Karina on SpoutBlog

Before I started this post, I Googled the phrase “guerilla Oscar campaigning,” and the first result was this story about how Mel Gibson vowed to spend no money on his Passion of the Christ Oscar campaign, aside from sending out 8,000 DVD screeners. Oh, how times have changed.

This year, even as the writers strike limits the venues for pre-Oscar awards show appearances and shillery, nominees are making the most of every TV moment, doing stuff that ends up on YouTube, and ensuring that they, their nominations and their movies stay in the public conversation. Here at SpoutBlog, we’re dedicated to handicapping the hype as it happens, so expect us to compare and contrast these media moments semi-regularly (Daily? Probably not. Weekly? Let’s see how it goes.)

First up: Diablo Cody goes looking for Daniel Day-Lewis cred, whilst DDL himself is busy trying to siphon off some of Heath Ledger’s headlines.

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The hot new meme in Oscar prognostication: what if the two “serious” Best Picture frontrunners split the sane vote, thus clearing a path for Juno to take the year’s top prize with a mere fraction of the Academy’s total support? Scott Feinberg elaborates:

[Juno] is heating up at just the right time. Also, I am presently of the belief that No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood will split the vote of those who feel the need to support a completely ’serious’ film, and that Juno???which might have enough passionate support anyway???would be the most obvious beneficiary…

I believe to this day that Little Miss Sunshine would have won Best Picture last year had Martin Scorsese not been in the Best Director race… Try as they might, No Country backers will not be able to elicit the same sense of obligation among Oscar voters to seize this opportunity to honor the Coens, and so there will be no coattail effect this year???in fact, I think we probably will see a Picture-Director split.

It could happen. But ST Van Airsdale??????otherwise known as The Reeler, now also blogging at Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men awards sub-site??????really, really hopes it doesn’t.

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• Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie continued their winning streaks over the weekend, each picking up the top individual prizes at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The WGA had issued SAG a waver to allow them to produce a telecast with professional writers, which thus made it cool for stars to show up, which thus created the conditions for this photograph of Angelina Jolie in what appears to be a tie-dyed chiffon sack, thus giving credence to recent rumors that she may be carrying two new doses of Pitt spawn.
• Of the many “specialty” films which expanded their theater count in hopes of capitalizing on Oscar nominations, only Atonement failed to see a bump in percentage this weekend, with The Savages gaining 2% even as it shed screens. But the real story of weekend in the indie box office realm??????which Variety buries at the very bottom of their writeup??????is that Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes-winning, Oscar-ignored drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days earned $48,176 across just 2 screens.
• Ben Fritz gets off a nice joke about Sylvester Stallone being an “ancient warrior” in his mass-market box office writeup, but it must be little comfort to the team behind Rambo, which opened in second place behind something I had never heard of called Meet the Spartans.?? Cloverfield dropped almost 70% in its second weekend, which makes sense considering the film’s hype peaked six months ago.