12/4/08

Here we go!  Yeah, I know, nominations for the Spirit Awards and Golden Satellites have been out for a few days now, but we all know that the AWARDS SEASON, that relentless march in ever-increasing lockstep toward our February 22 date with Oscar destiny, begins with the National Board of Review.  Yeah, nobody really knows who the National Board of Review is*, but we know something more important than that:  they're FIRST!  And this is what they said:

Best Film: Slumdog Millionaire

Top Ten Films (in alphabetical order):
Burn After Reading
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Defiance
Frost/Nixon
Gran Torino
Milk
Wall-E
The Wrestler

Best Foreign Language Film: Mongol

Top Five Foreign Films (in alphabetical order):
Edge of Heaven
Let the Right One In
Roman de Gare
A Secret
Waltz with Bashir

Best Documentary: Man on Wire

Top Five Documentaries (in alphabetical order):
American Teen
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Dear Zachary
Encounters at the End of the World
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Top 10 Independent Films of the Year:
Frozen River
In Bruges
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Mr. Foe
Rachel Getting Married
Snow Angels
Son of Rambow
Wendy and Lucy
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
The Visitor

Best Animated Feature: Wall-E

Best Director: David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Actor: Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino

Best Actress: Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, Milk

Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Ensemble Cast: Doubt

Best Original Screenplay: Nick Schenk, Gran Torino

Best Adapted Screenplay (tie): Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire, and Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionaire

Best Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Viola Davis, Doubt

Best Directorial Debut: Courtney Hunt, Frozen River

Spotlight Award (tie): Melissa Leo, Frozen River, and Richard Jenkins, The Visitor

The BVLGARI Award for NBR Freedom of Expression: Trumbo

William K. Everson Award For Film History: Molly Haskell and Andrew Sarris

So, what have we learned?  No much, obviously, unless you live in one of the major media markets where any of these movies has actually played yet.  I have to say I was surprised to see The Dark Knight claim no awards, although I kinda expect the New York Film Critics Circle (announcing December 13) to represent their best shot at an early win.  We'll know more when the Golden Globe nominations come out Tuesday if DK is going to be an awards-season player (because, honestly, it's much more the Globes' kind of movie than the Academy's, and they're going to need that early support).  I have high hopes for Slumdog Millionaire, Milk and Gran Torino, although it could take a month or more before I see any of those.  For all my love of David Fincher, the oh-so-morbid-sounding Curious Case of Benjamin Button scares the crap out of me.  Other interesting (and as yet unseen) titles in the mix include Frost/Nixon, Defiance and The Wrestler.  

But the biggest surprise here is the total lack of surprise.  I correctly guessed Millionaire and Hathaway before the awards were announced (I had guessed The Wrestler's Mickey Roarke as Best Actor, Tropic Thunder's Robert Downey Jr. as Best Supporting Actor, and respecting their love of a commercially minded director working with a large budget, guessed Christopher Nolan for Knight as Best Director) and there are none of those NBOR specials like picking Quills as Best Picture or Campbell Scott as Best Actor for Roger Dodger.  We didn't really LEARN anything today, a couple of movies and performances just managed to claim pole position.  If there's a real surprise, it's that the Board resisted what has to be a certain pressure to go with The Dark Knight.  At a time when award show ratings are plummeting and major newspaper critics are getting pink-slipped right and left, Big Award could really use a movie the public would rally around rather than another art house flick few will ever see.  Don't get me wrong, while I have yet to see a better movie than Knight this year, I'm not saying anyone SHOULD pick it for that reason, but don't tell me it's not in the back of people's heads...

One thing that's fun about this time of year is that you get to see how each organization's personality is showcased by exactly what kind of awards they choose to give.  What do we learn about the NBOR from this list?  They're trying not to get overly pinned down.  No commingling of Regular, Independent, Foreign Language or Documentary Films, in fact, they pick the "Top Ten Films of the Year" one of which is NOT the movie they picked as Best Picture ("Ten Runners-Up" would be a better way to put it, I think...)  Between their winners and runners-up, they've actually selected a Top 33 movies list, while taking time to single out all kinds of Breakthroughs and Spotlights (Question:  isn't Viola Davis a pretty familiar face to qualify for a "Breakout" award?), not wanting to be seen as "eliminating" any more movies than they absolutely have to (although this pretty much ends the Oscar candidacy of Jumper and 10,000 B.C.).  And just when is somebody gonna pick Best 3-D Movie in one of these things (adding that to my To-Do List...)?

Just some stuff to chew on.  More thoughts will follow when the Globes make narrow their list on Tuesday and we really start to get a sense of what is, and is not possible, in a pivotal Oscar season.

*The National Board of Review was founded in 1909 to prove that movies actually were an art form and not just smut after New York City banned film exhibition on those very grounds.  In the end, their "seal of approval" for artistic movies turned them into a de facto censorship organization until around 1950.  The Board started putting out lists of the years' best movies in the late 20's and kept doing that even after they stopped stifling the very artistic freedom they were founded to advance.  So endith the history lesson.