Oscar race heats up

If you ask any Hollywood insider he will tell you that this year’s Oscar race might finally be the wake-up call that this aging award show needs. It’s going to be the ultimate race between “old Hollywood” (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and “new Hollywood” (Slumdog Millionaire). And if the dark horse, the unlikely hero emerges as victorious, and of all places live on television as the world is watching on, this is certainly going to be an Oscar to remember...
It’s no big secret that the organisers of the Academy Awards have been working overtime to make the 81st edition of the Oscars a big hit after years of sagging ratings and generally falling interest by the public who just couldn’t be bothered to watch over three hours of an award show with nominated movies that no one outside of Hollywood has even heard of.
After hiring hosts that are stand-up comedians, like Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres and Jon Stewart, who have caused more embarrassment than ratings, the academy has selected Australian mega celebrity Hugh Jackman to host the Oscars this year. The selection is not completely out-of-the-blue as Jackman has already been heralded for hosting the Tony Awards, the Oscars of the theatre world, in both 2004 and 2005.
Jackman, a star of screen and stage, not to mention a well-loved celebrity, will most likely bring a whole new audience to the Oscars as host. His style will be more show-like rather than trying to be funny on the expense of Hollywood A-listers in the audience.
AMPAS (the academy giving out the Oscars) also hired a new team – producer Laurence Mark and director Bill Condon – who together brought us the Oscar-winning Dreamgirls a few years ago. The two promise to bring a new spin to the Oscars with their deep commitment and love to the film medium.
The freshman producers intend to give us a ceremony that will be no longer than three hours (which by itself will be a record if it happens), an evening for movie lovers by movie lovers and, most importantly, a lot of surprises.
But at the end of the day the billions of people around the world who will tune in to see the show will do so to watch who is going home with the gold… so let’s have a look at this year’s nominees.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is entering the race with 13 nominations including best picture, best director and best actor for Brad Pitt.
Button has been the front-runner all through this award season, being the most nominated movie (75 nominations in total) at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and the SAG Awards. However, it has failed to win any major award so far.
Slumdog Millionaire, which is nominated for 10 Oscars (as none of its unknown actors managed to secure a nomination), is the dark horse everyone is routing for. It has won all the awards leading to Oscars from the SAG, Critics Choice and Golden Globes among the 58 other awards it already won, and all this when it almost did not see the light of day.
The story behind the movie is that Warner Independent, a subsidiary of Warner Bros Studios, was one of the major backers of this movie and was scheduled to release it in the US as well. However, Warner Bros pulled the plug on Warner Independent (as well as sister companies New Line and Picture House) and the movie was left with no distributor. Warner Bros suggested the movie should go direct-to-DVD as they didn’t plan to invest in the theatrical marketing campaign of the movie. Director Danny Boyle (who is also favoured to win an Oscar for his work in the movie) decided to run the movie in film festivals around the world before releasing it on DVD.
At the screening of the film at the Toronto Film Festival (where it ultimately won the People’s Choice Award), some executives from rival studio, Fox Searchlight, saw the movie and fell in love with it and after lengthy discussions convinced Warner Bros to let them distribute the movie theatrically in the US. The rest is, of course, history… Slumdog became the darling of every critic and filmgoer and is now going to most likely win the Oscar.
Ironically, Slumdog’s biggest rival at the Oscars is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which is a Warner Bros Studios movie and rumour has it that the studio was behind the sham campaign against Slumdog a few weeks ago when it was printed in all the Hollywood trade papers that audiences in India felt ashamed and insulted by the movie. Regularly no one could care less in Hollywood what audiences in India feel about a movie, but as the Oscar race is a dirty race, it was spun around to make it seem like the producers used the locals and gave them a bad reputation in the movie.
Rounding up the list of movies with multiple nominations this year are Milk and The Dark Knight with eight nominations each, Wall-E with six nominations and Frost/Nixon, The Reader and Doubt with five nominations each.
The four acting categories (Best Actor/Actress and Best Supporting Actor/Actress) are almost evenly occupied by repeat nominated actors and winners alongside first-time nominees. Among the first-time nominees are: Viola David (43) for Doubt, Anne Hathaway (26) for Rachel Getting Married, Taraji P. Henson (38) for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Melissa Leo (48) for Frozen River, Josh Brolin (40) for Milk, Richard Jenkins (61) for The Visitor, Frank Langella (71) for Frost/Nixon, Michael Shannon (34) for Revolutionary Road and Mickey Rourke (52) for The Wrestler.
Rourke is today the one everyone is banking for best actor although the former Hollywood bad boy who made a remarkable comeback in The Wrestler has still to convince the Oscar voters to give him their vote over Sean Penn, who is an Oscar darling (having won an Oscar already for Mystic River four years ago). The returning nominees this year are: Brad Pitt (45), Sean Penn (48), Angelina Jolie (33), Marisa Tomei (44), Kate Winslet (33), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (41) and, of course, Meryl Streep (59), who has broken her own record with being the only actress in Oscar history to have been nominated 15 times; however, she has only won twice for Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Sophie’s Choice (1982).
The global economic crisis is of course also affecting Hollywood as we witness less money spent on campaigning for the nominated movies. Last year, for example, Miramax spent an estimated $15 million on the Oscar campaign for Best Picture winner, No Country for Old Men. In past years similar amounts were spent on campaigns for movies like Million Dollar Baby, Shakespeare in Love or Saving Private Ryan. The most spent on an Oscar campaign goes to The Gladiator, for which over $20 million were shelled to win Best Picture.
This year the budgets are by far more modest. Warner Bros/Paramount are estimated to be the biggest spenders this season for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which insiders estimate has cost the studios roughly $5 million, a third of what studios were used to spend on their Oscar campaigns. The recession is also showing its signs on the Oscar after-parties, which were always the most lavish parties of the whole Hollywood calendar.
The biggest party every year is the Vanity Fair party with thousands of guests and food and beverages costing millions of dollars. This year the party will be limited to only 750 guests and among the items on the menu will be chicken pot pie…

Over the past 10 years, award-winning journalist Ron Jacobsohn has covered every Hollywood event, from red carpet premiéres to one-on-one interviews with all of Hollywood’s hottest names.

Source: Weekender, February 21, 2009