Most OscarWatchers considered Amy Adams merely the lucky winner of the fifth Best Supporting Actress slot after the Academy placed Kate Winslet in the lead-actress race for The Reader. (I, for one, didn't predict an Oscar nod for her, though I was glad she got it.) But in the weeks since the nominations were announced, I've been feeling a shift in support towards the immensely likable star. Just last night, another Academy member told me he voted for her. So now I'm trying to figure out what it all means in the supporting actress race. Does it indicate stronger support than expected for Doubt and a possible win for Viola Davis (or even Adams?). Or will Adams' late surge result, Nader-style, in a down-the-middle Doubt split? If that's the case, could my Penélope Cruz prediction end up coming true? Whatever happens on Sunday, I doubt this is Amy Adams' last invitation to the Academy Awards.
One of the most fun items I posted this year was my list of the top possible surprises of the Oscar nominations, some of which ended up coming true (or half-true). With the Academy Awards ceremony now just days away, here are my 10 possible shockers that could take place this Sunday.
1. Slumdog Millionaire picks up the Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing prizes, winning all nine categories in which it’s nominated.
2. Doubt’s Viola Davis avoids vote splitting with costar Amy Adams and tops Penélope Cruz for Best Supporting Actress.
3. The Kate vs. Meryl showdown in Best Actress ends in a loss for both, as Frozen River’s Melissa Leo pulls an Adrien Brody and comes through with the win.
4. After losing the BFCA and SAG awards to Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke finally wins his first major domestic prize (i.e. voted on by Americans) and takes home Best Actor.
5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button gets upset in the Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects, and Best Makeup categories and becomes the biggest Oscar loser in history, going 0 for 13.
6. David Hare’s script for The Reader steals the adapted screenplay trophy from Slumdog’s Simon Beaufoy.
7. France’s The Class wins Best Foreign Language Film over critical favorite Waltz With Bashir (my colleague Thom Geier and I are actually predicting that one).
8. WALL•E not only wins Best Animated Film but also picks up Original Screenplay and both sound prizes for a total of four Oscars.
9. The Dark Knight wins Best Supporting Actor but otherwise goes home empty-handed.
10. Telecast producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark actually manage to keep the ceremony under three hours. (You can do it, guys!)
The awards gods don't seem to be smiling on me this year. First, I publish my Oscar nomination predictions, which end up matching perfectly with the Producers Guild and Directors Guild nominees but naturally miss a few of the eventual Academy Award honorees. Then I arrive at my Oscar-winner guesses...which almost completely match with this weekend's BAFTA winners. So, with my predictions hitting newsstands today, I ask you: What have I (and my intrepid colleague Thom Geier, who handles all the documentary and shorts races) gotten wrong? Let us have it.
Picture: Slumdog Millionaire
Director, Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Actor: Sean Penn, Milk
Actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader
Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Supporting Actress: Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Original Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black, Milk
Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
Animated Film: Wall-E
Foreign-Language Film: The Class
Documentary: Man On Wire
Editing: Slumdog Millionaire
Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire
Art Direction: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Costume Design: The Duchess
Makeup: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Score: Slumdog Millionaire
Song: "Jai Ho," Slumdog Millionaire
Visual Effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Sound: The Dark Knight
Sound Mixing: The Dark Knight
Short: Spielzugland (Toyland)
Animated Short: Presto
Documentary Short: The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306
Two of the closest major races at the Oscars this year -- Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress -- have something very intriguing in common: They've both become competitions between Harvey Weinstein and the company he used to run, Miramax. In the lead-actress race, the top two contenders are The Reader's Kate Winslet (a Weinstein Co. release) and Doubt's Meryl Streep (a Miramax film), while in supporting actress, Vicky Cristina Barcelona's Penélope Cruz (Weinstein Co.) and Doubt's Viola Davis (Miramax) have the best shot at a win.
In a year when Weinstein -- who had an 11-year run of consecutive Best Picture nominees while at Miramax but had been absent from the big dance the last few years -- is surprisingly back in the race, it's rich that his two best chances at Oscar victories are against his old company. Since Weinstein's departure in 2005, "the new Miramax" is a much different place, run by the unflappable, understated Daniel Battsek. But that's not to say Battsek's relative calm hasn't produced Academy results: He and his team shepherded Helen Mirren to a Best Actress win for The Queen in 2007 and took home Best Picture last year with No Country for Old Men. This year they've had a rougher go: After dominating the critics' awards, Happy-Go-Lucky's Sally Hawkins was shut out of the Oscar race, while five-time nominee Doubt failed to score a Best Picture nod.
For the sake of equality, I'm hoping Weinstein and Miramax each take home one female-acting prize next Sunday. But my hunch is that Harvey might just turn out to be a double winner.
Can Slumdog Millionaire be stopped? Danny Boyle's endearing drama picked up top honors at the Producers Guild and Screen Actors Guild awards this weekend, winning best picture at the PGA and the best cast prize at SAG. I had predicted Milk to win the big ensemble prize, thinking that the SAG voters would be more likely to give an award to established actors like Sean Penn and Josh Brolin than a bunch of unknown kids from India, but as an astute Academy member said to me after the awards last night, "A lot of times SAG treats the best cast award like Best Picture, because it's the closest thing they have." If that's the case, then the outcome makes perfect sense. In any case, Slumdog now has two more huge wins to add to its victories at the Golden Globes, Broadcast Film Critics Awards, and National Board of Review.
The four acting races lined up with my predictions. Sean Penn topped Mickey Rourke for Best Actor, making him the frontrunner for the Oscar next month, while Heath Ledger was named Best Supporting Actor to the surprise of no one. Kate Winslet won her third consecutive supporting-actress trophy for The Reader, while Meryl Streep won the only award for Doubt. This means that the two female SAG-winning performances will duke it out for the Oscar, since the Academy placed Winslet in the lead category for The Reader. Now the race is really on.
We're now less than 24 hours away from the big Oscar nominations announcement. I'll be up early to react to the news live on the Today show (please tune in!), and I'm wondering: What will be the big shocker among the nominees tomorrow? Surely everything won't go as predicted, right? Here are my top 10 possible stunners.
1. The Reader or Gran Torino sneak into Best Picture over The Dark Knight.
2. Richard Jenkins bumps Brad Pitt out of Best Actor.
3. Melissa Leo snags Angelina Jolie's Best Actress slot.
4. Voters ignore Kate Winslet's supporting-actress campaign and nominate her for Best Actress for The Reader, leaving Revolutionary Road out of the acting races completely.
5. Dev Patel scores a Best Actor nod instead of landing in the supporting category.
6. The Dark Knight trumps The Reader in the adapted-screenplay race.
7. Doubt scores four acting nods after all, as Amy Adams pushes Taraji P. Henson out of supporting actress.
8. Happy-Go-Lucky's Mike Leigh displaces Ron Howard or Gus Van Sant in Best Director.
9. Milk takes two supporting-actor slots and leaves Robert Downey, Jr., in the cold.
And finally...
10. Slumdog Millionaire tops Benjamin Button and scores the most overall nominations.
What do you think the biggest surprise will be? And if any of these actually happen, don't say I didn't warn you!
With just two days to go before the Oscar nominations are finally announced, I'm resisting the urge to change any of my predictions, which went to press in EW before the Producers Guild or Directors Guild nominees were revealed. Can The Dark Knight bump The Reader out of the screenplay running? Will someone like Richard Jenkins or Melissa Leo fight his or her way into the acting races? Will the Academy overrule campaigns and put Kate Winslet for The Reader or Dev Patel for Slumdog Millionaire in the lead-acting category? I'm standing by my predictions, listed again below. Last year I lucked out with 34 out of 40 correct. Let's see which of you can score the most this year. Post your predictions and I'll give a shout-out to the OscarWatcher who gets the most right.
Picture
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Director
David Fincher
Christopher Nolan
Ron Howard
Gus Van Sant
Danny Boyle
Actor
Clint Eastwood
Frank Langella
Sean Penn
Brad Pitt
Mickey Rourke
Actress
Anne Hathaway
Sally Hawkins
Angelina Jolie
Meryl Streep
Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road)
Supporting Actor
Josh Brolin
Robert Downey, Jr.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Heath Ledger
Dev Patel
Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz
Viola Davis
Taraji P. Henson
Marisa Tomei
Kate Winslet (The Reader)
Original Screenplay
Happy-Go-Lucky
Milk
Rachel Getting Married
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Wall-E
Adapted Screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Earlier this week I gathered the four Golden Globe-nominated cast members of Doubt--Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis--for an extensive conversation about their thought-provoking new film. In part 1 of the interview, we talk about whether it was helpful for them to see Doubt on Broadway and the differences between film and theater audiences. More to come in the next few days.
Now that the New York Film Critics Circle award results are trickling in (early winners include Milk's Josh Brolin for Best Supporting Actor, Happy-Go-Lucky's Mike Leigh for Best Director, and Rachel Getting Married's Jenny Lumet for Best Screenplay), something very interesting has occurred: Penelope Cruz and Sally Hawkins have both won their respective acting categories from the New York and Los Angeles critics groups. In the last seven years, 11 actors have been recognized by both organizations and all 11 eleven went on to score Oscar nominations as well. Cruz has been a supporting actress front-runner for months. But have my fellow Oscar bloggers and I been underestimating Hawkins' chances at making the final five? If so, whose Best Actress spot could Hawkins steal? Kate Winslet's? Angelina Jolie's? Cate Blanchett's? Hawkins will certainly earn a Globe nod tomorrow for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, and she could beat Mamma Mia's Meryl Streep for the prize. We'll see if she can land a SAG nomination on Dec. 18.
For Your Consideration ads have been coming fast and furious in the trade papers lately, and as I suspected would happen a few weeks ago, the Weinstein Co.'s advertisement for The Reader (which I'd call a definite top-10 Best Picture contender) lists Ralph Fiennes and David Kross in Best Supporting Actor, and Kate Winslet and Lena Olin in Best Supporting Actress, with no candidates for Best Actor or Best Actress at all. Now, other movies, like Crash and Babel, have tried this tactic before with some success. But those two were indisputably ensemble films, whereas The Reader, which spans five decades, clearly has two main characters: one shared by Kross and Fiennes and the other played entirely by Winslet. Obviously, the all-supporting decision is meant to keep Winslet from competing against herself (she's up for Best Actress for Revolutionary Road), but now that I've seen in print, it does seem a little disingenuous. If the Weinstein Co. had placed Kross in the Best Actor category (he has much more screen time than Fiennes), there would have been at least one official lead to speak of. Still, if the Academy follows the campaign directives, it'll turn out to be a smart move, since Winslet's amazing performance in The Reader should be a sure thing for a supporting nomination.
