Jacki Weaver, 'Social Network' Win Village Voice Poll
The Village Voice poll snubs Christian Bale and David Fincher and honors Jacki Weaver, Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg, Aaron Sorkin and Exit Through the Gift Shop, the Social Network of docs.
Monotonously but ominously for The King's Speech, The Social Network swept another big contest, the 85-critic 2010 Voice Film Poll. It had the highest percentage of ballots since quadruple Oscar nom Far From Heaven in 2002. Pollster J. Hoberman notes that the last Time mag Person of the Year featured in a concurrent film was Mission to Moscow's Josef Stalin in 1943. (Stalin tried to affect the 2011 Oscars by sending an assassin on a mission to Hollywood to kill John Wayne, but the assassin had the true grit to quit and hide in America. But at least Joe made possible Peter Weir's The Way Back, the Gulag Great Escape, whose screeners, mailed Monday, are the last of the Oscar season -- Newmarket's interesting hail-mary marketing play.)
"There's only one movie of the moment," concludes Hoberman. But will the Academy honor a movie evoking the past, and old-time Oscar values? Like, say, True Grit?
Natalie Portman lost to Jennifer Lawrence, her Winter's Bone co-star John Hawkes kayoed Christian Bale, and in what I hope portends Oscar glory, Jacki Weaver won best supporting actress for Animal Kingdom, a best-picture nom-worthy crime flick better than the likelier Oscar longshot The Town, if you ask me. Exit Through the Gift Shop may get an Oscar nudge for yet another critical win (two, actually, best doc and best first film -- plus it was No. 13 for best picture).
The Ghost Writer nabbed No. 4 for best picture and director. Too bad Olivier Assayas had to make Carlos as a TV miniseries to get financing; it got more first-place votes than Network and wrested best director from Fincher by two votes.
Two Oscar hopefuls scored on Hoberman's Passiondex, which rewards films with the most first and second-place votes -- that is, the most passionate fans. Toy Story 3 was No. 10 on the best picture poll, but No. 8 on the Passiondex Top 10. Greece's entrant for the best foreign film Oscar, Dogtooth, about child-imprisoning parents, was No. 9 on Passiondex. Tied with The Social Network.
And the best picture winners are:
1. The Social Network
2. Carlos
3. Winter's Bone
4. The Ghost Writer
5. Everyone Else
6. Dogtooth
7. Black Swan
8. Wild Grass
9. Mother
10. Toy Story 3
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Covering The Race
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Scott Feinberg
Lead Awards Blogger & Analyst
Scott, whose THR coverage appears both in print and online, is one of the film industry's most experienced and trusted awards analysts, and possesses one of the strongest track records at forecasting the Oscars. His best showings came in 2006 (when he called 21 of 24 winners) and 2004 (when he called 20 of 24 winners); he was also the only pundit to project long-shot best picture nominations for The Reader (2008), The Blind Side (2009) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011). An alumnus of Brandeis University, he previously ran "The Feinberg Files" blog for the Los Angeles Times. He is now a voting member of both the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, and is writing a book about film history for young people for which he has interviewed more than 350 high-profile Hollywood figures.
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Gregg Kilday
Film Editor
Gregg contributes awards news, features online, and "The Race" column in print.
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Tim Appelo
Film Reporter
Tim contributes awards news and features, both in print and online.
