“The Chronicles of Narnia” as a potential best picture nominee? Is that movie’s witch casting crazy spells to make Oscar watchers say such things?
“Go ahead and call us nuts, but we really think we have a possible contender for Best Picture on our hands,” a rep for Disney told me last week. I resisted all temptation to scoff — or worse, snicker — while he made comparisons to “Lord of the Rings.”
Sure, both are epic fantasy films based upon popular books. Both even have similar characters, special effects, monsters and, to some degree, plots. But the hobbit books were targeted to general audiences; C.S. Lewis wrote for kids. Oscar voters often care about that, thereby dismissing the latter as, literally, kids’ stuff.
But — presto! change-o! — here comes an email from Thelma Adams of Us Weekly: “Just saw ‘Narnia.’ Slot it into one of five best pic noms. It’s this year’s ‘LOTR.’ Perfect. Maybe even Tilda Swinton supporting as the White Witch.”
Wow. Very gutsy of you, Thelma! But here’s a loopy, alternative idea that might have worked, if thought of earlier: “Narnia” as a nominee for best animated picture.
Why not? Obviously, it missed the list of this year’s contenders, which was issued today by the academy, but perhaps it should’ve been included. Nowadays so many movies rely so much on fake imagery that they could probably be categorized as “animated.”
A few years ago Joel Siegel kvetched to me, “‘Gladiator’ shouldn’t be up for best picture! All of those crowds you see in the Coliseum, like so much else in that movie, are generated by computer. Theoretically, ‘Gladiator’ could be nominated for best animated picture.”