Your August 23 Oscar Favorite Is … ‘The Ides of March?’

Will Leitch
·Editor

Movie City News, a pleasant, helpful site that bills itself as "Hollywood's Homepage," a moniker that always makes us feel like it's 2003 again, is perhaps most beloved by film dorks like us for its Gurus O' Gold. This is not the name of a bank for leprechauns: It is a regular survey of smart Oscar prognosticators to help determine the films most likely to be nominated for an Oscar. Come December and January, we're going to be studying every new Guru update like it's the Koran. (Or, fine, The Bible.) The first one of the season, the pre-Toronto Film Festival one, just came out, and you'll never believe what the panel thinks is the top contender.

What's Number One? It's "The Ides of March," a political thriller starring George Clooney (who also co-scripted and directed), Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman. When we first saw the film's trailer last month, we thought the movie looked fascinating but also oddly outdated already; it seems to reflect a time when politics were not just two intractable sides screaming at each other through the comment section of blogs. (It's based on a play written in 2008, which in political time is basically the equivalent of the dawn of man scenes in "2001: A Space Odyssey.")

Anyway, only two members of the 10-person panel had "The Ides of March" as their No. 1 choice, but all 10 had it in the top 10. Remember, because of that sudden, weird rule change, there will be no more than 10 Best Picture nominees and no fewer than five. Just for the sake of discussion, though, here are the top 10 Gurus O' Gold selections, as of August 23, which is very, very, very, very, very far away from the Oscars.

1. "The Ides of March."
2. "War Horse."
3. "The Artist."
4. "The Descendants."
5. "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."
6. "J. Edgar."
7. "Midnight In Paris."
8. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."
9. "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."
10. "The Tree of Life."

Only two of those movies have been released ("Midnight In Paris" and "The Tree of Life"), and only three have been seen by anyone ("The Artist" was the huge crowd-pleaser at Cannes). In other words: This list is pretty much just a football crowd cheering for the backup quarterback. That doesn't make it any less fun, though.

Gurus O' Gold: Pre-TIFF [Movie City News]