Welcome to the tightest Oscar race in years. That fact was made clear this morning when four films put themselves in a position to actually take it all, an unusually high number of movies with a real chance to win Best Picture: and yes, wait for it, These are your new co-front-runners, folks, based on the fact they are also nominated for Film Editing, the most important category to also be nominated in if you want to have a prayer at Best Pic. (True, Birdman managed to become the first movie in 34 years to win the top prize without a corresponding editing nomination last year, but I would put an asterisk next to it because that film was sold with the idea that it was a single shot and cut in the camera, so it doesn’t count.)
Two of the four, Spotlight and The Big Short, actually have all the key components most often needed for a shot at the brass ring with key writing, directing and acting nods as well. The Revenant and Mad Max fall more into the epic category and failed to land screenplay nods. It is rare for a movie to take Best Picture without a corresponding nod for its script. In fact, it is so rare that the last film to do it was Titanic in 1997, which managed 14 nominations but not one for James Cameron’s script. Before that, you would have to go back 32 years to 1965’s The Sound Of Music, and before that to 1948’s Hamlet (and that movie already had a pretty good script written by William Shakespeare).
So going by Oscar history, it would appear the two front-runners of the new front-runners are indeed the true-life issue-oriented films in the race, Spotlight and The Big Short. They share the gravitas Oscar voters often love to see in their Best Picture choices but both of them, with six and five nominations, respectively, fall far behind the leading totals of 12 nominations for The Revenant and 10 nominations (but nothing for acting) for Mad Max: Fury Road. The films with the most nominations usually — though not every single year — are more likely to take Best Pic since it means they have more support throughout the entire Academy, which now participates in voting in all 24 categories.
See what I mean about this being a tight year? Prognosticators may have a tough time calling this one.
One thing is for sure though: With so many films having a real shot, and so many major studios involved for a change, the money should be flowing and the campaigning fierce in the second phase. All of them are in it to win it. And don’t count out upstart indie A24’s Room, which also has key writing, directing and acting nominations to go along with its Best Picture designation.
That movie packs a real emotional punch — another key element with traditional appeal to voters. For me, in a morning full of them, perhaps the biggest shocker was the omission of presumed front-runner Ridley Scott for The Martian in the Best Director race. He was just DGA nominated, and I predicted in my DGA story that there would likely be one of those nominees who wouldn’t make the Academy’s cut — but I never dreamed it would be Scott. Room’s Lenny Abrahamson, who had not been a big part of the awards conversation so far, grabbed the Oscar slot instead, a very deserved nomination and clearly an acknowledgement by the Directors Branch of the true difficulty of making a movie largely set in a 10-x-10 room. Make no mistake, today was also a very big day for Room, which had failed to make the DGA, PGA and WGA (where it was ineligible) lists but scored in all those categories with Oscar.
Without the Director and Editing nominations, 20th Century Fox’s other nominee (in addition to Revenant) The Martian would seem to face an uphill battle in the Picture race, as does Steven Spielberg’s Bridge Of Spies and Fox Searchlight’s Brooklyn for the same reasons. Spielberg and Scott — both initially thought to be sure things at one time in the Director contest — were not alone among stunning omissions today (I hate the word “snub”; they just didn’t get enough votes). This is one of the rare years where Harvey Weinstein doesn’t have a horse in the Best Picture race and he must be disappointed that neither Carol — and deserving director Todd Haynes — nor The Hateful Eight got in despite a total of nine nominations between them. Interestingly, Haynes’ 2002 film Far From Heaven was similar to Carol in that it was a romantic drama set in the 1950s and also got acting, writing, cinematography and music nominations but, like Carol, ignored in Picture or Director.
