Return of the King: critics choice for best picture

[Eternalknight]

The Return of the King just won the Critics Choice award for Best Picture, as well as Best Ensemble Cast.

 

[Ranger REG]

But will that be a major factor in the minds of Academy Award voters? Highly doubt it.

 

[Hypersmurf]

But will that be a major factor in the minds of Academy Award voters? Highly doubt it.

You never know... the last four BFA Best Picture winners have gone on to take the Best Picture Oscar. And seven of the last eight BFA Best Director winners have taken the Oscar there too.

-Hyp.

 

[Mistwell]

For what it's worth, not only is ROTK not making the critic lists for the odds on favored to win Best Picture, it isn't even making most nomination prediction lists!

That of course does not mean it won't be nominated, nor that it won't win...but it isn't looking good at the moment. Things tend to change as the date approaches though.

The buzz right now includes these movies:

Lost in Translation, Cold Mountain, The Last Samurai, Mystic River, Seabiscuit, House of Sand and Fog, Big Fish, Master and Commander, In America, 21 Grams, and Monster (for best actress).

Of those, I have seen Lost In Translation, Last Samurai, Seabiscuit, Big Fish, and Master & Commander, and all were good movies. I'm planning on seeing most of the rest...

Mirimax is, essentially, buying a nomination for Cold Mountain. They do this every year for at least one movie. Some years it wins, some years it doesn't, but it always seems to get the nomination.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

To get nominated (again) and not win I can see, if not agree with -- but to not even get nominated would be criminal, IMO.

ROTK is winning a number of "Best X" awards from other critical groups; WTF is up with the Academy?

 

[Mistwell]

To get nominated (again) and not win I can see, if not agree with -- but to not even get nominated would be criminal, IMO.

ROTK is winning a number of "Best X" awards from other critical groups; WTF is up with the Academy?

It hasn't happened yet. Buzz is just that - unreliable rumor.

The problem seems to stem from this issue: People are upset that some of the DVDs of the independant films are not released this year to academy voters (due to some piracy issues). This results in a widespread belief that some of the better indie films will not get votes that some people think they deserve, because they won't be widely seen.

To counter this issue, some people who would have voted for a blockbuster film like ROTK feel obligated to vote for their favorite indie film (even if it wasn't quite as good as ROTK in their mind) to make up for other people not voting for those indie films because they didn't see those films. It's just an assumption that ROTK will get it's votes, so why waste your precious vote on it when you can vote on an indie film that didn't get the attention you think it deserved by not releasing the DVDs this year to voters.

Of course, this stands to backfire, with so many people backing their favorite indie film that not enough actually vote for ROTK, despite so many voters actually thinking ROTK is the best picture.

Then again, this could all be just a false rumor...who knows.

 

[Shadowdancer]

For what it's worth, not only is ROTK not making the critic lists for the odds on favored to win Best Picture, it isn't even making most nomination prediction lists!

I don't know what lists you are looking at, but every Oscar nomination prediction list I've seen has RotK as a favorite to be nominated, if not the top favorite. And for my job, I keep track of this pretty closely.

 

[Shadowdancer]

It hasn't happened yet. Buzz is just that - unreliable rumor.

The problem seems to stem from this issue: People are upset that some of the DVDs of the independant films are not released this year to academy voters (due to some piracy issues). This results in a widespread belief that some of the better indie films will not get votes that some people think they deserve, because they won't be widely seen.

To counter this issue, some people who would have voted for a blockbuster film like ROTK feel obligated to vote for their favorite indie film (even if it wasn't quite as good as ROTK in their mind) to make up for other people not voting for those indie films because they didn't see those films. It's just an assumption that ROTK will get it's votes, so why waste your precious vote on it when you can vote on an indie film that didn't get the attention you think it deserved by not releasing the DVDs this year to voters.

Of course, this stands to backfire, with so many people backing their favorite indie film that not enough actually vote for ROTK, despite so many voters actually thinking ROTK is the best picture.

Then again, this could all be just a false rumor...who knows.

Well, the screener copy DVD issue got cleared up a couple of months ago. A federal judge ruled the Academy couldn't prevent the studios from sending them out. And they are sending them out.

That's why the LA Film Critics released their award winners a month late this year. They originally weren't going to give any awards this year, after the Academy announced it wouldn't allow studios to send out screener copies of potential nominees. Then, after the judge ruled the DVDs could be sent, the LA Film Critics decided to give out their awards.

But everything I've read says most people in Hollywood believe RotK is the closest thing to a lock to being nominated for best picture, and Jackson for best director. It's sort of like the year Titanic came out -- it's nomination was a foregone conclusion, everyone just discussed what else was going to be nominated.

If you look at all of the various guild awards within the motion picture industry, RotK has been nominated in those. And many of those same people also are members of the Academy. The guild award nominations are usually a pretty accurate barometer as to what will be nominated for the Oscars.

 

[Ranger REG]

Not exactly Return of the King, but LOTR related... The Two Towers won the 2004 People's Choice Award for Best Drama Motion Picture. It has beaten the Russell Crowe's film, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World (released November, right before the PCA's qualifing nomination deadline).

Sadly, it did not win the Best Motion Picture overall. It went to ... Are they friggin' blind?!?!!! ... Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

The next award will be the Golden Globe Awards, where The Return of the King will try to sink Master and Commander and drain the Mystic River of its star appeal.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hey, for what it was -- an action/adventure/comedy romp -- Pirates was extremely well done.

Goodness, they should've just given Best Picture to Fellowship, which I believe is the best of the three movies. Certainly, RotK will not win best picture. It's a nice ending to a story, but there are too many issues with it being incomplete. In FotR and TTT, I didn't notice the jumps and holes, but in RotK, I just want to stand up and shout, "Why the hell did no one in Gondor even say, 'Hey, look, our King's back?' It's the friggin' Return of the King! Make a big deal about it, please!"