Oscar Eye: Predicting Best Picture, Sorta

I've Loved You So Long, the French movie that is pretty much guaranteed to get Kristin Scott Thomas a second Best Actress Oscar nomination. That screening got out at 8, and of course at 9 I had to watch Grandpa McCrankypants and the Hope Monger square off, so there went the rest of my evening. (I promise that's the last time I'll reference real politics rather than Oscar politics in this column. Seriously!)So before I get into today's main topic-- Best Picture! And a little bit of The Dark Knight!-- I want to talk about Thomas, who gives an honest-to-God amazing performance in I've Loved You So Long, one of my favorite movies I've seen in ages. Thomas, English by birth but speaking French here, plays a woman sent to jail for murdering her 6-year-old son, though the exact circumstances of the boy's death aren't clear until the final scene of the film. After 15 years in jail she movies in with her younger sister, who was only a teenager when she left and knows her sister mostly as a mysterious stranger. As the two get to know each other, and Thomas's character Juliette comes to relearn the outside world, the movie encompasses so many aspects from humanity, from new romance to the joy of children. The movie itself is a gem, and Thomas anchors it; she'll be everywhere as Oscar season progresses, and hopefully audiences will overcome the language barrier to catch her great performance.OK, on to the big one, Best Picture, which has seen a lot of shakeups in the last few weeks despite most major contenders still being a month away from release. First, there was the whole debacle between Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein over The Reader, the World War II drama starring Kate Winslet and directed by Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliott). You can read details about the mess here, but basically Rudin, the producer, and Weinstein, representing the distributor, bickered over when the movie should be released; Weinstein, gunning for a December '08 release, won, and now Rudin has abandoned the project entirely. This results in terrible buzz for a movie that isn't even finished yet, and tarnishes the Oscar project of a movie that already has competition from its own lead actress, who also stars in Revolutionary Road this December.Then there's The Road, which has been hit with rumors of a delay today at Entertainment Weekly. The movie is considered a hard sell given its post-apocalyptic themes, but it's based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote the familiar title No Country for Old Men. Viggo Mortensen may also be competing against himself, given his starring role in the Holocaust drama Good, but The Road has been considered a major contender for months now. Delaying this movie until 2009 would mean yet another major shift in the landscape.

As for the movies already in release, the sole major contender is still The Dark Knight, which has fallen off the public radar ever since it stopped earning over $1 million in a weekend (to be fair, that only happened two weeks ago, in its 11th week of release). In Contention recently raised the possibility that Heath Ledger could compete as Best Actor as opposed to Best Supporting Actor, which is the kind of rumor that can only take flight before studios have started their big For Your Consideration campaigns. It's unlikely to stick, but rumors like that stoke the fires for The Dark Knight's campaign, which, weirdly enough, could get drowned out by the madness of Oscar season, even though it's the biggest movie of the year. Funny how these things work. When Oscar predictions start getting serious, and the period for nominations kicks off at the end of the year, The Dark Knight will become a hot topic once more; in the meantime it's up to those who are in the tank for the movie to keep the home fires burning. For the record, I'm 100% behind a Best Picture nod for The Dark Knight-- even though you all crucified me for giving it a measly 4.5 out of 5 stars for my review.So after a month and a half of the fall movie season, it's been more about movies that have fallen out of contention than those that have gained momentum. Body of Lies tanked at the box office, and went it went all hopes of Oscar. Che got poor festival reception, and Changeling's was mediocre, so it'll be an uphill climb for both of those lead performance-driven movies. W. has gotten so-so reviews, except for some raves for Josh Brolin's performance, and Secret Life of Bees is gaining no traction for its strong female leads. Does anyone remember that Duchess and Appaloosa were released earlier this fall? You'd think given that we're all holding our breath for the big releases in November and December, we'd find something to cling to in the meantime; instead everyone keeps repeating "Milk, Revolutionary Road, Doubt, etc." to themselves and counting the days until those movies finally come out.By the time of next week's column, I'll have seen Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle's movie that's favored by some to make it in for Best Picture, and....wait for it... Quantum of Solace. I won't be allowed to write about it, but I promise to drop lots of maddening hints. In the meantime, I invite you to check out the chart at Gurus of Gold, which aggregates Oscar predictions from all kinds of smart people, and is willing to go into the kind of speculation I don't bother with. I mean take a look at their top five Best Picture predictions... four of the five are movies practically no one has seen, and the fifth is Slumdog Millionaire, which premiered at Toronto. It's going to be amazing to see how much this stuff change once these movies actually see the light of day.Also check out the updated chart below, which includes a second chart for movies already in release. Look how organized we're getting! See you all next week.