the Oscars (was: Nazi sympathies soft-pedaled in The King's Speech?)

On Wed, 26 Jan 2011, Lance McLain wrote:
> Best Picture for The Social Network?  You're kidding?

It was actually considered the front-runner -- winning critics' awards 
left, right and centre -- until last Sunday, when the Producers Guild 
Award went to The King's Speech instead.  Granted, the PGA and the Oscars 
have only agreed about 2/3 of the time, but it still sent shockwaves 
through the ranks of Oscar punditry, and convinced everyone that this 
year's Oscars would be a genuine "race" and not just a coronation.

And *then*, on Tuesday, the Oscar nominees were announced -- and The 
King's Speech had 12 nominations, while True Grit had 10 and The Social 
Network was tied with Inception for third-most nominations, i.e. 8.

And if you follow the rule of thumb which says that the movie with the 
most nominations wins Best Picture, this would definitely seem to give The 
King's Speech the best shot at winning the top prize.

The Social Network is still in the running, though.  Inception doesn't 
have a chance because it wasn't nominated for Best Director (the last film 
to overcome this hurdle was 1989's Driving Miss Daisy, which at least had 
the advantage of having the most nominations period), and True Grit 
doesn't stand a chance because it wasn't nominated for Best Film Editing 
(the last film to win without being nominated in that category was 1980's 
Ordinary People) and it also wasn't nominated for the Directors Guild 
Award (an award that has agreed with the Oscar for Best Director and/or 
Picture on all but a handful of occasions in its 60-ish-year history).

Apart from The King's Speech and The Social Network, there are only two 
other Best Picture nominees that meet the nominated-for-DGA and 
nominated-for-Best-Film-Editing requirements, namely The Fighter and Black 
Swan.  But Black Swan is pretty much out of the running because it failed 
to get a nomination for its screenplay, and it's extremely rare for a film 
to win Best Picture without a screenplay nomination; the last time it 
happened was for 1997's Titanic (which, again, at least had the advantage 
of having more nominations period than any other film).

So that leaves only The King's Speech, The Social Network and The Fighter 
as serious contenders.  And, yeah, huh, interesting: they're all "true 
stories" of one sort or another (and they all feature characters who are 
still alive today; in The King's Speech, we get a glimpse of the king's 
daughters, one of whom still sits on the throne as Queen Elizabeth II).

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