One blogger tabs “Dragon Tattoo” as the Oscar favorite

Awards Corner is calling David Fincher’s version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as the early favorite to win the best picture Oscar. If this film did have a chance to win the big prize — and I’m not convinced it had any chance at all — that chance is completely shot now. That’s because tabbing it the “Oscar favorite” saddles it with expectations that I can’t see how it can fulfill. Don’t get me wrong — Dragon Tattoo could be a great film, it could even be on a Silence of the Lambs level, but then no one called Silence of the Lambs the Oscar favorite immediately after it hit theaters, let alone five months before it was released.

Now I expect people will walk out after seeing Tattoo saying, at best, “That was an excellent picture, but I’m not sure it is was THAT excellent.”

As for me, I still wouldn’t count out War Horse as the Oscar favorite, but then I still have confidence that the Mavs will come back to win the 2011 NBA title.

At any rate, here is Awards Corner’s picks for the 10 best picture slots for 2011 (as of right now):

• Carnage
• A Dangerous Method
• Extremely Loud and Extremely Close
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II (not that this is going to be really deserving, but simply as a salute to the entire series).
• Hugo Cabret
• J. Edgar
• Midnight in Paris (Yeah! Woody’s back!)
• The Tree of Life
• War Horse

 What’s that you say? You haven’t even heard of most of this films. Well, you’re not supposed to. These are, after all, the Oscar contenders. Last year at this time no one outside the industry had heard of Social Network, King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter, 127 Hours, etc. No big deal.