National Board of Review Resurrects Clint Eastwood's Oscar Hopes

Wow ... the National Board of Review Awards came out this afternoon, and the slate is full of surprises. Biggest of all comes in the biggest category: Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima for Best Picture? Seriously? It's a film that virtually no one has been talking about, largely because its companion film, Flags of Our Fathers, basically came and went when released earlier this fall. The film was originally scheduled to open in February, but Warner Brothers recently moved the released date up to December 20, apparently due to the hunch that Flags isn't going to attract any significant awards attention.

The trades haven't reviewed Iwo Jima yet. In mid-October, David Poland devoted almost 2000 words to explaining why Clint Eastwood can't pull off war movies; a couple of weeks later, he postulated that Iwo Jima (which as of that writing, he had not seen) "could be a film that critics are craving… an agreed upon serious film without the vote-splitting love/hate thing going on with Babel and Little Children. And if New York or L.A.['s critics circles] or both went for Iwo Jima as their Best Picture, suddenly it is in serious Oscar play."

At this point, I don't think either Babel or Little Children has any real chance to break through the twin roadblocks of The Departed and Dreamgirls; though it's still unseen by pretty much everyone *but* the National Board of Review, the blessing of that org might just be the push the Eastwood film needs to break this race wide open. At this point, I don't think anything else set to be released in the next three weeks could manage it.

Other WTF? items on NBR's list: Djimon Hounso of Blood Diamond and Catherine O'Hara from For Your Consideration were named the Best Supporting Actors; Blood Diamond and Flags of Our Fathers made the 10 Best Films list (that might give the former a credibility with art house audiences that its middling reviews have not); Dreamgirls and The Queen did not.