Ridiculously Late Best Picture Predictions

I’m splitting up my final Academy Award nomination predictions into three groups: My top five picks will be divided between “Locks” and “Guesses,” with a few “Pinch Hitters” that could surprise if any of the Guesses fail to make it (though when I gauge my own success as a prognosticator on Tuesday, I’ll only be counting my top five picks). Names will be listed in order of likelihood. Commentary will be sprinkled throughout. Also, by clicking on the hyperlinked category names, you can see my Ridiculously Early predictions from four and a half months ago.

Best Picture

Locks: The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, Sideways

It’ll be a shock to Oscar watchers everywhere if one of these three fails to make the cut.

Guesses: Finding Neverland, Fahrenheit 9/11

I settled on Finding Neverland a few weeks ago, after seeing it nominated for just about every guild award (Producers Guild, Directors Guild, three Screen Actors Guild nominations – including Outstanding Performance by a Cast, Editors Guild, Art Directors Guild – it failed to garner a Writers Guild nomination, though only because it was rendered ineligible by a technicality). Seabiscuit followed a very similar trajectory last year (though it picked up a few more, including Makeup and Sound Editors nominations, which haven’t been announced for this year yet, as well as the Writers Guild, Costume Designers Guild and American Society of Cinematographers nominations that Finding Neverland missed. It was this Guild sweep that inspired me to pick Seabiscuit as one of the five Best Picture nominees last year, even when it was still considered a longshot (for some of the same reasons as Finding Neverland – namely that critics weren’t enamored with it). But actually, I was leaning towards calling Neverland as a finalist even before the Guild nominations started piling in for another of the reasons that Seabiscuit was dismissed: Sentimentality. It’s a quality that’s missing from the Three Locks, I think, and yet it’s a quality that usually finds its way into the top five. I didn’t hear any nose-blowing at the end of Million Dollar Baby, but my mother needed a tissue as Neverland’s credits were rolling. Which illustrates the other Oscar-benefit of sentimentality – it skews older than your average critic/Oscar-prognosticator but hits squarely in the Academy members’ demographic. Don’t underestimate sentimentality.

Like most predictors, I’ve been wrestling with the fifth slot all Oscar season. This year, that slot is truly a wildcard. At various points I’ve had Ray, The Passion of the Christ, Hotel Rwanda, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Motorcycle Diaries and The Phantom of the Opera all pegged for a nomination. Fahrenheit 9/11 has gone in and out for me repeatedly.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: The Academy’s preferential voting system. I don’t fully understand it, even after reading David Poland’s, Tom O’Neil’s and Dave Karger’s explanations, but the one thing I do get is that a sizable minority of passionate voters outweighs a majority of only mediocre support. The best example of this that I can think of is last year when Fernando Meirelles was nominated for Best Directing. My guess is that Gary Ross and Anthony Minghella both had more total votes, but that the people who voted for Meirelles consistently ranked him much higher.

As both Poland and O’Neil have pointed out, Harvey Weinstein and Michael Moore are following Karl Rove’s strategy of exclusively targeting their base and hoping they have the numbers. Even putting aside Weinstein’s uncanny ability to campaign for votes (just ask Lasse Hallstrom) and Moore’s less successful vote-getting talents (just ask John Kerry), I predicted last September that the film’s chances would be boosted by a Bush win. I believe that many liberals in Hollywood are still bitter about the election and the Reddening of America, and a vote for Fahrenheit 9/11 would serve as a giant “[bleep] you!” I try to think of how Moore groupies Leonardo DiCaprio, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck will vote – will DiCaprio put The Aviator as #1 or Fahrenheit (the movie he flew cross country to attend both premieres of)? Now, I know that these people aren’t necessarily representative of the Academy as a whole, but the die-hard liberals must make up a sizeable minority, right? So will they put politics ahead of art?

One thing that raises doubts is that no documentary has ever been nominated for Best Picture. And though Fahrenheit 9/11 has done a lot of things that no documentary has done before, I think that the reason behind the genre’s absence goes beyond it having its own ghettoized category at the Awards (a hurdle which Moore tried to sidestep by not submitting). As with animated features inability to get recognition (excluding Beauty and the Beast) long before they had their own category, I hypothesize that Academy members at large, who mostly have made careers on live-action, scripted films, tend to recognize films that highlight their own specialties. Thus members of the acting branch like movies with strong acting, writers like movies that are well-written, art directors like movies with good art directing, and so on. Maybe that’s not true, but I think it would help explain why the film with the most nominations almost always wins Best Picture. So will actors and art directors and makeup artists and costume designers and special effects artists vote for a movie that doesn’t even have those elements? And can Weinstein have his fingerprints on three Best Picture nominees (he actually had them on four in 2002)?

I don’t know, but I’m going to put it in the top five, against my better judgment, mostly just because I think it’d make things interesting. It also would fulfill a couple of the categories that are usually represented at the Oscars that seem to be missing this year: The $100 Million Blockbuster, The Pre-September Release and The Relevant Message Movie (Million Dollar Baby has yet to position itself as such). And it would validate my analysis of the Cannes numbers.

Pinch Hitters: Hotel Rwanda, Ray, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Passion of the Christ

The thing (preferential balloting) that makes me think that Fahrenheit 9/11 can rise to the top is the same thing that makes me think that any one of these could easily surpass it.

I have a feeling that most liberal, socially minded voters will put both Fahrenheit 9/11 and Hotel Rwanda on their ballots. But which will they tend to rank as #1? The worst thing for both would be if half ranked Rwanda higher and half ranked Fahrenheit higher. Of course, Rwanda has several advantages over Fahrenheit. For one, it’s a traditional scripted/acted film. It highlights an under publicized social injustice in a disturbing and yet ultimately uplifting manner (the only thing uplifting or hope-inspiring about Fahrenheit is its box-office). Although financial success is usually seen as a positive in the Oscar race, in this instance, Rwanda may have the edge because voters may recognize that they could help get its message out in a way that Fahrenheit already achieved on its own. However, that positive may also be a negative. Rwanda didn’t really make as big a splash in the media as I thought it would and the critics and guilds haven’t rallied behind it in large numbers. At this point, it may be lucky to clinch two acting nominations.

A lot of people are calling Ray as the fifth slot-filler. Universal’s campaigning did manage to push another critically-underwhelming movie through last year, and Ray has had almost as much Guild support as Finding Neverland. It also doesn’t have a clear vote-splitter in the race (De-Lovely and Beyond the Sea fell by the wayside), though it’s support among the Academy Black Caucus may be divided among Hotel Rwanda and Fahrenheit 9/11 (which picked up a somewhat surprising nomination at the NAACP Image Awards). Still, I don’t know anybody who actually liked the movie (not that being a good movie is a prerequisite for an Oscar) – though I may be committing the cardinal sin of Oscar predicting: Letting my personal feelings about a film’s quality influence my predictions.

That same sin may be what keeps me believing that Eternal Sunshine still has a shot. I know that it will probably appear as #2 on a lot of ballots where Sideways is #1 (thus discarding the votes for Sunshine. But I also know that very few people like Sunshine – it’s either loved or hated, and the people who love it really love it – even more so than Sideways lovers love that film. It could break through thanks to its small, but fervent group of supporters, though most likely it will go the way of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.

And then there’s The Passion. This is a movie that really has no direct competition. People who don’t hate it think it’s the Second Coming. Sure, Mel Gibson has probably killed his chances by not whoring himself for votes and by his prickly behavior of late, but then again, this movie is bigger than him. Like Fahrenheit, it would fill the Blockbuster, Pre-September and Relevant Message slots. And it would have the added bonus of endearing Hollywood to the rest of America.

Stay tuned for predictions in other categories...