December. So Closer might get its shot after all.

5. The Passion of The Christ

I originally had this at #6, but while writing my last post, I convinced myself that I needed to put one pre-September release in here, and I’m starting to realize that The Passion seems like a pretty classic Academy-friendly movie (to those who suggest that they’re squeamish when it comes to violence, I point out that Pulp Fiction, Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan all pushed the bloodletting envelope). Surely there are enough devout Christians in Hollywood to carry it to the promised land… Surely?

The On-Deck Circle
Any of these could be called up to the Big Five should one of the above falter.

6. The Motorcycle Diaries

When The Passion was at #6, this was at #5, and it could easily move back into the top five if it’s as good as early festival buzz suggests. It’ll have to catch on, and stay caught on between September and January. Even then, it faces a couple of uphill battles. First, this looks to be a competitive year for foreign language films in the Best Picture race, and there have never been two foreign language films nominated in the category in any year, and only seven total in 76 years. Second, is this really the year Hollywood wants to be seen as embracing a communist icon? That doesn’t sound like the “heart and soul” of America.

7. Closer

Mike Nichols is hot. So are Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman and Jude Law. Clive Owen is supposed to be hot. And that’s all well and hot, but I think Closer is too insubstantial, too sexually frank and maybe too stagey to become the monolithic awards-darling that Angels in America has become through the lowered expectations of the much smaller proscenium arch of television.

8. Fahrenheit 9/11

A documentary has never been nominated for Best Picture. A documentary had also never been number one at the box-office or broken the $100 million barrier. Will the people who loved it in June still love it in January? More than any other movie this year, this one’s awards hopes hinge on world events. My inclination is that its odds are greatly enhanced if its star wins in November, but I could have that backwards.

The Funny Four
Like I said, I don’t really see any of these happening, but if the Academy’s desperate for a laugh, it’ll probably come from one of these.

9. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
10. Synergy
11. Spanglish
12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Runners-up
Small dramas (with the exception of The Phantom of the Opera) that might get their hopes up with some Oscar Season traction, but seem too small from this vantage point to make the final cut.

13. Finding Neverland
14. Kinsey
15. The Sea Within
16. A Very Long Engagement
17. The Phantom of the Opera

The Runners-up to the Runners-up
These seem to have even less of a chance.

18. Sideways
19. Bad Education

Uh… No
Not gonna happen.

20. An Unfinished Life

Predictions in other categories, coming soon...