Yesterday I posted a piece called “Strange Avoidance Mechanism.” It questioned a group decision by six contributors to an 11.29 L.A. Times Oscar Buzzmeter piece (Anne Thompson, Tom O’Neil, Glenn Whipp, Kenny Turan, Justin Chang, Nicole Sperling) to name six films — Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Shape of Water, Dunkirk, Darkest Hour, Get Out and Lady Bird — most likely to “lead this year’s Oscar race.”
What was wrong with that? Oh, nothing except for the fact that a very likely Best Picture nominee and, to go by the Oscar fortunes of Gotham and Spirit Award winners over the last five or six years, a likely Best Picture winner was more or less ignored — Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name. In fact Chang, Turan, Whipp, Sperling and O’Neil picked Call Me By Your Name as a leading Best Picture contender. But Anne Thompson didn’t, and so the other six films ranked higher.
I should have just written Thompson, but I wrote them all a letter instead. “I don’t think I went off the handle at all with this piece,” it began. “It was a measured, carefully phrased analysis that concluded with a head-scratcher. I simply pointed out the likelihood, given the pattern of the last few years, of a Gotham or Spirit Award winner ending up as Best Picture Oscar winner. It’s not an unreasonable presumption as it’s based upon statistical fact. And yet somehow you guys, in the aggregate, managed to exclude Call Me By Your Name from your list of the six most likely Best Picture contenders or winners. (“…which movies will lead this year’s Oscar race.”)
Can I ask something? Who among you is predicting with a straight face that Darkest Hour might “lead” the pack or win a Best Picture Oscar? It might be nominated, sure, but winning? C’mon.
Not only that, you also managed to avoid naming The Post, which is easily locked as a Best Picture nominee and, given the present political current, a likely winner — it’s safe, steady, boomer-friendly (Tom and Meryl), well-written, staunchly liberal, and it really, really doesn’t like Trump. Hello?