If you’re anything like me, this is the time of year when you get all a-flutter about the impending Academy Awards and start lining up all the little duckies in a row to see which films could stand out as possible candidates.
OK, maybe I need a life. Still, it’s a game for me, really, and if you’re going to play it well, you have to be informed. Of course, industry watchers know that the studios stockpile their Oscar bait for November and December release so the films are fresh in the minds of the voters: the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It’s a well-established strategy that can make for a long two months of movie going if you intend to catch all the films in time to make informed decisions about your Oscar picks.
Fortunately, enough contenders have released already this year that we can start the game now, so read on to learn which films are getting the early Oscar buzz, and which upcoming flicks might make the grade.
What We’ve Seen So Far
Road to Perdition
From the short list of possible contenders already released, the dark gangster drama Road to Perdition stands out as the most Oscar-worthy of the lot. Starring two-time Best Actor winner Tom Hanks, who can do no wrong in the eyes of the Academy, and directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty), this film about a ’30s hit man who ends up protecting his son from his boss has a better-than-good shot at getting several nominations. It’s a shoo-in for at least a couple production nods (including, possibly, cinematography, costumes, set design, score), but whether it can go all the way to the top remains to be seen.
Signs
M. Night Shyamalan’s eerie Signs might make the nomination list as well. The Academy loved the writer/director’s first box office hit The Sixth Sense, and Signs made more money and a bigger splash than Sense. Still, critics ran hot and cold on this one. If I were to bet, I’d place it on the screenplay list as well as possibly garnering some notice in the acting categories, especially Joaquin Phoenix as an everyday guy doing extraordinary things for his family.
The Indie Factor
Although there’s a lot of talk about the heartbreaking The Good Girl, the disturbing One Hour Photo, the seriously twisted Igby Goes Down, and even the weird romantic comedy Punch-Drunk Love, these films will probably earn their accolades in the acting, directing or screenwriting categories rather than on the Best Picture front (Adam Sandler? I can’t believe there’s even a possibility). But you never know–these days indie films just keep getting better and better, and the Academy gets quirkier and quirkier. The one real possibility for a Best Picture nomination of all the indies out there now is the spirited and endearing My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It could very well be the Babe of 2002 come Oscar time–on sheer popularity alone.
What’s Still To Come
8 Mile
Ah, what’s to come, indeed? There are lots of contenders, starting with Curtis Hanson‘s 8 Mile on Nov. 8, starring rapper Eminem (aka Marshall Mathers III) as a punk kid trying to break out of his urban surroundings. It’s highly doubtful the bad boy himself will get a nomination (imagine the size of his head if he did), but in the talented hands of Oscar-winning Hanson (L.A. Confidential), the film itself has potential.
The Quiet American
Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American, which releases on Nov. 22 in Los Angeles and New York for a one-week run to Academy notice, stars Michael Caine as a jaded British journalist and Brendan Fraser as a young idealistic American CIA agent. It’s set in 1950s Saigon, based on the novel by Graham Greene and both men are in love with the same Vietnamese woman. Classic British book? Period costumes? Love story? Sounds like a winner to me.
The Indie Factor, Take Two
More indie contenders are on the way in the coming months, starting with Adaptation on Dec. 6. The latest from director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman, the talent behind the ultra-quirky Being John Malkovich, tells the story of a screenwriter, aptly named Charlie Kaufman, who becomes disillusioned in the most delightfully odd ways while trying to adapt a book into a movie. The film’s one problem? It stars Nicolas Cage. Its saving grace? It stars Nicolas Cage, who really can act, given the right part, and Meryl Streep, a perennial Oscar favorite.
One week later, on Dec. 13, Alexander Payne, the highly original director who brought us Election, takes another stab at dark comedy with About Schmidt, about an insurance salesman (Jack Nicholson) who decides his life has meant nothing up to now and sets out to correct it.
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The Holiday Onslaught
Starting Dec. 18, the Oscar race begins in earnest. We have Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers , the second installment of the trilogy, which touts bigger, better battles and more intense, dramatic performances. The Academy may never award Best Picture honors to a fantasy saga, but the film is still bound to get a nomination.
Dec. 20 brings the bulk of the holiday contenders: The 25th Hour, starring Edward Norton and directed by Spike Lee (who never seems to win, but should someday); The Antwone Fisher Story, the directorial debut of last year’s Best Actor winner Denzel Washington, who also stars; and, of course, Martin Scorsese‘s long awaited Gangs of New York, about the mean streets of 1860s New York and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a man trying to avenge his father’s death.
Gangs was supposed to be Oscar bait last year but has finally made it to the boards, and with the delay, young DiCaprio finds himself the star of not one but two potential Oscar winners. He’ll appear on Dec. 25 in Steven Spielberg‘s Catch Me If You Can as the youngest person to ever make the FBI 10 Most Wanted List–the real-life con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr.
Last but not least, we have two female empowerment movies releasing on Dec. 27, just in time to squeeze into contention. In The Hours, directed by Billy Elliot‘s Stephen Daldry, three woman (Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep) interact with Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway in a story that spans the 20th century. Please–this has got Oscar written all over it. Then there’s Chicago, the big-screen adaptation of the hit Bob Fosse Broadway musical, starring Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones as two song-and-dance gals on trial for murder. Moulin Rouge paved the way for this one, folks; movie musicals are now tres chic. If the film can live up to the spectacular stage production, then we’ve got a contender. It’s exciting, isn’t it?
Look for more Oscar picks next week when I look at the acting categories.
