Well, just shows that early mediocre WoM for Marie was not that off...

But...I like living with the assumption that all Frenchies are just snobs???

Are there any other films that appear toi be locks in some catagories (Costumes, Art Direction) and pretty much dead elsewhere (Save maybe Cinematography)?

Just saw Children of Men and while a very good film (im still torn between an A and A-) - you can count it out of any major awards come oscar time.

The MC chart is updated (replaced The Last King of Scotland with Flags of Our Fathers).

The Queen is back up to 92 on Metacritic.

assisted by Baltimore Sun's 100. Now it has tied The Departed for the number of 100s.

The Departed is dragged down to 85 by New Repulic's 40.

All updated.

That last 100 put The Queen in a tie for 2nd with The Departed with 12 100's.

Little Children got another 100, too.

Flags now has 8 100's.

Amazingly, all the scores for Flags of Our Fathers have converged: 76% RT with 7.3 average, 76% COTC with 7.5, 78 MC.

Updated.

Wow for the Queen, which now has an 8.8 COTC rating.

Marie Antoinette is on life support. I was going to remove it, but Roger Ebert gave it a 100 at MC so it survived til the next update.

Little Children continues to surge forward.

Another quick update.

Babel got 2 new positive reviews.

Flags is going to need some help to be nominated now. Early release date, bad box-office, and just decent reviews. Munich had almost an identical situation, except that was late December... I think if Munich came out in October, it wouldn't have made it.

I don't get the reasoning.

Bad box office? Where did you come up with that "fact"? It just got released today and it's not a teenagers film where they flock on opening night to see it, it's an adult film.

"Decent" reviews? It's getting very good reviews, especially from the most important critics. Internet sites don't influence. It's reviews are better than many Best Picture nominees, and even some winners.

Maybe I'm just not getting something. Could you explain where you're coming from a little more detailed?

Box-office, well I was judging that from the screen reports so far. If it opens to like 11-12 mil, it'll probably make around 40-45 mil or something going into the nominations. Reviews are mid 7 range consenseus, 76% just isn't that hot for a BP movie. Reviews are decent, but it would be one of the lower % nominees. Like I said, it's exactly like Munich right now... And I think the 3 extra months could very well be the difference maker, it's basically going to be at a standstill.

The thing that you're not figuring into things, is that Letters From Iwo Jima will always be around to remind everyone of Flags of Our Fathers. Also, if you look at the critics, you'll see that Variety didn't like Munich. Both trades raved on Flags. They each have 8 100's. Take a look at the difference in impact.

[table]
[row][col]Munich 100's[col]Flags 100's
[row][col]Newsweek[col]The Hollywood Reporter
[row][col]Entertainment Weekly[col]Time
[row][col]New York Post[col]Village Voice
[row][col]James Berardinelli[col]Los Angeles Times
[row][col]Premiere[col]Washington Post
[row][col]Slate[col]USA Today
[row][col]Roger Ebert[col]TV Guide
[row][col]Empire[col]New York Post[/table]

That matters. Flags doesn't even have all of it's reviews yet. The academy just isn't going to pay attention to RT ratings, especially when I'm sure they know agendas are at work. David Poland's killed his credibility on this. He tried his best to kill this picture (because he's pushing Dreamgirls), and he even had a groupie or two embarrassing themselves right along with him.

As far as the box office, yeah, it's probably not the best thing to do if you're going to make the call that it had Bad box office based on first day crowd reports on a messageboard. Flags isn't a blockbuster opener type, it's an adult film that will rely on reviews from sources like above, not David Poland or comingsoon.net and their unprofessional online rants, and will also rely on older audiences who don't like crowds.

What Mav said. And a beer.

There is no freaking way they don't award The Queen at least one Oscar and Best Actress currently seems to be the most likely pick, the second is Screenplay.

Marie Antoinette increases one point to a 66 at Metacritic with 36 reviews thanks to Travers' rave (RT rating: 54%), which should be enough to garantee nominations (and wins?) in Art Direction, Costume Design, Make-up and possible others..
- and yes, I'm thinking Dreamgirls will be a disaster as big as Geisha last year, even with Bill Condon...


And talking about Travers aka my favorite critic right now, his 4-star review for Babel: http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/mov ... 7181/babel

Any reason you've been pimping Marie Antoinette so much this far?

ehehe... the same reason most people here are pimping The Prestige (and I found Lost in Translation a little bit overrated) I'm just really excited to see it, it reminds me so much of Moulin Rouge's reaction 5 years ago.. But I've seen even bigger fans at OscarWatch, so... I'm not alone

FOOF just made $3.5M Friday, looking for, at best, a $12M weekend.

How badly will this effect its buzz?

Anyone remember Cinderella Man?

The Departed is pretty much loking at a $130+ million total now. It can be counted to those successful "entertaining" films that Academy likes to award...

A Sasha's thread at OW reminded me: with the October heavyweights all released (after Babel next week), shall we do a roundtable on different races and post it somewhere? We could also have our own Guru of Gold predictions as a site and see how we stack up this early on.

So I saw Little Children today, and it probably had the best acting and editing I've seen all year.

Yay. How was Kate?

PEACE, Mike.

Is everyone still betting on a Flags BP nomination?

Because I'm not.

I think it needed reviews up in the high 80s at RT to get there.