“My Week With Marilyn” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” lead the longlists for the British Academy Film Awards, with 16 mentions apiece.
They are followed closely by “The Iron Lady” with 14 entries, and “The Artist,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “Midnight in Paris” and “War Horse,” with 13 apiece.
Other prominent pictures include “The Help” and “Hugo” with 12; “Drive,” “The Ides of March” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” with 11; and “We Need to Talk About Kevin” with 10.
Of these, only the final Potter installment is excluded from the best picture longlist, which also includes “The Descendants” (seven mentions), “Moneyball” (eight) and “Senna” (six).
The BAFTA longlists includes 15 entries in most categories, plus five apiece in animation and documentary, chosen in the first round of voting. The five nominees are chosen from these longlists in the second round.
The longlists also indicate the top five choices by the relevant chapters, which generally provides a close guide to the likely nominees.
“The Artist” emerges as the leading contender with 10 chapter picks, followed by “Hugo” with nine, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” with eight, “My Week With Marilyn” with six and “The Help” with five.
Because of the large number of films included in the longlists, the omissions are often more notable than the inclusions. “The Tree of Life” gets only one mention, for cinematography, arguably reflecting the failure of distrib Fox to send out a DVD screener to BAFTA voters.
There are no chapter votes for best picture, but the five chapter picks for best director are Michel Hazanvicius for “The Artist,” Nicholas Winding Refn for “Drive,” Martin Scorsese for “Hugo,” Tomas Alfredson for “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and Lynne Ramsay for “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”
However, only two of those films, “The Artist” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” are also among the chapter picks for adapted and original screenplay.
Aside from “The Artist,” the other chapter picks for original screenplay are “Bridesmaids,” “The Guard,” “Midnight in Paris” and “Young Adult.”
Aside from “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” the chapter picks for adapted screenplay are “The Descendants,” “The Help,” “The Ides of March” and “Moneyball.”
“The Help” has a particularly strong presence in the acting longlists, with five entries including four chapter picks (Viola Davis for leading actress, and Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer for supporting actress).
“My Week With Marilyn,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and “The Ides of March” also get five acting mentions, followed closely by “The Iron Lady” with four.
The five chapter picks for leading actor are Brad Pitt for “Moneyball,” Gary Oldman for “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” George Clooney for “The Descendants,” Jean Dujardin for “The Artist” and Michael Fassbender for “Shame.”
The five chapter picks for leading actress are Berenice Bejo for “The Artist,” Meryl Streep for “The Iron Lady,” Michelle Williams for “My Week With Marilyn,” Tilda Swinton for “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and Viola Davis for “The Help.”
BAFTA’s new documentary category is a contest between “George Harrison: Living in the Material World,” “Life in a Day,” “Pina,” “Project Nim” and “Senna.” “Senna” is the only documentary also on the longlist for best picture, making it the clear favorite to win the doc prize.
Unusually, there are no foreign language films in the best picture longlist.