It felt really good to duck out of the looking-ahead business after last year’s fairly contentious (both amongst the films and their supporters) Oscar season. I didn’t saddle up to the upcoming season until a few weeks ago, hammering out preparations for this column, and even this, most would tell you, is too early.
But at the start of July, in the midst of an interesting (critically speaking) summer movie season, and with half the year behind us, it seems a decent time to take stock of 2011’s Oscar business. And Disney may have gotten the conversation going just in time with last week’s debut of the trailer for Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse.”
With the influx of film awards coverage this last decade, Oscar strategists have switched gears in how they campaign for the gold. With a cycle that chews and chews and chews on whatever is available to digest, being the early frontrunner has become the kiss of death. Films like “The Aviator,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Dreamgirls,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Up in the Air” failed to reach the winner’s circle in recent years after being hailed as tough cookies early on. Some of them put up better fights than others, some of them didn’t even manage to rise up to a nomination, but all of them looked formidable at one point or another before having their legs knocked out from underneath them.
It’s a bit of a scorcher in Telluride this year. Relatively speaking, of course. I’ve got all these long pants in the suitcase but can’t seem to shake the shorts as of late.