Leading Men, a Few Months Late

I know you all thought I had a) fallen back into my coma, and b) long ago abandoned any hope of finishing the Best of 2008 feature. Maybe by now you're bored of the idea that I'm in fact awake and still, in slow accretions, working toward the finish line on these Honorees. Thankfully, I've been in the middle of revising a scholarly article that turns heavily on performance description, which has reignited by impulses to sing the praises of more recent turns by consummate actors. And the work by my eight—yes, eight—Best Actor choices was so exemplary that there was no way I was whittling them down more than that, or forcing myself to be succinct in my praise. "Too much of a good thing" is rarely an expression for which I have any use.

Forgive me for not being ready with the 2007 equivalents, which I had steadily been doing for my last couple announcements, but you know what happens if I keep thinking of reasons to postpone. If you must know, were I ready to write up my Best Actors of 2007, they'd have the names Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood), Del Toro (Things We Lost in the Fire), Jones (In the Valley of Elah), Mühe (The Lives of Others), and Pinsent (Away from Her). Hopefully, I'll still get to them.