29 months ago I explained a common reason why certain films are nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. It’s “because of the resonance and universality of their themes. And the themes that always seem to register more than others are contained in personal journey movies about growth, redemption and transformation.” Or because they make the old 3D formula — desire, deception, discovery — seem true and real in a newish way.

What, then, are this year’s Best Picture Oscar contenders saying in a thematic, this-is-our-life-and-this-is-who-we-are sort of way? Here, right or wrong, are my summaries:

127 Hours is basically saying that no man is an island, that arrogance always leads to a fall, but if you meet a traumatic threat head-on and somehow survive you’ll be much stronger for it, and that you’ll feel a wonderful tidal surge of “isn’t life grand?” when you realize you’ve escaped death. Basic slogan: Anyone who thinks he/she is Superman will find out sooner or later that he/she is not.

Black Swan is saying that being wound too tight and overly competitive and agitated about your creative competitors…actually, it’s not saying that. It’s saying that if a director keeps things close and real and Roman Polanski-like and tones down the CG and cranks up the Tchaikovsky and lays on the lezzy sex, he’ll have a hell of a good film on his hands. Basic slogan: It’s hard to go wrong with Darren Aronfosky at the helm.

The Fighter is saying that family is not always the end-all and be-all. It says that almost every family has a damaging parent. It also has a brother or sister who are hugely delusional and/or damaged and draining the spirit of those family members who are trying to live focused, balanced and productive lives. And yet at the end of the day, family members do watch out for each other. Basic slogan: Life is rough and hard and messy, so you need people you can trust.

Inception is saying that Christopher Nolan has a wow-level imagination and the support of a corporate-connected studio to make those imaginings come true. Basic slogan: The real drama in anyone’s life is buried in their subconscious.

The Kids Are All Right is saying that lesbians are just like anyone else, and that marriage can be a bitch and a marathon and is no piece of cake. Basic slogan: We’re all regular folks under the skin.

The King’s Speech is saying that degrees and pedigrees don’t matter all that much, and that bright, resourceful Average Joes sometimes know a thing or two that can really help high-born fellows who have everything. Basic slogan: Smarts, perception and wisdom sometimes come in unlikely packages.

The Social Network is saying that nobody nices their way into the big-time, that gold does things to men’s souls, and that (a) genius and (b) loyalty, friendship and decency are two different games that don’t necessarily overlap. People with big brains live in their own realm and are sometimes less trustworthy than people with medium or smaller-sized brains. Such is the way of exceptionalism. Basic slogan: Watch your back, jack.

Toy Story 3 is saying that it’s hard when your usefulness has run its course, and thank God for about-to-be-college students who remember what it was like to be a kid. Basic slogan: Cherish and hold onto the heart and the imagination that you knew in your childhood.

True Grit is saying that being tough and smart and feisty doesn’t mean you wont lose your arm or wind up living a life without a lover or a husband, but if you get bitten by a snake it’s good to have a pot-bellied old dog like Ruben Cogburn looking out for you. Basic slogan: the Coen brothers are the best — they always know what they’re doing.

Alfred Hitchcock‘s Foreign Correspondent (1940) was one of 1940’s ten Best Picture nominees. Hitchcock’s Rebecca won the Oscar, John Ford‘s The Grapes of Wrath should have won, but in my book Correspondent is almost equal to Wrath. And it’s much better than All This, and Heaven Too, The Great Dictator, Kitty Foyle, The Letter, The Long Voyage Home, Our Town and The Philadelphia Story.

The plane-crash sequence shows that you don’t need state-of-the-art visual effects, much less 21st Century CGI, to make an action sequence work. It’s all about what to show, and when and how to show it

I’m getting quite tired of reading dismissive remarks about The Social Network along the lines of a comment posted today by an HE reader called dayXexists. “I found very little emotional resonance in The Social Network,” he wrote, “[because] it’s just about some college kid who is an asshole and screws over his best friend.

“That’s why I’m so baffled about all the fanboys throwing such a big stink over TSN supposedly being so superior to TKS. I don’t think either come anywhere near Black Swan, The Fighter or even 127 Hours.”

I have no beef with anyone preferring these three films to TSN or TKS, but there’s a 10.9.10 Maureen Dowd column that requires a fresh review. It reminded me that The Social Network is afflicted with the same story virus that compromises Das Rheingold, that semi-boring hack opera by the overbearing Richard Wagner.

“They had me at the mesmerizing first scene, when the repulsive nerd is mocked by a comely, slender young lady he’s trying to woo,” Dowd began. “Bitter about women, he returns to his dark lair in a crimson fury of revenge.

Das Rheingold “unfolds with mythic sweep, telling the most compelling story of all, the one I cover every day in politics: What happens when the powerless become powerful and the powerful become powerless?

“This is a drama about quarrels over riches, social hierarchy, envy, theft and the consequence of deceit — a world upended where the vassals suddenly become lords and the lords suddenly lose their magic.

“The beauty who rejects the gnome at the start is furious when he turns around and betrays her, humiliating her before the world. And the giant brothers looming over the action justifiably feel they’ve provided the keys to the castle and want their reward. One is more trusting than the other, but both go berserk, feeling they’ve been swindled after entering into a legitimate business compact.

“The antisocial nerd, surrounded by his army of slaving minions, has been holed up making something so revolutionary and magical that it turns him into a force that could conquer the world.

“The towering brothers battle to get what they claim is their fair share of the glittering wealth that flows from the obsessive gnome’s genius designs.

“The gnome, remarkably, invents a way to hurl yourself through space and meet up with somebody at the other end.”

The themes in The Social Network, in short, are “strikingly similar” to those in Das Rheingold. The timeless echoes in Wagner’s opera, “based on the medieval German epic poem Das Nibelungenlied, which some experts say helped inspire J. R. R. Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings, underscore how little human drama changes through the ages.

“We are always fighting about social status, identity, money, power, turf, control, lust and love. We are always trying to get even, get more and climb higher. And we are always trying to cross the bridge to Valhalla.”

This is not the cosmic-celestial time-trip sequence from Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life. (Malick would of course never dream of sampling Kubrick.) But play it directly after watching Fox Searchlight’s recent Tree of Life trailer, and you’d be forgiven for suspecting as much. It’s actually a school-assignment montage, called Origins, by Dylan Wells. The music is his own. Damn good if I do say so.

Three or four days ago Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone sent me and several others a list of questions for her 2nd Oscar Roundtable discussion. Here’s the article that resulted. The questions + my original responses follow:

Stone: Do you think The King’s Speech was always going to be the film that appealed to the highest number of voters, and that it was only a matter of time before it started winning the big awards?

Wells: Apparently, sadly, yes.

Stone: Or do you think it became the stronger pick as an anti-vote to the rest of the more challenging fare?

Wells: I’m sure that many, many people who wanted/needed that extra emotional oomph factor in their Best Picture preference decided somewhere along the way that they were anti-Social Network to some degree. They looked around for that distinguished huggy bear/comfy-blanket factor, and they found it in The King’s Speech.

Stone: Do you think The King’s Speech is a film that would have won in any year or do you think its popularity is somehow specific to this year, 2010? Does Obama have anything at all to do with it?

Wells: We’re all dealing with just as much of an agitated political/cultural climate under Barack Obama as we were under George Bush, if not more so. I don’t think there’s any connection.

But I’ll tell you one factor that hasn’t yet been brought up. Naysaying The Social Network is a way of conveying a roundabout fuck you to the GenYs and GenXs by the less-hip, less-engaged, less-forward-looking portions of the Boomer and blue-hair community. I’m not saying all boomers and blue-hairs feel this way, but a lot of them, deep down, are essentially telling the younger generation that The Social Network is “a very fine high-end film but it’s yours, not ours….a very smart and strong drama but there’s not much of an emotional arc for the main character and not nearly enough heart and that’s how we feel. Now sit in that chair in the foyer and wait your damn turn. We know you’re nipping at our heels and that you’ll be taking over the industry sooner or later, but we run it now and so KISS OUR COLLECTIVE ASS, you computer-head, iPad-obsessing, insufficiently emotional, Jersey Shore-watching, baby-sipping, hoodie-wearing, sandal-wearing, constantly-texting whippersnappers!”

Stone: Why do you think Christopher Nolan failed to get his third potential Oscar nomination for direction?

Wells (i.e., channelling Stephen Colbert): Because he’s too cold, too British, too geeky-fanboy-tecchy. He needs to grow up, find his soul and make a nice huggy bear/comfy blanket movie….or he’ll get no love from us!

Stone: Do you think that the recent spate of darker, less traditional Academy Best Picture winners — The Departed, No Country for Old Men, The Hurt Locker only won because they didn’t have a movie like The King’s Speech to go up against? Is The King’s Speech like Titanic in that way?

Wells: In terms of delivering strong emotional currents, The King’s Speech — a very nicely done, highly polished upscale buddy movie — is a modest trickle compared to Titanic‘s damburst. That said, the last four or five years witnessed an abandoning of the Academy’s huggy-bear requirement in its Best Picture selections. The wins of The Departed, No Country for Old Men and The Hurt Locker were evidence of this. If you analogize setting aside the huggy-bear requirement with the pattern of an alcoholic getting sober and attending AA meetings, hailing The King’s Speech is a relapse — the Academy is back to slurping the booze.

Stone: Do you personally think it matters what film wins Best Picture?

Wells: A Best Picture Oscar is a kind of significant statue, a stamp, the chiselling of a thought, a moment in time carved on a Thai mahogany bedpost that will be looked at and contemplated for decades to come.

[Posted from 35,000 feet on an LAX-to-JFK flight — Sunday, 2.6.11, 2:15 am NYC time.]

My sincere (if unsurprised) congrats to Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin for his taking the WGA Award earlier this evening for Best Adapted Screenplay, and also to Inception’s Chris Nolan for winning the Best Original Screenplay WGA trophy — very much deserved. And now for six hours of cramped, sleepless hell on a Delta red-eye to JFK, leaving in 23 minutes.

The Santa Barbara Film Festival Director’s panel concluded about four hours ago. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to post but here it is. Peter Bart moderated a discussion between Black Swan‘s Darren Aronofsky, Inside Job‘s Charles Ferguson, The King’s Speech‘s Tom Hooper, Toy Story 3‘s Lee Unkrich, The Fighter‘s David O. Russell and Winter’s Bone‘s Debra Granik.

(l. to r., top): Ferguson, Hooper, Russell (bottom): Unkrich, Granik, Aronofsky.

Aronofsky took the prize, if you ask me. Funny, fast on his feet, honest, straight dealer. Hooper and Russell tied for second place. Unkrich, Granik and Ferguson tied for third.

Bart’s two best lines: (a) “Last year we had [the formerly involved] Kathryn Bigelow and Jim Cameron. Have any of you ever hooked up with another director?,” and (b) “He who defers rarely sees.”

I was jerked awake when Russell used the term “movie gods,” although he didn’t mean it in an HE way. He was referring to the gods who decide which films will be green-lighted and which won’t be. But it was flattering nonetheless to think that the term is catching on to some degree.

Aronofsky #1: “Actors are always in control. At is most intense movie acting is a 30-second burst of emotion and then we call cut. So I never pushed Natalie [Portman] too close to the edge. Working with Mickey Rourke, who doesn’t respect directors or scripts or other facets of the filmmaking process, definitely changed the way I work.”

Aronofsky #2: “An elderly important Italian dignitary came into the theatre before Black Swan was about to screen at the Venice Film Festival, and he got a long standing ovation. And at the end of it I leaned over and said to him, ‘I’m really, really sorry for what’s about to happen.”

Aronofsky #3: ” I could play Russell or Hooper. We could all say each other’s lines. But on February 28th, we’re all going to get back to work.”

Entertainment Weekly‘s Dave Karger handled things quite nicely as the moderator of the Virtuosos Award ceremony at the Lobero last (i.e., Friday) night. The honorees were Another Year‘s Lesley Manville (funnier and looser than she was before the Oscar nominations), Winter’s Bone‘s John Hawkes (relaxed, funny, self-deprecating), Animal Kingdom‘s Jacki Weaver and True Grit‘s Hailee Steinfeld (much taller than she seems in the film).

(l to. r.) John Hawkes, Lesley Manville, Hailee Steinfeld, Jacki Weaver, Dave Karger — Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre, 4.4.11, 9:15 pm.

Hailee Steinfeld

This afternoon’s tweet relates to yesterday’s Anne Thompson/Indiewire story about Queen Elizabeth II saying flattering things about The King’s Speech.

Toronto Star critic Peter Howell has put on his straw hat and white bucks and red-and-white sport jacket and done the old soft-shoe about how the Gurus of Gold don’t dictate or act as tastemakers — “we just predict.” That’s their claim, yes, and to some extent it’s true.

But the Gurus know full well (and David Poland most of all) that when they vote for a certain film as the likeliest Best Picture nominee or winner it becomes a beacon for the Zeligs out there, for all the Academy members who aren’t sure where to turn and are basically just looking for warmth and assurance and the safety of a crowd.

And that is what people all over the globe want more than anything else — not to stand tall and alone and be “right” (whatever that means), but to know the balm of acceptance and companionship and bon ami and the embrace of brothers and sisters.

The urge to blend in and belong is a very strong one. It exists, I would imagine, in about 80% or 90% of the human population. The rebel, iconoclast and independent thinker club (to which I belong) constitutes, at best, 10% of humanity, and perhaps even less. And the Gurus know this, and yet they pretend that they’re just idly sitting on the sidelines, watching the action in the center arena like hockey fans and calling it as best as they can, and they are so full of shit I can barely stand it. They are kingmakers and they know it.

Howell puts it thusly: “A fellow [Sundance] traveller looks up at me from beneath his snow-fringed toque and exclaims, ‘Hey! Aren’t you one of those Gurus o’ Gold?’

“‘I am indeed,’ I replied, proud at my first street recognition as a Guru, but also a little wary. I noticed with relief that he had no shotgun. Utah is part of the Wild West, after all.

“‘Why are you guys bailing on The Social Network?’ my transit inquisitor continued. ‘Why are you following the other sheep and promoting The King’s Speech?’

“I sighed deeply and began the critic’s speech I’ve given many times on this topic. I love The Social Network, but it’s my sworn duty as a Guru o’ Gold to predict what the nearly 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are likely to choose for Best Picture and other Oscars,” and that’s all.

That’s the ostensible duty, all right, but the final effect is something else entirely.

I’m asking myself if I should book a flight to Moscow to catch the 3.31 theatrical opening of Bruce Robinson‘s The Rum Diary. This isn’t the loneliest, saddest and most unloved Johnny Depp film of all time (that would be 1997’s The Brave), but it’s certainly the loneliest of this century. The $65 million film (according to IMDB Pro) is also slated to open in Sweden on 9.23.11.