12/10/08

Now this is more like it!   A year ago at this time, four major film award bodies had selected their winners and there was already virtually no chance that anything but No Country for Old Men, the favorite of three of them, would win the Academy Award for Best Picture.  There Will Be Blood, which pocketed the other, tried its' best to generate a little drama, and Atonement even managed a Golden Globe upset, but in the end the 2007 Awards Season was little but a dreary march to coronation for a movie I didn't even like.  But my minority opinion aside, we've just got too much media and too many damn critics circles to tolerate a season of Uni-Mindism.  I want variety, I want to believe that people are picking the movie they sincerely enjoyed, and so far this year, I like what I'm seeing.  In the three days of this week, three Critics Circles have selected three different movies as Best Picture, creating a complex and intriguing field which is, again, harder to form an artistic opinion on since the movies themselves are mostly still unseen by all but credentialed critics and (in some cases) residents of New York and Los Angeles.  A field is beginning to form, but allow me to enjoy it while it's yet to become a drumbeat.  Your winners from the aforementioned cities and the early-rising Washington DC critics, please:

BEST PICTURE:
Milk (NY)
Slumdog Millionaire (DC)
WALL*E (LA)

BEST ACTOR
Sean Penn, Milk (LA, NY)
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler (DC)

BEST ACTRESS
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky (LA, NY)
Meryl Streep, Doubt (DC)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Josh Brolin, Milk (NY)
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (DC, LA)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (LA, NY)
Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married (DC)

BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire (DC, LA)
Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky (NY)

BEST SCREENPLAY
Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire (Adapted DC)
Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky (LA)
Jenny Lumet, Rachel Getting Married (NY, Original DC)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
WALL*E (DC, NY)
Waltz With Bashir (LA)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (NY)
Let the Right One In (DC)
Still Life (LA)

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Man on Wire (DC, LA, NY)

Add in last week's National Board of Review winners, and what have we learned?  Man on Wire is clearly the documentary of choice, going 4-for-4, and WALL*E is a de factor 4-for-4, having been passed over as Animated Feature only by the LA critics who went all the way and picked it as Best Picture.  Meanwhile, Cruz has captured 3 of 4 awards in that most Woody Allen-friendly of categories, Best Supporting Actress.  Heath Ledger's much-praised Dark Knight performance has already become the most honored by anyone ever playing a comic book villain, confirming buzz that many dismissed as fanboy wishful thinking (as beliefs that Knight itself could emerge as a Best Picture contender may be proving to have been, although the LA and DC critics did select it as a runner-up).  He's been matched by Brolin, whose acclaim for Milk can't help but be boosted by his amazing work in W..  Foreign Language Film remains a totally wide-open field.  Across the board, we've yet to see a Daniel Day-Lewis type Awards Season landslide building in any category.

These early awards are important to build buzz and try to establish consensus, but would-be contenders like Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button don't yet need to consider themselves finished.  It's hard to regroup if you're not one of the 10 movies selected as Best Picture nominees by the Golden Globes, but it does happen:  just 3 short years ago, Crash was still empty-handed after the Globe nominees were announced (while Brokeback Mountain had emerged as the early hammer, interrupted only by Munich's DC Critics win).  But we'll compare notes again tomorrow and see if the Globes have any surprises to toss us.

And as I think I mentioned, they'd BETTER!  Without surprises, the awards season is little but one long chance to ask yourself "When the hell is that gonna open in my city?!?"