And the nominees are...

It has been quite a while since I last posted here. I have been trying to think of a new direction, a fresh take on the whole movie blog thing. While I haven’t come up with a long term solution I thought the movie awards season would be a good time to reemerge as a movie blogger.

What I want to do is give my take on who I think the nominees for best picture will be this year. The way I’ll go about doing that is I will explain a little bit about the process and then give my predictions. From there I will give a more detailed explanation as to why I chose what I did. I figure some of you may just be interested in the pure meat of who I think is going to be nominated and others of you might want to read more into the process. I had a lot of fun taking the afternoon to work through this so I hopefully you will find the process insightful. 

Here it goes...

For the past two years the Academy has nominated ten films for best picture as opposed to the previous five films. Before 2010, 1944 was the last year there were 10 nominations (Casablanca won best picture). In 2010 for a host of reasons, the Academy voted to go from 5 nominations to 10. I think the powder keg for this move was because the Dark Knight did not receive a nomination that year. 

After two years of 10 nominations the Academy voted to change the process again. The rules state there can be between 5 and 10 nominees. I think a big reason for this was that it was becoming a stretch to find 10 films that were “best picture” worthy when you had films like “The Kids are Alright” and even “Winter’s Bone” nominated. Both are fine films, the later much more so than the former in my opinion, but not best picture type films. So we stand today with 5-10 nominees. I’ll try and explain the voting process to the best of my understanding and as simply as possible. Academy members rank to five movies for best picture (the past two years they went to 10). Then the total number of ballots will be divided by 11 and that will give the minimum number of first place votes a movie needs to receive a best picture nomination. The ballots will get sorted based on first place votes and when a film scores the minimum number of votes it’s in. If it receives 10% greater than the minimum number the surplus votes will be redistributed to the highest ranked film on the ballot that hasn’t yet qualified (thanks to the LA Times for giving a concise explanation of the process, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/17/news/la-en-voting-20111117). What this does as far as my understanding is it constrains what gets nominated because to be nominated you need to be far up on the ballot list to receive votes. This way you won’t get some “much less worthy movie” nominated simply because a few people put it on their ballot list. It has to have a greater proportion of voters who think it is the best film of the year. 

This new process makes it a lot tougher to conjecture what the nominees will be because there is no fixed number. Unlike years past where I would simply be able to place films in a number slot, this year I have to determine what is going to get nominated based on the quality of the movies themselves.While I do think it’s better to have movies nominated based on their quality as opposed to simply getting the nominees up to 10, it does make for a much more arduous task. Couple that with the fact that it has been a pretty rough year for quality movies and you get quite a daunting task. 

Now that you have the scoop, let’s get to the meat. I tried to order them starting with the ones I am sure are going to get nominated and working my way down to less sure they will be nominated. 

Here they are, my predictions for the 2012 Academy Awards Best Picture nominees:

1. The Descendents
2. The Artist
3. Hugo
4. Midnight in Paris
5. Moneyball
6. Tree of Life
7. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
8. War Horse
9. Drive

You can stop here if you want, or if you’re interested to know why I picked what I did read on. First I’ll tell you why and then how and what data I used to come up with the nominees. 

The Descendents (one of my shoe-ins)

This movie has met critical acclaim and has been a huge hit at film festivals (I saw this film at the closing ceremonies for the Philadelphia Film Festival). Critics and the Academy both love Alexander Payne. His last movie “Sideways” (released 7 years ago) was nominated for best picture. He has this quarky way of commenting on humanity and especially the social interactions of life. In my opinion he is an Academy favorite and not only that the film meets a lot of other criteria. It’s a quite drama with a lot of social commentary. The Academy loves to nominate a drama. Also it falls right in the middle of the runtime that most nominees are: 1:50. Not only that but it was distributed by Fox Searchlight which always has at least one if not a couple nominees each year. Some might say distributor shouldn’t be considered since it isn’t actually part of the film but as you’ll see, I believe there is something to the distributor of nominated films.

The Artist (another shoe-in)

Before it came out I would have never expected this sort of movie to get nominated. It’s a black and white silent film. A year ago I would have told you making a silent film was a sure way to stick yourself in the art house and nothing more. But this is a really well done film.  Instead of being out of date it harkens back to a bygone cinematic era and leaves people wishing there were more films like this (hopefully it won’t bring about a bunch of copycats because then it would get old really fast). This has been the talked about film of the year and is in my opinion in a heated competition for the best picture award with “The Descendants.” While the names in the film are lesser known here in the states, it is distributed ty the Weinstein Company and when they have a film in contention it often gets nominated.

Hugo

I don’t have as much backing this film up but I have a pretty good feeling it will be nominated. While it’s a kids film, it’s also a Martin Scorcese picture. Scorcese is more well known for his gritty crime dramas but he is also a staunch proponent of film preservation and the history of cinema. Hugo is laced with allusions to the history of cinema and if they Academy would like any kids film it would be one that looked back in awe at the history of their own profession. The movie in many ways is a tribute to film and a very well done film at that. This falls outside the grid a little as far as rating goes but there is often a PG or under film nominated. While I don’t think it will win I do believe it will be nominated.

Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen has been releasing a film every year for I don’t know how many years. Some of them are flops and others excellent films. It’s been a while since one of his films was nominated and I think Midnight in Paris is going to do the trick. It scored 93% on the tomatometer so no problem there and it falls in the in the runtime slot (1:31-2:00) where 60% of the nominees from 2009-2011 fell. Festivals loved it and it was one of his higher grossing films as well. It was playing at one of the theaters in Philadelphia from May-December (quite a theater run). 

Moneyball

Here I’m getting a little less sure. Moneyball was a surprisingly good film for being a movie whose plot was based on statistics and numbers. I think that’s part of the catch to it though that will intrigue the Academy. The cast and crew takes a seemingly mundane idea and turns it into a critically acclaimed movie. It was written by Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian and the Academy loves Aaron Sorkin. Not only that it has a few other factors going for it: it’s a sports movie based on a true story. The Academy loves a motivational and true sports story. I think it would have stood an even better chance if it were rated R as opposed to PG-13 because R rated dramas are much more frequently nominated than their PG-13 counterparts. It’s still a great film that has a great chance at being nominated.

Tree of Life

This was a tough call because it is such a divisive film. There were many instances of people walking out of this film but with those instances there were many others who stayed transfixed on the screen. Tarrence Mallick is a very accomplished director (that statement may be the definition of an understatement). This is a sweeping and artsy film that struck a lot of cords. It is minimalist in dialogue and heavy on the visuals. Also, it was distributed by Fox Searchlight and when a Searchlight film gets enough critical acclaim it has a significant chance at being nominated.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I am totally willing to be wrong on these predictions and this may very well be an instance where I am. So why do I think it could be nominated? It’s a movie based on a best selling book and while it did not bring in the revenue it was expected to it is a very well done film. It was hard to determine if the brutal sexual violence would deter it from being nominated but I think the Academy has the stomach for it. Mainly because it’s a David Fincher film and he is so often nominated when he releases a movie. It’s a pretty raw film with a sexually twisted plot but I think it has enough going for it to be nominated. This film has the longest runtime of my nominations being the only one over 2:30 which I think helps it more than hinders it by putting it in a category of it’s own. And it’s an R rated drama, a hard R rated drama at that. 

War Horse

I actually really wish this film would not get nominated but that’s not what this post is about. It has not gotten across the board positive reviews and currently stands with a 77% tomatometer score. However it is a war movie and the Academy loves war stories when they are well done. From what I’ve read it doesn’t seem to be that well done but for whatever reason it is being nominated across the board for other awards as we make our way to the Academy Awards. And we can’t forget that it was directed by Steven Spielberg.

Drive

I hope the Academy gives credit where credit is deserved. Drive is a film that combines film noir with a great 80s type soundtrack and a great less is more dialogue approach. It paints a much more realistic picture of what being a getaway driver may actually look like and it is a character driven film not a stunt heavy one. It also has funny man Albert Brooks playing a sinister and serious mob man perfectly and stars man of the year Ryan Gosling (although some may disagree and say Michael Fassbender and I will say I’m on the fence as far as that accolade goes). It does have some pretty intense and brutal violence which could detract from it and it was distributed by a much smaller company. But perhaps it could be the one film from the smaller distributors that gets nominated. 

There you have it, a total of 9 films. I want to address why I left certain films out. I don’t think “The Help” will be nominated because it is too mainstream of a film. While it was well done and will probably get some nods for acting I don’t think it has what it takes to be an overall nominee. Also it was released by Dreamworks which has not had a film nominated in the past 3 years. 

“Shame” has been making a lot of waves since it’s release for it’s sexually explicit material about a sex addict dealing with intimacy issues. While it has great acting and I think deals with an issue that most people won’t talk about, I think it’s too edgy to be nominated. The NC-17 rating is a major detractor. 

“Ides of March” had a lot of potential: George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Marisa Tomei together in a political film. While it didn’t bomb, the expectations were so high that it couldn’t deliver. Also, Gosling, Clooney and Hoffman are all in other potential nominee films. 

Now that you have the list and the reasoning, keep reading if you want to learn more about the process and the data collected. 

My process:

I ran through the release listings for 2011 and wrote down movies that I thought had any semblance of a chance at being nominated. This list proved to be a page and a half long. This was probably the most subjective part of my process. I know I should have started with more objective and worked my way down to subjective but this was the best way I could think of. I try and stay up on movies that have any sense of critical acclaim and/or popularity to them so I felt apt to be able to create such a list. 

After the brain drain, I went through and weeded them down to movies I thought had a greater chance of being nominated. This resulted in a page and a half list of movies. This again was a pretty subjective phase but I felt confident in that part of the process. 

From there I stepped away from this years movies and looked at the past nominees from 2009-2011 to do a more systematic analysis. I took down the following information for each nominated film: genre, rating, distributor, tomatometer score, and runtime. 

Best Picture Nominees 2011-2009

Film	Genre	Rating	Distributor	Tomatometer	Runtime
Avatar	Sci-Fi	PG-13	Fox	83%	2:40
Blind Side	Drama, Sports	PG-13	Warner Bros	66%	2:06
District 9	Sci-Fi	R	Sony Pictures, Screen Gems	91%	1:52
An Education	Drama	PG-13	Sony Classics	94%	1:35
The Hurt Locker	Drama, Action, War	R	Summit	97%	2:07
Inglorious Basterds	Drama, Action, War	R	Weinstein	88%	2:32
Precious	Drama	R	Lionsgate	91%	1:49
A Serious Man	Drama, Comedy	R	Focus	89%	1:45
Up	Action, Kids, Comedy	PG	Walt Disney	98%	1:29
Up in the Air	Drama, Comedy, Romance	R	Paramount	91%	1:49

Film	Genre	Rating	Distributor	Tomatometer	Runtime
Benjamin Buttons	Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi	PG-13	Paramount	72%	2:47
Frost/Nixon	Drama	R	Universal	92%	2:02
Milk	Drama	R	Focus	94%	2:07
The Reader	Drama, Romance	R	Weinstein/MGM	62%	2:03
Slumdog Millionaire	Drama, Romance	R	Fox Searchlight	94%	1:56

For each category I counted up the number of times each subset occurred (for example, how many times was an R rated movie nominated). Here’s the data set I came up with:

2009-2011 Academy Awards Trends

25 Nominees

Genre:

Sci-Fi- 4 nominations 16%

Drama- 22 Nominations, 88%

Comedy- 4 Nominations, 16%

Action- 5 nominations, 20%

Kids- 2 nominations, 8%

Romance- 4 nominations, 16%

Sports- 2 nominations, 8%

War- 3 Nominations, 12%

Mystery- 2 nominations, 8%

Rating:

R- 15 nominations, 60%

PG-13- 8 nominations, 32%

PG- 1 nomination, 4%

G- 1 nomination, 4%

Distributor

Fox Searchlight- 3 nominations (11-2, 09-1), 12%

Paramount- 4 nominations (11-2, 10-1, 09-1), 16%

Warner Bros- 2 nominations (11-1, 10-1), 8%

Focus- 3 nominations(11-1, 10-1, 09-1), 12%

Weinstein- 3 nominations(11-1, 10-1, 09-1), 12 %

Columbia- 1(11), 4%

Disney- 2 (11-1, 10-1), 8%

Roadside Attractions- 1 (11), 4%

Fox- 1 (10), 4%

Sony Pics- 1 (10), 4%

Screen Gems- 1 (10), 4%

Sony Classics- 1 (10), 4%

Summit- 1 (10), 4%

Lionsgate- 1 (10), 4%

Universal- 1 (09), 4%

Tomatometer:

96%-100%- 5, 20%

90%-95%- 12, 48%

85%-89%- 4, 16%

80%-84%- 1, 4%

<80%- 3, 12%

Runtime

>2:30 3, 12%

2:01-2:30 6, 24%

1:31-2 15, 60%

1:01-1:30 1, 4%

Then I created a document that contained all the pertinent information for the movies released in 2011.

Film	Genre	Rating	Distributor	Tomatometer	Runtime
Jane Eyre	Drama, Romance	PG-13	Focus, BBC	85%	2:01
Bridesmaids	Comedy	R	Universal	90%	2:04
Midnight in Paris	Comedy, Romance	PG-13	Sony Pictures Classics	93%	1:34
Tree of Life	Drama, Sci-Fi	PG-13	Fox Searchlight	84%	2:18
X-Men First Class	Sci Fi, Action	PG-13	Fox	87%	2:11
Beginners	Drama, Comedy	R	Focus	84%	1:44
Harry Potter Pt. 2	Fantasy, Action	PG-13	Warner Bros.	96%	2:11
Rise of the Planet of the Apes	Sci-Fi	PG-13	Fox	83%	2:00
The Help	Drama	PG-13	Dreamworks	76%	2:17
Warrior	Drama, Action	PG-13	Lionsgate	82%	2:19
Drive	Drama, Action, Suspense	R	Film District	93%	1:40
Moneyball	Drama	PG-13	Sony Pictures	95%	2:06
Ides of March	Drama	R	Sony Pictures	85%	1:42
Martha Marcy May Marlene	Drama, Suspense	R	Fox Searchlight	88%	1:41
Like Crazy	Drama, Romance	PG-13	Paramount	72%	1:29
J. Edgar	Drama	R	Warner Bros.	42%	2:17
Melancholia	Drama, Sci-Fi	R	Magnolia	78%	2:15
The Descendants	Drama, Comedy	R	Fox Searchlight	89%	1:50
Hugo	Mystery, Kids & Families	PG	Paramount	94%	2:06
The Artist	Drama, Romance Comedy, Silent	PG-13	Weinstein Company	97%	1:40
Dangerous Method	Drama	R	Sony Pictures Classics	76%	1:33
Shame	Drama	NC-17	Fox Searchlight	80%	1:39
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy	Suspense, Drama	R	Focus	84%	2:08
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	Mystery, Suspense, Drama	R	Sony Pictures	86%	2:37
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close	Drama	PG-13	Warner Bros.	52%	2:09
War Horse	Drama, War	PG-13	Walt Disney	77%	2:26

Once I had this information it was only a matter of correlating the information to get my list of best picture nominations.