MOB: Calm Before the Storm

If you're not nearly as obsessed with awards season and Oscar politicking as I am but are still curious as to how the process might work, might I recommend you start with this season? Last year the critics decided in lockstep with The Social Network before every industry award went in lockstep with The King's Speech. The Oscar winning fates of last year's winners such as Colin Firth, Christian Bale and Natalie Portman seemed like foregone conclusions as soon as their films debuted (while Melissa Leo was the frontrunner in her respective category).
Next week we have what should be every distributor, campaigner, and prospective awards candidates taking in their final breaths before jumping into the depths of awards season starting with the New York Film Critics, much earlier than usual, and the National Board of Review within days of each other. From then on until the holiday season, where there's a nice breather until the industry awards, will be a deluge of obscure regional critics prizes doled out and pages worth of nomination lists.

And it's not like this year hasn't already been fraught with tension and suspense. After the surprising announcement of bringing Brett Ratner on to produce the Oscar telecast itself for next year with Eddie Murphy as its host brought with it some house cleaning among writers, PR people and other producers of the show under his watch until it turned out he was a douchebag sullying the name of the Academy and had to step down, after which Eddie Murphy followed suit. This is the year that the Academy announced that not only would there not be a set number of Best Picture nominees for the first time ever, but when they announce them it will be in completely random non-alphabetical order so you'll have really no way of knowing for sure what was coming next. Their recent shortlist of potential Documentary Feature nominees included many more high profile snubs and shockers than usual (no mentions of The Interrupters, Senna, Page One, Nostalgia for the Light, Into the Abyss or others to be seen).
Not to mention their current list of Animated submissions for the year, currently standing at a number high enough to reach the 5-nominee threshold needed for the category, could dwindle down to 3 nominees if they rule motion-capture films like The Adventures of Tin Tin or Happy Feet 2 ineligible (remains to be seen though most feel like they will).

And that's not even getting to the potential nominees. There is little critical consensus out there, with the highest metacritic rating for wide releases belonging to Moneyball and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. II (slight advantage to the latter), though The Descendants is looking pretty good on nearly the same tier as The Tree of Life. You can have star studded acting lineups of what you can call Hollywood's 1% that can include Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Glenn Close, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kirsten Dunst, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep , Charlize Theron, and Michelle Williams, among others. Some of those are in a club of lower profile indie fare alongside the likes of Démian Bichir, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elizabeth Olsen, Michael Shannon, and Tilda Swinton.

It's likely not going to break down this specifically, but I can foresee scenarios where very major precursor more or less goes with a different film or performance. Here are some simulations: We'll start with the first two, New York critics and National Board of Review

New York Film Critics Circle
Best Film: The Tree of Life
Best Director: Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive
Best Actor: Brad Pitt, Moneyball and The Tree of Life
Best Actress: Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Best Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks, Drive
Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain, The Help and Take Shelter and The Tree of Life et all.

National Board of Review
Best Film: The Artist
Best Director: David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Best Actor: George Clooney, The Descendants and The Ides of March tied with Brad Pitt, Moneyball and The Tree of Life
Best Actress: Michelle Williams, Meek's Cutoff and My Week With Marilyn
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help

And then we can go ahead and fill in some blanks for the other two major film critics.

Los Angeles Film Critics Association
Best Film: The Descendants
Best Director: Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
Best Actor: George Clooney, The Descendants
Best Actress: Jeong-hee Yoon, Poetry
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Best Supporting Actress: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

National Society of Film Critics
Best Film: A Separation
Best Director: Steve McQueen, Shame
Best Actor: Michael Fassbender, Shame
Best Actress: Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy
Best Supporting Actor: John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Best Supporting Actress: Carey Mulligan, Shame

So you start to see a semblance of consensus at some point, since there's a lot of overlapping voters and tastes within these groups. But let's begin to get on with the industry awards.

Broadcast Film Critics Awards (BFCA)
Best Picture: The Descendants
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Best Actor: George Clooney, The Descendants
Best Actress: Viola Davis, The Help
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Best Supporting Actress: Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus

Golden Globes
Best Picture, Drama: War Horse
Best Picture, Comedy/Musical: The Artist
Best Director: Steven Spielberg, War Horse
Best Lead Actor, Drama: Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar
Best Lead Actress, Drama: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Best Lead Actor, Comedy/Musical: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Best Lead Actress, Comedy/Musical: Charlize Theron, Young Adult
Best Supporting Actor: Patton Oswalt, Young Adult
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Screen Actors Guild
Ensemble Cast: The Help
Best Actor: Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March (stranger things have happened)
Best Actress: Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Best Supporting Actor: Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Best Supporting Actress: Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

BAFTA Awards
Best Film: The Artist
Best British Film: Senna
Best Foreign Film: The Skin I Live In
Best Director: Tomas Alfredson, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Best Actor: Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Best Actress: Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin
Best Supporting Actor: Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Best Supporting Actress: Berenice Bejo, The Artist

With this kind of potential data out there, you can pronounce frontrunners and feel out the mood for the time but it won't be nearly as statistically easy to pick out winners as it has been the past few years, and I do think we should buckle ourselves down for a thrilling season of twists, turns, shocks and snubs.