The 5th Slot and the Lone Director... - ...in a 10 Picture year

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Post by Sonic Youth »

Looks like the game is a bust this year. With the director nominees being Bigelow, Cameron, Daniels, Reitman, and Tarantino, I think it's safe to say that this would have been another perfect Film-Director matchup. Oh, well... And let's hope this never has to come up again, although I'm afraid it will.

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Post by Hollywood Z »

Youth, there is one problem with your theory and that is if there were 10 Best Picture nominees since 1995, there wouldn't be this issue of directors getting nominated with, which is what we could see evidence of today. There's too wide of a slate to see movies getting left behind. Also, most of the movies you listed were expected to get Best Picture nominations like The People vs. Larry Flynt or The Truman Show or were well liked enough, but didn't have enough steam for a five-slotted Best Picture race, such as Leaving Las Vegas, Being John Malkovich, or Black Hawk Down.
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Post by Big Magilla »

I don't really see an odd man out scenario this year. Most of those being mentioned are likely to see their films nominated as well. Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon) may be the lone exception.

On the other hand, there is a very good chance that Oscar will disagree once more with the DGA and pick Clint Eastwood, Lone Sherfig, Neill Blomkamp or Haneke over Lee Daniels.
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Post by Sabin »

Were this a five movie slate, I would say the 5th Slot for Best Picture would be Precious with nominations for Sidibe, Mo'Nique, and screenplay. For Best Director, that would be Lone Scherfig for An Education. Unfortunately, I've already wavered once and opted for Neill Blomkamp instead and I don't plan on doing the same twice in a day.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Yes, even in a 10 Picture year, there is still a 5th Slot and a Lone Director. The Oscars may change, but die-hards like us stubbornly cling to the old.

No one knows what the nominees are as I'm typing this, but by tomorrow morning, we'll all be speculating on which Best Picture nominee would have been denied a Director's nom, and vice-versa, had this been an ordinary year with only five Best Picture nominees. I'm sure we've already been thinking about this topic, and so I thought we could devote a thread to it.

First, let me immediately say that I recognize we are never going to know the answers, and this is a futile, time-wasting exercise. But when has that ever stopped us?

Second, Oscar Guy's site is a terrific reference for matters like these. Among other things, it provides a yearly tabulation of how many nominations each film received, and this proved very useful.

I made a list below of Director-less Pictures, and Picture-less Directors. I stopped at 1995, partly because I can only compile so much before I get sick of it, but also because I thought recent history might provide a few clues. Of the fifteen years, there were two when the Best Picture/Director slate perfectly matched, and there were two years where there were two Picture/Director discrepencies. But eleven of those years saw the 5th Slot/Lone Director phenomenon. What pattern can we detect from this list? First, figuring out which of the Best Director nominees may be farily easy. Almost always, the film with the Lone Director received fewer nominees than the Best Picture noms. Of the 14 Lone Director films, 9 of them received 3 nominations or fewer.* Four of them (United 93, Talk to Her, The Sweet Hereafter and The People Vs. Larry Flynt) received only one other nomination, and Mulholland Dr.'s Best Director nom was its one and only nom. This raises the possibility that even with 10 Best Picture nominees, we could have a Best Director nom with no Best Picture. That may very well happen with The White Ribbon tomorrow, with a nod for Director and Cinematography, but not Best Film.

*10 if you include "Dead Man Walking", which I'm tempted not to since one of the nominations was for Best Song.

The only other pattern I've been able to detect with Lone Director nominees is this: any Lone Director film that also received an acting nom (7 films) did not receive a single technical nomination. Vera Drake, Billy Elliot, John Malkovich, Truman, Larry, Las Vegas and Dead Man all received Director, at least one Acting nom and (except for Larry Flynt) Screenplay... but nothing in the tech categories, surprisingly so in some cases. We can assume it was lack of tech support that denied them Best Picture. This is not a surefire theory - films such as Capote have received Picture and Director noms without a single tech nomination - but it's an interesting coincidence to note. As for the other Lone Director films, Editing is the tech category that comes up more often than the others. Overall, 9 of the Lone Director films have also received a Screenplay nom.

But what about the 5th Slot nominees? That's a much tougher one. A few things in common. 12 of the 14 received acting nominations, 12 received a technical nomination of some sort (7 for Editing), 11 of the 14 received screenplay noms. Sometimes they have the fewest nominations among the Best Pictures, but they're also likely to fall somewhere in the middle. I can't discern any true pattern between these films because they're a diverse lot - some F/X extravaganzas, some acting showcases, etc. And if all the previous years contained 10 Best Picture slots, how would we know, for example, that The Green Mile (only four nominations) would have been one of the five Best Pictures, but Dreamgirls (8 nominations, more than any other 2006 film) would NOT have been? This is where the futility sets in, and maybe an analysis of each individual year might provide answers. And how would we know if this year would've contained a perfect five-for-five matchup? Or a three-for-five matchup?

In any event, if you AMPAS mystics are seeking answers to the unanswerable, I hope some of my observations have helped. Here's to some good discussion!




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Post by Sonic Youth »

The nominees from the past 15 years where film and director didn't correlate.

2008
(No discrepency)

2007
Atonement - Julien Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

2006
Little Miss Sunshine - Paul Greengrass (United 93)

2005
(No discrepency)

2004
Finding Neverland - Mike Leigh (Vera Drake)

2003
Seabiscuit - Fernando Mierelles (City of God)

2002
LOTR: The Two Towers - Pedro Almodovar (Talk to Her)

2001
In the Bedroom/Moulin Rouge! - David Lynch (Mulholland Dr.)/Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down)

2000
Chocolat - Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot)

1999
The Green Mile - Spike Jonez (Being John Malkovich)

1998
Elizabeth - Peter Weir (The Truman Show)

1997
As Good as it Gets - Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter)

1996
Jerry Maguire - Milos Foreman (The People Vs. Larry Flynt)

1995
Apollo 13/Sense and Sensibility - Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas)/Tim Robbins (Dead Man Walking)
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