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Chris Molanphy’s Best Picture Oscar Predictions 2006

Written: 22 January 2007

Oscar nominees to be announced: 23 January 2007

 
Ten years ago, at precisely this time of year, I was sitting around my Uncle Johnny's apartment chatting about the Oscar race. We had a New York Times Arts & Leisure section, with its massive full-page movie ads, at the ready, and as I flipped through the paper, I casually rattled off five movie titles I said would end up in the winners' circle: The English Patient. Fargo. Secrets & Lies. Shine. And, just to make sure one Hollywood blockbuster ended up in there, Jerry Maguire. I didn't think much of it at the time.

A couple of weeks later – in mid-February 1997, when the nominees were announced – I was stunned to find the exact five names I'd tossed off trumpeted as the Academy's five Best Picture contenders for 1996. I hadn't mentioned the predictions to anyone but my uncle and then-girlfriend, and I certainly hadn't documented them anywhere. I vowed, then and there, that I wouldn't let my awesome powers of Academy divination go unremarked again. Let other watercooler pundits agonize over their Oscar pools on the Academy's super Sunday. I was going to become the Nostradamus of nominations.

Which brings us here, to my Best Picture predictions for the 2006 Academy Awards. The Oscar nominees will be announced on Tuesday, 23 January, and the awards show will take place on Sunday, 25 February – the earliest-ever dates on which the Academy has anointed its nominees and winners, respectively. And that's not the only thing that's changed since the winter of 1997.

Stifling a Yawn

For the record, I've only gone five-for-five one other time since that first year. But I have loved the regularity of spending my winters at the movies, weighing my reactions to various films against buzz and hype. What started in the late '90s as a pre-Oscar e-mail to friends and evolved in 2000 into a web page has become a winter ritual for me.

But I must say, the modern blogosphere has sucked a good deal of the fun out of this game. Guessing the nominees is now, evidently, a pastime for all.

It's not like we were in the Dark Ages in 1997 – you had Entertainment Weekly putting out glossy pre-nomination Oscar forecats; and by the end of the ’90s, web columnists (and future bloggers) like Jeffrey Wells were starting to buzz online about the horserace. But last year, things reached critical mass: the Grey Lady herself, the Times, launched an Oscar blog – David "the Bagger" Carr's endlessly entertaining The Carpetbagger. At the same moment, Wells upped his output, from two or three columns a week, to literally 25-times-daily squibs – about this critics' circle, that overhyped Oscar bait, this other total lock for a nod. Between Wells's Hollywood Elsewhere, David Poland's Movie City News and Kris Tapley's In Contention, plus the two coastal papers' Oscar blogs, you can now literally – from about the week before Thanksgiving right through Presidents Day – monitor the Oscar race on an hour-by-hour basis.

Oh, and mind you, I do. I'm obsessed with this stuff, and I'll read whatever a pundit throws at me. But the only thing worse than seeing others encroach on your turf is seeing them do it well. I could tolerate and even enjoy all the coverage last year, when Brokeback Mountain was fighting off a motley assortment of heel-nippers like Munich and (the ultimate winner) Crash, and the final five was anyone's guess. But this year – when at least three, maybe four Best Pics were etched in stone before Christmas, and by now the fifth has basically been settled, too – I'll feel a diminished thrill if the five preordained flicks listed below are announced from a Los Angeles podium Tuesday morning.

But wait, you're saying. I keep reading that this year's Oscar race is wide-open – that the critics' groups and the Golden Globes have all awarded different movies, and so no one knows what's going to end up near the finish line for Best Picture. That's half-true: this year's ultimate winner of the Best Picture Oscar remains a mystery to me and everyone else – we have no Titanic, no Lord of the Rings, no Chicago dominating the list this year. It's the nominees that are totally predictable, thanks to the hivemind of the blogosphere. It's kind of my worst nightmare – a year where the predictive part I most relish is too easy (watch, now I'll screw it up anyway) but, once nominated, any of the five films below could plausibly take the statue. Well, except The Queen. Probably.

Before I rattle off the five Best Picture contenders pretty much everyone has already called, I close this introductory rant by noting that these are my Oscar predictions, not a list of my favorite movies of 2006. For the record, if it were up to me, the five Best Picture nominees would be Children of Men, United 93, Volver, Little Miss Sunshine and Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Yeah, I know – keep dreaming.

The Locked-in, Totally Locked Locks

 
1. THE DEPARTED — You know how some people are saying they don't want Hillary Clinton to run for President because they don't want a rerun of the Clintons' personal backstage dramas? That's how I'm starting to feel about Martin Scorcese's perennial fourth-quarter movie releases. The difference is, we could solve our Clinton Problem by tossing Hillary from the race; but if we're ever going to end our long national nightmare concerning Marty's lack of an Oscar, the electoral lever is going to have to be pulled for him eventually. It looks like that might actually, finally happen, if the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild of America and a slew of critics' awards are any indication: everybody is lining up to give Scorcese their Best Director kudos, and the movie in question – Marty's first-rate, Boston-based remake of the Hong Kong thriller Mou gaan dou (Infernal Affairs) – is getting nominated or at least making critics' top fives or top threes. Thing is, virtually no one has named The Departed their Best Picture, and that clouds the forecast for Oscar night. But the nomination? Come on, The Departed is a mortal lock – even if it had been directed by Brett Ratner, any crime drama starring Jack, Leo and Matt and backed up by a Sheen and a Baldwin would have Oscar juice. (Psst – my favorite performance of all? No joke: Marky Mark.) Leonardo DiCaprio, in particular, has never been better – this is the movie for which he deserves a Best Actor nod. (Forget Blood Diamond. Oh, wait – we already have.) So, yeah, Marty is finally going to take the podium on Oscar night for a film that's not quite his best...but hey, whatreyagonnado, he already made the best mob movie of all time (yeah, Coppola fans – I said it), and that year, the Academy was too busy lavishing praise on legendary auteur Kevin Costner. This year, let's end this parlor game of Spin The Marty once and for all, even if the film itself doesn't rate its own statue.

2. DREAMGIRLS — What's left – Barnum? Cats? Starlight Express? In the wake of Chicago's dominance in 2002, it seems no Broadway musical from the last 30 years has gone unmentioned as a possible candidate for filmic reinvention. (Coming to screens by 2008: Mamma Mia! I wish I were kidding.) But the harsh reality is, for every Chicago or Evita, there are at least two Rents, Phantoms or Producerses, seemingly surefire Great White Way movie fodder that connects with neither audiences nor the Academy. So how did Dreamgirls become the 800-pound gorilla of the 2006 Oscar season, hyped as early as a year ago as the one to beat? Maybe it's the novelty factor: an all-black production chronicling the rise of crossover black pop. Maybe it's the great behind-the-scenes tale – the 25-year saga to bring the 1981 Tony winner to the multiplex, the fight by übermensch David Geffen to protect the script from penny-ante Hollywood hacks, the thinly veiled Supremes/Berry Gordy references. Or maybe it's the array of talent on offer: from much-beloved director Bill Condon, who won a screenplay award some years back for Gods and Monsters but is perceived as overdue for Best Director recognition; to ingenue, American Idol runner-up and Best Supporting Actress lock Jennifer Hudson, who in this straight white boy's opinion steals the role of Effie White from the legendary Jennifer Holliday. The last six weeks have been nail-biters for Paramount/Dreamworks, as Dreamgirls suffered the classic backlash of a front-runner. The movie's win in the Best Musical or Comedy category at last week's Golden Globes forestalled that chatter a while longer; but the Globes aired after the deadline for Oscar ballots, so their effect on the race this year is negligible. I had a fine time at Dreamgirls and was fairly impressed with the quality of the production and the acting. Eddie Murphy, in particular, blew me away with acting chops I didn't know he possessed – if he takes home a Best Supporting statue, he deserves it even more than Hudson does. I was less impressed with the music, which should be channeling Motown but instead screams late-’70s gay-friendly showtunes. But what struck me as I was watching – and this might either propel the movie to a win, or repel certain old-school Oscar voters – is this: Dreamgirls may be the most "meta" Best Picture nominee of all time. You've got a stand-in for Diana Ross, played by a former girl-group lead singer who had a few Destiny's Child bandmates thrown under a bus to ensure her dominance; the tossed-out singer, played by a nearly forgotten singing-competition contestant, and she's belting "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" to both Jamie Foxx and (in her head) Simon Cowell; the Jackie Wilson-esque soul superstar fumbling toward middle age, played by the biggest African-American star of the 1980s, struggling to stay relevant at 45. If you find all this irony delicious, and you are an Oscar voter, Dreamgirls is your movie.

The Only Slightly Less Locked Locks

 
3. BABEL — If you're still depressed, as I am, by last year's Best Picture upset by Crash, the news that Alejandro González Iñárritu's fatalistic multicharacter polemic Babel is in this year's running might be cause for another hit of Xanax. Compared to Crash, Babel is not bad at all. The cinematography is often breathtaking, the acting is generally impassioned without veering into the unreal, and González Iñárritu offers several set pieces – a Tokyo nightclub, a mountainous Moroccan village, a rip-roaring Mexican wedding – that are unforgettable cinema. Still, The New York Times's A.O. Scott put it best: "[I]s it a meaningful experience? That the film possesses unusual aesthetic force strikes me as undeniable, but its power does not seem to be tethered to any coherent idea or narrative logic. You can feel it without ever quite believing it." You know who does believe in Babel, though? L.A. middlebrows, and last year's Crash win shows they will get behind a film en masse if they're crazy enough about it (emphasis on "crazy"). In an Oscar race that's been fairly static, Babel has undergone the closest thing to a whiplash rollercoaster ride: heavily hyped in the fall, it opened to middling reviews and weak box-office, didn't win any critics' prizes and by early December was given up for dead by most Oscar pundits; then the Golden Globe nominations appeared a couple of weeks before Christmas and, seemingly out of nowhere, Babel wound up with the most mentions. That didn't improve the film's estimation by critics or cinéastes, but it got the attention of Hollywood, who cheered loudly last week when Iñárritu's passion project took the Best Drama award on the Globes. (The fact that González Iñárritu is almost as movie-star handsome as his actor Brad Pitt probably doesn't hurt.) So Babel has been basically locked into the Best Picture race since New Year's, and the only question remaining is whether the Academy's actors branch – the biggest voting bloc – is smitten enough with cutie-boys González Iñárritu and Pitt and their film to go all Crash on it next month.

 

4. THE QUEEN — In an awards season that stretches from the first falling leaves to the dawn of next spring, sometimes the most amazing feat is just hanging on. And Stephen Frears's imaginary biopic of England's figurehead has just hung on, and on, and on. A three-star movie led by a five-star performance (gee, when have I said that before? cf. Ray), The Queen has been the most reliable small/adult/awards-caliber film of fourth-quarter ’06, pulling in steady money week after week as more hyped Brit-accented contenders like Notes on a Scandal and The History Boys came and went. Indeed, The Queen’s tenacity has surprised even me; Emily and I – suckers for the subject matter – saw it when it opened back in October, and while I knew screen goddess Helen Mirren was a lock for Best Actress, the film itself struck me as pleasant, dowdy BBC-TV fare. Yet here we are months later, with The Queen closing in on $40 million at the U.S. box office, and every blogger worth his salt expects the well-liked Frears and his well-liked movie to make the final five for both Director and Picture. I remain a bit mystified, but I am reminded that Oscar ballots allow Academy members to list a ranked order of favorites. So while I don't expect many voters to give their biggest votes to The Queen, it's entirely plausible that a surfeit of second- and third-place votes will put it in the winners' circle. As David "Carpetbagger" Carr pointed out recently, when the nominations are announced, one way to gauge how strong sentiment for The Queen is running is to see whether Michael Sheen, who does an excellent Tony Blair, makes it into the Best Supporting Actor race.

The Underdo...Nah, It’s a Lock

 

5. LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE — There's a small but solid record of the fifth Best Picture slot going to a little-film-that-could, an underfinanced underdog with populist appeal – a Four Weddings and a Funeral, a Full Monty. You couldn't invent a better title for a movie to fill this slot than Little Miss Sunshine – it practically squeals, "Vote for me, won't you? I'm ever so cute." Please excuse my sardonic tone – I actually enjoyed LMS tremendously, and unlike some complainers I found the ending rewarding and even a little surprising; as my wife aptly put it, "It makes explicit what the rest of the pageant contestants only imply." Still, inasmuch as LMS was a breath of fresh air amid last summer's deadening blockbusters, I didn't walk out of it thinking it had a chance in the Best Picture race. But one year after it sparked a bidding war at Sundance, this movie debut by husband-and-wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris continues to wildly exceed low expectations. Grossing some $60 million, it was the indie blockbuster of the year (if you can ignore its distributor's connections to Rupert Murdoch). It earned a passel of Golden Globe nominations and was briefly whispered as the spoiler to Dreamgirls in the Best Comedy or Musical category. And just two days before I'm typing this, LMS won the Producers Guild of America's top prize, defeating the exact four movies listed above; next week, it is widely favored to walk off with the Screen Actors Guild prize for Best Cast in a Motion Picture, that group's equivalent prize to best picture. Like its four predicted competitors, LMS boasts a slew of worthy Supporting Actor candidates – Steve Carrell, Paul Dano and especially the foul-mouthed Alan Arkin – and if a couple show up in the running, you'll be able to smell the momentum brewing. So forget The Full Monty – as bloggers start whispering louder about Little Miss Sunshine, the little movie it most starts to resemble is Rocky. Some underdog.

The Near Misses

 
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA/FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS — What was that proverb about two birds in a bush? Four months ago, when asked what films were early Oscar favorites, I said Clint Eastwood would inevitably figure into the Best Picture race with at least one of his two World War II epics. I mean, come on – would you bet against a film with a Greatest Generation title like Flags of Our Fathers, directed by our favorite septugenarian auteur? But with a day to go before nominations are announced, most pundits are expecting Dirty Harry to get shut out. What happened? Money, for one thing, or the lack thereof – Flags of Our Fathers was supposed to do Saving Private Ryan business when it opened in October, but it died quickly and quietly. Then Warner Bros. hemmed and hawed throughout the fall over whether to release Flags' Japanese counterpart, Letters from Iwo Jima, in time for ’06 awards or hold it until early ’07. In the end, they went for it – and lo and behold, it earned some of the strongest reviews of the year. But by then, Flags was damaged goods, and that dragged down Letters – all the plaudits in the world couldn't make the general public turn out for a subtitled war movie sympathetic to America's opponents in that war. Between the two, Letters still stands a chance of knocking out one of the above, but its low profile – and confusion at the Globes over whether it merited a Foreign Language award – will probably doom it. And honestly, Clint doesn't need another statue.

 

 
UNITED 93 — One of the best films, period, of the year and the only one that moved me to tears, Paul Greengrass's documentary-like recreation of the last Sept. 11 hijacking suffers from a unique, almost unprecedented problem: an inability to get people to watch it. Performing respectably but not spectacularly at the box office, United 93 has won more Best Picture prizes from critics' groups than any movie this year, but millions of moviegoers and thousands of Oscar voters can't bring themselves to see it. I agree with the film's many boosters that there's nothing "too soon" about this film – that if we're ever going to start a sane, sensible dialogue about the effects of that cataclysm, we have to confront our horror, anger and terror head-on, and it's time. That's just what United 93 does, which didn't make it a thrill ride for me, but as a New Yorker, it was tremendously cathartic. Plus, if I may be a bit shallower for a moment, FAA Director of Operations Ben Sliney plays himself in the film, and if it were up to me, he'd be in the Supporting Actor race right alongside Arkin, Murphy, Sheen and Carrell. So, if for no other reason, rent United 93 to watch one man's great performance as himself.

 

 
CHILDREN OF MEN/PAN’S LABYRINTH — What's especially annoying about the hype on Babel is it's by far the weakest film of the three released in ’06 by the Mexican directors known to Hollywood as the "Three Amigos": Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro. The trio aren't bothered by the sobriquet; in fact, they're milking it, appearing at awards functions together to promote their respective films and thanking each other for mutual/moral support as they accept awards, collectively working as ambassadors for the Mexican film industry. I'm glad they're all pals, but Cuarón and del Toro are operating on a much higher level than González Iñárritu. Cuarón's adaptation of P.D. James's dystopian novel Children of Men is the best, most heart-stopping film of the year in any country or genre. And del Toro's fantasy fable Pan's Labyrinth, centered in Franco-era Spain, was a sensation at Cannes and – for all its creepiness and gore – is the most imaginative, visually sumptuous film of the year. But both are falling victim to late-December release dates that pitted them against better-funded competitors. And I suspect Hollywood thinks it only needs to reward one of the hermanos' films this year. Leave it to them to pick the wrong one.

 

 
BOBBY — I can't believe I've gotten this far into the proceedings without mentioning Harvey and Bob Weinstein. But this is the former Miramax capos' only contender this year – via their new shingle, The Weinstein Company – and unless Hollywood is even more sentimental than I thought, it's out of the money. A all-star saga of characters and stories centered around the day of Bobby Kennedy's assassination that wants to be Altmanesque, Bobby has been described as "the Love Boat at the Ambassador Hotel," which hasn't exactly inspired me to go see it. Director Emilio Estevez – yes, him – is Hollywood royalty (son of Martin Sheen), and the kind of affection heaped on Sofia Coppola should theoretically be falling his way, too. The film did get a nod from the Golden Globes, but Bobby hasn't made enough dough at the box office or earned enough respect to make the final five. If it does, blame the Actors' Branch.

 

 
LITTLE CHILDREN — This should have been one of my favorite films of the year. Todd Field, director of the superb In the Bedroom, was the perfect choice to adapt my favorite Tom Perotta novel, and Kate Winslet is, predictably, luminous and flawless in the lead role. I'm an even bigger fan of supporting player Jackie Earle Haley, who portrays a suspicious suburb's misunderstood monster better than Perotta even envisioned it on the page. But so many little details were botched throughout Little Children – an intrusive and totally unnecessary voice-over spoils the stillness of the film's tone, and a bit too much of Winslet's character's backstory is sacrificed. Plus, the ending is off-key and weird. As if all these problems weren't enough of an awards-season challenge, studio New Line completely botched the release, keeping it limited for far too long and failing to capitalize on generally favorable reviews. A sad missed opportunity for virtually everyone involved – but I am still rooting for Winslet and Haley.

 

 
BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN — I always close with a dark horse pick, but this year's horse isn't so dark. Sasha Baron Cohen's win last week at the Golden Globes showed how deep the reservoir of affection and admiration is (in blue states, anyway) for this unlikely blockbuster. Detractors, and there are many, find Borat cruel and arrogant; and I do share with some of them the opinion that Baron Cohen's experiment disguised as extreme comedy proves not so much that Americans are boors than that they are unfailingly, sometimes foolishly polite. The most sober-headed argument offered by supporters is that Borat is more than a stunt; it's a whole new approach to comedy and the movie-making process. In fact, I would say an Adapted Screenplay nomination (so called because it's based on Baron Cohen's TV character) is quite likely – and if Borat wins or even gets nominated in this category, expect major ramifications in the ongoing fight between TV studios and reality-TV writers demanding to have their work properly recognized. I'd even say that a Best Actor nomination for Baron Cohen is not out of the question. But if a movie that featured naked man-on-man wrestling, lessons on poop etiquette and a critical cameo by Pamela Anderson makes it into the Best Picture race, I'll French-kiss my sister while declaring her "#4 prostitute in all of Tri-State area."

Other films that are too flawed or underhyped to take seriously but shouldn't be ruled out:

Thanks, as always, for reading – and feel free to contact me at chris[at]molanphy.com with your own predictions. What the hey, everybody's doing it.

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