Academy Awards horse race shifts into high gear - Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Academy Awards horse race shifts into high gear

With Hollywood now nominating twice as many films for the best picture Oscar as it used to, handicapping the annual horse race has become a lot more difficult.

This year’s crop of best picture nominees is highly eclectic — among them a period-piece “silent film,” a Hawaiian slice-of-life dramedy, Martin Scorsese’s first foray into 3D, a family drama pegged to 9/11, and a baseball flick (what?).

The buzz will build over the next few weeks leading up to the Academy Awards on Feb. 26, and the nominees are likely to shift position more than once between now and then. Complicating the whole process is the fact that many of the films in the race this year are esoteric works that went unseen by most people.

Still, it’s possible to glean a little bit about which way the wind is blowing at this early stage. Here’s a rundown of which films and performers seem to be grabbing the initial inside track in the “big seven” awards categories.

Best picture

Nominees: The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse

The Artist has consistently led the pack to this point. It’s the kind of film that the Academy loves to love, and that your average Joe Moviegoer rolls his eyes at — a black-and-white silent film in French, with subtitles. With recent wins in the Golden Globes and Producers Guild awards, it’s the odds-on early favorite. The films getting the most mentions as potential spoilers are The Descendants, which features one of George Clooney’s warmest and most accessible performances, and Hugo, the legendary Martin Scorsese’s 3D fantasy, which landed a whopping 11 Oscar nominations, although many are in the technical categories.

Best director

Nominees: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist; Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life; Alexander Payne, The Descendants; Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Again, Michel Hazanavicius is in front of the pack for The Artist. If anyone will beat him, it looks like Scorsese, who has been nominated numerous times but has won only one best director Oscar, for 2007’s The Departed, which many consider to be one of his lesser films.

Best actor

Nominees: Demian Bichir, A Better Life; George Clooney, The Descendants; Jean Dujardin, The Artist; Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Brad Pitt, Moneyball

The race her is again shaping up as a duel between The Artist and The Descendants, with Dujardin and Clooney duking it out. If they split enough of the vote, Brad Pitt could sneak in as a dark horse. If there was any real justice in the world, the great Gary Oldman, who has never won an Oscar, would finally get his due.That won’t happen, mainly because while his performance was typically superb, his film was a slow grind.

Best actress

Nominees: Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs; Viola Davis, The Help; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady; Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Davis is getting talked up for her role in The Help, a drama set in the Deep South during the Civil Rights era, the kind of socially conscious film that is often irresistible to the Academy. Mara was ferocious in her film and could sneak in. It’s also impossible to ever count out Meryl Streep when she gets nominated for anything,

Best supporting actor

Nominees: Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn; Jonah Hill, Moneyball; Nick Nolte, Warrior; Christopher Plummer, Beginners; Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

A comparatively weak field this year makes this category a bit of a crapshoot, although the early money seems to be gravitating toward Plummer for his role as a 75-year old art expert who comes out as gay and then deals with the effects of that revelation on his son, played by Ewan McGregor.

Best supporting actress

Nominees: Bérénice Bejo, The Artist; Jessica Chastain, The Help; Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids; Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs; Octavia Spencer, The Help

A tough one to handicap, particularly because two actresses from the same film are in play in this category. Spencer and Bejo seem to have the early edge. Melissa McCarthy was outrageously hilarious in Bridesmaids, but while the Academy occasionally nominates such films to show that it’s not totally unhip, it never lets such films actually win.

Best original screenplay

The nominees: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; JC Chandor, Margin Call; Asghar Farhadi, A Separation; Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist; Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumulo, Bridesmaids

Michel Hazanavicius has a slight early lead, but there is also a fair amount of talk about using this category as an opportunity for one last kiss from the Academy to Woody Allen.