Oscar 2012: the Aftermath

Best Actress and Best Actor

Less than a week after the most epic of parties, with the red carpet all rolled up, and the stars all (hopefully) back at work, here are some random notes on this year’s Academy Awards aftermath. I’m not concentrating on the actual show itself, but discussing the ultimate question: what does it all mean?

Let’s discuss the success of The Artist. It wasn’t a clean sweep, Lord of the Rings-style. It was more like a respectable showing, a la Chicago in 2002. This doesn’t mean that studios are rushing to make eclectic projects like this one. Harvey Weinstein is not overcome with a sudden urge to bring back silent movie en masse. What this does mean, as a business model, is that the major studios and boutique shops (like The Weinstein Company and Focus Features) will continue to attend film festivals and acquire domestic distribution rights to worthy projects, dress them up in critical praise, and create Oscar campaigns for them. No, the major studios are still producing Transformers sequels and busily re-booting tried-and-true franchise options. (Unless you’re Christopher Nolan or Steven Soderbergh and can do whatever the hell you want.)

Jean Dujardin will continue to be a star in France, and his next few projects might get limited release in North America, but people here may forget he exists. The real test of longevity will be how he navigates his career without TWC’s direct involvement. He’s charmed everyone by appearing on talk shows, participating in that hilarious Funny or Die video, and he’s sexy to boot. He will now have to decide if an American project might entice him and he can become a domestically-recognized movie star, or if he’ll continue in French films exclusively. He may want to call fellow French Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, for tips. She’s continued working in their native France while also taking on strong supporting roles in such prestige projects as Inception, Nine and Midnight in Paris, all of which were nominated for or won Oscars. Dujardin will have to choose wisely, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. In the interim, it’s likely that his next film Les Infideles, which caused some controversy in France due to its outrageous movie poster, will be given a local release.

Now that Meryl’s won an Oscar for her outstanding performance in The Iron Lady – a film I did not love but in which she was tremendous – the pressure’s now off to give her a third Oscar, something people have been buzzing about since at least 1985. She still has more nominations than any performer, living or dead, and as many Oscars as Jack Nicholson and Ingrid Bergman, one away from Katherine Hepburn’s all-time record. However, the next person in line for the Best Actress award will be none other than fellow nominee Glenn Close. Seeing Close on the red carpet for the first time in years, looking beautiful but also age-appropriate given the lack of any (obvious) plastic surgery, should remind the Academy to take notice of the outstanding work she’s done since her last Oscar nomination 23 years ago. She’s since won two Tony Awards and three Emmy Awards (and countless nominations) for, amongst others, a political stage play, a big-budget Broadway musical smash, noted miniseries and excellent ongoing work for serious, prestigious television series such as Damages and The Shield. Heck, Damages just might be her signature role and may outclass almost about everything she’s ever done in film. She’s now lost at the Oscars six times. She is due. Her next project is Thérèse Raquin, currently in pre-production. This is an adaptation of an oft-performed Emile Zola play and novel, smells of prestige, and is due out next year. Close for Oscar, 2014? It could happen.

Oscar 2012: Best Actress

In our continuing coverage of the Oscars, we break down the nominees for Best Actress. Here are the candidates, and the reasons why and why they may not win the Oscar. Fasten your seat belts, as Bette Davis once said: this just might be the most competitive category of the night.

Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs

For her: Unbelievably, this is Close’s sixth career nomination and she has never won an Oscar, despite landmark performances in Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons. She’s already won just about every major acting accolade over her career, including three Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards. Albert Nobbs is a passion project, as she played the role on the stage in the early 80s and took nearly thirty years, due to unforeseen stops and starts in production, to bring her pet project to the screen. Close also co-wrote the film’s script and theme song, showing her dedication to the project. Oscar loves a gender-bending performance, as evidenced by wins in the past for Gwyneth Paltrow, Hillary Swank and Linda Hunt.

Against her: The film performed poorly at the box office and received tepid reviews, some of them for Close herself. Even the excellent notices she received were overshadowed by higher praise for her nominated co-star Janet McTeer, who is also performing in a gender-bending role. While there is considerable love and respect for Close, there’s no groundswell of critical or public consensus to bring her the big win. With Viola Davis and Meryl Streep running neck-and-neck with Michelle Williams a close third, Close just doesn’t have enough momentum to overcome her competition. And while short-listed for various prizes including the Globe and SAG, Close herself hasn’t won any for this particular performance.

Viola Davis in The Help

For her: A previous nominee, Davis is also the front-and-center star of one of the year’s Best Picture nominees, and a popular one at that. It’s the highest-grossing Best Picture nominee this year, likely seen by just about the entire voting body. She’s won SAG, Critics Choice and National Board of Review prizes for individual and / or cast performances. She’s the only nominee here to star in not one, but two Best Picture nominees (the other being Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), speaking to the quality of the films in which she chooses to appear. While the film caused some controversy over its depiction of race relations in the Deep South, even the film’s detractors conceded that Davis’s work transcended the material. There’s also a political dimension at play, as the only African-American to ever win this category did so ten years ago – Halle Berry – and the Academy might want to correct that imbalance.

Against her: Fierce competition from her good friend and former co-star Streep, who once said in a speech that “someone should write this woman a movie!” There are some critics who don’t like how the role was written, as it may have (inadvertently or otherwise) tapped into some racial stereotypes. The Academy may wish to steer clear of racial politics, but that hasn’t stopped them from awarding a controversial film with its top prize before (cf. Crash).

Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

For her: The year’s big breakout role and surprise nominee, Mara is the youngest nominee this year and one of the youngest ever. It’s the first of three films in which she’ll embody the character Lisbeth Salander, considered one of the most iconic figures in contemporary literature and film, and the Academy loves to honour ingénues. The performance is also considered physically demanding: she bares her body and has a graphic rape scene that is arguably the most challenging since Hillary Swank’s winning turn in Boys Don’t Cry.

Against her: The memory of the original TGWTDT is still fresh for a lot of viewers, many of whom preferred the performance of its original star, the un-nominated Noomi Rapace. Given that she’s got two more films to make in the trilogy, Mara will have another opportunity to perform the role and potentially be nominated for an Oscar. She has a bright future and with so much competition by veterans and more distinguished actors, she is the one rank outsider in a tight field. There are also those who believe that she took a spot meant for Tilda Swinton, unrecognized for her work in the acclaimed We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady

For her: Another year, another parade of prizes for Streep for a great performance. This year, her count includes a BAFTA (her first since the 80s), a Golden Globe and the New York Film Critics, amongst many others. Oscar likes to reward actors in biopics who age and die and / or go insane, and this role has it all (except for the death part). Streep also affects a British accent for the first time in a long while, and her impersonation is considered spot-on. There’s been a campaign reminding voters that it’s been 29 years since she last won, for her legendary performance in Sophie’s Choice, which may remind voters that it’s finally time to honour the current consensus as the greatest living actress.

Against her: The film received some terrible reviews and, despite initially promising box office, did not perform well, at least not in North America. While most critics have raved about her work, those who hated the film also dismissed her performance. Streep already has yet another award-worthy work lined up, the leading part in the forthcoming August: Osage County, in the role that won its original star a Tony Award and is considered another opportunity for her to showboat and do what she does best. It might be perceived by voters that there will always be another chance to reward Streep, even without actually giving her the award.

Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn

For her: A career-transforming role, Oscar happens to like biopics and that’s why both she and Streep are in the race. Williams, at age 32, is the youngest American actor to receive three Oscar nominations at that age, beaten only by Brit Kate Winslet, who accomplished the same feat by age 26. Williams has successfully graduated from being a Dawson’s Creek alumnus into an accomplished and adventurous actress. Add to this several prizes this season for her role, including the Golden Globe, and she’s been short-listed for every other major prize out there.

Against her: There are still some, believe it or not, who might consider her a “TV actress” who made good. While her reviews for Marilyn were excellent, the film’s notices overall were not as enthusiastic. Many have considered her performance an “interpretation” rather than a total mimicry, and that has led less kind critics to say that the role is not “on the nose”. In a year when she’s going toe-to-toe with Davis and Streep, she might be overlooked if she doesn’t benefit from a split vote. She’s a strong third-place, but may not have overall support for her film to make it to the winner’s circle. Plus, with such an impressive resume at such a young age, it’s more than likely that she’ll get nominated again, and like win.

The lowdown: It’s Davis vs. Streep in a photo finish, with Williams being the tiebreaker. I’m calling it for Davis, but wouldn’t be surprised to see Streep take Oscar home for the third time.

The Oscar will go to: Viola Davis for The Help.

Oscar 2012: SAG Award Winners

Let me get this out of the way: Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer will win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. They just won in their respective categories at the Screen Actors Guild Awards tonight, having also swept through the Critics Choice and Golden Globe Awards and each winning a packet of critics’ notices. The die has been cast, those races are officially over. Now let’s turn out attention to the three big winners and see if we can read the Oscar tea leaves from them.

Best Ensemble: The Help. Six years ago, a small independent film premiered at a major film festival, where it won top honours. It then played at major festivals in the fall, swept through the critics prizes, was named Best Picture at the Golden Globes and also won the Producers and Directors Guild of America awards. This was in spite of (or maybe because of) the film’s high concept that drew critics and very enthusiastic fans. Darkening the then clear-waters, however, was a SAG Ensemble win to its chief rival for the Best Picture Oscar, a racially-charged drama featuring a big cast, some good critical notices and some controversy about the film’s point of view and how accurate / enlightening / patronizing it allegedly is. The small independent darling was Brokeback Mountain, and the racial drama that was named Best Picture was Crash.

Flash-forward to today, and you’ll see a parallel if you substitute Brokeback Mountain for The Artist and Crash for The Help. Do you see a possible upset in the Best Picture Oscar race?

But then you point out: Crash had wider support due to its corresponding nominations for Best Director, Screenplay and Film Editing, none of which The Help has despite its many acting citations. This is true, but what The Help has is insane popularity among audiences and the guild. This is important because the Academy is 1) largely comprised of actors, and 2) love to honour a big box office hit. While I’m not saying that The Help will win Best Picture, it certainly made a very strong case by sweeping Best Ensemble and both Actress awards at SAG. The last film to do so was Chicago, which swept through the 2002 Oscars and danced away with six prizes including Best Picture. This is not to say that The Artist will not win Best Picture, either. This is simply to point out that if The Help is named the year’s best film, there is precedent for it.

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin in The Artist

This is not to say that the incredibly-reviewed silent French comedy will walk away without a major Oscar. It’s the front-runner for Best Director, with its helmer Michel Hazanavicius taking the Directors Guild of America prize just last night, and its star’s unexpected triumph at SAG over the likes of George Clooney and Brad Pitt just turned this category from a match-up between the two megastars into a genuine three-way race. Dujardin already has a Golden Globe and Cannes Best Actor notice, and a win here could forecast an upset in Best Actor. This was supposed to have been a slam-dunk for Clooney’s work in The Descendants, but this is no longer the case.

The Artist at Work: Meryl Streep’s “Theater of War”

In the summer of 2006, while The Devil Wears Prada was playing to packed movie houses across the country and Meryl Streep was enjoying the first true wave of her recent popularity that lasts to this day. It was a strange time as ever for her to appear in The Public Theater’s production of Bertolt Bercht’s epic pacifist play Mother Courage and Her Children in Central Park. Given that the play is considered a classic of German theatre, politically charged, lengthy and difficult, no less a marquee name than Ms. Streep could have compelled audiences to sit through this on a summer night when they could have been at an air-conditioned multiplex instead. Given the recent discussion and awards show presence of the delightful Streep for her current triumph in the otherwise undistinguished motion picture The Iron Lady, it’s an opportune time to see a true artist at work.

Adapted from German to English by the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner, the production assembles a dream team to bring Brecht’s vision to life. Not only is Streep the lead, whose presence guaranteed capacity crowds to a nearly four-hour pacifist play in the notorious New York summer, but the production is directed by George C. Wolfe. All three talents are tied in by Kushner’s seminal play and miniseries Angels in America, and their pedigree shows. Brecht isn’t exactly a big crowd draw like Steven Spielberg, but his name in the theatre is amongst the biggest, alongside Shakespeare, Beckett, Marlowe and Bizet. The mounting of the 2006 production was captured in the documentary Theater of War.

The documentary appears from the poster to be an intimate portrait of how Streep prepares for her role, one of the most notoriously difficult to perform on the stage. This is a role you grow into, one you earn, one in which you must have complete mastery of your craft to inhabit the role. To give you an idea of the challenge in playing Mother Courage, it’s the female equivalent of playing King Lear for male actors. What’s striking is that although we see her in rehearsal, in performance and in some interviews, and whenever she’s on stage in the production she carries the whole weight of it on her shoulders, she’s just one part of the enterprise. When asked about the collaborative and building process, she likens it to the plumbing and underlay of a building that has yet to be complete: you may want to show off how pristine it is and it will ultimately hold up the structure, but you don’t necessarily need to see the darn thing. Word.

Mother Courage and Her Children explores the psychology of the war profiteer from the inside-out, while making statements about the urge to battle in the modern era. This is what Brecht intended: to explore contemporary themes in artificial settings years removed from the present day, and drawing parallels and conclusions on his philosophical questions in the present day. Mother Courage travels through Germany during the Thirty Years’ War and makes her living selling necessities of life such as food and clothing from a covered cart. She takes along her three children – Eilif, Swiss Cheese and mute Kattrin – on her quest to profit from the war, and she welcomes it.

Brecht’s thesis, of course, is that there is no such thing as easy money and everyone must pay from the spoils of war. Indeed, Mother Courage loses all three of her children but she herself survives. It’s a long treatise, Kushner states, on how the world has nothing to offer the young and that life is a lesson in “how to eat shit and learning to pretend you like it”. This is a grim play. The reason it’s such a difficult role to play is that Mother Courage is almost never offstage for the entire three to four hours of the performance. She sings several songs about how to eat that figurative shit (the one that comes in every job or “out of your ass” as the play states), delivers long and vulgar speeches on survivalist instincts, and must somehow win the audience over before they bolt for the exit when they realize that Mother Courage and Miranda Priestly might have Ms. Streep in common, but the latter character has better accoutrements and a Park Avenue townhome.

And yet Theater of War so fully immerses you in the milieu of creating a production that the experience of creating art is never less than enthralling. There’s considerable discussion of Brecht’s history and anti-Nazi sentiments, which drove him out of Hitler’s Germany through Europe and Asia, and into the United States, where he was investigated by the House Un-American Activities for producing “radical” literature. This is truly how one learns to make a statement: not by throwing tantrums in dressing rooms, or the odious rider clauses certain “diva” singers allegedly have when they’re on tour, but by eating, living, breathing the playwright’s vision and making an artistic statement through a performance, not through one’s declaration of being an artist.

Theater of War is available to view on Netflix.

Oscar 2012: BAFTA Nominations

Think that the Oscar campaigning only occurs in L.A. and New York? There’s usually one trans-Atlantic trip required in the season and that’s to London for the annual British Academy of Film and Television, or BAFTA, Awards.

Long thought of as an afterthought to the more prestigious Oscars, the BAFTAs took on new life once they moved their awards ceremony to late February starting in 2001, and with the truncated Oscar schedule in 2004, they moved it up to a scant two weeks before the actual Oscar ceremony. The effect was felt immediately, as the BAFTAs became an important, if not always accurate, indicator of how the Academy might vote and may influence last-minute voters. Most interestingly, the BAFTAs correctly forecast in the last few years some surprise Oscar winners, including Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett, and allowed them to pull away from the pack of other frontrunners. This is why the BAFTAs have, in the last decade, proven to be an influential, if not always reliable indicator of who wins the Academy Awards.

The BAFTAs tend to favour homegrown product. This is why films that did not receive much love from the Academy, such as Girl with a Pearl Earring and Cold Mountain, tend to fare better at these awards. Having said that, there is often a strong overlap between what the Academy eventually nominates and the BAFTAs.

You can access the full list of nominees on the BAFTA website and on the Hollywood Reporter’s list.  Here are some of the major nominees:

11 nominations including Best Film

Best Film: The Artist, The Descendants, Drive, The Help, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best British Film: My Week with Marilyn, Senna, Shame, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive), Martin Scorsese (Hugo), Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin)

Best Actor: George Clooney (The Descendants), Jean Dujardin (The Artist), Michael Fassbender (Shame), Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Brad Pitt (Moneyball)

Best Actress: Berenice Bejo (The Artist), Viola Davis (The Help), Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin), Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)

Best Supporting Actor: Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn), Jim Broadbent (The Iron Lady), Jonah Hill (Moneyball), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (The Ides of March), Christopher Plummer (Beginners)

Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain (The Help), Judi Dench (My Week with Marilyn), Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids), Carey Mulligan (Drive), Octavia Spencer (The Help)

Best Original Screenplay: The Artist, Bridesmaids, The Guard, The Iron Lady, Midnight in Paris

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants, The Help, The Ides of March, Moneyball, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Brits are talking about Kevin

Overall, the nominations haven’t substantively changed the status quo, as the likes of The Artist (with a leading 12 nominations), The Descendants and Moneyball still put them front-and-center in the Oscar race. However, it did give certain British films an opportunity to earn more love than they might have at the Academy. Chief among these are three films starring Best Actress nominees that bagged multiple citations: My Week with Marilyn, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and The Iron Lady. None of these are in the conversation for the Best Picture Oscar, but their presence indicates that these projects are indeed strong female-centered vehicles. It should also be noted that the BAFTAs also tend to honour their own, and each major category often produces a left-field nominee who just happens to be British. This year, they include names that haven’t figured into this year’s Oscar race yet, such as Judi Dench, Lynne Ramsay, and Abi Morgan for her otherwise much-criticized script for The Iron Lady. Similar beneficiaries include Senna, The Guard and Coriolanus.

Oscar 2012: Golden Globe and Critics Choice Winners

In continuing awards season coverage, let’s take the pulse of the Oscar race following the Critics Choice and Golden Globes Awards.

Mr. Popular: Clooney wins Globes and Critics' Choice Awards

The big winner of these two groups is the silent comedy that could, Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist. Sweeping four prizes including film and directing honours at Critics Choice, combined with three top awards including film and lead actor at the Globes, just elevated it to the very top of the heap, after it topped New York and Boston. And why wouldn’t it be? Critics love it, it made the rounds to rapturous applause at film festivals everywhere, and the industry is clearly enjoying its homage to the golden age of Hollywood. However, it’s also very French, it’s silent, and the film has made a rather puny $8 million in domestic box office receipts. In other words, the Academy might enjoy it enough to nominate it for a bunch of awards, but they might not consider it to have the weight of important subject matter. Plus, Best Picture winners tend to be out-and-out box office winners, but the likes of Crash and The Hurt Locker have proven otherwise. Perhaps The Artist will win out of sheer excellence, and it’s still too early to call it a done deal.

"Love, and a bit with a dog." - The Artist is named Best Film

Tonight was a chance for Hollywood to know who is top dog, and by George it was, er, George … Clooney, that is. Getting Best Actor citations at both Critics Choice and Globes for The Descendants has made him the candidate to beat for the Oscar, ahead of his close friend and likely fellow nominee Brad Pitt. Arriving at the Globe stage with a cane, Clooney clearly was lapping up the attention. He is the consummate leading man of the moment, with acting chops, the passion to take on humanitarian endeavours, and the energy to direct a well-received work like the multi-Globe nominated The Ides of March. Let’s not forget that although he has an Oscar, it was in Best Supporting Actor, and a star of his stature necessarily requires a lead acting Oscar for his mantelpiece. Unless Pitt draws even with him by winning the Screen Actors Guild Award in two weeks’ time, call Clooney to take home the Oscar.

Michelle Williams needed the Globe, in addition to her long string of smaller awards, including the Boston and Washington prizes and nominations for the Critics Choice and SAG, to make her presence greater felt, and she got it. It’s a bit contested as to whether or not My Week with Marilyn is a “comedy” per se, but the marketing team chose well to place her there, and her win officially cut off Charlize Theron’s and Kristen Wiig’s chances at getting into the final five for Oscar. It should be noted that every year, Harvey Weinstein champions a single Best Actress potential nominee and he has personally helped shape the campaign to get her the big win. This has proven successful for the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet in the past, and with Viola Davis and Meryl Streep still at the forefront of the race, he will undoubtedly put Williams front-and-centre in the campaign.

The Critics' Choice: Viola Davis for The Help

Speaking of Davis and Streep, both just made real and substantive cases for them to take home the Oscar, in terms of precursor groups’ wins. Davis won Critics Choice and did a double whammy by taking home the ensemble prize for The Help as well. She hasn’t won any of the other major prizes for her role, and almost everyone agrees that she is the very best thing in the whole film. The Critics Choice trophy put her neck-and-neck with Williams. Streep, with The Iron lady opening to respectable modest business in platform release and win her eighth(!!) Golden Globe, positioned herself further as the frontrunner by just a smidgen in the race for the Oscar. It’s not a slam-dunk yet, as she herself was out by a hair’s breadth two years ago and still lost for Julie and Julia, but she’s definitely one of the three co-favourites with Davis and Williams. And with her gracious speech at the Globes proving to be yet another charming performance, wherein she praised the talents of her fellow nominees, Academy voters should take note. In other words, the Best Actress race is a real race.

Cinematically Inclined: “The Iron Lady”

Would it be predictable to say that the marvelous Meryl Streep has delivered a terrific performance once again? Of course, for that is par for the course and quite frankly not a revelation. It is often said that Streep can elevate even sub-par material such as Julie and Julia and One True Thing with her great work. There's nothing she's crap at, as this recent tribute to her at the Kennedy Center Honors attests. Sadly, The Iron Lady, for all of the preliminary publicity and high expectations, is one of those occasions. This is not something I wanted to write, given how excited I have been for months about this project since it was first announced.

Phyllida Lloyd’s much-awaited and controversial biopic on Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady, arrives with considerable fanfare and a lot of support from The Weinstein Company. Streep has long been touted as being overdue to win a third Academy Award and once again, she is in the thick of an awards season campaign armed with a clutch of prizes for her revered work, including the New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress Award and nominations for the SAG and Golden Globe Awards.

Let’s discuss how deeply committed Streep is to the role. All of Thatcher’s mannerisms are here: the distinctive authoritative voice, the slight cock of the chin upward, the indomitable spark behind her eyes when she is about to flay an opponent politically. I attended the advanced screening with a British friend well-versed in all things Thatcherite, and he said flat-out that the voice was spot-on. Indeed, in her body language, communicated via subtle shifts as well as grander gestures, it was as if Thatcher had died and inhabited Streep’s body as the next vessel.

The film is framed around the present day. We see Thatcher being kept almost prisoner in her home, where guards at her posh Kensington flat are ordered to prevent her from going out. “Are they keeping out the riff-raff or are they holding you in?” asks her husband, the ever-patient Denis Thatcher. Jim Broadbent, as Denis, has played the long-suffering / supportive husband type of an accomplished woman before, most notably in his quietly heartbreaking Oscar-winning work in Iris. Here, Denis functions as a Greek chorus, commenting on the events as they happen and also in the present day, as Thatcher recalls her political past and we hurtle forward and backward in time without so much as a title card to at least give viewers greater context, especially those who may not have been fully immersed in Thatcher-era British politics and its place on the global stage. The catch, of course, is that Denis has been dead for several years, and his presence simultaneously soothes and tortures her, as she comes face-to-face with political challenges she overcame and considers the long-term consequences of her often controversial decisions.

British playwright and screenwriter Abi Morgan is no stranger to writing challenging material. In addition to The Iron Lady, she co-wrote Steve McQueen’s blistering Shame which is also currently in cinemas. Morgan’s previous work also includes the multi-BAFTA-winning miniseries Sex Traffic. While it’s artistically risky for Morgan to frame the film within the context of Thatcher’s dementia, the focus on her state of being unfortunately leaves out a lot of the political drama that made Thatcher such a riveting historical figure, regardless of what you thought of her political stance.

Oscar 2012: New York Film Critics Circle Awards

It’s that time right after Thanksgiving and before Christmas when magazines and other media outlets start naming their “best of the year” selections. That also extends to film critics groups, and their opinions on which films and performances were the most worthy of attention all year. It is also, for less sophisticated or mainstream audiences not privy to artier fare, an opportunity to see what the tastemakers consider the greatest.

Award-winner prognostication is not an exact science, nor is it really an art. It’s more inexact alchemy concocted in a crystal ball and subject to the votes of a group of about 5,000 film industry professionals and the marketing and PR departments hired to influence their choices. In presidential election terms, consider this part of the annual Oscar race the equivalent of the New Hampshire primaries: they may not decide the final outcome, but they at least identify the major players and alert those not named that they have to get their name out there and step up the campaign.

I love awards shows and I love watching and handicapping the races, which produce inevitably and alternatively sensible and baffling choices (I’m still angry that Crash won Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain, but let’s debate that another time).

Today, the New York Film Critics Circle (the “NYFCC”) announced their winners. In this piece, I will attempt to analyze the winners and determine if they should clear off the final weekend of February so that they can be in L.A. and, more precisely, at the Kodak Theater.

Best Film: The Artist

Best Film and Best Director: The Artist by Michael Hazanavicius

This silent comedy opened to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival and immediately picked up a distribution with The Weinstein Company for the United States. Famed for his impeccable choices in Oscar vehicles, Harvey Weinstein undoubtedly has great plans for making this crowd-pleaser one of the Best Picture nominees, if not the outright winner. Perhaps the big win here might forecast the biggest win of all. Considering that the film also received the most nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards, the film has become, as of this moment (always a key operating term in the next few months as momentum is continually gauged), the movie to beat. What’s strange, however, is that NYFCC did not choose its star, Cannes prize winner Jean Dujardin, for Best Actor, which went to …

Best Actor: Brad Pitt in Moneyball and The Tree of Life

There’s an old story circulating somewhere on the Internet (that’s why you should take it with a pinch of salt) that the NYFCC allegedly chose Cameron Diaz as Best Actress of 1998 for There’s Something About Mary just because the group wanted to invite Diaz to their awards banquet to pick up her prize. That story is an insult not only to the group, but also to Diaz’s expert comic skill (she is, in my opinion, still one of the most underrated actors to this day: Being John Malkovich, anyone?). Does this explain why Brad Pitt was chosen as Best Actor? Again: insulting to both the group and the actor, so let's not go there, and move on.

Never quite a critics’ darling, Pitt’s big win here with the toniest of film critics’ groups is a sign that he’s finally recognized by the pundits and not just audiences as a serious actor. It helps that his role in the crowd-pleasing Moneyball includes plenty of big speeches and wordplay in a Best Picture frontrunner. Actors like big showy speeches and he’s got that in spades in Moneyball, which means he’ll have a wealth of scenes to choose from as his Oscar clip. It also helps that by contrasting this with a dramatic but less verbal role in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, he demonstrates how easily he shifts between more commercial fare and artier offerings. When it comes to getting an Oscar nomination, unless he splits his own ballot (actors cannot be nominated against themselves in any one category and shared-film nominations are not allowed), he’ll likely get called for at least a nomination with Moneyball.

Best Actress: Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady

Best Actress: Streep

With her winning turn as Margaret Thatcher, Streep becomes the most-decorated female actor in NYFCC history. There has been much buzz about her potentially winning a third Oscar, but be reminded that such buzz has been brewing in ebbs and flows since Reagan was still president. Affecting a British accent for the first time since that era, this much-anticipated film will now open at year’s end with more fanfare and the tantalizing possibility of at least a nomination for its star. That being said, remember that Streep’s been tapped as a sure-fire winner in the past decade for Julie & Julia, Doubt, The Devil Wears Prada and Adaptation, not counting her other extraordinary performances in A Cry in the Dark, Ironweed, The Bridges of Madison County, etc. Streep will likely lock in another nomination – which would make this the seventeenth(!!) in her stellar career – but forecasting a win is something to seriously consider in about two months’ time.