PGA is an old boys club, but they use preferential balloting, so maybe the CODA thing is manifesting as an alternative.
More than once, I've though we're underestimating King Richard, especially in Original Screenplay. The CODA breakthrough happened during voting. It's possible that the probability of it winning may have changed the calculus among voters who weren't voting The Power of the Dog, but were also not liking <em>CODA</em>. We also have to remember that BAFTA doesn't have preferential balloting and The Power of the Dog won. That's at least 21% support. What if support is much higher. Preferential balloting only matters if the leader doesn't hit the 50% magical threshold. Things are eliminated bottom up then top down. What's most likely to get eliminated first, second, third, etc. and what film are they more likely to have in their second position.
I just keep thinking of how La La Land was dominating and then Moonlight won. The more critically acclaimed film, something a lot of Oscar voters probably couldn't relate to, but critics loved. La La Land won the PGA preferential system, but Moonlight won at the Oscars.
Of course, this may all be academic and CODA is destined to win.
Categories One-by-One: Best Picture
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OscarGuy
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
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anonymous1980
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture
It's NOT just the editing nod, Reza. It's missing editing AND directing AND a DGA nomination. Such a film has never won.Reza wrote:And so what if CODA has no nod for editing. There is always time for a precedent to be set.....although, correct me if I'm wrong, there has been a Best Picture in the past without an editing nod.
Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture
Guys all this self flaggelation over CODA vs Dog is a waste of time.
CODA is going to win and you can chalk it up to the current climate in the United States. People want things to be clean. Like apple pie and strictly white colored detergent. Folks who prefer a topsy turvy life are no longer in vogue. Things seem to have reverted back to the hypocritical 1950s in attitudes and likes. And so what if CODA has no nod for editing. There is always time for a precedent to be set.....although, correct me if I'm wrong, there has been a Best Picture in the past without an editing nod.
Of course if by some miracle Dog wins I'll be cheering it on.
CODA is going to win and you can chalk it up to the current climate in the United States. People want things to be clean. Like apple pie and strictly white colored detergent. Folks who prefer a topsy turvy life are no longer in vogue. Things seem to have reverted back to the hypocritical 1950s in attitudes and likes. And so what if CODA has no nod for editing. There is always time for a precedent to be set.....although, correct me if I'm wrong, there has been a Best Picture in the past without an editing nod.
Of course if by some miracle Dog wins I'll be cheering it on.
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Big Magilla
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture
I don't think there has ever been a situation like this one before.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and On Golden Pond were both sentimental films, yes, but they had the added perspective of featuring beloved movie stars in their last hurrahs - Spencer Tracy in the former, Henry Fonda in the latter, not to mention Katharine Hepburn who won her second and fourth Oscars for those films. They were not better than Reds and Chariots of Fire or In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Graduate, but they were highly anticipated films that did not come out of nowhere.
The same is true for Crash which had its supporters prior to its Oscar nomination. All three were nominated in years when there were five nominees. If there had only been five nominees this year, I doubt CODA would have been one of them. The closest comparison I could find in a five-nominee race would be 1976 when Rocky beat All the President's Men, Taxi Driver, and Network, but Rocky was a box-office phenomenon. I think it's more like Winter's Bone, a 2011 nominee for Best Picture, Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor (the unknown John Hawkes) as well as Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) in an expanded group of nominees. It was a nice-to-be-nominated little gem that had no chance of beating that year's The Social Network or sentimental challenger The King's Speech, which I would say were this year's equivalents of The Power of the Dog and Belfast.
I still think the film CODA most reminds me of is Gidget. Can you imagine Gidget being nominated in 1959, let alone winning against Ben-Hur, Anatomy of a Murder, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Nun's Story, to say nothing of the non-nominated Some Like It Hot and North by Northwest? Anatomy of a Murder would be this year's The Power of the Dog and Ben-Hur would be this year's Dune so I guess what we would be seeing is a race between Anatomy of a Murder and Gidget. What would they have done?
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and On Golden Pond were both sentimental films, yes, but they had the added perspective of featuring beloved movie stars in their last hurrahs - Spencer Tracy in the former, Henry Fonda in the latter, not to mention Katharine Hepburn who won her second and fourth Oscars for those films. They were not better than Reds and Chariots of Fire or In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Graduate, but they were highly anticipated films that did not come out of nowhere.
The same is true for Crash which had its supporters prior to its Oscar nomination. All three were nominated in years when there were five nominees. If there had only been five nominees this year, I doubt CODA would have been one of them. The closest comparison I could find in a five-nominee race would be 1976 when Rocky beat All the President's Men, Taxi Driver, and Network, but Rocky was a box-office phenomenon. I think it's more like Winter's Bone, a 2011 nominee for Best Picture, Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor (the unknown John Hawkes) as well as Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) in an expanded group of nominees. It was a nice-to-be-nominated little gem that had no chance of beating that year's The Social Network or sentimental challenger The King's Speech, which I would say were this year's equivalents of The Power of the Dog and Belfast.
I still think the film CODA most reminds me of is Gidget. Can you imagine Gidget being nominated in 1959, let alone winning against Ben-Hur, Anatomy of a Murder, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Nun's Story, to say nothing of the non-nominated Some Like It Hot and North by Northwest? Anatomy of a Murder would be this year's The Power of the Dog and Ben-Hur would be this year's Dune so I guess what we would be seeing is a race between Anatomy of a Murder and Gidget. What would they have done?
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Mister Tee
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Best Picture
Sometimes, people start predicting something that seems crazy for best picture, and it turns out correct -- Crash the most notable example. Sometimes it turns out a mirage -- as in Little Miss Sunshine. The trick is deciding which is which. I don't think there's any question the pundit class has wholeheartedly swallowed (to mix a metaphor) the notion that CODA is an unstopable, beloved juggernaut. But these are people who 1) when they say they talk to voters, mostly mean industry higher-ups and studio flacks, not talent on the ground and 2) tend to favor sentimental films in general -- witness their September swoon for Belfast, the love for which turned out considerably more limited than they'd predicted.
This isn't to say that CODA doesn't have some vociferous support, or that The Power of the Dog doesn't have issues that will hinder it with some voters. Other threads have degenerated into food fights over the two films, something from which I generally try to stay away. But let me talk a bit about the reception the two films have received.
I wish Sam Elliott had kept his fool mouth shut, because he's tainted any resistance to Power of the Dog with homophobia. I wouldn't suggest that none of the non-support the film is getting flows from that...but I truly think most of the opposition is on esthetic grounds. Many people just find it too cold and austere -- and, in the end, confusing (for which latter feeling they're labeled stupid). I watched the film again over the weekend, and, of course, I saw most of what I missed the first time through, and completely "got" the ending. But that ending still felt rushed to me, and lacking in climactic satisfaction; it's something many people have to put together afterward, and that's not the most gratifying narrative experience. Despite my problem with it first time through, I still thought it an impressive piece of work, and I thought that again on second view. But it is something I admire more than love, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the issue a lot of voters have.
I'm, of course, way out of step with those who love CODA -- or even those in the "it's not so bad" camp. I think it's a completely ersatz piece: every moment in it feels designed for audience knee-jerk reaction; not an honest or nuanced emotion in it. It's impossible for me not to view the possibility of its winning best picture as appalling. And telling me I ought to feel good about it because it offers representation for the deaf community is insulting (and very much what I'd feared might happen if we started judging films by how well they speak to societal ills). Back in 1967, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? addressed an extremely hot-button issue in inter-racial marriage -- Loving vs. Virginia was a freshly decided Supreme Court case. Yet most critics groaned at the Academy voting the film prizes for those good intentions. Hell, they sneered at In the Heat of the Night -- a much better film than either Dinner or CODA -- because it deprived the true artistic breakthroughs of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. i believe most of us have echoed that judgment in out historical reviews. So, it honestly shocks me to see people not perturbed by the idea of the Academy honoring a piece of cheese like CODA with its top prize.
Nonetheless...the case remains that many people don't like Power of the Dog, and, if they don't, there's going to be something that challenges it, likely something from a different part of the ballpark. Pundits thought that'd be Belfast, but, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't make it fly. And now, at the eleventh hour, it's CODA. Which, strictly from a follow-the-statistics approach, is an insanely unlikely best picture winner, as anonymous painstakingly details.
With all the talk of this race resembling the 2005 Brokeback/Crash, I've actually thought back to a much earlier race: the 1981 race centered on Beatty's Reds. That was, like Power of the Dog, a critically highly-regarded, well-respected, much nominated film that was certain to earn its director an Oscar. But there always hung over Reds much the perception that people didn't especially like it. The CODA that year was On Golden Pond, a broadly sentimental family drama that older audiences went crazy for. I've told this story before: a friend, with whom I've been trading Oscar predictions since high school, picked Beatty for director but On Golden Pond for best film, even though acknowledging in his letter that he was predicting something that, in that era, pretty much never happened (a film/director split had only happened twice since 1956). It turned out he was right about the split, but wrong about the beneficiary, as Chariots of Fire -- which had been exceedingly well-reviewed and a surprise box-office hit -- ended up taking the trophy in a shocker.
So...what if people are right about Power of the Dog being just too divisive (especially for a preferential ballot)? But what if they're also right that CODA simply has too few essential accoutrements (only 3 nominations, no director or editing) for a best picture win? What if it's one of the others? The pundits would probably say, okay, Belfast, then. But Belfast also missed the key editing nomination. Or West Side Story...but that fell short in both screenplay AND editing.
We might remember a film that surprised us at the nominations by getting an editing nomination. And later by winning at the Editors Guild. A film that, yes, missed best director, but got screenplay and two acting nominations, one of which it's almost certain to convert into a win ((plus another, for song). What if, while we're looking one direction, King Richard comes creeping along the outside rail?
In that 1981 race, I was emphatically rooting for Reds, and terrified by the prospect of On Golden Pond winning. In that context, while I was hardly thrilled about the Chariots of Fire triumph, compared to the worse alternative, I could live with it. I'd be about there with King Richard: if you'd asked me 6 weeks ago, I'd have been disgusted by the prospect of its winning. But if you tell me it was that or CODA...I'd swallow hard and say, well, it could have been worse.
I'm not saying I'm betting this way -- like anonymous, I have a vague idea the International vote will be strong enough for the Dog, that it could hold on despite the temporary madness affecting Tinsel Town. I just thought I'd toss this scenario out there as an alternate outcome.
This isn't to say that CODA doesn't have some vociferous support, or that The Power of the Dog doesn't have issues that will hinder it with some voters. Other threads have degenerated into food fights over the two films, something from which I generally try to stay away. But let me talk a bit about the reception the two films have received.
I wish Sam Elliott had kept his fool mouth shut, because he's tainted any resistance to Power of the Dog with homophobia. I wouldn't suggest that none of the non-support the film is getting flows from that...but I truly think most of the opposition is on esthetic grounds. Many people just find it too cold and austere -- and, in the end, confusing (for which latter feeling they're labeled stupid). I watched the film again over the weekend, and, of course, I saw most of what I missed the first time through, and completely "got" the ending. But that ending still felt rushed to me, and lacking in climactic satisfaction; it's something many people have to put together afterward, and that's not the most gratifying narrative experience. Despite my problem with it first time through, I still thought it an impressive piece of work, and I thought that again on second view. But it is something I admire more than love, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the issue a lot of voters have.
I'm, of course, way out of step with those who love CODA -- or even those in the "it's not so bad" camp. I think it's a completely ersatz piece: every moment in it feels designed for audience knee-jerk reaction; not an honest or nuanced emotion in it. It's impossible for me not to view the possibility of its winning best picture as appalling. And telling me I ought to feel good about it because it offers representation for the deaf community is insulting (and very much what I'd feared might happen if we started judging films by how well they speak to societal ills). Back in 1967, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? addressed an extremely hot-button issue in inter-racial marriage -- Loving vs. Virginia was a freshly decided Supreme Court case. Yet most critics groaned at the Academy voting the film prizes for those good intentions. Hell, they sneered at In the Heat of the Night -- a much better film than either Dinner or CODA -- because it deprived the true artistic breakthroughs of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. i believe most of us have echoed that judgment in out historical reviews. So, it honestly shocks me to see people not perturbed by the idea of the Academy honoring a piece of cheese like CODA with its top prize.
Nonetheless...the case remains that many people don't like Power of the Dog, and, if they don't, there's going to be something that challenges it, likely something from a different part of the ballpark. Pundits thought that'd be Belfast, but, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't make it fly. And now, at the eleventh hour, it's CODA. Which, strictly from a follow-the-statistics approach, is an insanely unlikely best picture winner, as anonymous painstakingly details.
With all the talk of this race resembling the 2005 Brokeback/Crash, I've actually thought back to a much earlier race: the 1981 race centered on Beatty's Reds. That was, like Power of the Dog, a critically highly-regarded, well-respected, much nominated film that was certain to earn its director an Oscar. But there always hung over Reds much the perception that people didn't especially like it. The CODA that year was On Golden Pond, a broadly sentimental family drama that older audiences went crazy for. I've told this story before: a friend, with whom I've been trading Oscar predictions since high school, picked Beatty for director but On Golden Pond for best film, even though acknowledging in his letter that he was predicting something that, in that era, pretty much never happened (a film/director split had only happened twice since 1956). It turned out he was right about the split, but wrong about the beneficiary, as Chariots of Fire -- which had been exceedingly well-reviewed and a surprise box-office hit -- ended up taking the trophy in a shocker.
So...what if people are right about Power of the Dog being just too divisive (especially for a preferential ballot)? But what if they're also right that CODA simply has too few essential accoutrements (only 3 nominations, no director or editing) for a best picture win? What if it's one of the others? The pundits would probably say, okay, Belfast, then. But Belfast also missed the key editing nomination. Or West Side Story...but that fell short in both screenplay AND editing.
We might remember a film that surprised us at the nominations by getting an editing nomination. And later by winning at the Editors Guild. A film that, yes, missed best director, but got screenplay and two acting nominations, one of which it's almost certain to convert into a win ((plus another, for song). What if, while we're looking one direction, King Richard comes creeping along the outside rail?
In that 1981 race, I was emphatically rooting for Reds, and terrified by the prospect of On Golden Pond winning. In that context, while I was hardly thrilled about the Chariots of Fire triumph, compared to the worse alternative, I could live with it. I'd be about there with King Richard: if you'd asked me 6 weeks ago, I'd have been disgusted by the prospect of its winning. But if you tell me it was that or CODA...I'd swallow hard and say, well, it could have been worse.
I'm not saying I'm betting this way -- like anonymous, I have a vague idea the International vote will be strong enough for the Dog, that it could hold on despite the temporary madness affecting Tinsel Town. I just thought I'd toss this scenario out there as an alternate outcome.
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anonymous1980
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Categories One-by-One: Best Picture
The nominees:
Belfast
CODA
Don't Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
I feel like I should post his now so we'll have more time to discuss this. So I guess we'll have to get this out of the way: CODA has emerged as the very unlikely challenger to the presumed front-runner The Power of the Dog. So unlikely, that if it were to win, it would be the most anomalous Best Picture winner since Grand Hotel. These are the huge decades-long stats it will break if it wins:
- First Best Picture winner since Ordinary People to win without a single below the line nomination (40+years).
- First Best Picture winner since Driving Miss Daisy to win without a DGA nomination. (30+ years)
- First Best Picture winner EVER to win without a Best Film BAFTA nomination since BAFTA's became a precursor. (20+ years)
- First Best Picture winner since the 1930's to win with less than 5 nominations. (80+ years)
- First Best Picture winner since Grand Hotel to win with neither a Directing nor an Editing nomination. (80+ years)
It's one thing to break one or two stats but to break all of these stats at the same time is crazy. I honestly don't know if this is genuine passion or a blogger created hype. There's also the X-factor of the significant chunk of young and international voters whose tastes lean more cinephile-like which led to victories for Parasite and nominations for Drive My Car in Picture and The Worst Person in the World in Screenplay. Is there enough of them to sway it towards Power of the Dog? I have no idea.
I'm currently leaning towards The Power of the Dog but CODA joining Grand Hotel in the asterisk club would not surprise me at this point.
Belfast
CODA
Don't Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
I feel like I should post his now so we'll have more time to discuss this. So I guess we'll have to get this out of the way: CODA has emerged as the very unlikely challenger to the presumed front-runner The Power of the Dog. So unlikely, that if it were to win, it would be the most anomalous Best Picture winner since Grand Hotel. These are the huge decades-long stats it will break if it wins:
- First Best Picture winner since Ordinary People to win without a single below the line nomination (40+years).
- First Best Picture winner since Driving Miss Daisy to win without a DGA nomination. (30+ years)
- First Best Picture winner EVER to win without a Best Film BAFTA nomination since BAFTA's became a precursor. (20+ years)
- First Best Picture winner since the 1930's to win with less than 5 nominations. (80+ years)
- First Best Picture winner since Grand Hotel to win with neither a Directing nor an Editing nomination. (80+ years)
It's one thing to break one or two stats but to break all of these stats at the same time is crazy. I honestly don't know if this is genuine passion or a blogger created hype. There's also the X-factor of the significant chunk of young and international voters whose tastes lean more cinephile-like which led to victories for Parasite and nominations for Drive My Car in Picture and The Worst Person in the World in Screenplay. Is there enough of them to sway it towards Power of the Dog? I have no idea.
I'm currently leaning towards The Power of the Dog but CODA joining Grand Hotel in the asterisk club would not surprise me at this point.