National Board of Review and Gotham have announced their winners, and Indie Spirit their nods. David Poland does a pretty good job summing up how useless these early returns are on his blog, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents anyway, especially since this is shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable Awards seasons in some time, and trend-latching becomes especially desperate in that kind of an atmosphere. For me, though, the fun is in seeing which of these wins resonate with me as harbingers, and which ring hollow for no other reason than they just do (since there’s really nothing to compare them to yet).
I’m going to focus primarily on the National Board of Review, whose specious reasoning is underlined by the fact that Avatar hadn’t even screened for critics when they announced (kind of like having a primary before all the candidates have thrown their hat in). They gave Up in the Air top honors which, for me, only solidifies its place in The Ten for Best Picture.
Speaking of which, in the context of Awards season, I begin to think that the whole point of going to ten is to create a de facto Academy Certified Top Ten of X Year the way the AFI and a handful of other organizations (like the National Board of Review) do. Of course, why the Academy would want to emulate any of those organizations is beyond me, so maybe it’s just a coincidence.
Eastwood gets Best Director for Invictus, but whether or not Eastwood fatigue will set in for Academy nominators remains to be seen. His film shares a Best Actor win (Morgan Freeman) with George Clooney, which means they’re both among the twenty or so names that could be in the final five at this point.
Carey Mulligan’s win for An Education helps convince me that she will probably be one of the final five for Best Actress.
Nice to see Anna Kendrick and Woody Harrelson get supporting wins, but that means nothing for their Oscar nod chances.
Haven’t even heard of the Best Foreign Picture winner but, for a guy that spends most of his year paying attention to theatrical releases, that happens a lot. Same with docs, though I’ve heard of (and am itching to see) Best Doc winner The Cove.
I’m going to detour a bit with the Animated win for Up to mention that the Annie nods are also out, and Coraline, Up, and Princess and the Frog are in a tight race to dominate, with 10, 9, and 8 nods, respectively, which suggests that this isn’t just Up‘s world and there really will be a race in the Best Animated Feature category this year.
The screenplay wins (Up In the Air for Original and A Serious Man for Adapted) actually do seem very predictive for nods.
Hurt Locker‘s Gotham win still doesn’t solidify in my mind its chances to make it into the final ten, although, for some reason, I feel like Kathryn Bigelow, who won for Best Director, somehow has a better chance at a directorial nod now.
As far as the Indie Spirit nods go, all I can say is it’s nice to see Adventureland get some screenplay love, as that’s probably all the love it will get this awards season. Also, it’d be interesting to see Amreeka‘s nods start the ball rolling on an acting nod a la The Visitor or Frozen River last year. I also feel like Samantha Morton has the best chance of coming out of The Messenger with a nod, if only because she’s been to the party twice before.
That’s all the completely baseless speculation that’s fit to post for now.
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