$2,527,491,501. That's the difference in worldwide box office gross between "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker," the two favorites for this year's Best Picture Oscar.
The Best Picture race is a case of opposites: "Avatar" represents everything new. It is the highest-grossing movie of all time. Fans point to its epic scale, innovative visuals and even its box-office earnings (after all, money drives the industry) as reasons that it deserves the award.
"The Hurt Locker," in contrast, made under $13 million domestically a figure that led many pundits early on to dismiss it entirely, since it would be the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner ever. On the other hand, it has dominated award shows this season, winning eight of the 10 major prizes that lead up to the Oscars. It reflects classic Academy values film as art, a medium for gritty, honest storytelling and suspense.
The result of the race will be incredibly telling as to the direction that movie-making is heading. The Oscar telecast itself is representative of the struggle between respecting traditional priorities and keeping the awards relevant. For the first time in years, the show has undergone drastic changes.
Some are simple, such as the decision to cut the longstanding tradition of live performances of the Best Song nominees in favor of video montages. While this move makes sense considering the category's recent penchant for nominating songs that few people know or care about, I've always thought the songs did a nice job breaking up the notoriously long show in a way no video montage could.
Another minor change is the selection of two hosts: Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. Baldwin's comedic performance on last Sunday's premiere of NBC's Jerry Seinfeld-produced show "The Marriage Ref" bodes well for him, but I still haven't forgiven Martin for "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" (2005). Regardless, the two have hosted "Saturday Night Live" an astounding 29 times between them, and they had decent chemistry in "It's Complicated" (2009), so I guess I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
A far more monumental attempt at innovation is the shift from five to 10 Best Picture nominees. The idea was to create opportunities for a greater variety of films to be nominated. The subtext, though, is that the Academy wants to include as many top-grossers as possible to make the telecast more appealing to an audience that extends beyond film buffs. In recent years, the most watched telecasts have been those in which blockbusters like "Titanic" (1997) or "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003) were frontrunners. The new system, the Academy hoped, would allow a film like "The Dark Knight," which many believe just missed last year's cut, to be nominated.
To some degree it worked: "Up" became the first animated movie to get a nod since "Beauty and the Beast" in 1991, and the "The Blind Side" made it in based on box-office figures and Sandra Bullock alone. Yet I would contend that adding films that do not have a real chance at winning devalues the nomination. Further, it's easy to tell which films would not have made the cut under the previous format. Worse, adding another sci-fi film, "District 9," will mostly just siphon votes from "Avatar" and skew the results.
The complex new voting system, which asks voters to rank all 10 films, also has the potential to alter the results. Voters looking to manipulate the system could rank "Avatar" in the top spot and "The Hurt Locker" last (or vice versa) since each is the other's biggest competitor. This possibility has led many to guess "Inglourious Basterds" will be a surprise victor.
It won't hurt that Quentin Tarantino's WWII pic has film executive Harvey Weinstein behind it. In 1998, Weinstein's ferocious Oscar campaigning for "Shakespeare in Love" catalyzed one of the biggest upsets in Academy history, defeating "Saving Private Ryan" in the Best Picture category. Now he is pushing hard for "Basterds."
"Avatar" director James Cameron also happens to be an infamous self-promoter, while "Hurt Locker" producer Nicolas Chartier recently apologized for his overly aggressive campaigning. All of these factors have combined to make this Best Picture race one of the most unpredictable in years.
The Best Director race provides this year's other major moment of Oscar intrigue. If, as some have predicted, "Hurt Locker" director Katherine Bigelow wins a definite possibility given her victory at the Director's Guild awards she would become the first female director to take the statue.
What makes this race even more compelling, however, is that her main competition, Cameron, happens to be her ex-husband. While the divorcees have been incredibly cordial thus far, the bragging rights at stake with this trophy should make for a memorable acceptance speech.
Last year I watched the Oscars with six middle-aged women in Brooklyn. Andrew Purpura '11 invited me to an Oscar "party" one that turned out to be made up of his friend's mother and five of her friends. He proceeded to go to bed an hour into the broadcast, leaving me alone with the ladies, none of whom I'd ever met and all of whom were more than a little drunk.
As "Slumdog Millionaire" racked up award after award, the show became so one-note that, despite my undying love of award shows, I considered leaving early. This year, with so much riding on the names in the envelopes, no contingent of jabbering ladies could to draw me away from the telecast.
The Academy Awards air Sunday, March 7 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
