There’s still time to get into the the drawing for an Inglourious Basterds DVD, but let’s not stop the contests there!
In 2010 for the first time in decades, there will be ten Academy Award nominations for Best Picture instead of just five. What exactly this will mean is yet to be determined. Will it encourage the Academy to include more offbeat, indie, and maybe even foreign films in the category? Or will it provide an opportunity for the top-level summer blockbusters to get a shot at major awards? Could we possibly see movies like Star Trek and Antichrist both nominated this year?
Thanks to Goon, who came up with this idea as a Row Three Challenge a couple of weeks ago, here’s your chance to guess! Which ten films from 2009 do you think will end up with the Oscar nominations come February? Remember, to be eligible, the films have to have had a theatrical release in the United States during 2009. Post your guesses in the comments section and we’ll tally them all up after the nominations are announced. Whoever has the most correct will receive a yet–to-be-determined prize pack, probably a DVD. We’ll let you know what the prize will be closer to the February nomination announcement. Sorry, contributors, you can play, but only for the glory.
We’d like to have all entries in before the Golden Globe nominations are announced on December 15th (because Golden Globes tend to be too good a predictor of the Oscars), so you’ve got about five days to come up with your picks and post them in a comment here. I’d also like to note that for the first time ever, there will be five nominations in the Animated Feature category, so please include five guesses for those nominations as well. We will use those guesses as a tie-breaker.
After the cut, a few possibilities to get you thinking (courtesy of Goon and Rusty, thanks for getting us started!). Feel free to throw in any others as well, of course – this is just a starter list.
A Serious Man
An Education
Invictus
Nine
District 9
Star Trek
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Lovely Bones
Avatar
Broken Embraces
The Road
Precious
Princess and the Frog
Up
Coraline
Home
Moon
The Hurt Locker
The Informant
Inglourious Basterds
It’s Complicated
Up In The Air
The Young Victoria
Damned United
Bright Star
Crazy Heart
The White Ribbon
The Maid
In the Loop
35 Shots of Rum
Mary and Max
Ponyo
Antichrist
Julie/Julia
Away We Go
Movie laboratories are one of my favorite things ever. Metropolis,...
For reference, here are the official rules for Oscar about which films are eligible:
http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/rules/rule01.html
A Serious Man
An Education
Invictus
Nine
District 9
Star Trek
Broken Embraces
Up
Inglourious Basterds
Up In The Air
of course i hope Dr. Parnassus gets a best director nom and best foriegn film noms for Mother & Broken Embraces.
Glory is all I need…
Ten Oscar Noms:
A Serious Man
An Education
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Invictus
The Lovely Bones
Nine
Precious
The Road
Up In The Air
Animated:
Coraline
Fantastic Mr Fox
Ponyo
Princess And The Frog
Up
For best piture:
Invictus
Nine
District 9
Avatar
Precious
The Hurt Locker
Up In The Air
Julie/Julia
A Single Man
Inglourious Basterds
Best Animated:
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Up
Coraline
Ponyo
Princess and the Frog
Good luck to all contestants
–Omar
Can you run for animated and best picture, or can you only run for one?
guesses coming shortly.
Goon, primary contest is for Best Picture. We’ll use the Animated Features to break a tie, should more than one person get the highest number of Best Picture nominees correct. If there’s STILL a tie, then…I guess we’ll draw for it. I’m just excited about all the possible nominees this year in both categories!
Andrew, thanks for the rules link! I didn’t realize some of those myself!
Precious
A Serious Man
The Hurt Locker
Up in the Air
Inglourious Basterds
Up
Nine
The Road
Bright Star
The Young Victoria
based on what I read about animated feature film, I take it they can run for best picture. I’m going to gamble on this years list taking advantage of the 10 on some mainstream pics. Also the buzz some of the late Oscar bait is apparently shit put a wrench in my initial ‘locks’
A Serious Man
An Education
Invictus
Star Trek
District 9
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Up In The Air
Up
animated:
Ponyo
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Princess and the Frog
Up
Coraline
Ooh, sorry Goon, I misunderstood your question. Yes, as far as I know, animated features are eligible for both awards, and can be nominated in both categories.
It seems like there’s a pretty solid consensus on animated feature so far – that’s gonna make it not so good a tie-breaker, isn’t it? Heh. Can I get 100-to-1 odds on A Town Called Panic? Anyone?
I was tempted to break the mold, because I think Coraline and/or Ponyo could get bounced by Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. That one is a crowd pleaser, and the extent of such effect on the voters is the big X factor there to me.
Anyone who doesn’t have The Young Victoria on their list is delusional. If there is one thing you can bank on with the Oscars, its their love for films about the monarchy, and this one is actually very good.
french canadian director, positive reviews arent positive enough, negative reviews are somewhat to very negative. not bankable enough for me.
maybe Golden Globes
I think Goon is right on this one, Rot. If it were a british production maybe…
What is Canada’s submission for best Foreign Language this year?
its a UK/US production, I am willing to put hard money on the table it will be nominated.
and it has a 73% on RT… to say they wouldn’t nominate mediocre Oscar bait films is to have amnesia. What’s important to remember is what a hard-on they have for the monarchy.
and I have seen it, it is a good film, it is custom-made for this sort of nomination.
Kurt, Canada’s foreign language submission is I Killed My Mother (it’s amazing; I reviewed it from AFIFest).
Mike, is Emily Blunt good in it? If so, I’d say she’s definitely a lock for an actress nom, because the Academy loves costume dramas/historical characters for acting nods, but I’m not sure about Picture. I haven’t heard a lot of buzz about it and it seems like it’s been pushed back a LOT.
Emily Blunt is great in it. It is the kind of film they are guaranteed to nominate when you have ten choices to fill. I wouldn’t be as confident if it was five, even though with five I still think they would, but ten, absolutely.
And Torontonians will have a chance to see I Killed My Mother next month apparently at the Cinematheque. Looking forward to it.
“It is the kind of film they are guaranteed to nominate when you have ten choices to fill.”
You’re operating on the assumption though that they’ll use the 10 films to fill up on more typical Oscar bait with only one or two ‘pander’ picks… I still think we’ll see a couple more than that, which will push stuff like this out.
Nine
The Hurt Locker
Up in the air
Up
Precious
Invictus
A single man
A serious man
an education
and
Star trek (why not, after how pissed people (or i) were at the Dark Knight not making the cut, and with the academy wanting people to watch the Oscars, why not go with one of the most popular blockbuster of the year?)
oh and animated
Up
Fantastic Mr. fox
Coraline
Princess and the frog
Ponyo
I’ll be shocked if Nine gets nominated after all the reviews that are coming out now
Holy Crap is THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG ever good! It is exactly everything that ENCHANTED should have been and more. First Disney movie that I’ve been honest to goodness impressed with in some time. I think there may be some Pixar-dust in the mix this time around, even if the film is very much a step back to handsome 2D Disney movie. This time they even (more or less) don’t have icky gender/class/race issues which is kinda rare. P&tF may not have the majesty of The Lion King, but damn it comes into the ball park, and it is a quite fun picture to boot.
(a review shall be forthcoming…)
All that being said, it is still doesn’t trump Fox or Coraline (even if Keith David manages to be better, he darn near steals this show as a wonderful villain) in the Disney than the Gaimen!)
I haven’t even started following the awards season races yet, but what the heck:
Best Picture:
A Serious Man
An Education
Nine
Star Trek
Precious
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Up In The Air
Crazy Heart
Avatar
Animated:
Up
Ponyo
Coraline
Princess & the Frog
Fantastic Mr. Fox
And I have seen exactly one of these movies! Yikes. Definitely fell behind this year…
Here’s my stab at an Oscar prediction:
BEST PICTURE
An Education
A Serious Man
Inglorious Basterds
The Hurt Locker
Precious
Up in the Air
Avatar
Invictus
The Road
Nine
ANIMATED
Ponyo
Up
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
joining Kurt in the praise for Princess and the Frog. Very fun…
but the Enchanted dig is cheap… there’s nothing subversive about it, poking fun at Disney, to warrant any of that “what Enchanted should have been” crap. I think Kurt just wanted to remind everyone that he didn’t like that movie.
I’ll actually go and say I like P&F more than The Lion King… but a lot of the ‘return to form’ hype around this acts as if its the first good Disney animated film since the mid 90s… I submit that Lilo & Stitch is fine just fine.
I guess for me, disney allowing for some give to their formula while still playing to their base (so to speak), The Princess and The Frog finds the right balance. ENCHANTED, with its ‘self-referential promise, simply failed to do much with it…ended up being more bound by the tried and true in the end. Yea, I wanted to remind you that I didn’t like that film.
I <3 Enchanted. That is all.
At this point, we’re going to have to use the Best Picture guesses as a tie-breaker for the animated feature ones – I didn’t think animated feature was going to be this easy a choice! It wasn’t be for me. I still kind of feel like they’ll give a nom to Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, because it was such a surprise hit.
i got 8/10 with 4/5 on animated.
Blind Side. YUCK
a solid 6/10, oh yeah!
No matter how bad Nine was I am surprised its not nominated. And Young Victoria, well…
Looks like Ashley also got eight. We have a tie!
We’re going to have to have a tiebreaker, either some screenshot competition out of 5 or a sound clip thing or just make it whoever guesses the most Oscar winners as a sidebar to the main competition later
No disrespect to Ashley, but I count seven for her, eight for Goon. Someone want to quadruple-check our counting ability?
Other interesting things – Nine and Invictus were by far the most predicted films that did NOT end up getting nominated, and The Blind Side was not predicted by anyone.
yeah actually, 7 for Ashley. did I win my own game?