I wrote about the Best Picture hopes for Milk and Slumdog Millionaire a few days ago. Today, while putting things I should be doing off, I stumbled upon an article titled “The Oscar Recession” on The Daily Beast. Two movies absent from this article’s analysis of the race: Slumdog Millionaire and Milk.

Now, it’s not a post about specialty divisions and their hopefuls. Instead it focuses on the recession’s effect on publicity budgets for mainstream studio Oscar contenders. The question I have is does a pared down budget for the studio pictures mean that specialty divisions’ films will have a better chance at the Best Picture prize?

If the studios are being more judicious with their budgets and, as this article implies, the contender list shrinking because studios want to back a winner late in the game, Fox Searchlight and Focus Features may in fact have a better chance of getting their long-awaited Best Picture win.  They’ve been building buzz in a traditional manner for months without having to rely on a sudden impact at the end of the year.

Then again, as the article states, the big winner could simply come down to this:

The Dark Knight is exactly the kind of film that may help the Academy itself, which makes revenue off the Oscar telecast, weather the financial crisis.

That’s an idea I’ve been behind for months.

Related:
Nov. 9 - Early Oscar Contenders: Slumdog Millionaire V. Milk?
Nov. 8 - Oscar Predix
Sept. 11 - The Dark Knight to get big Oscar push

WALL•E and 13 animated features that will lose to WALL•E have been submitted for Oscar consideration this year. Here are the films:

Bolt
Delgo
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!
Dragon Hunters
Fly Me to the Moon
Igor
Kung Fu Panda
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
$9.99
The Sky Crawlers
Sword of the Stranger
The Tale of Despereaux
WALL•E
Waltz with Bashir

Three pictures from the list above (or two + WALL•E) will be nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, pending LA qualifying runs for Bolt, Delgo, Dragon Hunters, $9.99, The Sky Crawlers, The Tale of Despereaux, and Waltz with Bashir.

Nominations will be announced Thursday, January 22, 2009.

During the 2008 presidential election, the underdog story Rocky was referenced over and over again.  Sen. Hillary Clinton compared herself to the Best Picture winner’s central character as she tried to win the Democratic nomination.  Sen. John McCain briefly used Rocky III’s ”Eye of the Tiger” as a campaign theme, only to have a member from the band Survivor request that he stop using the song. Both candidates may have lost to Barack Obama, just as Rocky lost to Apollo Creed, but we may yet have use for the Rocky comparison. 

When Rocky won Best Picture, it beat films like Network, Taxi Driver and All the King’s Men. They were better films. Much better, in fact.  But in a year that saw the end of the Nixon era and the election of Jimmy Carter the mood of the country may well have contributed to Rocky’s sweeping victory.

The question this year may be this: Now that Obama has won the election, will the Academy abandon the dark dramas it has awarded in the past few years for a more uplifting movie?

I told a friend the other day that if Obama wins the election, Slumdog Millionaire–a film about a teenager from the slums of Mumbai who goes on Who Wants to be a Millionaire  to win the heart of the girl he loves–will win Best Picture. It was a bold prediction, but one thing I didn’t take into account was a victory for Prop. 8, the California ballot initiative to ban gay marriage.  The LGBT rights movement is going to become a central issue confronting many Californian’s this year, and that puts Gus Van Sant’s Milk–a biographical film about the first openly gay man elected to political office in U.S. history–in play.  

Neither picture is an unlikely contender. Slumdog Millionaire has Fox Searchlight behind it, while Milk looks like the crusader picture that Academy members all over themselves to honor. But the thought of the major American film award going to a British-made indie set in Mumbai or a flick about a gay-rights icon is not only unlikely, it seems impossible giving the recent awards trends.

Are they great movies? Early reviews and festival buzz indicate they are.  More importantly they appear to be movies that, like Rocky, can tap into the mood of the country and be swept up in the celebration. Slumdog Millionaire was called ”a bouyant hymn to life, and a movie to celebrate.” In the trailers for Milk, we hear the politician say, “You gotta give them hope.” Neither sentiment is bad in a year like not other for a country like no other. As we approach the National Board of Review announcement (set for Dec. 4), don’t be surprise if…no…when one of these two pictures takes the NBR Best Film title home and starts on the road to Oscar glory.

Two important caveats. Slumdog Millionaire may need to catch on with the public, Juno-style, in order to become a legitimate contender. Milk, on the other hand, could be victorious with a lower box office total, but it will still have to go up against the Academy’s notorious homophobia. With those things in mind, I’m still placing my bets on either Milk or Slumdog Millionaire come February.

As I stated in an earlier post, 2008 has, so far, been a weak year for movies. The likely contenders are turning out to be about as to be as viable as any of those guys who ran for the Republican presidential nomination. (Changeling and Doubt are just two recent pictures to be slain by critical swords.) For films like Slumdog Millionaire and Milk, along with potential contenders The Dark Knight and WALL-E, a Best Picture win doesn’t look like a long-shot anymore. We just gotta have hope. 

Oscar Predictions Updated Nov. 8, 2008. 

Mark your calendars. The second-highest grossing film of all time (domestic) and biggest superhero film ever is coming to a store near you on Dec. 9.  Amazon.com is taking pre-orders for the incomparable Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, as I type this. (It’s also available on Blu-ray Disc and as a Two-Disc Special Edition.)

The December DVD date makesThe Dark Knight a super stocking stuffer this holiday season, and it also gives the picture (and, of course, Heath Ledger) a big push ahead of this year’s Oscar balloting. Nomination ballots go out on Dec. 26.  

I may not love the film, but I’m rooting for it. The Oscars need a big audience this year, and there’s no faster way to record ratings than to nominate The Dark Knight for anything it’s eligible for.  

Variety’s Anne Thompson is reporting that Sony Picture Classics has fired the first shot this Oscar season. The distributor announced that it has just sent out Oscar screeners for the indie drama Frozen River. Melissa Leo’s performance as a struggling single mother in the film has generated Oscar buzz since Sundance. Of course, being the only truly buzzworthy part of this year’s lackluster festival certainly helped.

We non-Academy folks are still waiting for a DVD release date.

Warner is getting serious, so serious, about its The Dark Knight Oscar campaign. Reuters is reporting that the house of Bat will re-release the picture in IMAX theaters and, potentially, conventional movie houses come January. That’s in the heart of Oscar campaign season, with nominations due in mid-January, with a late-January nomination announcement.

What this means is that Warner is confident that The Dark Knight will already get attention from major precursors (Golden Globes, BFCA, LA & NY Film Critics, etc.), which announce nominations and winners in December.

Now the only question is, when is Warner going to release the Bat on DVD? Does the January release mean the earliest we can expect a disc set will be in our Easter baskets? Stay tuned.

Related:
Aug. 17 - The Dark Knight is in - Oscar Predictions Updated
Aug. 16 - The Dark Knight beats Star Wars today
July 31 - Will The Dark Knight crrrack boff pow WALL•E’s Best Picture Oscar chances?

“Can two men reproduce?”
“No, but God knows we keep trying.”

I’m a non believer when it comes to Milk Academy Award talk. The trailer doesn’t do much to persuade me, Oscar-wise. While it does have the crusader story going for it, Milk still looks like a Gus Van Sant film. The trailer pushes it ever so slightly into art house Van Sant territory and not studio Van Sant. Could it be the perfect bridge between the two that at least gets a screenplay Oscar? Van Sant did direct Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Good Will Hunting screenplay allowing the words “Academy Award winner Ben Affleck” to grace movie ads everywhere.  He can’t do worse with a Harvey Milk biopic.

Beyond the cynacism displayed above, I must say that I’m freaking excited about the film. Here’s the trailer:
[youtube unu-9vM9VZw]

Milk hits theaters Nov. 26.

There’s buzz, and then there’s deafening noise. With $470 million in the bank and now a serious chance at challenging Titanic for the top spot, The Dark Knight is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored. It has a lot against it. It’s a sequel. It’s a superhero movie. But–and I keep hammering at this–the Academy needs a big ratings year.

General consensus would have you believe that The Dark Knight is one of the best motion pictures in years. Some people have said it’s the best movie they’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t go that far, but The Dark Knight is the kind of steamroller that, at the end of the year, more people will remember than a No Country for Old Men. Gosh darn it, people love it. Even the critics are on its side (Metacritic: 82/100, Rotten Tomatoes: 94/100).

I don’t think it’s a question of if The Dark Knight will be nominated for Best Picture. Now, I think it’s a question of whether it will win the top prize. The film won’t get much love from critics groups, with the exception of the Broadcast Film Critics Association. It will be telling in January if BFCA goes for the Bat in a big way. If New York and Los Angeles critics go for it in December, the game is over. Until then, it’s a waiting game.

Updated Oscar Predictions - August 17,2008

Will David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button get all the attention Oscar watchers are predicting? Will Heath Ledger get a nomination or even a win for The Dark Knight? Will WALL•E at least get a nod for Best Picture?  

It’s never too early to start making wild predictions.  Hell, Entertainment Weekly started doing it as soon as No Country for Old Men won Best Picture in February. So check out my first set of Oscar predictions.  

Goal for the weekend: Play the Oscar prediction game. It’s July, and the Oscar year is more than half over. There aren’t many contenders yet, which means I’ll be making, um, educated guesses based on pedigree, prestige, etc.

What I know already is that it is going to be a very different year for Oscar compared to last year. Studios are shuttering their indie labels. Paramount Vantage (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood), Picturehouse, Warner Independent (Good Night, and Good Luck), New Line Cinema (The Lord of the Rings). All gone or absorbed into the main studio.  The indie bubble is bursting and with it may go some Oscar hopefuls. 

Check back Sunday for more.