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Week Of May 15, 2006 - Premature Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
May 15, 2006
Premature Week
My First Look At Oscar 2007 - The Year Of The Director
Oh, how I have dragged my feet on this one.
My very first look at the season we just got through was on February 11, 2005 and offered just 2 of the eventual 5 nominees as options in a group of 20. The second Oscar piece last year, which waited until July 27 because I didn't feel like surfing the wave of stories that came out last June, included all five eventual nominees, though Capote and Good Night, And Good Luck were in the also-ran slots and not in the top 16 (which included one film that would end up not being released in 2005).
One film on that July list of 16 was from Cannes, Tommy Lee Jones & Guillermo Arriaga's The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. This year's Cannes offers no films that can be legitimately expected to be Oscar Best Picture contenders that are not already on the fall schedule. So the stress of writing this column before Cannes has been lessened significantly by Cannes' willingness to sell out.
However, there is a very unusual number of dramatic films from major directors that are available for a studio/dependent pick-up. Three. Francis Ford Coppola returns to the director's chair after too long an absence with Youth Without Youth, Milos Forman once again teams with producer Saul Zaentz on Goya's Ghosts, and Werner Herzog remakes his own documentary, Little Dieter Needs To Fly, as a dramatic feature, Rescue Dawn. I wouldn't count on Herzog's tough perspective to lead to a nomination, but Forman and Coppola's films will get a long, hard look.
The pre-summer slots often offer a serious player or two. Not this year. United 93 just isn't that kind of movie. And nothing else made much of an aesthetic impression.
As for the summer, after Cinderella Man got smacked all Summer and Fall long by the media and also didn't do so good, the summer "adult slot" has been abandoned. The closest to it is Columbia's The Da Vinci Code, which pretty much cannot get into the awards race. If it does huge business, it is too commercial. If it does mediocre business, it will get slammed as a flop. No win. There are some documentaries that will be aspiring to slots in the Oscar race, but not for anything bigger, no matter how hyper the Inconvenient Truth folks get.
On the current schedule, the first real contender arrives with another, as the Pitt-powered The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia are both slotted for September 15. I would be shocked if they both stayed on the date. What will be interesting is to see whether either Warner Bros or Universal is willing to "settle" for the near $40 million slot that The Constant Gardener cleared out in late August last year.
Also due in September is long-delayed (though to be fair, the film slotted Fall in November, as soon as it was determined that it wouldn't be ready for last year's race) All The King's Men. Once Steven Zaillian finally got done, the buzz at Columbia was quite positive, so there is hope. On the other hand, it is not a good time to open a drama if you are serious about box office or awards.
But Columbia is this year's Universal, loaded with almost too many movies that will require awards attention. The players are less muscular than in the last two years - no Nichols or Burton - and far less dangerous at the box office (except for King's Men), but still, a lot of titles that come with some degree of indie hip. October has Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette and Running With Scissors from the creator of Nip/Tuck and featuring a near sure-bet nomination performance by Annette Bening. In November, it's Marc "Monster's Ball/Finding Neverland" Forster, trying to recover from Stay with a comedy that might have some awards poignancy in an Adaptation kind of way, Stranger Than Fiction. And December offers superstar Will Smith in a dramatic role in The Pursuit of Happyness. There is also a Nancy Meyers comedy, The Holiday, which will surely tout Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as Oscar hopefuls.
But Columbia is getting out ahead of everyone else (even if WB is even more overloaded as they are)…
Let's get back on track by looking at the rest of the Big Muscle directors that are coming our way, looking for votes.
Besides two of the three directors whose films need distribution and Ms. Coppola and Mr. Forster, there are ten more Oscar-space directors with eleven more films in play this fall. In alphabetical order, AlmodovarCondonEastwoodFieldGibsonHytnerMinghellaScorsese
ScottSoderbergh.That's fifteen films from Academy Award tested filmmakers. Fifteen!
And then there is the next Oscar tier, which includes the aforementioned Werner Herzog, Brian DePalma, Ron "Yes, He's Oscar Tested, But Too Early" Howard, Steven Zaillian. Add to that, David Fincher, John Curran, Phillip Noyce, Alejandro Inarritu, Robert DeNiro, and Richard Eyre. Throw in a couple of up-n-comers, like Touching The Void's Kevin MacDonald behind an award candidate performance by Forrest Whitaker and Harvey Weinstein's lead horse, Emilio Estevez with Bobby, and you're up to 27 candidates without even breaking a sweat.
With due respect to filmmakers I like and whose films I am anxious to see, I have already written off the Oscar hopes - with the possible exception of some acting or writing nods - of Factory Girl, Fast Food Nation, For Your Consideration, Fur, and Southland Tales. Decoded into Year of The Director jargon, that would be George Hickenlooper, Richard Linklater, Christopher Guest, Steven Shainberg, and Richard Kelly.
This has got to be a uniquely intimidating year for any directing novices out there with big dreams of a trip to the Kodak. And on the flip side, there is little doubt that this is going to be one of the most disappointing seasons ever. Because for every New World which failed to achieve lift-off last year, this year, there look to be three. Either that or it will be the most competitive Oscar season in history.
We are far, far away from really knowing the deal this year. There are only a few films that are a natural Academy fit. And what that means is that as we spend the next 40 weeks trying to decode what is going on, one key detail will be bigger than ever… the actual movies. That's not so bad.
And now... my first Oscar chart of the year...
E Me: What will your weekend look like?
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