2007 was a year in which a good deal of the Oscar prognosticators’ speculation centered on whether or not No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood would be too violent for Academy tastes.  The more genteel violence of Sweeney Todd, Into the Wild and Atonement seemed more likely to them to pass the test of refinement generally thought necessary to be an Oscar winner.  How wrong could they be!

The National Board of Review straddled the fence a bit by giving their Best Picture award to the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men and their Best Director award to Tim Burton for Sweeney Todd.

The New York film Critics honored No Country for Old Men and its directors, Joel and Ethan Coen.  The L.A. Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics both chose There Will Be Blood and its director, Paul Thomas Anderson.  The Broadcast Film Critics brought things back around to No Country for Old Men and the Coen Brothers.

The Golden Globes, perhaps persuaded by all the prognostication, gave their awards to Atonement as Best Picture – Drama and Sweeney Todd as Best Picture – Musical or Comedy.

The Directors Guild snubbed both Sweeney Todd and Atonement but honored No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood with nominations for the Coen Brothers and P.T. Anderson, respectively.  Other nods went to Sean Penn for Into the Wild; Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton.  The Coens won.

Oscar agreed with the DGA on all except Penn, who was replaced by Jason Reitman for Juno.  Oscar’s Best Picture lineup included the films represented by four of them: The Coens’ No Country for Old Men; Anderson’s There Will Be Blood; Gilroy’s Michael Clayton and Reitman’s Juno.  The fifth slot went to Atonement, directed by Joe Wright.

The prognosticators were now seeing the light and speculation shifted to the race between critics’ favorites No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, with the former now the considered the front-runner.

Early favorites Into the Wild (two nominations, no wins) and Sweeney Todd (three nominations, one win) would likely have benefited from an expanded slate of ten nominees, as would have The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (four nominations, no wins), but what would the other two nominees have been?

Three films that were nominated for two Oscars each: Away from Her; American Gangster and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford would likely be fighting it out for the last two slots.  Since supporters of Away from Her and Jesse James were far more passionate than those of American Gangster, I’d say Gangster would be the one left out.

No Country for Old Men was the victor in Oscar’s 80^th annual battle, a televised event that almost wasn’t due to a protracted actors’ strike that had already hobbled the Golden Globes.