The first quarter of 2010 is in the books, and we’ve already got a whole slate of high-profile hopefuls for next year’s Oscars: Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski, Ben Stiller and Leonardo DiCaprio, Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning …
Hopefuls, maybe. But are they contenders?
In fact, the first quarter of 2010 is looking a lot like the first quarter of 2009, in which precisely one future Oscar nominee was released.
The one was “Coraline,” which got a nod for Best Animated Feature. And this year’s first-quarter release “How to Train Your Dragon” (left) has a decent shot of ending up in the same category, particularly if enough animated films are released to bump the category from three to five nominees once more.
But other than that, we’re probably dealing with a bunch of longshots among the films that were released in the first three months of 2010.
I’m not including the movies that have screened or played film festivals but have yet to be released – so this leaves out the well-received British indie “Fish Tank,” or the SXSW fave “Kick-Ass,” or the Sundance winners “Winter’s Bone” and “happythankyoumoreplease,” or “The Exploding Girl,” with its wonderful Zoe Kazan performance. Those are for later (though "The Exploding Girl," it should be noted, was released on April 2 and is now in theaters).
The films we’ve seen in the first three months of the year have certainly come from some awards-worthy directors, from Scorsese and Polanski and Paul Greengrass and Tim Burton and Noah Baumbach.
And they include stars who’ve won or been nominated before (DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Michael Shannon, Ben Kingsley) and others who might well get there someday, from Ben Stiller to Kristen Stewart to mumblecore grad Greta Gerwig.
But somehow, little has connected in the way it’d have to connect to be a player when awards season picks up steam in five or six months.
I mean, Kristen Stewart gets to glower and act sullen and play a real person, rocker Joan Jett, in “The Runaways” (right), but the film itself isn’t likely to be on any Oscar voters’ radar screens by year end.
Meanwhile, DiCaprio’s role in “Shutter Island” is deceptive, and more complex than it initially appears. Still, the performance is hardly on a level with the actor’s previous collaborations with Scorsese (“The Departed,” “The Aviator”), and the chances that he’ll be recognized for it are almost nonexistent.
His director’s chances aren’t much better. “Shutter Island” may have been considered an Oscar possibility last year, until its release was delayed into 2010 – but as enjoyable and stylish a genre exercise as it is, the film is likely too slight to make a dent in this year’s race unless it slips into a category like Art Direction.
And if Paramount opted not to spend on an awards campaign for the film last year, are they really apt to change their minds and back a first-quarter release that’ll be on video long before most voters start thinking about awards?
Polanski’s “Ghost Writer,” meanwhile, didn’t establish much presence at the box office, and its reviews, while largely positive, are studded with remarks like that of the New York Times’ A.O.
