Best Picture talk

With my love of movies, I always follow closely which movies will get nominated for Oscars—particularly for Best Picture. With the possibility of The Dark Knight getting a Best Picture nomination (it would be justifiable so) I’ve taken even more interest into the speculating process.

I believe at this point there’s six strong contenders—Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, The Dark Knight and Revolutionary Road.

Many year-end critics lists have been coming out so the race is definitely taking shape.

Milk, The Dark Knight, Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon and WALL-E all made AFI’s list of the top ten movies of 2008.

Milk has won the Southeastern, San Fransicso and New York Critics Circle award for Best Picture.

Benjamin Button as won the St. Louis Film Critics Award.

Slumdog Millionaire has taken home the San Diego, Boston (tie), Washington DC Critics Circle Award for Best Pictures and was named Best Picture by the National Board of Review.

The Dark Knight has won the Austin Film Critics Award for Best Picture and finished runner up with the LA Film Critics Association.

Interestingly enough WALL-E won top honors with the LA Circle and tied Slumdog Millionaire with the Boston Critics.

Unfortunately for WALL-E, I believe its fortune is going to be relegated to the category of Best Animated Film. I don’t think that’s fair because the movie is Best Picture material but I’m afraid that’s going to be the case. But it’s definitely a dark horse candidate.

Now why is Revolutionary Road still in the discussion…I believe that’s it’s still in the discussion because it scored some major nominations at the Golden Globes (Best Picture, Actor & Actress). But one might need to take that with a grain of salt because…as I have mentioned before…the Golden Globes tend to lean towards star power so nominating Leonardo DiCaprio would help fill that need (look…they nominated Tom Cruise as well). Plus sometimes the Golden Globes are just zippy so it’s hard to put a lot of stock into their decisions although it has been better lately.

At this point I would put Milk and Slumdog Millionaire as locks for Best Picture. It appears to me that the following four films… The Dark Knight, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Revolutionary Road and Frost/Nixon are fighting for the final three spots. Although I do see WALL-E as the top dark horse candidate. The next tier of possibilities would be Doubt (strong cast), The Wrestler (the Mickey Rourke comeback) and Rachel Getting Married (female bloggers love t his movie) and maybe Gran Torino (because the Academy loves Clint Eastwood).

My five to be the Best Picture nominees as of right now would be Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Dark Knight.