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The Oscar Recession
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Wall Street's collapse is hitting Sunset Boulevard, narrowing the field for Best Picture. Is Australia coming too late? Plus, watch the Oscar movie trailers.
Come February, Harvey Weinstein could be vindicated in his epic battle with super producer Scott Rudin over the release date of their Oscar bait film The Reader.
Weinstein fought like crazy to have the film—which stars Kate Winslet as an ex-Nazi war criminal—released earlier than planned in order to squeeze it into theaters before the end of the year, and qualify for the 2008 Oscar race.
Now, as Oscar buzz builds around the movie, it’s looking like a smart call. While almost any serious movie about Third Reich guilt that doesn’t star Tom Cruise stands a decent shot come Academy Award time, The Reader has an extra advantage in this year’s race: the competition is weak.
Despite its lowbrow superhero pedigree, The Dark Knight has stepped into the Best Picture void thanks to huge box office, critical acclaim and Heath Ledger.
With only seven weeks left to qualify for Hollywood’s biggest dog and pony show, Wall Street’s collapse is hitting Sunset Boulevard. As studios scramble to reign in costs, the slowdown is changing the dynamics of the Oscar race, and narrowing the Best Picture field.
Since full-fledged Oscar campaigns can break the bank, some studios are pushing potential Academy Award into 2009, taking them out of the running. Paramount’s The Soloist, an uplifting tale of a schizo, homeless violinist, and Weinstein’s The Road, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s soul-crushing apocalypse novel, have both been pushed back to next year.
And to cut back on publicity costs, an unusually high number of films are also being released late in the season, which means they may not have time to build the word-of-mouth momentum to clinch votes. Many of this year’s potential nominees---including Brad-Pitt-Ages-Backwards-Epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Winslet and Dicaprio re-team Revolutionary Road, Will Smith weepie Seven Pounds, Baz Luhrmann’s war pic Australia, and Clint Eastwood’s second film in as many months, Gran Torino—have yet to be screened for critics.
Further narrowing the field, a number of big films with Academy Award pretensions have already crashed and burned in theaters. Oliver Stone’s W., Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies and Eastwood’s Changeling are only viable in the acting categories, not for the Best Picture slot.
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I don't think it's any secret that the movie industry is going down like a led balloon, fast. You see actors going on talk shows and willingly admitting their movies suck, and that's even more of a sign. I mean, what are you going to do?
It's interesting that a political movie like "W" would be panned by both Republicans and Democrats alike. Perhaps it's time to admit that Oliver Stone has gone the way of other great directors like Stephen Spielberg. Once great. But now cannot direct there way out of a paper bag.
Edits. . . "rein in" - not "reign in," please, in paragraph 4. And the login screen should be "fill out," not "fill-out."
Arg.
Please respect meat-world rules of grammar; please don't let the immediacy of the Web drag us down!!
Why the two references to Batman being "lowbrow" and "low subject matter?" Maybe back in the days of pulpy 10-cent comics, but not now. Comic books, graphic novels, whatever you want to call them, are succeeding as an industry in developing stories with a far more compelling, varied and vivid palette of creativity and talent than either the film or TV industries. While few were looking, comics grew up. And now it's time to stop looking down your nose at them.
What's funny to me is the growing backlash against "all these comic book movies" while seeing, as a reader of comics, that most of these adaptations pale in comparison to their source material. The darly shining exception is this "low" Batman film, which expertly draws inspiration from some of the best stories published in recent memory and adds to them in ways that only moviemakers can. That's what makes this one so special.
"The Curiours Case of ..." is three hours. Won't be seeing that. Isn't this one of the issues that is having a negative effect on movie ticket sales? Who wants to sit in the movie theater for three hours. Aside from the review, the most important factor in whether I will spend my time and money on a movie is the length of the film. An hour, forty-five is perfect. Two hours is pushing it. I broke my daughter's heart when I refused to see the Chronicles of Narnia sequel which clocked in at some ridiculous time, but I would've chewed my hand off if I had to sit through a two-hour, forty-five minute film. We settled for Baby Mama. Good, not great, but I was in and out of the theater without feeling like I'd given half my day. Am I the only one who checks the length of the movie? Surely, I can't be.
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