Scott Feinberg has astutely pointed out that Steven Spielberg’s War Horse has galloped into the lead for the Oscar as Best Picture, easing past The Artist and The Descendants, with its old fashioned emotion and sentiment set against the horrors of war. Is anyone really surprised? Spielberg evokes the great works of John Ford and David Lean in his new film, which works its magic on the audience throughout, drawing tears here and there through the film until sob fest that is greeting the ending in some theatres. I watched more than a few grown men and women dabbing at their eyes as they left the theatre, warm smiles on their faces, fathers with one arm on their children, wives holding the arm of their husbands. The movie impacts people in that way, and the Academy likes that sort of movie, they always have.
The question of course is whether or not they will like it enough to honor it with a Best Picture award? They certainly might, and at this writing I am leaning to the fact that indeed they will.
I do not believe the Academy is going to give Spielberg a third Academy Award for Best Director, not for this film anyway. They may do so for Lincoln next year, but I am not sure War Horse is the stuff of Best Director, and frankly they have a chance to honor two of the greats of this generation in the same year. Imagine Spielberg wins Best Picture for War Horse, while Best Director goes to his close friend Martin Scorsese for Hugo. Two greats honored in the same year with the two top awards at the Academy Awards!!!! It gets no better than that. It could happen folks, in fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe it will happen. Think about it. The Academy is not immune to the attacks that they snubbed Scorsese for far too long before giving him an Oscar for his Boston crime epic The Departed (2006). To be realistic, the man should have won in 1980 for Raging Bull (1980) and again ten years later for Goodfellas (1990), bested both times by actors making their directorial debuts. NO the Academy realizes errors have been made, and splitting the wins this year allows them to right a wrong, honoring two of the greatest directors working today. Spielberg already has two Oscars for directing, and though he would love another, think that will come in time, next year likely for Lincoln. Scorsese will of course get another shot also, but this year he made a film about the history of the cinema and broke from the conventional style of film he usually makes. That is a bigger deal than people tend to realize. Yes John Ford made westerns, but not one of his four Oscars for Best Director was for a western! Why should Scorsese not win for Hugo?? It’s a magnificent achievement??
The Academy may go with The Artist, but I cannot see that happening because they so rarely honor foreign language films as Best Picture, and there are plenty of deserving American films this year. So watch the race, because it’s heating up, far from over and we have a close one this year.
Frankly The Artist might have peaked already.
Think about it, a Spielberg Best Picture win with Scorsese taking his second for Best Director….talk about a Hollywood ending!!
WillQ
January 4, 2012 at 5:38 pm
As much as these two legends have shaped modern movies, I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen. I like War Horse and Hugo very much. They were fun, emotional, and well made but they are not what I consider elite movies of the year. Also, neither War Horse nor Hugo will go down as even close to their best work. I’m a little baffled by the frontrunner status each have obtained for their respective films this year. I really liked them, but neither were extraordinary in my eyes.
They both have already won as well, wouldn’t it be better to see Malick, the reclusive cult genius, win despite his complete lack of press? Now that is what I call a Hollywood ending, and for a deserving movie as well. Also, I don’t see The Artist losing steam especially when it starts to expand theaters. Here’s to hoping Malick can pull out the deserved win!
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UBourgeois
January 4, 2012 at 5:39 pm
While War Horse has a solid shot at BP, I think the Artist is still ahead of it. It’s recieved far more precursor awards and its critical reception has been better by a considerable amount. And it is not a foreign-language film. It is entirely in English, but just happens to have been a French production. As for it already peaking, It may have been around the oscar buzz track for a while, but its mainstream notoriety seems to have just started – I saw the first ad for it in the Detroit Free Press just last Sunday. War Horse is probably the second, third, or at worst fourth most likely BP winner this year, behind The Artist, Hugo, and maybe The Descendants.
I do, however, agree that Scorsese has possibly the best shot at Best Director, as much as I would like to see it given to Malick. Scorsese, we can all agree, deserves to be honored by the Best Director Oscar a second time, as he is nearly without question one of the most talented and influential directors in film history, and the Academy recognizes that.
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Tristan Smyth
January 4, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Frankly, and I have to agree with the posts above, this analysis is far too bullish for me. I loved Hugo for what it was: an ode to film. I appreciated War Horse for what it was too: another sort of ode to the classic way of making film. In fact, this was quite the year for filmmakers taking time to appreciate their art form. However, the audience reaction that John cites in regards to War Horse, I saw that same response verbatim when I watched The Help, and I saw it during The Blind Side in 2009. I see the point on the emotion response, and I do agree that that is what the Academy enjoys, but I think this year has a strong enough contingent of films that War Horse won’t survive. I would hate to see Spielberg awarded for something which was a tad mediocre when he can still hit homeruns! I think a win for War Horse would really kill the buzz for Abraham Lincoln; it doesn’t feel plausible for the Academy to award a filmmaker back to back like that.
For Scorsese, I didn’t feel like this was a director trying something new. I understand the point about John Ford; however, when I take a glance at Scorsese’s oeuvre, I can see hints of Hugo in 1977′s New York, New York, 1993′s Age of Innocence, and 2004′s The Aviator. So I don’t feel it is him trying something new. He has always been a filmmaker tackling different sort of projects like 1988′s Last Temptation of Christ, 1993′s Age of Innocence, and 1997′s Kundun. There are other examples, but each of those I would argue that he hit home (some less so), and for each of those, he was ignored by the Academy. Let’s face it, the Academy doesn’t demonstrate its love for Scorsese the way we want it to, and I can’t imagine that after 30 years of snubbing him, they are going to award him twice in two years.
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Alex LoSchiavo
January 4, 2012 at 10:51 pm
I wouldn’t necessarily call The Artist a foreign film. I’d call it a universal film. And also, there are two lines of dialogue, both in english. Just because it was made by a french man, and starred a french man, doesn’t make it foreign. By those rules, the King’s Speech is a foreign film. John Goodman and James Cromwell are American. Plus, I don’t see this peaking at all. I just saw it again a few days ago, and the theater was packed. A packed theater with no tv spots in the area? I think the film is gaining more traction.
I love Spielberg as much as the next film fanatic, but in terms of past Spielberg, War Horse wasn’t up to par with me. Same goes with Scorsese. Hugo was one of the most entertaining films of the year, it was greatly done by a great director, and the story had tons of heart. Same situation as Avatar in 2009. (And it hurts me to compare Hugo to Avatar, I absolutely hated Avatar.)
Even though I passionately love Drive, I can still admit that The Artist should win Best Picture. I think it takes more skill and austerity to craft an silent picture in 2011 then it is to make a 3D adventure.
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George
January 4, 2012 at 11:39 pm
And we witness John H. Foote jump on the bandwagon. I really hope War Horse doesn’t win best picture, if you ask anyone who has seen it they will not tell you that it is one of Spielberg’s best. Same goes for Hugo and I would actually argue it is one of Scorsese’s lesser films (but I’m not a huge Scorsese fan). Like posters said above, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, The Aviator, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Departed are all vastly better than Hugo in my opinion. Why would the Academy give him director for a sub-par Scorsese movie when legend Terrence Malick and The Artist, a silent film, are in the running? If you go by Hugo’s (the film’s) logic, The Artist should obviously win director due to the “magic” of silent cinema that Hugo discovers at the end of the movie.
I liked War Horse and Hugo a lot, but should Spielberg and Scorsese be awarded top honors (again) for movies that pale in comparison to their truly great work? Or should The Artist (which, as stated above, is actually in English) a silent movie, The Tree of Life, which is one of the most ambitious movies I have ever seen, be snubbed to award great directors?
If Foote is talking about awarding great directors this year, why not award Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris, which, I think, is his best in movie in a long, long time? Instead of awarding War Horse and Hugo which are steps down from great movies made by the two film makers, why not give it too Woody Allen for a return to greatness?
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Jeremy DC
January 5, 2012 at 12:31 am
I really hope this doesn’t happen. I think Terrance Malick will win Best Director which I really hope doesn’t happen either. If War Horse wins best pic this year after The King’s Speech last year, it really seems to me that Hollywood is going out of its way to honor movies that may remind them of older style films, but yet those movies aren’t anywhere near as good as those classics that they remind us of.
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John H. Foote
January 5, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Jumjping on the band wagon?? Hardly, merely giving an opinion of something that could happen, and something that I might not necessarily mind happening — read my posts, I have never been a huge fan of The Artist believing it to be a good film, not a great one — this is the what the buzz is within the industry, at screenings and such — and precursor awards be damned, LA Confidential won everything but the Globe and the Oscar did it not?? Many films have swept the critics awards only to be nominated and lose the Oscar — and as for the comment about films being universal…aren’t they all?
I think the article was read entirely wrong, that you misunderstood my tone — if you a a regular reader, you must know I am often no fan of the Academy and their choices — what I am stating here is how they might be thinking, the fact they could honor two greats, the fact they could make up for past slights – and why honor Scorsese for a sub-par Scorsese film? First of al it was not sub-par, just radically differenet from what we are used to seeing, and second, how many times have they honored an actor or director for a film when in fact they were making up for a slight years earlier?? Was throwing out a possibility…..Jesus, simmer down….
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George
January 6, 2012 at 5:43 am
By the tone of your last paragraph it seems that you wouldn’t mind this happening and that you would like this to happen very much (judging from your top ten). A lot of readers here disagree and think that Hugo and War Horse, although made by great directors, should not take awards such as picture and director from more deserving films by lesser known directors. And yes Titanic did win the oscar over critic winning LA Confidential, but that’s Titanic… come on. And for radically different Scorsese, I think that Last Temptation and Age of Innocence are vastly superior to Hugo. Scorsese has had some great movies, overall does Hugo really measure up to his other classics? Same goes for War Horse. They’ve already made up for snubbing Scorsese with The Departed sweep, and Spielberg has one director twice and picture. That’s why people disagree with you here: because these two movies really don’t measure up to their director’ best work and giving them top honors would be an injustice to better movies solely because of the legendary directors behind them.
George(Quote) (Reply)