(This is a continuing conversation about this year’s Oscars, running all week long, with Damien Bona, a co-author of the definitive history of the Academy Awards, “Inside Oscar.” To read the chat from the beginning, hit the “more” link when you get to the bottom of this post.)

BILL: I think you hit exactly the argument against a ranked voting system when you said, “I would want a statistician to explain to me if a point system (with voters prioritizing all five nominees, or just one’s top three) would lead to less embarrassing results. Or would it mean that the winner was inevitably a compromise choice?” There’s a perfect illustration of that, back in 1998 when the National Society, which uses a variation of a ranked system, had heated supporters of “Saving Private Ryan” on the one hand and “Shakespeare in Love” on the other. The winner of the group’s best picture that year? “Out of Sight.”(!)

I remember a friend of mine at the time arguing that it’s just a recipe for the third-best film of the year to win. Which is … half-true; in crude terms, the “third-best” film will win only when the partisans for each of the alleged top two disdain the other the way they did that year. My argument for a ranked vote is that under the current system, the fourth- and fifth-best films tend to win. Of course, a switch in the Academy’s methods will never happen, unless films like “Ghost” start winning every year. And, as we discussed when this dialogue started on Monday, it seems as if we’re in a period when the Academy has been working hard to recognize quality over box-office appeal, at least in the nominations. (And the show has been getting the ratings to prove it.)

To conclude, do you feel comfortable offering some predictions? Neither of us are doing explicit reporting on what will happen; I assume we’re basing our calls on what we’ve read and the patterns the Academy has exhibited in the past.

I think Day-Lewis and Julie Christie are likely winners in the main acting category. Javier Bardem, a formidable, brave and focused talent who has been nominated for Best Actor before, was delicious in “No Country.” There is a sentimental argument for Hal Holbrook, but I have to say I am voting my heart here; unlike you I was appalled by “Into the Wild”; it was an interminable hodgepodge of direction at the service of a misguided and fundamentally dishonest story. Supporting actress is tough but I am going with Amy Ryan.

In the screenplay categories, I say the Coens and Diablo Cody, for “Juno.” “No Country” will get a cinematography nod for Roger Deakins, who was nominated twice. “No End in Sight,” a rigorous piece of reporting, will get best documentary. (And might provide the most controversial acceptance speech.) “Ratatouille” I think will get best animated feature. I can’t predict the other craft categories.

My hunch is that the Coens will get Best Director. All week I’ve been thinking that they wouldn’t get Best Picture, though I think in the end they deserve it. It won’t be “There Will Be Blood,” because that would be the most radical Best Picture winner in many years, perhaps ever. (Has ever such a piece of Pure Cinema won? “Lawrence,” maybe?) It won’t be “Atonement” because of the lack of a Best Director nomination. I can’t imagine the award going to a movie like “Juno,” despite its amazing popularity. (And I don’t think “There Will Be Blood” will siphon off enough votes from “No Country” for “Juno” to win.) I think “Michael Clayton” is the real contender, and may squeak through, for the reasons we discussed earlier.

It’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I hope you have an enjoyable Sunday night.

DAMIEN: One has to respect the omens and play the odds. Even though its success makes no sense to me, “No Country For Old Men” has taken the majority of critics prizes and has swept the top guild awards—there’s no reason to believe the result won’t be the same here. “There Will Be Blood” is probably more respected than liked by Academy voters and it’s hard to imagine such a misanthropic film winning the hearts of this mushy constituency. It will be ironic if “No Country For Old Men” does become considered the most “radical” Best Picture ever, because it’s not as radical a piece of filmmaking as “There Will Be Blood.” (It’s a parallel situation to 1941. “How Green Was My Valley” is arguably the best movie ever to win Best Picture—it just wasn’t the best picture of the year when “Citizen Kane” was also released.) Anecdotal evidence suggests that “Michael Clayton” is the film voters really, really like and although it didn’t leave a huge mark on the cultural landscape, it’s an extremely well-crafted and intelligent film with some serious contemporary overtones, and in Hollywood that package may well be more highly-regarded than “Art.” “Juno” is held in great affection, but is probably too small-scale for the top prize, and “Atonement” is an after-thought. Thus, “Old Country” is the likely winner, “Michael Clayton” the possible upset.

Daniel Day-Lewis’s silliness is a definite lock and Javier Bardem a virtual lock. As you note, there is some sentiment for Hal Holbrook in “Into The Wild,” but his lovely performance may be too low-keyed for these people to appreciate. And you and I certainly disagree on Javier Bardem, Bill. For me, he was little more than a hulking presence; to see a REAL psycho, check out Richard Widmark’s nominated performance in “Kiss of Death” (with his creepy laugh and immortal line, “Sleep is for squirts.”) The real shame regarding actors and the Academy this year is that what I consider to be the year’s most compelling work—Casey Affleck’s in “The Assassination Of Jesse James”—is going to be passed over. This is a brave and self-effacing performance in which the actor’s vocal modulations and discreet alterations in facial expressions brilliantly convey his character’s would-be bravado and the deep resentments simmering under a scarily calm exterior; he also makes us aware of the huge ego that’s dying to get out. And to make matters worse, voters put Affleck in the wrong category—he’s a lead in the picture.

I wish I could be as sure as you and most other prognosticators about Julie Christie. Hers is one of the best—and most heartbreaking—performances I’ve ever seen, but like Holbrook’s and Affleck’s, I fear it may be way too nuanced. Okay, if Christie loses to Ellen Page that’s one thing—Page is utterly charming and never hits a wrong note in “Juno,” allowing the audience to see the scared little girl who still lies just below the surface of her specifically-adolescent swagger. But I’ll lose whatever little respect I still have for the Academy if voters are big enough suckers to consider Marion Cottilard’s waxworks impersonation of Edith Piaf to constitute award-quality acting. It’s partially the fault of the pointlessly elliptical narrative structure of “La Vie en Rose,” but Cottilard’s Piaf seems like an entirely different person from scene to scene and thus doesn’t seems like a real live person. The actress is histrionic as all get out, but it’s her make-up that’s first-rate, not her performance.

Supporting Actress is this year’s biggest crapshoot. I think you can safely eliminate Cate Blanchett (”I’m Not There” is not the kind of movie which sits well with the typical Academy member, and it’s hard to imagine a Todd Haynes picture becoming an Oscar winner) and Saoirse Ronan (she’s no Anna Paquin). But a strong case can be made for the plausibility of all three other nominees winning: Ruby Dee both for both making a very small part indelible and a lifetime of memorable acting and social activism; Tilda Swinton as perhaps the strongest presence in a well-liked movie; and Amy Ryan for the seamlessness and sheer force of her performance. I keep going back and forth on this one but at his moment right now I would say Tilda Swinton.

Look for the Coens to win Best Director, and they are also likely to take Adapted Screenplay (although Ronald Harwood’ s beautifully economical script for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”—with its unexpected pockets of rich droll humor—is a potential sleeper here). I agree with you on Diablo Cody and “Juno.” I don’t think the Coens (or rather, “Roderick Jaynes”) will win Best Editing. Because the brothers do their own editing, many people will consider the cutting of the movie simply part of their direction and will opt to honor a full time editor—in this case most likely Christopher Rouse for “The Bourne Ultimatum.” And I think Cinematography will be one of the two statuettes “There Will Be Blood” takes home (the other being Sound Editing); Robert Elswit’s canvas contained more vistas and striking landscapes than Roger Deakins’s work in “No Country” (which is often the determining factor in this category).

The upset that would most elate me (other than Casey Affleck, but I have to be a little realistic here): the inventive, cerebral, witty and passionate “Persepolis” knocking out the completely ordinary “Ratatouille.” Not only would this French cartoon be one of the best movies ever to take home a major Oscar, it would finally justify the heretofore asinine and unnecessary “Best Animated Feature” category.

Thanks Bill, it’s been fun. Happy Oscar night!

(Click on the “more” link to read this conversation from the beginning…)

 

 

 

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“Talking Oscars with Damien Bona,” from the beginning:
“Inside Oscar” isn’t just the best Oscar book; it’s one of the best books ever on the movies. The authors, Damien Bona and Mason Wiley, put together not just an indispensable guide to what happened when and why in the months leading up to each year’s Oscar night, but a keenly insightful social history of the medium as well. Bona lost his friend and collaborator in 1994, but updated the original work regularly and published “Inside Oscar 2” in 2002. I’ve enjoyed talking with Bona since interviewing him for Salon a few years back. He graciously agreed to talk Oscar via email in the week leading up to the 80th presentation of the awards Sunday night. We’ll post the exchanges as they happen throughout the week.

BILL: Damien, it’s great to talk to you again. Is it just my personal perspective, or have the Academy Awards changed subtly over the last five years? Here again we have a line-up of movies that didn’t make much money at the box office; many of them—horrors—are what used to be called art films. It was slightly surreal to see titles like “In the Bedroom” and “Lost in Translation” in the best-picture lineups a few years back, and now it’s common for four out of the five nominated films to fall into this loose category. I suppose it’s because the movies being made changed; in a way, when it comes to the Oscars, we’re living in the house Harvey Weinstein built.Still, for those of us who love and love to ridicule the Oscars, isn’t the best picture lineup this year—”Juno,” “No Country for Old Men,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Michael Clayton” and “Atonement”—fairly defensible? OK, “Atonement” aside.

DAMIEN: Well, the quality of Best Picture nominees is fairly cyclical. Every once in a while, at least four of the nominees are small or ”arty” or not-conventionally-commercial. Nineteen Ninety-Six was one such year (“Fargo,” “Secrets and Lies,” “Shine,” and eventual winner “The English Patient” joined by the one Hollywood studio production—and the one smash—“Jerrry Maguire”). Newspaper headlines on Nominations Day inevitably employed variations of the pun “Independents Day,” just as they had done in 1992, although then it was more the acting, directing and writing branches with an independent streak. (Best Picture nominees that year were “The Crying Game,” “A Few Good Men,” “Howards End,” “Scent Of A Woman,” and the winner, “Unforgiven.”)

If one quantifies the quality quotient of a year’s nominees by measuring them against general critical consensus—though to do so ascribes much more perspicacity and taste to movie reviewers than they deserve—and not one’s personal preferences, then yes, 2007’s line-up is highly-respectable. While “No Country For Old Men” has done the best in the critics’ (and guild) awards, the other four nominees all have passionate defenders among critics. And this has generally been the case the last few years. (“Crash” was ridiculed by a lot of cinephiles, but it did have some strong critical support, although nothing in comparison to the film it bested at the Oscars, “Brokeback Mountain.”) To find Best Picture nominees that were scorned by the critical establishment—contenders whose place on the list of finalists seems as absurd as “Doctor Doolitle” in 1967 and “Airport” in 1970—you have to go back to “Finding Neverland” (2004) and “Seabiscuit” (2003).

Will this pattern last, and will Hollywood blockbusters continue to find it rough going with Academy voters? Impossible to say, but it is important to keep in mind that one year after the so-called “new dawn” of 1996, the Academy Awards were completely dominated by “Titanic.”

BILL: Staying with the top category, what are the odds you see? “Juno” has sold by far the most tickets; in fact it’s sold a lot of tickets, totaling to fully twice the $60 million “Little Miss Sunshine” made, and it’s still minting money. And box office counts at the Oscars.

On the other hand, in my estimation, the worst of the Best Picture nominees generally tends to win, which gives a leg up to “Atonement.” But it couldn’t eke out a director nomination. But it may be the Coen Brothers’ year, true? “No Country for Old Men” is “Fargo” with philosophy, and their most aesthetically controlled film. And yet—were there any onscreen images this year as enthralling as P.T. Anderson’s in “There Will Be Blood”? And couldn’t “Michael Clayton,” as an utterly inoffensive, competent and intelligent piece of filmed entertainment that happens to star George Clooney, slip in as a compromise? It might garner the votes of people who have bad dreams of pneumatic hammers, particularly those wielded by a sociopath lacking Anthony Hopkins-like politesse.

DAMIEN: I seem to be one of the few “No Country For Old Men” detractors. As a non-fan of the Coens since day one (i.e. “Blood Simple”), I just thought this was more of the same: Self-conscious “literary” writing (straining so hard to achieve the mythic), overly-composed shots which make the film not so much beautiful- looking as moribund and stilted, and a dash of the smug condescension towards “just folks” which has always afflicted their movies. All in all, it seemed to me like an extended episode of “Mannix” or “Cade’s County.” Only with pretensions.

Still, I can’t deny the appeal this film has to most people, as evidenced by its winning a huge amount of precursor awards. It’s hard to envision “No Country” not taking the three top awards. (But then again, “Brokeback Mountain” was pretty much of a sure thing.) Let’s consider the alternatives. “There Will Be Blood” seems to be the second choice film of everyone who loves “No Country.” Those who favor it are almost deliriously obsessed with it, but I haven’t seen evidence that there are as many such fanatics in the Academy as there are in the pages of the “alternative” weekly newspapers.“Juno” also has a lot of love, and its sweetness and upbeat quality puts it in contrast to the other nominees. And Academy members have never been accused of lacking a sentimental streak or a soft spot for “nice movies” (and this particular nice movie can also boast an Indie Feel—a $ 6.5 million budget— and for many people, a hip factor, which expands its constituency). But it does seem to lack the “heft” that Best Picture winners tend to possess. A win would not be a complete shock, but most likely “Juno” will probably have to content itself with Diablo Cody’s Original Screenplay win.

Bill, I think your analysis of “Michael Clayton” is spot on. How could anyone not like this well-mounted and sharp ‘70s throwback? But on the other hand, the conventional moral path of its narrative makes the picture just a bit predictable and ordinary. Despite that, Academy members are known to love the film. Yet, it comes to Oscar night with a specific handicap: “Michael Clayton” was not nominated for Best Film Editing, and the last movie with that albatross to win Best Picture was “Ordinary People” in 1980. (Two years ago, some sagacious Oscar observers—but not I—pointed to this specific detail as evidence that “Brokeback Mountain” was actually not a lock).

Clearly, Academy members don’t have the same low opinion of “Atonement” as you, but its lack of a Best Director nomination—despite that “Hey, look ma!” tracking shot—pretty much means the film is D.O.A. on Oscar night. The last film to win Best Picture without a directing nomination was 1989’s “Driving Miss Daisy,” but there’s a difference between the two. “Driving Miss Daisy” had been considered the front-runner before the nominations (or at least in a dead heat with “Born On The 4th Of July”) and there was an enormous uproar when Bruce Beresford wasn’t nominated for such a beloved movie, the slight actually intensifying support for the movie. “Atonement,” on the other hand had been seen as losing steam throughout pre-nominations season (with only its Golden Globe win propping it back up), so it was the film’s landing in the Best Picture category (in lieu of the more widely-predicted “Into The Wild”) was seen as the surprise, not Joe Wright’s omission.

Based on all the other citations, “No Country For Old Men” is the clear frontrunner. The most likely upset would come from “Juno.” (Its huge grosses say something about its appeal to regular filmgoers, and despite their positions, job titles and incomes, Academy members are much closer to people descending upon the multiplex on weekends than they are to cineastes.)

BILL: Your observation about the Coen Brothers smug condescension is something that doesn’t get talked about enough. “Fargo,” with its exceptionally controlled ultrablack tone, aside, their oeuvre otherwise has been too often based on a parade of grotesques. Some of their films just seem a stream of close-up of the faces of people who are misshapen in one way or another, Foghorn Leghorn dialects, and other crude scrawls. (A quintessential one is in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” when the fat guy pitches George Clooney out of the store, saying, “And stay outta the Woolworth’s!”) In “No Country,” which I just saw again, there is just one of these scenes—the rotund faces of the mariachi band who wake Josh Brolin up after his foray across the border. It struck me as unnecessary and out of keeping with the rest of the film.

So I share your ambivalence about the Coens, and there are other complaints one can make about “No Country”: Its plot is basically identical to “Fargo”’s, despite its tonier origins: There’s the suitcase full of money, the implacable murderer, the ruminatin’ sheriff…And I don’t understand the point of the penultimate scene. (I don’t want to give away any plot points for people who haven’t seen it.)

All that said, there is a serious and interesting debate going on in the film—it’s about the timelessness of evil. It’s not a nice film, either; it is not playing sentimental games and it does not ingratiate. It is technically very accomplished and, again, very controlled. And there are some surprises, too; when you track the action on a second viewing you notice that one slice of the mayhem in the film is prompted by an ostensible good deed. That, in turn, becomes a refutation in advance of the most plaintive line in the movie: “The coin don’t have a say.” The Coens think it does.

DAMIEN: Although the Coens have had passionate admirers throughout their careers, there were those of us who were consistently put off by their condescension and smugness. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader has referred to the “abrasive caricatures in the Coen brothers’ work.” Perhaps what disappointed me most about “No Country For Old Men” is that several people I know who have shared my disdain for the Coens assured me their attitude was different this time, and they had deep-sixed the attitude. Granted it’s not as pronounced as in the past, but it’s still there.

BILL: One of the reasons I like chatting with you about all of this is that you have an encyclopedic knowledge of the ebb and flow of the nominations and the awards over all these years. Do you have a sense at this point of how the academy thinks? Do you feel you know its way of thinking, the way, say, a biographer might ultimately have a mild meld with his or her subject?

DAMIEN: The mind-set of the Academy has changed over the years, much in keeping with changes in the movie industry. And despite being made up of a large number of individuals, there is a particular attitude. The Academy tends to be politically liberal (but not left-wing) and aesthetically conservative. An ideal Oscar movie is one that does have an air of seriousness about it, but which ultimately goes down rather easily (think, “A Beautiful Mind,” “American Beauty” and “Crash”—the last also having the advantage of being L.A.-centric.) Voters have also shown an odd tendency to favor new renditions of big old-fashioned epics. On any objective basis, there is no logical explanation for a “Braveheart” or a “Gladiator” to have won Best Picture (“Braveheart” wasn’t even a big money-maker), other than that from time to time voters are suckers for old-fashioned BIG movies. Happily, occasionally some of these big pictures are actually good, with “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” and “Chicago” being two recent examples.Academy voters are sentimental, but not overly so. (Just ask Lauren Bacall and Gloria Stuart.)

Of course, each year there are extraneous factors coming into play, such as a film’s release date, advertising campaigns, a filmmaker being considered overdue. It is unlikely that “The Departed,” as entertaining and beautifully crafted as it is, would have won Best Picture if the Academy hadn’t been consistently taken to task for having snubbed Martin Scorsese all those many years. (Of course, that sentiment didn’t help “The Aviator” or “Gangs of New York,” but in those cases, there was a sneaking feeling that the movies were made all too obviously as Oscar-bait.)

BILL: Anyway, as regards to the quality of the nominated pictures, I suppose you are right; Hollywood like everything else is cyclical. Isn’t this a long cycle, however? To me the “feel” of the best picture nominees, particularly, has changed of late. For the last three years arguably four of the five come from a place that is pretty tangential to mainstream Hollywood. It’s been almost routine now for analysts to total up the total box-office receipts of the nominees and note how low the result is. This year, “Juno,” not only a completely unforeseen hit but a completely unforeseen massive hit, is but at number 22 for the year.

What about last year, the Academy’s openness to Mexican cinema, when “Babel,” “Children of Men” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” racked up nomination after nomination? Could we have imagined, in 2001, the directors of “Y Tu Mamá” and “Amores Perros” would have made such an impact? But, in the end, it may just be a personal thing. In the last three years I count one movie—“Munich”—that I thought had no business being nominated. I guess I don’t feel I’m in my usual state of high dudgeon about the nominations. It could just come down to that!

DAMIEN: I think that for the past three years—no matter what one may think of the individual films themselves—there hasn’t been a single Best Picture nominee that could be considered schlock. For the time being, at least, the appearance of a “Seabiscuit,” “The Green Mile” or “Towering Inferno” on the list of finalists would be quite startling. But lest we get too optimistic, let’s recall that there have been other periods (such as the mid-1980s) when the Academy didn’t embarrass itself, only to have “Field of Dreams” and “Ghost” show up a little later.

BILL: Seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman on the supporting actor list reminds me that “Charlie Wilson’s War” was pretty much ignored. From the point of view of the Academy folks who worry about ratings, Julia Roberts on the best actress list would have increased the glamour quotient of the show immensely. (I don’t think she should be on there, though.) But Aaron Sorkin’s script for “Charlie Wilson’s War” was everything a script should be: tight, wound up and focused, with virtually every line a minor comic gem. I agree with you in the original-screenplay category that it seems Diablo Cody’s to lose, though “Michael Clayton,” to me, while quite predictable, can’t be counted out, given its nominations.

Over in adapted, you can see it going to the Coens, which would be their second, though I guess “Fargo” was an original screenplay. If “No Country” doesn’t dominate the awards, it don’t see a clear runner-up. Do you?

DAMIEN: I’m not quite sure why “Charlie Wilson’s War” didn’t do better with Academy. It was nicely reviewed and did fairly well at the box-office. This might be concrete evidence of the influence other awards have on Academy voters. Other than being nominated for a number of Golden Globes, “Charlie” was never a player in other groups’ awards. Having swept most of the critics’ and guilds’ awards, “No Country” is a formidable front-runner. Which is not to say that it’s invincible. Plenty of people hated the ending, and the occasionally elliptical narrative might be irksome to some folks, as well. But I can’t imagining the Coens NOT winning the Adapted Screenplay award—much of the dialogue seems written not spoken, and that often helps in the writing categories. (The likely Original Screenplay winner, “Juno” at times is also guilty of this trait.)

BILL: Don’t think I haven’t noticed your sly digs at critics, particularly those pesky alternative newspaper critics. I was a writer for many years at the Chicago Reader, where I was mighty proud to appear in the same pages as Mr. Rosenbaum. What’s your assessment of the critical landscape these days? Whence comes this skepticism? I’m a fan of Manohla Dargis in the Times. (She was part of the corps at the LA Weekly for many years, to my mind a fairly serious group of writers.) I like how personal Roger Ebert is in his writing, and admire his work ethic. Ken Turan at the LAT remains an iconoclastic voice, to my ears. And the great joy of reading someone like Jonathan, a true film scholar, is that he transcends the “review”: you enjoy just reading him as a writer and a thinker. Anyone else you like?

I’m not getting off track here; rather, I wanted to ask you whether critics really matter at all in the Oscar race. I marvel how the artists receiving Grammys each year are almost entirely mutually exclusive of the ones who top critics polls. At the Oscars, it’s a little more complicated, isn’t it?

Damien: To be honest, Bill, I don’t much look to critics in deciding what films to see, I generally rely on the advice of a few friends whose taste I trust. One reason is that I prefer to know as little as possible about a film before I see it—basically, just who directed it, the genre, and maybe a very general plot outline and any other pertinent information. (For that reason, I always take my iPod to the movies and keep it on with my eyes closed during the trailers.)

But also, I don’t think most reviewers are very bright or interesting. I don’t mean just the easy targets—the risible quote-whore TV reviewers or the nauseating Michael Medved—but the majority of mainstream critics, who tend in varying degrees to be Paulettes. There was much I couldn’t stand about Pauline Kael, but perhaps the most irritating aspect about her was that she had no real philosophy about cinema. She was like a giddy child and if what was up on screen appealed to her instinctively, that meant it was good. And if Li’l’ Pauline was bored, it was a bad film. Plus she had no imagination. Perhaps her most embarrassing write-up was when she ridiculed a film that has become a genuine classic, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” because she couldn’t get past the fact that, objectively, John Wayne and James Stewart were too old for their roles. Which, of course, was beside the point; iconic presence apparently was a concept too hard for her to grasp. As Bugs would say, “What a maroon!”

David Denby of “The New Yorker” and “New York”’s David Edelstein are probably the most useless of the prominent Paulettes, but there’s also Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly—I mean, how is anyone supposed to take seriously someone who selected “Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead” as the second-best picture of the year?

On the plus side, The “Village Voice”’s J. Hoberman is erudite and fascinating, and though his taste and mine don’t necessarily converge, it’s a privilege to read him. (Whenever I see the byline of his colleague at the “Voice,” Nathan Lee, however, I run the other way. Silly and pompous.)

Although I still miss Vincent Canby (me showing my age), the two main critics at the New York Times (Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott) are both excellent writers, and I enjoy reading their reviews even as the conventionality of their taste bores me.The Times did miss a great opportunity when it was looking to replace Janet Maslin and passed over Dave Kehr. He’s relegated to the DVD column, and his columns show that he’s both a wonderful stylist and a brilliant mind (although his affection for the unbearable Robert Zemeckis will always be a head scratcher for me). As the main film critic for the paper, Kehr would have taken the Times to places it has never been before.

Like me, Kehr (and Jonathan Rosenbaum, too) is an old-school hard-core auteurist, and that’s probably the primary criterion for me regarding a critic’s relevance. This genre of critics tend to pop up mostly in “alt weeklies,” but there is the terrific David Ansen, although to a slight degree his directorial-thematic tendencies are toned down by the fact that he writes for Newsweek.

You bring up a very interesting point contrasting critical influence on the Oscars and the Grammys. I had never thought of this before (mainly, I guess because I haven’t given more than a passing glance to the Grammys since I was maybe 16), but with the Oscars the path of Officially Accepted Acclaim travels from critics’ groups to Golden Globes to Guild Awards, so that Oscar voters have an unofficial handbook regarding “quality” films. In the music world, there are almost no such precursor awards. The only one I can think of is the Village Voice annual “Pazz and Jop” poll, but I don’t know if anyone pays much attention to that—it seems more like a pissing contest of music reviewers trying to out-cool each other. But maybe if music reviewers did get together and organize some prize-giving to serve as a guide-post, the Grammys wouldn’t be quite so lame.

BILL: There seems to be a consensus that Daniel Day-Lewis will take Best Actor. There is a true mystery to true acting, and certainly the way he inhabits the character of Plainview is arresting. He was also very much helped by the director, who seemed to have built his movie around Day-Lewis’s presence.

Anyone else in the category you like? I haven’t seen “In the Valley of Elah” yet, but I assume that, as with Viggo Mortensen in “Eastern Promises,” Tommy Lee Jones’ work in the film was widely admired by his peers in the very large actors branch of the Academy, which I guess we have to respect. (Mortensen’s nomination caught me by surprise, however. It didn’t seem all that memorable a role in a too-unsurprising movie. You’d never say that about Mortensen’s performance in David Cronenberg’s previous effort, “A History of Violence,” so maybe this is partly to make up for his being overlooked two years ago.) Otherwise, the category seems overloaded with manly men this year, Johnny Depp’s Sweeney Todd aside. (I’d been getting used to the wildly diverse lineups in recent years.)

Damien: I was slightly surprised by Mortensen’s nomination. Terrific actor, but his more nuanced work in “A History Of Violence” was by-passed. Maybe it was the Russian accent this time. Emile Hirsch was the actor among highly possible contenders who to me most got short-shrifted, but apparently the Academy was not as impressed by “Into The Wild” as one might have expected. Josh Brolin in “No Country” was also likely on the cusp of making the final five, and perhaps James McAvoy from “Atonement,” as well. Johnny Depp these days seems to have a free pass to the Final Five; he’s becoming the Greer Garson of early 21st Century male actors. Make a movie, get a nomination. The irony is that while he’s being nominated for insipid performances in “Finding Neverland” and “Sweeney Todd,” his wonderful earlier work (such as in “Edward Scissorhands” and “Ed Wood”) was ignored).

I know I’m in a distinct minority here on Daniel Day-Lewis, but to quote Aldo Ray on Charlton Heston, “What a hamola!” I blame the reviewers to whom I above referenced for making it set in stone that this absurd, one-note, unbelievable, albeit technically-proficient channeling of John Huston constitutes Great Acting. And granted, he was playing a Concept, not a character, but still, some day, the acclaim for this performance will seem as embarrassing as that seventy years ago for Paul Muni’s work in those Depression-era biographies (Louis Pasteur, Emile Zola, Juarez) seems today. And poor Frank Langella.

BILL: What is it that occurred that broke down the good old-fashioned reliance that the Best Director winner would be the Best Picture winner? The academy broke with this rarely since the 1950s, am I right?

I just looked at the list; between 1956 (when George Stevens won for “Giant” and “Around the World in Eighty Days” took Best Picture) and 1998 (when Harvey Weinstein snookered Steven Speilberg out of his Best Picture award for “Saving Private Ryan” with “Shakespeare in Love”), there was a director-picture split exactly four times, or once a decade on average.

(They were: “The Graduate”/ “In the Heat of the Night” [1967]; “Cabaret”/”The Godfather” [1972]; “Reds”/”Chariots of Fire” [1981]; and “Born on the Fourth of July”/”Driving Miss Daisy” [1989].)

And now it’s happened three *more* times since 1998. Does this represent a big change in Academy voting patterns?

Damien: That’s an interesting question, Bill. With “Gladiator,” “Chicago” and “Crash” winning Best Picture but not Best Director, it almost seems as if the Academy is going back to the first year of the awards, when there were two top prizes: Best Production and Artistic Quality Of Production. These three films were much bigger and not as “artsy” as the films which won Best Director (”Traffic,” “The Pianist” and “Brokeback Mountain”).

Of course, each Oscar season has its own reasons, and there were specific factors that helped lead to the splits. “Saving Private Ryan” was seen as a true “Director’s Movie,” with Steven Spielberg undoubtedly the world’s most famous filmmaker at the time. With “Shakespeare In Love,” on the other hand, the script was the thing. And nobody really knew who John Madden was. (He seems to have slipped back into anonymity in the decade since.)

Steven Soderbergh had two Best Director nominations and both his films, “Traffic” and “Erin Brockovich” were up for Best Picture in 2000. It simply was his year. (The real mystery here is what in the world was anyone who voted for “Gladiator” thinking?)

And in 2002, “The Pianist” had a last-minute surge as voters viewed it late in the voting season. That “Chicago” was the odds on favor to win Best Picture, while at the same time many prognosticators were talking up a Martin Scorsese in the Best Director category, signaled to Academy members that they could vote for the beloved “Chicago” for the top prize but not also award its neophyte director, Rob Marshall. It’s just that nobody ever figured the overdue veteran who would finally get his reward would be Roman Polanski, and not Scorsese.

BILL: Boy, taking your iPod to the movies and closing your eyes during the previews. That is, as the kids say, hard core. Thanks for mentioning J. Hoberman, whose ability to grasp some of the deep things going on in some very difficult films on a weekly deadline is remarkable. He seems very much a humanist as well. And I don’t know if you know that Dave Kehr was a Chicago Reader critic as well, and legendary among the town’s critical corps, which is saying something. I lived on the west coast during his heyday, but had a subscription to the Reader in those pre-internets times; you had to know what he was writing about each week. The Chicago Reader archive, unfortunately, does not stretch back to his pre-1986 era, though you can read all of Jonathan Rosenbaum’s film writing there. Kehr does have a fine blog, however, at davekehr.com.

And, Ah, yes, the Paulettes. I could tell you stories. My favorite is Mr. Michael Sragow, who I think is doing very good work at the Baltimore Sun. I think we have to recognize, though, that Kael embarked on her punch-drunk love of the genre at a time when, for example, Bowsley Crowther was still the critic of record at the NYT. In an ideal world, there would be a spectrum of idiosyncratic voices, where a Kael’s instinctiveness could vie with a Hoberman’s haute analyses.

We may be getting there, actually. In all but a handful of journalistic outlets these days, of course, the rise of “entertainment journalism,” a term that makes me smile, has twisted the roles of many critics; instead of being good writers having something to say, they are expected by their editors to validate the preferences of the mass audience, in an attempt, vain as it might be, to get them to stop canceling their subscriptions. Ha! There is a subject for a new discussion entirely; as the internet mows everything down in its path, what’s the point of a local film critic anymore? In five years, will there be any?

Anyway. I had an idea that it comes down to this: The members of the academy consider their own opinions as good as any film critic’s. I fancy few are contemptuous of great film. (Whereas many, many Grammy voters were and are contemptuous of much pop and rock music, much less hip-hop. As a result, Grammy flubs, both in degree of outlandishness and sheer quantity, are by orders of magnitude more prevalent than at the Oscars.)

Which brings me to my next question. Doesn’t it all come down to the voting system? Let’s make “Gladiator” a poster boy for the empty, silly film that wins Best Picture. Is it because “Traffic” and “Crouching Tiger” split the intoxicated-by-film vote? (We can presume no one voted for “Chocolat,” and the bleeding hearts went for “Erin Brockovich.”) It is wonderful to me that all these questions (how close the votes were in a particular year, most notably) remain hidden in the Price Waterhouse vaults. (I think the Academy should have a fifty-year embargo, but then open the records.) There are many Oscar mysteries that in the end may be explained by the simple voting system used by the organization. All a film needs is a simple plurality, and it is possible—indeed, it’s probably indubitable—that a film with 21 percent of the vote may have won Best Picture. Back in 1990, had “Ghost” been up against four very strong films, it could have snuck in, couldn’t it? (Actually, that year, four dreadful films were up against “Goodfellas,” which by my logic thus should have taken it! “Dances with Wolves” came away the winner, though.) Should the Academy adopt some sort of ranked voting system, where presumably the worst film nominated each year could never win?

DAMIEN: One difference between the Grammys and the Oscars is that there is simply so much more musical product each year than there are film releases. Deciding that one album, one single, one song can be the best of the year is madness. The concept of a “best” is fatuous in any artistic field but given the sheer volume of eligible contenders and the fact that appreciation of music relies so much on personal taste rather than any indisputable inherent quality make the particularly pointless. Year after year, a plurality of Grammy voters show that their personal taste is of a mellow, Baby Boomer bent. I don’t know for sure, but I would assume that the majority of the Recording Academy members are behind-the-scenes folks, and thus they would be less cutting-edge than an organization made up of artists. And their status within the industry would additionally lead one to believe they are of a certain age. I don’t think one can honestly say, for example, that Steely Dan’s “Two Against Nature” is a bad album. But was it relevant in 2001, when its competition included Beck, Eminem and Radiohead?

By contrast, in the world of film—although some idiosyncratic voices exist in a parallel cinematic universe—a general mainstream consensus coalesces around the two dozen or so “top quality” films of the year, and so the pool of movies in which the critics are interested and to which Academy members gravitate overlap a great deal.

As for Oscar voting procedures, I would want a statistician to explain to me if a point system (with voters prioritizing all five nominees, or just one’s top three) would lead to less embarrassing results. Or would it mean that the winner was inevitably a compromise choice? Most critics organizations vote on a point system, but are the slightly-better outcomes of their awards the result of the balloting rules or the slightly-better taste of the participants?

I, too—and I imagine just about every other Oscar aficionado—would love to see the results of past Oscar voting. The Academy’s rationale has always been that it didn’t want to discomfit those who would be revealed to have done, in a word, lousy. But after half-a-century what difference would it make? The secrets in the vaults might actually put the Academy in a more favorable light. If it turned out, say, the “Ordinary People” only beat “Raging Bull” by one or two votes, then the taste of the organization isn’t as ripe for ridicule. And from a social-history standpoint, knowing the results would be invaluable, giving a much more precise portrait of tastes in popular culture during various eras.