This year’s Presidential election might have resulted in a decisive win, but not all elections lately have been so clear-cut. Take last week’s poll, in which we polled you folks about your favorite of our top 5 horror movies of all time. With nearly all precincts reporting, it’s a dead heat between the top contenders, Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Making this deadlock all the more surprising is the fact that, just a few weeks ago, these first two installments in George A. Romero’s Dead franchise didn’t finish nearly so closely in that particular poll. At any rate, it’s looking like we’re going to have to send this one to the House of Representatives, who ought to be able to settle this thing, although the possibility of a corrupt bargain is a very real one.
This week, we look ahead to the upcoming awards season. If recent history is any indication, most of the Oscar nominees will come from films that have yet to be released in theatres. But odds are that at least the moviegoing public has already seen a few of the nominees who will wake up happy on the morning on January 22, 2009. So who stands the best chance of getting nominated from the first ten months of the year? Setting aside the most obvious choice (the late Heath Ledger, of course), I’ve listed five of the most likely contenders, taken from films that have been widely released or are currently available on DVD. Will it be Anne Hathaway’s revelatory work in Jonathan Demme’s family dramedy? Angelina Jolie in her first collaboration with perennial Oscar favorite Clint Eastwood? The scene-stealing Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen’s latest? The Jenkins, knocking one out of the park in his long-awaited leading man breakthrough? Or will the Academy decide to recognize the controversial, attention-getting comedic work by Robert Downey Jr., the big-star story of the year so far? The choice is yours:
As always, feel free to sound off in the comments section. See you next week!