Oscar 2010: The World vs. "King's Speech" vs. "Social Network"

Now that it's not been nominated for any Academy Awards and was completely ignored in the box office, I'm going to say that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is the outcast gem of 2010. However, I'm clearly not here to discuss the several awards that Edgar Wright's action-comedy deserved by didn't get. This Tuesday morning's Oscar nominations drew quite a lot of debate and distractions, mostly from Christopher Nolan's disheartening snub from the Best Director field. It's the category Inception most deserved to snag a nomination in, and yet it didn't. It all serves to draw attention away from the real matter at hand, and that is the completely changed Best Picture race.

First off, I'd like to take the time to comment on something that I did not comment on when the nominations were announced on Tuesday, and that is my predictions from a year ago. There more than a few that I obviously got wrong, because some films just failed to deliver on their promise. I thought that The American would add another nomination to George Clooney's resume, How Do You Know would be a return to form for James L. Brooks, and Hereafter would be Clint Eastwood's most widely adored film since Million Dollar Baby. I don't have to say it for everyone to know I was wrong, because I even expected Iron Man 2 to be nominated. The first one was so surprising in a great way, but the second proved to be surprising in a negative fashion. I'm not going to blame myself for supporting Harry Potter and Blue Valentine, because in an ideal world they would've been nominated this year. However, I was right about Inception, True Grit, Toy Story 3, and The Social Network, so four out of ten isn't anything to wine about.

Back to the present, or rather the more recent past, months ago we thought that there was no excitement left in this year's Oscar race. It seems we were wrong, and painfully so. The King's Speech came out with 12 Oscar nominations this Tuesday, a rather astounding total for a British period drama. I'm not going to start pretending that it deserved all those nominations, because it didn't. The cinematography for the film, well done as it may have been, wasn't as good as other contenders like Let Me In and Deathly Hallows: Part 1. I don't even know what to say about Sound Mixing, but even though Tom Hooper did an honest job of directing, he lacked the unique creative vision of some of the other contenders. This is coming from somebody who absolutely adored the film, so don't lose sight of that.


So the awards season is far less clean cut than we thought it was, and the next month will be a battle between The Social Network and The King's Speech for the win, as it was originally. Originally we all thought that David Fincher would take the win for Best Director, while The King's Speech went on to win Best Picture. Then The Social Network took almost the entirety of the critics awards, as well as the Golden Globes, and it looked like Fincher's film was going to sweep. Then we revert to now when The King's Speech took the PGA and came out on top in terms of nominations on Tuesday, and it's now a race between the two films.

Some people have been trying to stick a third horse into this race, either in favor of True Grit or Black Swan, but neither of them has done phenomenally well in precursors or guild awards. This is between the top two films, and I'm just not happy about that. I love both films, and if either of them wins, I'll go to sleep satisfied that night. However, it just doesn't seem like a true battle of the opposites. It seems a little too vanilla for my taste, so I'm praying that neither of them conquer the guild awards in the coming weeks. I hope that one of the other contenders takes the spotlight and makes this a three horse race. That's what I'm most looking forward to. It probably won't happen, but we've seen wild cards become a huge presence late in the awards season before. Who's to say it won't happen again?