Gold Rush Gauntlet

Let the 2012 Oscar Olympics begin!

On the eve of the first critics group announcement, this year's Oscar race is about to get serious.  The National Board of Review usually fires the Awards Season battle cannon first, firing the charge for a small army of critics groups to announce their best of 2012 winners in advance of the guild and Golden Globe nominations, all of which will be unveiled before Christmas. This year, the NYFCC will deliver the inaugural honors, announcing their picks for the year's best tomorrow morning (Dec. 3). Last year, they gave top prizes to "The Artist" and its director Michel Hazanavicius, and Oscar ultimately echoed.

Ben Affleck and his "Argo" ensemble

Movie geeks and industry types speculate all year about the upcoming Oscars and the long list of likely and potential nominees, narrowing things way down as the year's crop of great films comes into focus. This year, the field has been particularly strong, with a shortlist of clarified contenders in each category and frontrunners pulling rank for the big win.  There can be up to 10 Best Picture nominees, with a film required to rank #1 on five percent of all Academy ballots to get a nomination. (This provision allows for a small but passionate groundswell of voter support to propel cerebral art house fare like "The Tree of Life" into the final lineup, while widely acclaimed films must stir enough absolute favor in voters or end up an also-ran.

Now that the final four presumptive contenders for the big prize have finally screened for critics and the press, it's clear that "Les Miserables" and "Zero Dark Thirty" are sure things, along with established frontrunners "Argo," "Silver Linings Playbook," "Life of Pi" and "Lincoln," which has been raking in bank at the box office and commercial success means everything when Oscar is on the line.

Of these, I have only seen "Argo" and "Silver Linings," both of which deserve their likely awards bounty, and "Life of Pi" is definitely next on my must-see list.

"Les Miserables" is a perfect example of obvious Oscar bait that figures into predictions as a frontrunner sight unseen, a big studio spectacle that skipped the fall festival circuit because it was still in post-production.  When Tom Hooper's musical finally screened for the press over Thanksgiving weekend in a ceremonious international unveiling, a clear sign of Universal's confidence in the picture's  broad appeal, the internet lit fire with unanimously ecstatic praise.  Hooper won the directing Oscar two years ago for Best Picture winner "The King's Speech," so he's well-versed in the Oscar game and the old-fashioned Academy clearly likes his style.


Universal is pushing this thing big time, opening wide on Christmas Day with high commercial hopes for boffo box office through the holiday corridor and well into January, banking on all-but-certain victory at the Golden Globes, with its segregated Best Picture field giving musical "Miserables" momentum should it defeat the lighter-weight comedies in its category. Anne Hathaway has been singled out by virtually every report on the film's Oscar chances as the surest shot of all, with that gut-wrenching performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" sealing the deal.

Less than 48 hours after the "Les Miz" blitz hit, its thunder was stolen by the electric reaction to Kathryn Bigelow's highly cloaked, hugely anticipated "Zero Dark Thirty," a intense, pulsating procedural recounting the hunt for Osama bin Laden from inside the clandestine CIA operation that ultimately killed him. Sidestepping a political narrative in favor of the same visceral embedded-in-combat approach that won both of them Oscars for "The Hurt Locker," Bigelow is again working in tandem with screenwriter Mark Boal, whose journalistic attention to detail and editorial purity are crucial to the film's unflinching depiction of the mission's execution.

Given the pair's history together, it's no surprise that "Zero Dark Thirty" fires on all cinematic cylinders. But unlike the tripwire-tense set pieces that constructed "The Hurt Locker," Boal's utilitarian script takes a "Zodiac" approach to the CIA's hunt for bin Laden. Bigelow knows exactly what she's doing, a director in total control of hugely ambitious material that yields neither to political agenda or Hollywood convention.  Bigelow's unflinching immersion into the operation's strategic perseverance plays on screen like a docudrama. To THR's Todd McCarthy, "the film's power steadily builds over its long course, to a point that is terrifically imposing and unshakable." Finally culminating in the fateful Navy SEALs mission,  Bigelow's skillful staging of action sequences is said to achieve an unprecedented realism with the assault on bin Laden's compound:

"Shot in no-light situations in several stretches, it is an incredibly staged sequence, tense and brutal and direct, and perhaps the single greatest expression of everything Bigelow's worked towards in the staging of action over the years." -Drew McWeeny, HitFix.com

The real game-changer for the "Zero" Oscar train is Jessica Chastain, who has catapulted into the front of the pack of Best Actress contenders. Anchoring a film with more than 100 speaking roles, Chastain plays a CIA analyst who ultimately leads the decade-long hunt for bin Laden to mission accomplished. Chastain plays Maya, a cipher of a character with no given emotional or biographical background to inform her motivations, and the actress delivers what Sasha Stone says is "far and away the best performance by any actress this year."

It's a huge statement, and given the range she's exhibited in last year's string of breakout performances, it's a massive leap forward in terms of both Chastain's range as an actress and for her career potential hereafter.  From grace incarnate as the nurturing mother in "The Tree of Life" to the Oscar-nominated comic nuance she brought to "The Help" and a torrential force of emotion in "Take Shelter," Chastain has a range that suggests she may very well become the best actress of her generation. In "Zero Dark Thirty," she is asked to carry a film for the first time and, according to Christy Lemire, it's mission accomplished: "Chastain's powerfully controlled performance – a spectacular showcase for this versatile actress' many talents and a long-overdue leading role – is emblematic of the film as a whole."

The remaining four potential nominees for Best Picture are less than guaranteed, though there are a few likely favorites that could muster enough support from Academy members to reach a critical mass of first place votes and land a nomination.

"Beasts of the Southern Wild," which swept Sundance and topped $10 million last summer thanks to spectacular word of mouth from art house crowds. First time director Benh Zeitlin has created a remarkable vision of imagination triumphing over hopelessness, with 8-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis in the year's most impressive screen debut as Hushpuppy, a marvelous character brought vividly to life by Zeitlin and his little star.  The impression Wallis leaves on audiences should not be underestimated, making her an odds-on record breaker as the youngest Best Actress nominee in Oscar history. Whether "Beasts" will figure into Best Picture is less certain, but it's not hard to imagine five percent of voters getting behind the year's most boldly cinematic indie so it makes the cut.

Similarly, an extremely outspoken contingent of cinephiles are mad about Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master," a dream come true for the director's loyal following of adoring intellectuals. Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams are are all probable acting nominees, but the film was polarizing enough to generate a sizable backlash against Anderson's deliberately contentious approach to what many people basically expected would be a sensationalistic Scientology exposé. The parallels are certainly there, but "The Master" is intentionally misleading on the surface, with Anderson's controlled submersion into the male psyche hardly satisfying as commercial entertainment. Bereft of anything close to emotional catharsis, "The Master" is defiantly cerebral and irresolute.
It's also completely spellbinding, a master class in both cinematic technique and existential subjectivity. The rabid critical support for "The Master" should be enough to secure a Best Picture nomination, but its equally ravenous detractors -- and dismal box office performance -- are significant enough to give pause.

Michael Haneke's "Amour" is another critical darling, winner of a second consecutive Palme d'Or for the legendary European auteur three years after "The White Ribbon" took top honors in Cannes.   Unanimously admired by the press, Austria's entry for Best Foreign Language Film is all but promised the Oscar in that category given its reception leading up to Sony Pictures Classics' stateside release. "Amour" is a devastating portrait of an elderly couple facing the inevitability of death, with a softer touch from Haneke said to be winning favor from Academy members well in advance of its U.S. release and admiration may just be strong enough to figure "Amour" in among the top ten. If not, it will have to settle for the foreign film prize and possible nominations for its acclaimed lead performances, especially Emmanuelle Riva for Best Actress. If the octogenarian French actress manages to land a nomination in the company of 8-year-old "Beasts of the Southern Wild" star Quvanzhané Wallis, this year's Best Actress competition will break records for both youngest and oldest ever nominees.

"Moonrise Kingdom" was a big commercial crossover, surprising box office observers with its broad playability well beyond the usual urban art house boundaries of Wes Anderson's quirky films.  Focus Features will push big for a Best Picture nod, and critics groups will likely give "Moonrise" plenty of love as the month goes on. A SAG ensemble nod could be in store for the talented ensemble, anchored by a pair of prepubescent unknowns with a starry supporting cast to impress fellow actors/voters in offbeat roles, and a nomination for the Screen Actors' equivalent to Best Picture would certainly build momentum for the case of "Moonrise" landing in Oscar territory.

There's also fellow Focus stablemate "Anna Karenina," a ravishing adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's tragic romance from director Joe Wright. Sure to turn heads in technical categories across the board, Wright's vision of Russian society plays out on a literal stage and works brilliantly, with Keira Knightley deserving another Best Actress nod (after "Pride and Prejudice") for a tremendous performance under Wright's direction. The film may be too daring artistically to click with a large enough voting block, but it's certainly in the running.

Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" is finally in the can, having just screened for its first audience only three weeks shy of its Christmas release. While Tarantino's bold spaghetti-western take on slavery in segregated South will likely earn notices for his audacious screenplay and Leonardo DiCaprio's flamboyant plantation owner villian in the Best Supporting Actor field, a Best Picture nod is looking unlikely given the timeframe, subject matter, and most crucially, the stiffest Oscar competition in years. Commercial and critical success are nevertheless imminent, and Oscar may indeed follow suit in the big category if "Django" pulls out the punches.

There are hopeful aspirations for a handful of other contenders, from "The Hobbit," which is said to be lighter and cheesier than Peter Jackson's original epic trilogy to acting showcases like "Flight" and "The Sessions," both widely acclaimed but lacking against stronger competition to make the Best Picture grade.  James Bond has never been better than "Skyfall," and its massive box office success doesn't hurt either. I'd love to see "Cloud Atlas" considered for Best Picture, but something tells me the stigma of commercial indifference and polarizing response from critics are more than enough to seal its fate on the outside of Oscar's in-crowd, with the test of time sure to give "Cloud Atlas" the Great Film recognition it deserves.

But "The Impossible" might prove to be quite the opposite, with an outside chance at surging forward on a wave of emotional well-wishing given the huge wallop it packs depicting a vacationing family in Indonesia torn apart by the 2004 tsunami.  It's a big hit already overseas, having grossed nearly $60 early in its run, with Naomi Watts a strong contender to break into the final five Best Actress nominees.


Finally, consider "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" as a potential sleeper to break into the Best Picture elite, with considerable affection for the surprise summer hit still a factor, not to mention surefire Golden Globe nominations in the Comedy/Musical categories. Never count out the combined powers of Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith when it comes to Oscar.