THE BUS KEEPS ROLLING

Just when you think you're starting to get things sorted out, with the latest batch of awards indicating a Best Picture showdown between Babel and The Departed, along comes further evidence of a possible win by Little Miss Sunshine. The IMDB posed the $64,000 question in its daily poll as to which dark horse Oscar candidates people are rooting for.

The poll had nearly 25,000 respondents.

The winner by nearly 24% was Little Miss Sunshine for Best Picture. That was followed by (I'm rounding off percentages):

• Ryan Gosling for Best Actor (13%);

• Abigail Breslin for Best Supporting Actress (11%);

• Djimon Hounsou for Best Supporting Actor (10%);

• Other (8%);

• Meryl Streep for Best Actress (5%);

• Penelope Cruz for Best Actress (5%);

• Paul Greengrass for Best Director (4%);

• Jackie Earle Haley for Best Supporting Actor  (4%):

• Babel for Best Picture (4%);

• The Queen for Best Picture (4%);

• Rinko Kikuchi for Best Supporting Actress (4%);

• Alejandro González Iñárritu for Best Director (2%);

• Adriana Barraza for Best Supporting Actress   (2%);

• Stephen Frears for Best Director (1%).

The nearly one in four vote for Little Miss Sunshine, followed by strong support for Abigail Breslin to take an upset win for Best Supporting Actress over front-runner Jennifer Hudson, indicates there's still gas in the tank of Little Miss Sunshine's VW bus. It's important to remember that IMDB users are not the same as Academy voters.  I would wager there there's very little in common between the two groups, apart from a love of movies.

And what is to be made of the idea that Little Miss Sunshine is viewed by so many people as a dark horse for Best Picture? Does that mean they don't think it  has a serious  chance of winning, but wish it did?

  It's curious that Babel and The Queen are considered dark horses by a much smaller percentage of those polled, and neither The Departed nor Letters From Iwo Jima are on the dark horse list. 

Comments

[Carla]

I think the Veedub bus, itself, shoulda been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. It was one of my favourite characters in the film!