Oscar Speculation

You know, that is kind of interesting. I never quite thought about it in those terms because he still continued to do some damn big projects after all of that - Master and Commander, Cinderella Man. But the Oscar door did close on him. A good way to put it.

Now, the other speculative question is: does Denzel win for Fences if he loses 2001 to Crowe? That is, of course, disregarding the butterfly effect of it all and assuming that his projects (and the overall cinematic landscape) would've remained the same.

1. Yes, given it swept all categories it was nominated for, there is no reason to believe the academy would've taken more time on those two categories to still award Master and Commander, which sadly would've gotten goose egged. (One can easily wonder if those branches purposefully voted to snub it just to prevent that from happening).

2. No way, only because that theoretical category was FAR too weak that year, even if they were a jury. I mean Balto, The Goofy Movie and Pocahontas, as the nominees over Toy Story? I seriously doubt it.

3. I mean that is *The* question, and there was a month between ceremonies, so plenty of time for voters to rethink their choice. And Crowe was in the best picture winner, much like when Hanks won twice. However, Washington also was seen as overdue for a lead, and obviously was never going to ever win BAFTA. Maybe SAG was truly just making up for not giving him the win the previous year. I imagine it was super close even in the final tally, so maybe? I do think the bigger difference is Crowe probably would've gotten nominated again for possibly both Cinderella Man and Master and Commander.

1. It's hard to say. A part of me thinks it would clean sweep for pure momentum's sake, but the fact that it didn't get nominated at either makes me think there would still have been a bit of exhaustion in those respective categories to allow for Master and Commander to still sneak past.

2. I mean, it won an actual honorary Oscar that year, so I can't see how it wouldn't have gotten a nomination, even in the face of tradition. And I think it wins the same way every other animated film wins that Oscar: box office.

3. I think Crowe still wins. I think the margins were very close but the timing on that could not have been worse for him. But it's hard to really bet against that clean sweep up to that point plus a Best Picture/Director/Supporting Actress combine, and without the backlash/controversy, I think Crowe still pips him to the post at the end.

The interesting thing is that the Academy showed that it could go against an overall juggernaut in at least one tech category when they gave Titanic everything except for Makeup. So your outcome sounds very plausible to me. Especially if any voters would've remembered that LOTR had already won Cinematography before.

Maybe PD for Shutter Island (most of actual nominees weren't big contenders) and probably that's it.

I honestly think they pushed it back because the studio knew it wasn't going to be a major player anyways, and really looking at how it was being perceived pre-release, and before the 09 awards season, a lot people I think thought it was a far more sort of "prestige" type film, rather than the very "genre" if not exploitation style film it actually was.

Love your answers, guys. Agreed on Shutter Island. I got two more for you:

1. If Ben Affleck is nominated for Best Director for Argo, does he still win the GG/BAFTA/DGA trifecta and then the Oscar? Or do you think there's a possibility that he swept those three because of the uproar his snub caused? In other words, how do you think the BD race would've looked like had he been nominated?

2. Does Michelle Williams win for The Fabelmans if she's in the Supporting Actress race? Or does the combo of the EEAAO dominance and JLC's veteran status still push the latter forward?

1. Globes voting had already ended before Affleck's snub, so he still wins that. I honestly think he was a frontrunner for Best Director regardless. Maybe he doesn't sweep - I'm usually tempted to say BAFTA could go differently since it's the least industry overlap, but they nominated him for Best Actor so maybe not - but that year was shaping up Argo's way which is what made the snub so shocking.

2. Almost certainly. The race was only as open as it was because Williams felt like a lead.

Nah, Julia Roberts was in her prime and was getting Denzel his Oscar no matter what.

I definitely think Ledger still wins. That performance was hugely memetic and was a massive, flashy performance that would've been hard for anyone to deny. And as we saw with Boseman, a death doesn't guarantee a win. He would've had the box office and the transformative angle, and he was a prior nominee to boot.

Brolin had the Best Picture nominee but he was playing Dan White, who I don't think they would've deigned to recognize as a winning performance for the man who murdered Harvey Milk the same year they feted Penn and Dustin Lance Black for honouring him. I think the nomination was the reward, as well as being acknowledgment of his achievements the previous year.

Hoffman had just won, and Shannon barely got over the line in the end.

If anything, I think Downey, Jr. was Ledger's biggest competition. He had a banner comeback year with Iron Man and Tropic Thunder and his performance, while in a broad comedy, was very reminiscent of what Kevin Kline was doing in A Fish Called Wanda, and it was tangentially related to the industry and it was clear the Academy was willing to laugh at themselves in this instance.

But I don't think anyone was beating Ledger. That was a barnstormer of a performance and while the film itself didn't get the Picture nod, the fact that it didn't showed that they were willing to change the format of nominations to reflect the outcry of its absence. Ledger's passing may have been the (pardon the pun) final nail in the coffin for the other contenders, but I feel like the second that he shows up giving that performance, he's guaranteed himself the Oscar.

stephen pacinoyes - I definitely hope you guys are right! There's just no denying their genre bias at this point in their history, though, and at 29 (the age he would have been during the ceremony), he still would have been very young for a male winner. I definitely take your arguments though, and they make perfect sense - just playing devil's advocate. 

Of course not, and feel free to pose more questions if you've got'em! That's why I made the thread to begin with - not just to ask my own questions but to hopefully have the others keep the ball rolling.