Make your bets: Seasons big week rolling
Short of Oscar week, the next seven-day period is the biggest of the award season by far and it all kicked off this morning with the ultra-predictable announcement by the Producers Guild Of America of its list of nominees for the Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year in theatrical motion pictures.
No surprises here with front-runners "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button", "Frost/Nixon", "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Milk" joined by the year's biggest box-office hit and No. 2 all-time domestic champ, "The Dark Knight," to take the five spots. "Knight's" increasing Best Picture Oscar hopes would have been dashed if the money-loving PGA had dissed it, but now pundits everywhere will probably be filling in their fifth Academy slot with "Dark Knight" as well, especially if it lands a DGA nomination for Christopher Nolan on Thursday.
Some caution should be heeded though by gleeful Warner Bros publicists. The PGA list, while fairly accurately mirroring Academy Best Picture choices in recent years, is usually off by one and rarely goes five for five. Yes, "Doubt," "The Reader," "Defiance," "Revolutionary Road," "Gran Torino", "The Wrestler" and "Wall-E," there is still hope ("Wall-E" did make the PGA animated films category, joining "Bolt" and "Kung Fu Panda").
Speaking of "Doubt," it's strategy of setting itself apart from other specialty releases and going relatively wide over the holiday break seems to be paying off. This weekend it joined "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (at about $80 million in 11 days) and "Slumdog Millionaire" as the only real Oscar contenders to also make the box-office top 10, a good psychological advantage during the Academy voting period. "Doubt" placed 8th with $5 million, a strong hold dropping only 8% and now totaling about $19 million overall. Of course $19 million is chump change compared with what "Dark Knight" pulled in an afternoon during its heyday. If the Caped Crusader does make both the PGA and DGA lists, it will certainly complicate "Doubt's" hoped-for climb into that fifth slot in Oscar's Best Picture circle.
Even more impressive among current contenders is "Slumdog" with $4.8 million, nearly matching "Doubt's" gross while playing on less than half the number of screens. It has $28 million in two months and impressively hit the top 10 with only 612 engagements, with grosses going up 11% from the previous week. It was the ONLY film to show an increase. This Hindi hit has yet to make a false move this award season.
Box-office hits and misses aside, by this time next week we should have a pretty clear picture of where this season is heading. The effect on Academy voters should be interesting to note as their balloting continues through Jan. 12 during a period where five, count 'em, five groups hold their official award galas and six guilds announce their nominations (including the all-important PGA, DGA and WGA). Call it all the Super Bowl of Oscar influencing.
Monday, Jan. 5: PGA noms announced and the New York Film Critics Circle has their dinner where "Milk" will be crowned Best Picture of the year.
Tuesday, Jan. 6: The Palm Springs Film Festival Gala takes place with contenders like Sean Penn, Clint Eastwood, Anne Hathaway, Dustin Hoffman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Amy Adams, Ron Howard and others all making the trip to the desert this crunch week. Being seen getting awards doesn't hurt, man.
Interesting that the official opening of the fest isn't until a couple of days later, but the gala, which is usually held on a weekend got stuck between the New Year's holiday and the glut of other award shows being moved earlier and earlier every year. The PSIFF organizers had no choice but to go for a Tuesday, the only date with no competition in order to guarantee their honorees would show up for the prime photo op.
Wednesday, Jan. 7: The Writers Guild announces its feature film nominees while balloting closes for the DGA, BFCA and HFPA. Meanwhile "Milk" milks the Q&A circuit one more time with events at the Pacific Design Center and the ArcLight.
Thursday, Jan. 8: The DGA announces its feature film nominees. The Broadcast Film Critics Assn.'s Critics Choice Awards takes place at the Santa Monica Civic broadcast live on VH1. "Milk" and "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button" lead the parade with 8 nods each. Often the BFCA choices are good Oscar indicators, but nobody's perfect.
Friday, Jan. 9: Let the Globe parties begin. And the American Film Institute holds its annual cozy luncheon to explain their choice for top 10 movie and television shows of the year. This is when we find out how "Wendy and Lucy" made the list but not "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Revolutionary Road."
Saturday, Jan. 10: BAFTA has its annual tea right in the middle of their voting period so expect contenders to show up to schmooze the Brits who don't announce their nominees until the incredibly late date of Jan. 15, three days after Academy Award nomination balloting closes, for god's sake. Doesn't this group want to influence the Oscars too????
Sunday, Jan. 11: It's the Golden Globes and nobody is on strike so expect to see LOTS of stars other than just Mary Hart this year. NBC broadcasts it all live to the east coast starting at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. With only one day left before Oscar ballots are due, the effect of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.'s choices on the Academy will be negligible but historically they often match up and the group always lives up to its reputation for throwing a great party. Even though their gala had to be called off due to the WGA strike last year, Globe winners Daniel Day Lewis, Marion Cotillard and Javier Bardem all repeated at the Oscars and their surprising Best Drama winner, "Atonement," which had been snubbed by all the guilds came back from the presumed dead after that night to nab an upset Best Picture Oscar nomination.
Monday, Jan. 12: The American Cinema Editors "Eddie" nominations are announced (can you wait?). Final Oscar nomination ballots are due at 5 p.m. The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. hands out awards to Sean Penn, Sally Hawkins and "Wall-E."
Then it will all be over, a week that will live in glittering infamy. Contenders will take a rest and wait until 5:38 a.m. on Jan. 22 to see if any of this pre-Oscar awards whirlwind means squat to the all knowing, all seeing, and hopefully (for the sake of potential nominees) all impressionable Academy of Motion Picture Arts &Sciences.
Check this space for coverage of all the fun. It IS fun , right?
-- Pete Hammond
Photo: Warner Bros.
the dark knight nominated. thats how it should be.
Posted by: shirley | January 05, 2009 at 07:36 PM
We voted for Obama for change(If you didn't vote for obama you still know that it is a miracle that he won also I'm asking for a nomination not a win I haven't seen all the other nominees so I can't judge). Why not nominate the dark knight for best picture and it'll be the first superhero movie to ever do so.
Wall-E would only follow in the footsteps of Beauty and the Beast. Besides Wall-E is no better than Toy story 1&2, Ratatouille, or finding nemo which all did as well critically and did better at the box office but were not nominated.
Besides the dark knight has higher ratings on rotten tomatoes and metacritic than The curious case of benjamin button, Frost/Nixon, revolutionary road, Doubt, and is equal to milk and slumdog give or take a few points here and there. And it has higher ratings than a lot of previous best picture winners such as Titanic, A beautiful mind, gladiator, crash, etc....(list goes on look it up).
So in all the academy needs a BOOST in ratings due to last years low ratings and most importantly the academy needs change
Posted by: Marv | January 06, 2009 at 05:39 PM
Haven't heard it mentioned yet, but if Winslet and Leo are not sleeping together I'd be greatly surprised, especially after the glimpses we got of her winning her awards and her comments about who she really loves, and the over the top body language going on at the table, etc. Both Leo AND her hubby seemed uncomfortable with her outpouring of affection towards her movie star partner. Hubby looked embarrassed and probably wished he had at least shaved. Compared to Leo, he was very scruffy appearing and probably had most of the hotties in the audience saying, "Well, no wonder. LOOK at him"
Posted by: John Bargas | January 12, 2009 at 03:48 PM