For a while there it really seemed like awards season, didn’t it? Nominations for obscure awards were going out, critics were saying “best of the year” all over the place, and there were grand pronouncements flying all over the place: “There Will Be Blood will win Best Picture! Emile Hirsch is a shoo-in for Best Actor!”
And now? I don’t know about you, but I’ve got presents to wrap, and I’ve been telling my brother twice a day that all I want for Christmas is Ratatouille on DVD, and it really isn’t that hard to find. And I really want to take my parents to one of the movies I’ve been writing about here, but all that seems to be playing in the local multiplex in my hometown (the worst movie theater in the world, I promise you) is National Treasure 2 and Alvin and the Chipmunks.
But I digress. There actually has been one big bit of awards announcements this week, the SAG Awards. Voted on by a randomly selected handful of union actors, some say these awards are the most important we see before the Oscars, since they are voted on by actual Academy members and not critics. It seems they wanted to prove how different they are from critics too, since their awards are all over the place. SAG doesn’t do “Best Picture” but “Best Ensemble,” and they definitely threw some crazy names into that list: there’s No Country for Old Men, Into the Wild and American Gangster, which could have been reasonably expected, but then Hairspray and 3:10 to Yuma-- what now?!?! That also means shut-outs for Juno, widely expected to win, as well as Oscar hopefuls Atonement, Michael Clayton and Sweeney Todd.
Michael Clayton, at least, made it out OK: all three of its lead actors got nominations. But Hairspray, whose John Travolta got a Golden Globe nomination, got shutout elsewhere. On the other hand, Into the Wild scored three more acting nominations, including one for Catherine Keener, who has been empty-handed up to this point.
If you’ve been following all the critics awards and regular awards up to this point, you’re probably ready to throw up your hands, and I don’t blame you. What on earth does this all mean? Pretty much all we have right now is a consensus that No Country for Old Men is the best movie of the year, and from there on out, it’s a demolition derby. Atonement, which opened as the perfect Oscar movie, hasn’t been getting the acting awards it’s needed, and has struck out again and again with the critics. Then again, as passionate Atonement supporters keep reminding us over at Awards Daily, The English Patient was similarly ignored by critics ten years ago and went on to win Best Picture. Juno still looks like a contender when it comes to Ellen Page and Diablo Cody, but failing to get a best ensemble nod from SAG may have hurt; it hurts me at least, since that was that best actual ensemble, with actors actually interacting, I’ve seen all year. No Country has a great cast, yes, but it’s mostly about men trying to get away from each other as quickly as possible.
The weirdest story right now is the constant yo-yo action from Into the Wild. If you remember it scored way big with the Broadcast Film Critics Association a few weeks ago, only to be largely shut out from Golden Globe nominations. And now it gets SAG nominations all over the place, so much that you imagine they wish they handed out directors’ awards so they could plant a big sloppy kiss on Sean Penn.
If the SAG awards have left you dizzy and desperate for clarity, there’s a handful of critics’ lists out there that are alternately delightful and infuriating to read. A.O. Scott did some seriously fuzzy math in regards to the number 10, but at least he didn’t give Ratatouille the indignity of sharing a spot with Persepolis, the way David Edelstein did (Note: Both of these critics are delightful and came up with truly delightful lists. If you can’t be cranky on Christmas Eve, tell me, when can you?) Roger Ebert, on the other hand, has continued the happy-dancing tub-thumping he’s been doing for Juno since September, and put it at #1 on his list (you can read our Ed’s rant about it, but I’ll just say that I can’t believe he found room for The Great Debaters in there). And the Entertainment Weekly critics made me happy by nodding to No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood (Lisa Schwarzbaum) and Superbad (Owen Gleiberman), but then went super-pretentious and included things like Lady Chatterley and something called Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis. Then Glieberman went and put Lars and the Real Girl on his five worst list, which both an insult to me and to more deserving movies like In the Land of Womenand Spider-Man 3.
The long-awaited CB Top Tens will be revealed in a little over a week, so you’ll all just have to parse through these critics’ lists to figure out what we, the esteemed Blend Critical Force, will bless with our love. I’ll give you a preview though: I’m working on having the cajones to put Superbad on my list, but I just might not be up to Owen Glieberman’s level. In the meantime, though, I’m going to forget all about this business and watch It’s A Wonderful Life and Elf-- two movies that I would put on my top ten list every year if I could.
