Thursday, January 19, 2012

Closing in on Oscar

CLOSING IN ON OSCAR



We're down to the point where we could start counting down to next Tuesday's nomination announcement in hours rather than days.  The last 24 hours have seen a couple of key developments.  First, the announcement from The Academy yesterday of the nine foreign films still left to compete for the five nominations in that category and ultimately the Oscar.  Any number of the websites listed in the right hand column carried stories about that announcement.  I have linked to the Awards Daily story here:
http://www.awardsdaily.com/2012/01/9-foreign-language-films-vie-for-oscar/



Four Telluride films have made the "semi-finals" A Separation, Pina, In Darkness and Footnote.  Not making the list, in something of a surprise, Le Havre.  So the dream of an all Telluride list of five films has ended, though the four that are left are all pretty legitimate players to be announced on Tuesday morning.  As a matter of fact, my final prediction on Monday will be the four T-ride films plus Canada's Monsieur Lazhar.

The other developing story is a slight rumbling/backlash against The Artist because, the thinking goes, general audiences may not be as enamored of the uniqueness of a black and white silent film in 2012.  we'll see pretty soon if the theory has any legs.

OSCAR PREDICTIONS

The latest Oscar prognostications from three really good sources:

Movie City News' latest Gurus of Gold chart:
http://moviecitynews.com/2012/01/gurus-o-gold-post-globespre-oscar-nominations/

Dave Karger's "Final" pre-Oscar nomination predictions:
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/01/17/oscar-predictions-dave-karger/

And the latest update from The Hollywood Reporter's resident Oscar guru Scott Feinberg:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/golden-globes-oscar-nominees-scott-feinberg-awards-season-279829

Of course, The Film Awards Clearinghouse will be up on Monday morning with my look at where the nominations will go and where we might see some surprises  (War Horse fading, Tattoo on the rise...)


FASSBENDER ON PARADE



Michael Fassbender has been and continues to be red hot and I am modestly confident that he will hear his name next Tuesday morning when the Best Actor nominees are announced.  He's featured this week on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter and THR has a couple of online articles in conjunction with that.  You can find those here:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-fassbender-shirtless-full-frontal-nudity-shame-x-men-george-clooney-282871

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/THR-cover-michael-fassbender-shame-nudity-dangerous-method-282859


AND FINALLY

Two fun and interesting spec pieces about some of the far fetched things that could (but probably won't) happen on Tuesday morning.

From Kris Tapley of Incontention:
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/in-contention/posts/off-the-carpet-as-the-music-stops-fringe-hopefuls-cross-their-fingers

And also from Steve Pond at The Wrap
http://www.thewrap.com/awards/column-post/10-oscar-shocks-could-probably-wont-happen-34362

I'll have some other tidbits for you tomorrow.

Follow me on Twitter @Gort2

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