In this morning’s roundup of Oscar news ‘n’ notes from around the web, the directors’ race gets crowded early, and the Golden Globes honor yet another white man.
Sasha Stone considers that perilous Oscar figure, “the frontrunner.”This year, she says, that slot currently belongs to “The King’s Speech” – but then she points out that it’s only November, which means that predictions are based on little more than guesswork on the part of pundits who are “looking at a fuzzy picture” and don’t really know what they’re doing. Still, she gets very sure of herself when she moves to the Best Director race, where she says there are already four “slam dunks”: Danny Boyle for “127 Hours,” David Fincher (above) for “The Social Network,” Tom Hooper for “The King’s Speech” and Christopher Nolan for “Inception.” But she also says that you shouldn’t take November predictions seriously … so maybe those guys aren’t slam dunks after all. (Awards Daily)
A little Golden Globes scandal is nothing new: heck, the entire history of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is full of questionable calls (Pia Zadora, anyone?) and general silliness. But Tom O’Neil stirs up another HFPA fusswith a simple question: “Why does the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. continue to snub women and minorities when bestowing its Cecil B. DeMille Award?” Here’s the math, according to O’Neil: the Globes have honored only one African-American with the award (Sidney Poitier in 1982), and they haven’t given the DeMille to a woman since Barbra Streisand in 2000. He provides a list of those who’ve been snubbed, though it’s awfully hard to sell the notion that, say, Will Smith deserves the honor more than De Niro does. (Awards Tracker)
Tim Appelo starts with a question – could Rachel McAdams get an Oscar nomination for “Morning Glory”? – and supplies a quick answer: well, no, probably not. But he thinks she’ll probably get a Golden Globe nod, since the HFPA honors comedy and musical actresses in a separate category. And more to the point, he thinks that McAdams is channeling Diane Keaton’s Oscar-winning performance in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” albeit “a smarter Annie Hall.” (The Race)
A year ago, Oscar show producer Adam Shankman tweeted that Neil Patrick Harris would host the Oscars “when it’s right,” which was another way of saying that at the time it wasn’t right. But apparently lots of people think it’s now right – because when Dave Karger asked his readers to vote on which newcomer should host the upcoming Oscar show, Harris drew almost double the votes of the runner-up, Tina Fey, 32.49 percent to 17.14 percent as of Wednesday morning. Out of the eight possibilities, which also included Stephen Colbert, Conan O’Brien, Justin Timberlake and Ricky Gervais, Oprah Winfrey finished last with less than three percent of the vote. (Oscar Watch)
(Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
