For "The Descendants," a New Angle in the Oscar Race WITH 11 days to go before Oscar ballots are due, "The Artist" seems to have the best picture race wrapped up. For a rival contender like "The Descendants," that might not be an entirely bad thing. Hollywood loves an underdog. That kind of sentiment helped push "Million Dollar Baby" over "The Aviator" in 2005 and "Crash" over "Brokeback Mountain" in 2006. The question this year has become whether "The Descendants," starring George Clooney and directed by Alexander Payne, can turn that same status into an asset. Or has it simply slipped too far back? Just a few weeks ago Oscar pundits had "The Descendants," a drama about loss and love in modern-day Hawaii, nearly on par with "The Artist," a mostly silent, black-and-white romp through old Hollywood. Then victories at important guild ceremonies pushed "The Artist" way out front - so far that most Oscar strategists think no amount of fancy footwork by competing films can overtake it before ballots are turned in on Feb. 21. But the studio behind "The Descendants," Fox Searchlight, is not leaving the dance floor quietly. In a window into what the final throes of an Oscar campaign can look like, Searchlight has gone on the offensive, unleashing new television commercials and emphasizing to reporters the movie's underdog status. It has also dispatched Mr. Clooney and Mr. Payne, both nominated for their work on the film, to link "The Descendants" to classic family dramas - and best picture winners - like "Ordinary People" and "Kramer vs. Kramer." "Part of the secret of the film - and you can really point to "Terms of Endearment" in this sense - is the ability to turn on a dime from funny to sad," Mr. Clooney said of "The Descendants" during a question-and-answer session on Monday night at the Egyptian Theater here. That event, billed as "A Tribute to Classic Family Dramas From Oscars Past and Present," was mostly just a tribute to "The Descendants," organized by Searchlight in mid-January with the nonprofit American Cinematheque, whose membership overlaps that of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The evening opened with a brief clip reel in which scenes from family-oriented classics ("On Golden Pond," "To Kill a Mockingbird") were cut together with moments from "The Descendants." Then the crowd watched "The Descendants"; the Q. and A. followed. The message seemed to be about staying power: When voters look back on the best picture winner five years from now, will they see a film that stands the test of time? Longtime Oscar watchers often cite the 1999 competition in which "Shakespeare in Love" overtook "Saving Private Ryan" for the top prize, noting that the latter film has proved to be the more enduring one. The event at the Egyptian did not count as an official plea to voters under the Academy's rules, which limit studios to two post-nomination screenings at which any individual nominee can appear. But campaigning wasn't far from the crowd's mind. One audience member, commenting on Mr. Payne's use of Hawaiian music in the film, asked, "I heard a rumor that you tried to bribe the Oscar judges with ukuleles?" A mortified-looking Mr. Payne said that was news to him, and a Searchlight executive denied it. Mr. Clooney and Mr. Payne on Wednesday participated in a similar promotional event here that was sponsored by The New York Times and moderated by a reporter from The Times. New advertisements for "The Descendants" are running frequently on the West Coast during "Jeopardy" and other television shows that draw older viewers. A majority of Oscar voters are over 50, after all. While earlier commercials emphasized how many prizes "The Descendants" was winning and its humor - an effort to reach both voters and potential ticket buyers - the new spots include a sharper emotional tug. They also double down on the family theme the studio has deemed so important to its Oscar hopes. One ad is simply an extended shot from the end of "The Descendants" in which Mr. Clooney's character sits on a sofa with his two daughters eating ice cream and silently watching "March of the Penguins." Another depicts Mr. Clooney crying in his comatose wife's hospital room. "We have attempted to convey our own feelings about the film - that it is a deeply layered look at universal themes of complicated love, forgiveness and the importance of family, and that it is a beautifully crafted and acted film that will stand the test of time," Nancy Utley, a president of Searchlight, said in an e-mail. Ms. Utley declined to discuss her campaign playbook in more detail. As for Mr. Payne, he responded curtly when asked about Searchlight's shifting strategy this week. "Ask the studio," he said. I just make them. I don't contextualize them. He wasn't exactly on message at the Egyptian either. As the Q. and A. moderator sought to stick to the family theme, Mr. Payne seemed to grow impatient and said, "If you're going to try and compare this to other family dramas, I'd like to bring up another aspect perhaps of contextualizing it." He then spoke about how Hollywood has seemed to have abandoned the good old-fashioned tear jerker. "The closest we have right now are Pixar films," Mr. Payne said. The audience laughed. "And hats off to "em," he added. Veterans of the Oscar hunt say there isn't much more that Searchlight, which won the best picture race in 2009 with "Slumdog Millionaire," can do at this point. The momentum is with "The Artist," which held back at the start of the race while "The Descendants" came out early, hitting the campaign trail hard in September with appearances at film festivals in Toronto and Telluride, Colo. And the facts are the facts: "The Artist" won the top awards at the directors and producers guilds and got 10 Oscar nominations, second only to "Hugo," which got 11, albeit none in acting categories. "The Descendants" got five. So Searchlight will have its fingers crossed for an upset on Feb. 26, Oscar night. But it may have to comfort itself on the ride home with its relatively big ticket sales: $111.2 million at the global box office so far, more than double what "The Artist" has taken in.