Best Supporting Actress: the unknowable factors

With the Screen Actors Guild around the corner tomorrow, I'll be doing a longer preview thinking about some scenarios in the five categories and what various wins could mean for the Oscar race, especially in the wake of however the Directors Guild of America ends up tonight.

In the meantime though, I'm stuck thinking about Best Supporting Actress and trying to wrap my mind around why I have no idea who I think will win the Oscar.

Maybe that's because in the past few years, the Golden Globes have seemed particularly unreliable in this category. Last year was a bit of an exception, with Mo'Nique winning everything under the sun for Precious, and I'd be inclined to say if Melissa Leo wins the SAG tomorrow night she'll be on her way to an Oscar for The Fighter. But what of Amy Adams? The young, three-time nominee could almost certainly siphon votes, but the problem of thinking about "vote siphoning" is that it almost never actually happens. For a split-vote to occur, there have be large percentage of votes drawn for both actors of the same movie, plus a larger percentage drawn for the third party. The only time in recent memory where I think it's happened was in 2002 when Adrien Brody beat Jack Nicholson/Daniel Day Lewis for Best Actor, but that was the night when The Pianist burst out of nowhere to win three top awards.

The Directors, or how much the DGA matters

Now that Christopher Nolan is out of the running for Best Director, the Coens are in, The King's Speech is the nomination leader and David Fincher has the Golden Globe tucked firmly under his arm, one of the big game-changing questions becomes: What do we make of Best Director?

Since Tuesday, the blogosphere has been swirling with this sudden notion that 2010 will be a split year: David Fincher will win Best Director, and The King's Speech will win Best Picture. Sorry, but I don't buy that yet. Yes, it's true that a split year has happened more times in the twenty years since 1989 than in the twenty years before it (five times since 1989, with four of those five in the last twelve years. Between 1968 and 1988, it happened twice).

So let's take a second and think about the contemporary splits.

The elephant in the room - Nolan's snub

Christopher Nolan has been nominated for the Directors Guild of America award three times - for Memento, The Dark Knight, and Inception. How many times has he been nominated for Best Director at the Oscars? He hasn't.

In 2008, The Dark Knight earned eight nominations, but missed on Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. This was after it scored nominees in most major guilds and seemed to have the industry support to go the distance and be the first superhero film to earn a Best Picture nomination.

Lots of analysts pointed to this as one of several reasons behind the expansion to 10 Best Picture nominees - an opportunity to finally give more space to big blockbuster successes without pushing out the prestige films; the Oscars could finally get viewers from all demographics.

Two years later; the story's almost the same. Amid all the talk about The King's Speech and True Grit, the general population only really seems concerned about one thing: Christopher Nolan was not nominated for Best Director.

Inside the campaign: "Feeling movies"

Harvey Weinstein is a monstrous producer. To recount the reasons why Miramax was one of the most influential independent studios of the 1990s and into the 2000s is something I don't really have time for, but please, look it up.

Suffice to say, Weinstein saw that the Oscars were how he could make money off his films. He could use them as a way to advertise, and in campaigning to win them for his films and his films' actors, he could win allies, industry respect, and let his movie studio grow and attract more actors and filmmakers who want to win Oscars. He engineered the 1998 coup of Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan, one of the perennial "Oscar shockers." He campaigned relentlessly for The Reader in 2008, netting it surprise Oscar nominations for Picture and Director (at the expense of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight) and his work invariably helped Kate Winslet earn her Best Actress Oscar.

I'm not saying this as a way to devalue the films themselves. I'm saying it because, it's true. Weinstein made the Oscars a game, one that involved careful plotting, human appeals, and a bit of cunning. This year, Weinstein returns with The King's Speech.

Of 'Kings' and 'Grit'

"Them boys, they'll think about the wrath that's about to set down on them."
-- True Grit

I want to make this very clear: True Grit will not win Best Picture. It may be the biggest surprise of the morning, grabbing ten nominations overall including Picture, Director, Screenplay and a wealth of tech awards, but it's not going to come from behind and win. I don't say that because it lost the PGA, and I don't say that because it's not nominated for the Directors or Screen Actors Guild.

The reason is: Best Film Editing.

I'll explain. In 1989, Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture without being nominated for Best Film Editing. In the 20 years since, no film has won without this nomination. In 2006, people were calling for a Little Miss Sunshine win over The Departed. The only Picture nominees to also be nominated for Film Editing were Departed and Babel. It was an inherently foolish prediction. This statistic, along with "The Directors Guild never lies when it comes to Best Director (unless it's 2002)," is one of the things that we Oscar pundits hold sacred.

Surprises abound: Category-by-category reaction

This constitutes "part two" of Oscar morning - my knee-jerk reactions to each category, how I did in my predictions, and what makes me most/least happy on a category-by-category basis. A full write-up on the nominations as a whole will follow

Best Picture: No surprises, no worries. I need to see 127 Hours now, but the only thing that caught me up was I picked The Town over Hours. Hindsight's 20/20. Ebert says Winter's Bone is a "surprise." I knew it was going to be here back in November. Just saying.
My predictions: 9/10 (10/10 with alternate)

Best Director: Holy smokes. No Christopher Nolan. Is the man just not liked? Yesterday, people were calling David O. Russell the weak spot; turns out the Academy still can't figure out whether or not they should embrace sci-fi. C'mon, guys. The upside? The Coens are in, and we all know that makes me smile.
My predictions: 4/5 (5/5 with alternate)

The 83rd Annual Academy Award Nominations

Nominations Leaders:
The King's Speech - 12
True Grit - 10
The Social Network - 8
Inception - 8
The Fighter - 7
127 Hours  - 6
Black Swan - 5


Best Picture of the Year

Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

Best Director

Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
David O. Russell for The Fighter
Tom Hooper for The King's Speech
David Fincher for The Social Network
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for True Grit



Best Actor in a Leading Role

Javier Bardem for Biutiful
Jeff Bridges for True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network
Colin Firth for The King's Speech
James Franco for 127 Hours


Best Actress in a Leading Role

Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman for Black Swan
Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine

Oscar nominations predictions

The time has come. 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, we find out if we've actually been reading this race correctly, if the Academy is going to throw a "Reader"-sized curveball into the proceedings. Here are my picks in every category.

Best Picture

Black Swan

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids Are All Right

The King’s Speech

The Social Network

The Town

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter’s Bone

Alternates: 127 Hours; Another Year

Best Director

Darren Aronofsky for Black Sawn

David Fincher for The Social Network

Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech

Christopher Nolan for Inception

David O. Russell for The Fighter

Alternate: Joel and Ethan Coen for True Grit

'The King's Speech' wins PGA

I'll admit it: I was stunned.

Even though my mantra was (and now of course continues to be) "the race is not over," I was ready to pronounce the Best Picture race a done deal after The Social Network's clean sweep of Phase I and Phase II. But it's been quite the week for Tom Hooper's The King's Speech -- it picked up more British Academy nominations than any other film this year (a walloping 14) and has now won the Producers Guild of America Award for Excellence in Producing.

Full Winners:

Picture: The King's Speech
Episodic TV, Drama: Mad Men
Episodic TV, Comedy: Modern Family
Documentary: Waiting for Superman
Miniseries: The Pacific
Live TV: The Colbert Report
Animated Feature: Toy Story 3

Keep reading for some analysis and scenarios: