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Will Netflix finally stop crying itself to sleep on Oscars night?
That’s the sad streaming giant’s dearest hope for next week, when “The Power of the Dog” enters the ceremony (Sunday, March 27 at 8 p.m. on ABC) as the favorite to take home the Academy Award for Best Picture.
And, despite it being pretentious and languid, director Jane Campion’s ‘flix film probably will win.
But until they hear that “Puh” from the presenter’s mouth — unless, of course, it’s uttered by Warren “Bungle” Beatty or Faye “Flub” Dunaway — Netflix execs will be biting their nails and taking swigs of Jameson from a flask. Because they’ve never emerged victorious. And they know a win is no sure thing.
If Ted Sarandos and Co. do take the stage at the Dolby Theater, they’ll surely belt that famous “Cabaret” lyric sung by Sally Bowles: “Not a loser anymore — like the last time and the time before!”
And the time before that.
Remember “Roma”? Alfonso Cuaron’s 2018 semi-autobiographical movie was a critic’s darling for the streamer. The Spanish-language, black-and-white film was heavily favored to win the top prize and seemed a shoo-in after Cuaron took home the telling Best Director trophy. Social media pariah “Green Book” was called to the podium instead.
Netflix — believing itself to be the new King of the Movies — doubled down. The next year they produced the massively expensive film “The Irishman” ($159 million) and released it in November. If you ask Siri, “What do I need to make an Oscar-winning film?,” she’d say, “Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and a mafia plot.” It was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, and lost every single one.
Did “Marriage Story,” Netflix’s smaller but still prestigious 2019 movie about a crumbling relationship starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, walk down the aisle? Nope! That lost Best Picture, too.
Even Aaron Sorkin couldn’t change their fate. During the first year of the pandemic, when almost no one went to a movie theater for months, Netflix’s “Trial of the Chicago 7” still lost to “Nomadland,” which played exclusively in the two brick-and-mortar theaters that were open.
Now comes “The Power of the Dog.” More boring than a train delay, it has all the right pieces: It’s a Western; Campion would be one of just three women to ever win Best Director; its stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst are both having a moment; the film is kind of homoerotic (just ask Sam Elliott!).
However, although it’s won a slew of awards so far, it failed to even get nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble, and Cumberbatch, Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee all went home empty-handed there, too. You hear that angry barking in the distance? That’s because Netflix knows that the majority of Oscar voters are actors.
The film also will also be faced with the new-ish ranked-choice voting system, just like New York uses in our mayoral elections. That method of tabulating the winner, considered to be more fair, boosts the chances of “Belfast” or Apple TV’s “CODA” (the big SAG winner), because if one film doesn’t get more than 50 percent of the No. 1 slot votes, the No. 2 slot votes get factored in.
I’m no mathematician, but I reckon that doesn’t benefit a movie as divisive as “Power of the Dog.”
So, Netflix could break its Oscars curse next Sunday. Or not. Just ask Glenn Close.
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