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Ah, early winter.  Every year.

 

The icy winds.  The holiday shoppers.  The Charlie Brown Christmas special.  The article in The New York Times proclaiming that this year the Best Picture Oscar race is wide open, as opposed to the past few years, when the race had clearly narrowed to one or two contenders.

 

I was first alerted to this odd tradition by writer Tim Carvell, writing hilariously in Slate way back in 2002 about "The New York Times' Oscar amnesia."  Carvell's target, Rick Lyman, has gone on from writing about the annual anomaly of unclear Oscar races, and Carvell has gone on to other pursuits as well.

 

But the annual amnesia lives on at The New York Times through other writers, and I have taken it upon myself to chronicle it.  In 2012, I wrote a blog post about writer Michael Cieply's call in the Carpetbagger column of a "chaotic contest" for Best PIcture, unlike (Cieply wrote) 2011, when "The King's Speech" would obviously win, and 2010, when it came down to "The Hurt Locker" and "Avatar".  Except that in January of each of those years, the Carpetbagger had said the races were a "wild scramble," and "a wide-open contest."  

 

Unlike previous years.  Every year.

 

The Carpetbagger may be on top of the left coast buzz over Oscar gold, but it apparently does not follow Slate or this august blog (or itself), because its tradition proudly and unabashedly continues.

 

Yesterday, a New York Times headline warned, "Oscar Race Begins, Without Front-Runners for a Change."

 

What??  It's a wide-open race as late as November 30!  What a wild, unprecedented year!

 

"This year’s race is notable for not having a clear front-runner, unlike seasons past, when we saw 'Boyhood' face off against 'Birdman' and 'Gravity' against '12 Years a Slave.' There is no runaway contender yet for 2016’s top prize, best picture. Prognosticators are currently pitting 'Spotlight' against 'The Martian' and 'The Revenant,' though the first might prove too modest, the second too genre-y, and the third too grim for the Academy’s tastes."

 

 

Dare we look back at what Carpetbagger said about the early outlook for the 2014 and 2015 Best Picture races?  We dare.

 

On December 1, 2014, Cara Buckley introduced herself as a new Carpetbagger columnist, and immediately took on its most hallowed tradition with aplomb.  

 

"Unlike last year, when '12 Years A Slave' was anointed best picture before the leaves turned, this year the race is more wide open – with 'Boyhood,' 'Birdman,' and 'The Imitation Game' … among the strongest so far in play, with hopes riding high on 'Unbroken,' which has just begun to screen."

 

I was going to italicize the parts of that quote that are funniest and most perfectly support the premise of this post, but I had to italicize the whole thing!

 

Even later, on December 17, 2014, Cara Buckley's Oscar race article bore a headline trumpeting, "The Biggest Oscar Races, Up for Grabs"!  "[W]hile there are favorites and front-runners, unlike last year, there are no locks for three of the four biggest categories yet."  Up for Grabs?  Unlike last year?  Sound familiar?

 

While she does identify "Boyhood"  (which did not win) as a "front-runner," she hardly says its a two-movie race.  Rather, she lists its main competitors, "The Imitation Game," "Selma," and "Birdman" (which has "passionate if not universal backing"), before predicting other potential nominees.

 

Even as late as January 15, after the nominations were announced, the Carpetbagger hadn't quite settled on the two-movie dogfight theory.  Its article said that "virtually every picture in the running shows pockets of weakness," listing the problems with five movies, and concluding, "So it is still a race."

 

So let's look back at the early race for the 2014 Oscars.  Is it possible that The Carpetbagger will have written that UNLIKE LAST YEAR, the contest for Best Picture is UNUSUALLY WIDE OPEN?

 

Well, the Carpetbagger's Golden Globes article, published on December 12, 2013, called '12 Years a Slave and 'American Hustle' (not 'Gravity') movie awards front-runners, citing an "unusually strong and broad field of contenders."  The article did list '12 Years a Slave' and 'Gravity' as likely Best Picture contenders, but it noted, 

 

"This is a crowded year, however, and it will take more than a boost from the Globes to create the inevitable sense of victory achieved by contenders like 'Slumdog Millionaire,' in 2009, or 'The Artist,' in 2012, both of which went on to win the Oscar for best picture."

 

So it was clear that 'The Artist' would win 2012?  As they say, this is where I came in.

 

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