Oscars 2010

[Ben]

No. That would be Space Chimps 2: Electric Boogieloo.

[EricJ]

I've never once expected TS3 to be a frontrunner for Best Picture. As I've said before, it's a little idiotic for Disney to be pushing for it the way that they have.

Disney was pushing it?...Nnno. They were not the ones pushing it: The quoted exec was just surprised and riding the wave to "suddenly" notice that everyone else was...Like it had escaped their notice for the last eight years since we tried to nominate "Incredibles" for Picture and "Ratatouille" for Actor.
Like Beauty&Beast, it was seen as the "first" front-runner out of the gate this year for getting so much runaway populist support and inner-child critical mania before we could think of a second nominee, and we were too stubborn to let it go--Just that, well, we didn't think they liked Social Network all that much, until the Critics' awards came out.

[Bill1978]

I'm with you EricJ in regards to how that Time announcement seems to help lend support to the awards circuit. Cause really, to be honest the craze of Face book was actually 2 years ago. That's when it changed the world, not this year. I do feel this one is more of a publicity stunt for the movie than actually honouring the right person.

I thought Silence Of The Lambs was the frontrunner for that year's Oscar season since it was released in February, while Beauty was more of a fanciful vote. Just like I think Toy Story 3 is more of a fanciful vote than a true serious contender.

[EricJ]

Everyone agreed Lambs was one of the best movies of that year--It was just that Oscar pundit-ing made it stylish to complain about how everyone knows the Academy "never remembers" anything before October, so most predictors made a great handwringing show of giving it up for dead that year and blaming the Academy for it.
(It was part of the cynicism about spring-Lambs in the first place that caused the columnists to say, "Well, since they'll never remember the best film, what do we have left, apart from that Disney work-in-progress screening?")

...Which, like predictions that the Academy "hated fantasies" like Return of the King, is always a refreshing reminder that reason sometimes wins out and Dewey sometimes doesn't defeat Truman.
I'm unfortunately putting my website Contest bet this year on the Old People's Facebook-Showoff movie--But if, like most smartypants second-guessers, I'm pleasantly surprised at the last minute, it'll be worth losing out on the prize.

[estefan]

I think The Social Network has been the front-runner for Best Picture for a while. I expect it will also take Director, Adapted Screenplay and Editing. I will say this right now: the Oscar for Best Picture will never go to an animated feature. They're just way too biased against the medium to give it one. This is the same group of people who in '95, gave Babe a Best Picture nomination over Toy Story. Now, I like Babe as much as the next person, but looking back, it seems odd that they gave it to the talking pig picture over the revolutionary picture that also showed computer animation as a serious form of storytelling.

Moving on, what do you think are Alan Menken's chances of winning best song for the fifth time? A bunch of people are putting money on Burlesque winning the award, but I don't see many Academy members actually watching that one, when they have more interesting screeners to watch. I wouldn't be surprised if "I See the Light" wins it as it does come in a pivotal moment of the film (you can even compare it to the ballroom scene from Beauty and the Beast, since it's the main love ballad and is when the film especially takes advantage of the 3-D format).

P.S. I look forward to Eric's entertaining reasoning to why Babe got in over Toy Story. I know he gets an unfortunate wrap on here, but I do find his thoughts genuinely interesting.

[Ben]

Everyone agreed Lambs was one of the best movies of that year--

-- Not everyone, Eric.

[James]

Ain't that the truth! Even discounting Beauty and the Beast there was still a nominee better than Lambs -- JFK.

And how in the world did The Prince of Tides get on that list! Yikes, that was an awful film!

[Ben]

It's another conspiracy!

[EricJ]

P.S. I look forward to Eric's entertaining reasoning to why Babe got in over Toy Story. I know he gets an unfortunate wrap on here, but I do find his thoughts genuinely interesting.

There...was...a....MANIA for Babe in 1995, and it was one prime example of the 5th-place "Cuddly favorite" nominee, eg. Field of Dreams, The Full Monty, Life is Beautiful, or, well, 00's Pixar.
Toy Story 1 was seen as an influential "experiment' in making humanoid characters with them computer-polygon thing, but it wasn't until TS2 (and Jessie's song) that Buzz and Woody ever attracted quite the cuddly inner-child gushiness that '95 grownups had for saying "That'll do, pig." The mania even made a major star out of bit-player James Cromwell.
Babe 2, nnnnot so much, but Randy Newman deserved to have gotten his Best Song for that one.

(As for Prince of Tides in '92, that was on what was the almost religious Hollywood reverence at the time for Barbara Streisand directing.
Streisand...Hollywood...(ahem)....(tactful whistle)...'Nuff said. )

[American_dog_2008]

I wanted Konferenz der Tiere to make it to the animation submission.

[Bill1978]

I thought The King's Speech was the front runner for Best Picture this year. With The Social Network getting the populist push for Best Picture. In previous years with only 5 nominees, I believe The Social Network would do a The Dark Knight calls of how out of touch the Acadmey is when it didn't get nominated. It's lucky it's in the era of 10 nominees. Which I personally hope disappears once Hollywoood realises that popular movies doesn't mean you have to check y our brain at the door. I find it better for only 5 noms for Best Picture as opposed to what appears to be a lucky dip approach to fill in positions 7-10

[Ben]

10 Best Pictures at the Oscars does two things: yes, it allows some more popular choices to get in. But they're there "for show" and don't really stand a chance (Avatar vs. Hurt Locker), unless they are truly worthy (Return Of The King). The other thing it does is to open it up so wide that there are films that seem to get in that really don't deserve it but are there because they're "big" or "important" releases.

But, then again, Hollywood isn't really making the kind of decent films that won critical AND commercial praise like back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s anymore...

[Whippet Angel]

I haven't seen The King's Speech yet, but I'd really like to after hearing so many good things about it. I was a little disappointed that Colin Firth didn't win best actor last year (his performance in A Single Man was outstanding). Perhaps this'll be his year??

I'm a huge fan, if you can't tell.

[EricJ]

10 Best Pictures at the Oscars does two things: yes, it allows some more popular choices to get in. (

And as we found out last year, they never get in anyway:
After '05, the voting period was shortened by a month (to try and shut up the Weinsteins' annual marketing-blitz "bribe"), and the result was that without that extra crucial month to think and catch up on screeners, busy Academy voters didn't have TIME to think up their own creative choices:
Pressed for the last minute, they ended up doing what every other Net fanboy does anyway--Parrot whatever highbrow favorites the Critics' Circle/NBOR agree on, and whatever gullible star-driven Oscar-bait the Golden Globes fall for (anybody want to guess whether "Inception" and either of the Johnny Depp movies make the cut?), and assume the others knew what they were doing.

Apart from trying to get Pixar nominated , the "10 Picture" stunt last year was deliberately hands-on trying to fix the one real reason why "Oscar ratings keep slipping", namely that the Picture choices were becoming more obscure and uninteresting, and no mainstream favorites were being remembered as in the Chicago/Return of the King days. Star Trek and Harry Potter VI started bragging in public about their chances with "the return of audience movies".
And what happened in reality?--We got TWICE AS MANY last-guess Critics Circle art-films and dopey Golden Globes, like anybody seriously expected "A Serious Man" or "Inglorious Basterds" to take Best Picture.

[estefan]

But, then again, Hollywood isn't really making the kind of decent films that won critical AND commercial praise like back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s anymore...

Umm...

Inception, Toy Story 3, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Despicable Me, How to Train Your Dragon, Shutter Island, Tangled, The Town, The Social Network. Even smaller films like The Fighter and Black Swan which aren't exactly the sort of films that grab mainstream attention have been doing very well at the box-office.