A crapload of Asian awards. It even beat out Hero for Best Picture on Hong Kong Film Awards - the most prestigious awards show in China. Winners of that award are almost regularly great movies.

Besides saying people disagreed no one said why the movie wasn't Oscar bait. Because it was a popcorn flick (that loyal's remark was the closest one to naming a reason)? TDK and W-E were popcorn flicks too, yet again there were groups of people believing that at least one of them will get a nomination. Look how that turned out.

No disrespect to Asia, but Asian awards don't really count.

You know the scene where Jack wags the big fake black dildo around? Yeah, that's the opposite of Oscar bait.

yeah, fair point. Okay, I guess it could happen then, that would be cool.

The Academy's gotten over those things, dude. Don't we all remember Buffalo Bill's dance in SOTL?

Well I would switch my Informant vote to a Lovely Bones vote, and I would probably redact my tree of life vote but I'm not sure where I'd put it. Honestly, I'm pretty unsure of most of these, not that much just seem oscar baity to me yet. In a few months, when posters and trailers are starting to float out there, I should have a better guess.

Out Front

The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson) Drama about heaven. 13% [ 22 ]
Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese) Leo and Marty's 4th film. 13% [ 22 ] Poster sucked
The Human Factor (Clint Eastwood) Nelson Mandela drama. 11% [ 20 ]
Nine (Rob Marshall) Adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. 11% [ 20 ]
Public Enemies (Michael Mann) John Dillinger vs the Feds. 9% [ 16 ] Mixed reaction to the trailer
Avatar (James Cameron) First Feature Film Since Titanic. 7% [ 13 ]
Tree of Life (Terence Malick) Brad Pitt drama set in the 1950s. 7% [ 13 ] May not be released this year

Middle Pack

Cheri (Stephen Frears) Drama set in 1920's Paris. 4% [ 8 ] Mixed Reaction From Germany
Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino) WWII Drama 4% [ 8 ]
Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodovar) Penelope Cruz thriller. 2% [ 5 ] Mixed Reaction From Spain
The Informant (Steven Soderbergh) A Beautiful Mindish Thriller. 2% [ 5 ]
Amelia (Mira Nair) Life of Amelia Earhart. 2% [ 4 ] PG Rating
A Serious Man (Coen Brothers) Comedy set in 1967. 1% [ 3 ]

Little To No Love

The Fighter (Darren Aronofsky) First wrestling, now boxing. 1% [ 2 ]
Up (Peter Docter) Pixar's latest. 1% [ 2 ]
State of Play (Kevin Macdonald) Based on hit BBC mini-series. 0% [ 1 ]
Whatever Works (Woody Allen) Yearly effort. 0% [ 1 ]
How Do You Know? (James L Brooks) Comedy. 0% [ 0 ]

Out Of Contention

Away We Go (Sam Mendes) Comedy about relationships. 0% [ 0 ]
Taking Woodstock (Ang Lee) Comedy about 1969 music festival. 1% [ 3 ]

I don't think Bill dance was played for comedic effect. It was creepy.

it would be really funny if Taking Woodstock or Away We Go won the BP oscar,

Indeed, have you seen the trailers

Does anyone have any release updates on The Fighter and How Do You Know? I know How Do You Know? is still casting and won't start filming until this summer. But I don't have anything beyond that.

I've done it in front of mirrors after getting out of the shower many times. Does that count?

Extreme long shot but Michael Sheen is amazing in The Damned United. Possibly his best performance for me. If it gets a decent US distributor that goes for it it has a chance.

Is that a football movie?

And what's your argument? It's a remake of a movie that won Asian awards? Hmm, doesn't work for me either.

It was bloody, it was fun and unlike The Aviator it certainly was not made with the main intention of winning Oscars. You usually don't remake films when you're struggling to get an Oscar. There's nothing that, on paper, distinguishes it from any other solid thriller.

It is but virtually zero football is featured. Its all about the massive conflict behind the scenes.

Well, Scorsese/DiCaprio/Damon/Sheen/Nicholson/Wahlberg/Baldwin rolled into one film does add a fuckton of pedigree.

Let's see -

Scorsese - 7 noms
DiCaprio - 3 noms
Damon - 1 nom, 1 win
Sheen - nada
Nicholson - 12 noms, 3 wins
Wahlberg - nada
Baldwin - 1 nom

That's pretty good. But then again so are Ocean's 11-13.

Scorsese and Nicholson are way bigger than anyone in Ocean's 11-13. Except Pacino, but he doesn't count anymore after Gigli and all those Jon Avnet shitfests. Plus The Departed is more serious and complicated no matter how you slice it, even with the ultra-black humor.

are we saying way bigger or are we counting Oscar noms/wins?

Nicholson is hard to top in either case with 15 overall nominations but back to the original point, no one considered The Departed Oscar bait at the time regardless of Nicholson and Scorsese.

I think looking at the reviews it had, that was rather short-sighted of us. Well, I don't remember what I thought of it...

No worries, it wasn't just us. It was everyone across a wide variety of websites.

I mean, before the reviews, just the mere concept of this film does not scream Oscar bait.

The Reader does
A Beautiful Mind does
Ray does
Memoirs of a Geisha does
Nine does

This...doesn't.

Uh, Whatever Works is done filming and set for June 19th limited release.

I meant How Do You Know?

One of those movies wasn't nominated despite screaming Oscar bait.

What about the concept isn't baity? Dirty cops and mobsters trying to figure out the moles at both ends. From the guy who brought Goodfellas, a highly redarded mob movie that was nominated for BP and BD among other noms. And it was based on a wildly popular and pretty great (if not one of the greatest) Asian flick(s in recent history).

We can agree to disagree, but to me this one would've checked out as an Oscar movie. I'll say again, maybe the problem was at the time that people haven't seen the original, so maybe they weren't aware of how good the movie could turn out to be.