My Acting Contenders for 2015

Who am I forgetting? Who would you root for? Whose work have you not seen? Because if they're listed here, you definitely should...

Best Actress
Top Contenders
Elizabeth Banks, Love & Mercy
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Cate Blanchett, Truth
Emily Blunt, Sicario
Sandra Bullock, Our Brand Is Crisis
Laia Costa, Victoria
Marion Cotillard, Macbeth
Blythe Danner, I'll See You in My Dreams
Rinko Kikuchi, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
Rooney Mara, Carol 
Bel Powley, The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

Honorable Mentions
Geraldine Chaplin, Sand Dollars
Golshifteh Farahani, About Elly
Michelle Hendley, Boy Meets Girl
Arielle Holmes, Heaven Knows What
Dakota Johnson, Fifty Shades of Grey
Jacqueline Kim, Advantageous
Sidse Babett Knudsen, The Duke of Burgundy
Sarit Larry, The Kindergarten Teacher
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Maria Alexandra Lungu, The Wonders
Ellen Page, Freeheld
Teyonah Parris, Chi-Raq
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
Sarah Silverman, I Smile Back
Cobie Smulders, Results
Sarah Snook, Predestination
Mya Taylor, Tangerine
Karidja Touré, Girlhood
Alicia Vikander, Testament of Youth
Mia Wasikowska, Madame Bovary
Kristen Wiig, Welcome to Me


Best Actor
Top Contenders
Ibrahim Ahmed, Timbuktu
Abraham Attah, Beasts of No Nation
Tom Courtenay, 45 Years 
John Cusack, Love & Mercy
Paul Dano, Love & Mercy
Jesse Eisenberg, The End of the Tour
Michael Fassbender, Macbeth
Michael B. Jordan, Creed
Michael Keaton, Spotlight
Frederick Lau, Victoria
Sam Louwyck, The Wonders
Josh Lucas, The Mend
Ben Mendelsohn, Mississippi Grind
Jason Mitchell, Straight Outta Compton
Olivier Rabourdin, Eastern Boys
Géza Röhrig, Son of Saul
Jason Segel, The End of the Tour
Koudous Seihon, Mediterranea
Michael Shannon, 99 Homes

Honorable Mentions
Christopher Abbott, James White
Jason Bateman, The Gift
Adam Driver, While We're Young
Bill Hader, Trainwreck
Corey Hawkins, Straight Outta Compton
Oscar Isaac, Ex Machina
O'Shea Jackson, Jr., Straight Outta Compton
Samuel L. Jackson, The Hateful Eight
Reda Kateb, Far from Men
Shameik Moore, Dope
Viggo Mortensen, Far from Men
Stephen Plunkett, The Mend
Ryan Reynolds, Mississippi Grind
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Matthias Schoenaerts, Far from the Madding Crowd


Best Supporting Actress
Top Contenders
Angela Bassett, Chi-Raq
Cate Blanchett, Cinderella
Viola Davis, Blackhat
Noni Hazlehurst, Truth
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Cynthia Nixon, James White
Jada Pinkett Smith, Magic Mike XXL
Erica Rivas, Wild Tales
Elisabeth Röhm, Joy
Isabella Rossellini, Joy
Lise Roy, Tom at the Farm
Kristen Stewart, Clouds of Sils Maria
Mickey Sumner, The Mend
Tessa Thompson, Creed
Kristen Wiig, The Diary of a Teenage Girl 

Honorable Mentions
Diana Avrămuţ, When Evening Falls on Bucharest, or Metabolism
Rebecca Ferguson, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Nicole Kidman, Paddington
Andie MacDowell, Magic Mike XXL
Julianne Moore, Maps to the Stars
Lucy Owen, The Mend
Sheu Fang-yi, The Assassin
Phyllis Smith, Inside Out
Tilda Swinton, Trainwreck


Best Supporting Actor
Top Contenders
Emory Cohen, Brooklyn
Michael Cyril Creighton, Spotlight
Billy Crudup, Spotlight
Benicio Del Toro, Sicario
Taron Egerton, Testament of Youth
Sam Elliott, Grandma
Sam Elliott, I'll See You in My Dreams
Keir Gilchrist, It Follows
Tim Guinee, 99 Homes
Stacy Keach, Truth
Jimmy LeBlanc, Spotlight
James Marsden, The D Train
Reynaldo Pacheco, Our Brand Is Crisis
Austin Pendleton, The Mend
Chris Sarandon, I Smile Back
Liev Schreiber, Spotlight
Michael Shannon, Freeheld
Michael Sheen, Far from the Madding Crowd
Alexander Skarsgård, The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Martin Starr, I'll See You in My Dreams
Stanley Tucci, Spotlight
Daniil Vorobyov, Eastern Boys

Honorable Mentions
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Reg E. Cathey, Nasty Baby
Kevin Corrigan, Results
John Cusack, Chi-Raq
Joaquim de Almeida, Our Brand Is Crisis
Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation
Paul Giamatti, Straight Outta Compton
Walton Goggins, The Hateful Eight
Scott Mescudi, James White
Michael Peña, Ant-Man
Bernard Pruvost, Li'l Quinquin
Édgar Ramírez, Joy
Peter Sarsgaard, Black Mass
Jamey Sheridan, Spotlight
Leonardo Sbaraglia, Wild Tales
Michael Welch, Boy Meets Girl


Best Ensemble Cast
Top Contenders
About Elly
Carol
Eden
Girlhood
La Jaula de oro
Mississippi Grind
Our Brand Is Crisis
Results
Sicario
Spotlight
Tangerine
The Wonders

Honorable Mentions
Brooklyn
Creed
The Diary of a Teenage Girl
I'll See You in My Dreams
Joy
The Kindergarten Teacher
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
Love & Mercy
The Mend
Mustang
Nasty Baby
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
The Princess of France
Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens
Straight Outta Compton
Wild Tales

Still Anticipating
Animals, Appropriate Behavior, Blind, Bluebird, Buzzard, By the Sea, Concussion, Digging for Fire, Good Kill, Jimmy's Hall, Kilo Two Bravo, The Lady in the Van, Learning to Drive, Legend, Love at First Sight, Mr. Holmes, Ned Rifle, The New Girlfriend, Office, Saint Laurent, The Second Mother, Secret in Their Eyes, She's Lost Control, Spring, The Stanford Prison Experiment, Theeb, Time Out of Mind, Tu dors Nicole, What We Do in the Shadows

Cannes 1995: Day 9: May 25

The Convent, Portugal, dir. Manoel de Oliveira

This third-to-last day of the Competition is a riddle to me, even more so than whatever syndrome is or isn't making King George III mad, or why Benoît does any of the things he does in Don't Forget You're Going to Die, or wtf is happening in the crypt or the church or the cave or the woods or the beach or the first reel or the second reel or the third reel in The Convent.  Just when the Palme race started to heat up with much more exciting contenders than we'd seen in the early days of the festival, Day 9 feels larded with puzzling, truncated, or frankly mediocre work, in and out of the Main Competition.  The things that make Beauvois's and de Oliveira's films frustrating to watch admittedly make them more interesting as time passes. Either might have been served by an earlier berth in the schedule, an idea we'll revisit when we land on Dead Man on the final day.  Most of the sidebar stuff could just as easily not have played at all, but I have to say, after so many unsatisfying narratives and inchoate statements, it was sure was fun watching Antonio Banderas fire away at bad guys with weaponized guitar case.

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The Fifties 2014: Actor, Actress, Director, Picture

ACTOR

NICK'S PICKS:

Macon Blair, Blue Ruin: Communicates the everyman quality of the character without condescending to him. Never turns into a killing machine.

Jim Broadbent, Le Week-end: Just as he was nearing Maggie Smith levels of typecasting, he plays someone angrier, sadder, hornier, more fun.

Pierre Deladonchamps, Stranger by the Lake: Not a wallflower or an idiot but shows us the character's nerves and his unreliable conscience.

Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel: Distinctive enough he isn't just doing "a Wes Anderson character," and he's dapper, funny, and sad.

Sergio Hernández, Gloria: We sense his desire for Gloria and the certainty that he will disappoint her. You resent him but still sympathize.

Runners Up: Tom Cruise, Edge of Tomorrow; Jake Gyllenhaal, Enemy; Archie Alemania, Norte, the End of History
On the Radar: Tom Hiddleston, Only Lovers Left Alive

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Oscar 2013: Predictions, Preferences

All feature-film categories now complete!

Look how distressed Sandra Bullock is, trying to glance into her crystal ball, straining to quantify how many Oscars her movie Gravity will win tomorrow.  I'm sporting the same look on my face as I publicly prognosticate winners for the first time since Jennifer Lawrence was in the Brownies.  But why not take a stab at it?  I've been spouting off on every other angle of the Academy Awards this year: diagnosing the narrowing field of "top" competitors for The Advocate; debunking popular myths about the Oscars and their biases in The Washington Post; and discussing some favorites among this year's nominees and some formative Oscar moments with Der Spiegel, though if Sie kein Deutsche sprechen, you won't be able to read it.  What I have not done anywhere, in any language, is forecast who is winning or fess up to my own choices.  So many of my favorite people are sticking their necks out.  So, as Charles Busch belts out in Die, Mommie, Die! - widely regarded as a near-miss for a Best Picture nod in 2003 - "Why not me?"

Best Visual Effects
Gravity will stomp all over its competitors, making it the sixth Best Picture nominee in a row to cop the prize (after Benjamin Button, Avatar, Inception, Hugo, and Life of Pi, just so you don't have to look it up).  You may take this streak as proof of the Academy's growth over the years—since even within my lifetime as an Oscar queen "effects movies" were often persona non grata in Best Picture—or all you may see is an industry increasingly compelled toward digital extravaganzas. Either way, Gravity would probably mop the floor even with the five past winners I just named, much less with the competitors it has to vanquish here... which in a way is too bad, because there's a lot to say for the invigorating spectacles and sleek execution of several sequences in Star Trek and Iron Man 3.  I was less taken with the effects work in The Lone Ranger (yes, even as regards that train crash), and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was one of a handful of Oscar nominees I missed in theaters. Will: Gravity  Should: Gravity  Hey, Where's The Great Gatsby, which owes the bulk of its locations, color schemes, camera movements, and memorably debauched extras to digital intervention

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
From an impressively strong field we slide over to an annoyingly weak one. Dallas Buyers Club will probably win on default, since voters tend to gravitate to Best Picture nominees unless there's a stirring reason not to.  Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is many things, but not that.  (Actually, Bad Grandpa on its best day is only a couple of things, which disappointed me, since I thought the first Jackass movie was a hoot.  Especially seeing it in a Detroit shopping mall, with people flashing laser sights on the screen midfilm.)  The Lone Ranger has the more-is-more thing nailed down, and a lot of graphically arresting cosmetics have been lovingly applied to actors like Barry Pepper and Helena Bonham Carter.  Still, AMPAS has recently rejected some ostentatious contenders who would have been shoo-ins in the Rick Baker era (The Time Machine, Norbit, Hellboy II) when a more broadly admired film presents itself as an option (Frida, La Vie en rose, and Benjamin Button in those cases).  I think it might have been nice if more of the Buyers Club's subscribers had looked visibly ill.  I would love to see a bruising throwdown between those who insist that Johnny Depp's bird-stapled-to-his-head "Native American" is the year's most horrifying faux-archetype and those who proffer Jared Leto's eyebrowless transwoman for the same distinction.  But failing that battle, and following the canny publicizing of Dallas's breathtakingly low budget, Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews ought to get own their chance to say "All right, all right, all right!" or possibly even speak about Neptune. Will: Dallas Buyers Club  Should: Lone Ranger  Hey, Where's American Hustle, obviously, but also the lightly greyed hair of Llewyn Davis and the wax-museum quality of so many of his acquaintances.  Also, Cate Blanchett's Park Avenue blonde tresses in Blue Jasmine, which are turning into dark roots before her eyes, or ours at least.

Best Supporting Actor
On the subject of Dallas Buyers Club, I thought the movie was fantastic and Jared Leto pretty good the first time I saw them.  Upon revisiting a week or so ago, Dallas betrayed more stress marks, and Leto—by now vaulted from Casting Stunt That Paid Off to Prohibitive Favorite for the Oscar—still seems ...pretty good, without quite explaining what Rayon's doing in this script.  There are some pearl-clutching gestures and other frou-fra in the performance that make it seem stale, conceived more for an audience than from a character who's been built feet up, as they say in American Hustle.  And speaking of Hustle, Bradley Cooper has a large enough part in that movie that he's drawn fire for being a lead falsely slumming in this category.  Yet there are lots of ways to confront the question of who's really "supporting" in a film.  Leto's scenes are more limited, but every single one is handed to the character to be charismatic, or tragic, or funny, or all three, just like Angelina Jolie's and Jennifer Hudson's scenes were in their Oscar-winning vehicles. The movie arguably supports him more than the reverse. Cooper is on screen bunches but, like most of his Hustle castmates, acts an over-the-top character in a strong way and still doesn't seem like he's showboating, or depriving his co-stars of the cues they need to enrich their work.  He and Abdi are the Bests in Show in their movies without ever looking like they realize it.  Fassbender, like Leto, is cleverly playing a thesis that's been posited in the script in place of a real character: in one case, the AIDS patient with a wavering commitment to living, in the other, a slave-owner as one-man multiplex of grimy perversions.  Hill is ...uh, very good in 21 Jump Street and Moneyball.  I have no idea who he's playing in Wolf of Wall Street, no matter how hard he's working to keep the badminton birdie from landing. Will: Leto  Should: Cooper  Hey, Where's James Gandolfini, who didn't need an iota of gratuitous sentiment to merit a nod for his middle-aged romantic, so tentative yet brave, so relaxed yet staunchly principled.  Plus the usual surfeit of guys who got no promotion (Ben Mendelsohn in Place Beyond the Pines, David Oyelowo in The Butler) or who indulged in the sin of acting in non-American films (Yiftach Klein in Fill the Void, Peter Kazungu in Paradise: Love).

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The Fifties for 2012: Best Actor

Regular readers—the ones who remember when I was a semi-regular writer—know that every September I publish lists of my favorite movie-making achievements from the first 50 U.S. commercial releases I've seen in the calendar year.  I somehow always hit this milestone in late August or early September, as was true this year, though the ongoing Big Year at work means I'm a few weeks late actually posting my lists.  In many ways, this hasn't mattered: of the next seven U.S. releases I've seen since hitting the big "50" mark, only the hilariously and charismatically acted Think Like a Man would have made a dent in these rosters. As for the others, Alps, Bachelorette, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Cabin in the Woods, The Five-Year Engagement, and Snow White and the Huntsman, whatever their relative strengths (and they all have some), would have whiffed even if I had seen them in time. You can see the 50 movies eligible for consideration here, with Bullhead as the cutoff point.

So, before the bread goes totally stale, and before it gets too awkward to exclude early-autumn highlights like the beautifully played Hello I Must Be Going, the richly conceived Looper, and the impeccably constructed How to Survive a Plague, here begins this year's midway honor roll...



Best Actor
Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum for 21 Jump Street, for impeccable and uproarious chemistry even while carving out distinctive personas, winking at the past while wholly delivering in the now;

Tommy Lee Jones for Hope Springs, for his 101 variations on ornery reticence, many flavored with humor, desire, or embarrassment, and just barely signaling a will to improve;

Clarke Peters for Red Hook Summer, for conveying Enoch's decency and his indecency with fresh approaches, across Spike Lee's vertiginous range of heightened and quiet styles;

Joaquin Phoenix for The Master, for hewing to a wormy, clammy core of inarticulate longing and self-reviling discomfort even when he showboats, and for the first processing; and

Channing Tatum for Magic Mike, for emanating a total ease in his body and his relationships but a gnawing unease in his circumstances, all in a relaxed, Soderberghian key.

Honorable mentions are led by Michael Fuith in Michael and then rounded out by Adam Scott in Friends with Kids, Anders Danielsen Lie in Oslo, August 31st, Lucas Pittaway in The Snowtown Murders, and Liam Neeson in The Grey.

I'll Take a Final Stab at This

Jan. 11: Oscar ballots are due shortly. The BFCA awards (a ridiculous enterprise, which I disdain) and Golden Globe awards (a ridiculous enterprise, which I treasure) will both play out by the end of the weekend. Plenty of signs still await us as to who might win, but I don't think we'll get any more tips about the nominations. So, I'm fixing my predictions now, albeit leaving them to acting, directing, and Best Picture for the moment. I will expand to the other categories before Jan 24 and announce the update on Twitter. (You're following, right?)

By the way, this year's Oscars are going to be awesome, because Emmanuel Lubezki is finally going to win, and for a Malick film! Anything that annoys you about the awards trudge season in the next six weeks, just think about that.

Jan. 18: Predictions in below-the-line categories added.
Jan. 23: Last switch, Beginners for 50/50 in Original Screenplay.

PICTURE: The Artist, The Descendants, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse Missed: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close 8/9!
Anything Else to Consider? Bridesmaids was my closest runner-up in my previous attempt at predicting, because the people who love it, and there are a lot of them, may well rank it first: for affection-based reasons and from a temptation to endorse career opportunities for women, especially in comedy. It's harder to leave out than it was last time, just as it's harder to leave in The Tree of Life and War Horse, but I'm sticking with the same line-up. The Malick has even more passionate devotees than The Thin Red Line did in 1998, and War Horse feels like a rallying-point for whomever pushed, you know, The Cider House Rules and The Green Mile across the line. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and, even more so, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have suggested estimable fan bases and hit audiences at a good time for nomination recognition. They are feasible nominees, but I'm still not feeling it. Still no idea what to think about Ides of March.

DIRECTOR: Woody Allen, Michel Hazanavicius, Bennett Miller, Alexander Payne, Martin Scorsese 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? I have dropped Terrence Malick for Allen, whose nods from the Globes and the DGA bode well, as does the fact that his previous nomination was even longer ago than Malick's. I still desperately want to go out on a limb for Asghar Farhadi, especially as I now hear Separation screeners went out really early: great move, Sony Pictures Classics! I imagine, though, that Miller will draw huge support not just from Moneyball's many, many fans but from people who admire him for salvaging the project from abortive ruin, and in such an easy-breathing, audience-stroking way that still emits credible personality. If they went for him for Capote, which was colder and made a tenth as much money, why wouldn't they here? Meanwhile, Payne movies have repeatedly done less well with AMPAS than in precursor season—no script nod for About Schmidt, no Giamatti for Sideways—so I'm hoping that he's vulnerable. Even though I'm sure he isn't.

ACTRESS: Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Meryl Streep, Kristen Wiig, Michelle Williams 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? After the frontrunner trifecta, the last two spots go to some combo of Close, Rooney Mara, Tilda Swinton, and Wiig: three women who went to bat for long periods and in multiple capacities to get their movies made, plus Mara, the quasi-overnight sensation. Mara's movie dropped at the right moment, and her reviews are even stronger than the film's. Perceptions that she's been prickly or presumptuous in interviews might matter more, and without the extra force of a "Scrappy Novice Pulls Herself Up By Her Bootstraps" narrative that served Lawrence, Sidibe, et al, she looks a bit like a 1%er in a big fat studio movie. Surely more tempting to AMPAS, which is full of people in Close's age-range, to reward 30 years of project development and general fondness for an un-Oscared vet, even if they don't watch or like the movie? And easier, I think, to thank Wiig for writing herself a sensational vehicle (boy, do they love actors who do that) and for making something so profitable that a lot of other people might get more, better, and/or funnier work because of it. Between popping in a Bridesmaids screener or a Kevin screener, what would Ernest Borgnine do? Or Sid Ganis? Or indeed, Rooney Mara? (Okay, Rooney would watch both.) Or, having run out of time to watch all your screeners, you vote for the funny, bank-making bridesmaid and the five-time Oscar bridesmaid, right?

ACTOR: George Clooney, Jean Dujardin, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Michael Shannon 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? I'm dropping Fassbender for Oldman. Shame is really divisive and a harder movie to get people to watch, surely, than Tinker Tailor, though both feel like modest hits in proportion to their scales. Plus, "let's make Fassbender happen" and "let's act like we've always supported Oldman" seem about even to me as narrative hooks. Shannon's hook still seems even better to me: an open-ended, all-American indie that invites you to participate in it, especially at the end, whereas the other two sort of expect you to be fine with feeling frozen out. Demián Bichir's SAG nod doesn't seem to have produced a lot of buzz, and Gosling's vehicles didn't land in a "Best Actor" way, even if he owned the year. Rescidivist, old-guard Clint-worship makes DiCaprio the only other spoiler I'm really wondering about at this point.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bérénice Bejo, Jessica Chastain, Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Shailene Woodley 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? I'm dropping Janet McTeer for Chastain, in a very competitive heat. Almost dropped McCarthy instead, but felt odd projecting Bridesmaids to gain heat elsewhere and lose it where it's actually had some. (Then again, only some.) With six more or less neck-and-neck performances, I'm assuming that the best-loved movies have the edge. Does anyone like Albert Nobbs as much as the Help, Descendants, Bridesmaids, and Artist factions love those show-ponies?

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kenneth Branagh, Albert Brooks, Jonah Hill, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer 3/5
Anything Else to Consider? Short of Patton Oswalt or mayyyybe Ben Kingsley elbowing in on Jonah Hill's action, I just don't see a lot of movement in this race. If you don't live in New York or Los Angeles, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close still feels more like a myth, and a widely-loathed myth at that, than a movie. Obviously, those two markets are the only ones that really affect Oscar-nod outcomes, but even there, does anyone still think Max Von Sydow is happening? I wish Mortensen felt more likely, but people aren't talking much about the movie, even though it's holding up as best as can be expected (though no more than that) given the currently glutted market. Caesar and Uggie can stroke each other's fur consolingly in the corner. I know, I know, chimps have hair, not fur. Whatever. A commenter reminded me about Nick Nolte, whom I admit I'd forgotten about, and he has definitely been pulling down some nominations. But if I liked Warrior and I'm an awards geek, and I forgot about him, what does that say about the heat around his performance?

Predictions always look like one-third a plausible Oscar scenario, one-third a reflection of what idiosyncratically resonated with you about past Oscar rosters, and one-third what you're loving or hating at the moment you predict. I'm sure this is the case here.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Artist, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, The Tree of Life, War Horse 5/5
Anything Else to Consider? Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy feels very competitive, and Harry Potter, Drive, J. Edgar, and Moneyball are not out of the question.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Bill Cunningham New York, Hell and Back Again, If a Tree Falls, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Project Nim Missed: Pina 3/5
Anything Else to Consider? I've only seen half of those, so I'm picking a little blindly, with We Were Here, Buck, Undefeated, Jane's Journey, and others posing serious opposition.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: The Artist, Beginners, Bridesmaids, Midnight in Paris, A Separation 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? This race feels as crammed with full-tilt possibilities as it did in 2008, when Woody Allen got blanked for Courtney Hunt and Martin McDonagh. I'd put 50/50, Take Shelter, and Win Win as the most likely spoilers, with Margin Call and Margaret after that, and Young Adult still hanging on.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Descendants, The Help, The Ides of March, Moneyball, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? I can't figure out whether Hugo or The Help will lose a spot to Ides of March; possibly neither of them will, but Ides just seems so Writer's Branch-friendly and the two Hs don't. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and War Horse pose outside threats, but does anything else?

ANIMATED FEATURE: The Adventures of Tintin, Arthur Christmas, Cars 2, Chico & Rita, Rango Missed: A Cat in Paris, Kung Fu Panda 2 2/5
Anything Else to Consider? Puss in Boots probably makes more sense than the more outré Chico pick, but especially when the overall field has proved uninspired, this branch has proved susceptible to Secret of Kells-style surprises of late. Winnie the Pooh, despite great reviews, and Rio, despite great box-office, haven't had any luck on these rosters so far this season.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: Footnote, In Darkness, Pina, A Separation, SuperClásico 3/5
Anything Else to Consider? Monsieur Lazhar and Seediq Bale feel like strong plays, and people who have seen Bullhead seem quite enamored. I'm not even sure I can work out which of the three semi-finalists are the Executive Committee's pet causes. Omar Killed Me feels like the straggler to me, but after Zem's multi-faceted career, I'm pleased for him.

FILM EDITING: The Artist, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Moneyball 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? War Horse and Tinker Tailor are the most considerable threats outside this list, I think, but fondness for the former seems mo muffled, and the confusing plotting of the latter is surely down to the editing as much as anything. And how many quick inserts of portentous-looking faces do we need? Best Picture heavyweights should always be considered here, and the Descendants team is pushing hard for a nod. Tintin's action set-pieces might impress, too, though even in this field, animation and motion-capture have some high hurdles to clear. I'd have thought well-liked action blockbusters like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Super 8, or Harry Potter might stake a claim here, but the A.C.E. ballot suggested no enthusiasm. They didn't for Ghost Protocol, either, but after the swell box-office and the dazzling set-pieces, can it really be ignored?

ART DIRECTION: The Artist, Harry Potter, Hugo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, War Horse Missed: Midnight in Paris 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? Note that, without trying, I am duplicating the BAFTA list. I realize the Guild conspicuously omitted War Horse from their own nominees, and maybe I ought to take the hint, but is Spielberg really to be overlooked for the Elizabethan dioramas of Roland Emmerich's team in Anonymous, or the cool appeal of Dragon Tattoo, or the Disneyfied South of The Help? Possibly, but hard to believe.

COSTUME DESIGN: Anonymous, The Artist, Hugo, Jane Eyre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? My Week with Marilyn might get by on period setting alone, and for padding out Michelle Williams' figure, even though the costumes are nothing special. Troy Syndrome could always yield a crazy-good nod (Immortals?), a crazy-dumb one (Pirates?), or just a crazy one (W.E.?). Thor might be the most Troy-ish contender of the lot, and the Guild went for it. I thought A Dangerous Method had some of the year's best tailoring and most character-specific designs, but Oscar has never once sprung for Denise Cronenberg. J.Edgar's not impossible, but has its fan base, if it ever existed, withstood a sparkless season?

ORIGINAL SCORE: The Artist, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, War Horse Missed: Tintin 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? Once again, turns out I'm repeating BAFTA. First, if The Descendants qualifies here, please somebody swing by and check my pulse.

SOUND MIXING: Hugo, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Super 8, Transformers 2/5
Anything Else to Consider? I hesitate at ignoring The Artist and at suppressing my own desires to see Hanna in the mix (heh heh). War Horse, Tintin, Fast Five, Harry Potter, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes must be tempting choices for the pop crowd. Tinker Tailor and Rango certainly deserve consideration for fans of subtlety and idiosyncrasy. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will draw at least a few votes from both factions. Moneyball scored a nod from the Cinema Audio Society; I can't work out why, but I'm glad to hear support for the movie is broad, even in unexpected quarters.

SOUND EDITING: The Adventures of Tintin, Fast Five, Hugo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Super 8 Missed: Drive, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 1/5!
Anything Else to Consider? I'm sure I'm over-estimating the differences between the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing rosters, although the nominators in the Sound branch have been refreshingly willing to do this of late. Animation tends to do well here, and while I'm rooting for Rango to get the nod, Tintin is fresher in the mind. All those car noises in Fast Five and chimp-screeches in Apes seem tough to avoid; The Artist, for its belated but witty sound elements, and Hugo, given its loudness and density, could lend the category some Best Picture prestige. M:I-4, Pirates, Transformers, Harry Potter, Super 8, and War Horse will make major pushes to unseat one, two, three, or more of these picks. I frankly won't be stunned if I'm wrong across the board.

MAKEUP: Anonymous, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, The Iron Lady 1/3
Anything Else to Consider? Betting against the Best Picture front-runner is probably folly, and betting against two of them is probably... follier? I think The Artist has a much better shot than Hugo. In fact, I'd be less surprised to see Harry Potter or Albert Nobbs than Hugo. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is the hardest semi-finalist to gauge, since AMPAS has opted more than once for this kind of off-the-radar title when the work is good enough.

VISUAL EFFECTS: Captain America, Harry Potter, Hugo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Transformers 4/5
Anything Else to Consider? The branch has tipped five other semi-finalists (M:I-4, Pirates, Real Steel, Tree of Life, and X-Men). The Tom Cruise box-office juggernaut could easily crash the front-runners' party. I hate leaving off the engrossing cosmogony and nanobiology in The Tree of Life, but it's the sort of Visual Effects work critics and Oscar nods love to endorse and Oscar never does. The other three I'm not particularly worried about, though not having seen Real Steel or Pirates, which made a lot of people a lot of money, I'm perhaps being cavalier.

ORIGINAL SONG: "The Keeper," "Lay Your Head Down," "Life's a Happy Song," "The Living Proof," "Man or Muppet" Missed: "Real in Rio" 1/2
Anything Else to Consider? The In the Land of Blood and Honey track? The novelty number from Captain America? The Elton John drivel? I don't enjoy thinking about this absurdly capricious category.

I'll Take One Stab at This

Since Oscar ballots went out today, and I have a hard time imagining anything else transpiring in the coming weeks that will significantly change what we know already in the Picture, Director, and Acting races, I'm going to pony up to the bet-placing table and prognosticate. One update to follow in January to incorporate more of the non-celebrity fields. (I hate calling them the "technical categories." Emmanuel Lubezki and Skip Lievsay and Sandy Powell are artists, people. You know it, and I know it.)

Also, read this, which is lovely, funny, and beautifully thought-out, and way more valuable than what I'm doing here.

PICTURE: The Artist, The Descendants, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse
Anything Else to Consider? Bridesmaids, because people genuinely love it and it might have helped green-light some more projects, and A Separation, if it pulls off the kind of below-the-radar City of God surge of which it seems capable (though of course I still doubt this, especially up top)

DIRECTOR: Michel Hazanavicius, Terrence Malick, Bennett Miller, Alexander Payne, Martin Scorsese
Anything Else to Consider? I'm wondering if emeritus contenders Woody Allen or Steven Spielberg can elbow one of these guys aside, but otherwise, I think that's your roster. Again, maybe Asghar Farhadi if Separation is getting out to more people than we realize.

ACTRESS: Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Rooney Mara, Meryl Streep, Michelle Williams
Anything Else to Consider? I think Tilda's going to lose her standard spot in the precursors to the same things that brought down Angelina Jolie for A Mighty Heart: film's too small, and it's not a screener a lot of folks are just dying to pop in. If there's a seventh factor, I guess it's Charlize Theron, but I really don't think so.

ACTOR: George Clooney, Jean Dujardin, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Michael Shannon
Anything Else to Consider? Unlike Kevin, I think Take Shelter will draw eyeballs; everything from Chastain Curiosity to Boardwalk Empire to a full year of strong reviews will help. Leonardo DiCaprio, Demián Bichir, Gary Oldman, Ryan Gosling (for Drive), and even Woody Harrelson are all possible threats, in about that order. Crowded race.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bérénice Bejo, Melissa McCarthy, Janet McTeer, Octavia Spencer, Shailene Woodley
Anything Else to Consider? Can you survive vote-splitting with your own projects and vote-splitting with your scene partner? I'd like to see Chastain here, but since someone has to go, I'm guessing it's her. Redgrave's Volumnia still gnashing her war-monger's teeth in the corner, where she's been most of the season.

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kenneth Branagh, Albert Brooks, Jonah Hill, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer
Anything Else to Consider? The longest list of possibilities, to include Max von Sydow, Viggo Mortensen, Nick Nolte, Ben Kingsley, Patton Oswalt, Andy Serkis, and Armie Hammer. Yet Plummer remains, for me, the most heavily fore-ordained winner of the night. Exciting that all five of the other races seem genuinely open as of Christmas!

(Again, one update and additional categories to follow in January)

Eyes on the Critics' Prize: Dead Ringers

The other day I was chatting with my pal and yours Joe Reid about how exciting the annual critics' prizes can be, especially when the voters feel cleared to ignore the publicist-stamped and buzz-backed contenders in a given vintage and to venture off the prix-fixe menu. This doesn't mean that critics' organizations should be obligated to avoid the worthiest among the Oscar frontrunners, only that it is disheartening—and increasingly frequent—that many of these groups seem disinclined to entertain the possibility. If you're a paid critic or, one way or another, a moneyed cinephile (the situation I project, sight perpetually unseen, onto most members of the National Board of Review), there is simply no way that you don't see, for example, five better performances by women in second- or third-tier roles than Shailene Woodley's in The Descendants. Not to pick on Shailene, who does as much as anyone to try to make that beached whale float, if not actually swim. But also: come on. That's a lot of movies in a lot of genres from a lot of countries to comb through just to find one gal who can seem convincingly drunk while throwing shit over a fence, and then Stick Up For Dad when the script decides, quite abruptly, that the time has come.

Then again, the coverage of the critics' prizes is often so indistinguishable from a guessing-game about who will win the Oscar that you cannot easily fault the balloters for playing right into the hands of that discourse. Pundits, subsequent voters, and PR flaks pay much closer attention to them than the public at large does, and periodical editors seem determined to package the story this way, rather than running the kind of press that might encourage us to consider, say, the National Society of Film Critics as a body on the order of the Pulitzer or Booker juries: a body whose approval is an accolade in itself, which I'm certain is how many recipients perceive it, and not as a stepping stone to some later, very different, peer-administered prize. Voting critics, finding themselves in this climate, inspire me whenever they try to launch a Marcia Gay Harden or a Jeremy Renner or a Pan's Labyrinth or a Gosford Park or a Fernanda Montenegro—a plausible longshot, but a longshot nonetheless—further into the hunt for Academy Awards. This seems like an apt, exciting use of their professional pulpit, though it's at least as exciting when they rally around a Luminita Gheorghiu, a Lupe Ontiveros, a Bill Nighy, or a William H. Macy (circa 1998, not 1996), not so much daring AMPAS to follow their lead as demonstrating some measure of indifference. These choices feel inexplicable except as honest responses to the self-presenting virtues of the hundreds of movies that critics see in a year, and as showcases of the integrity of a critic's labor and purview. (Or maybe it's the only way to get a nutter of a Montenegro disciple or someone mad for Vlad Ivanov to end the filibuster? If so, don't tell me.)

In any case, I'm interested in knowing what someone who spends the whole year watching hundreds of movies really thought was the best—someone whose tastes have been ratified by readers and editors, even if I don't always agree with her or him, or with those readers and editors. I don't just want to think of these verdicts as irreducibly uncertain tea-leaves or even as self-consciously activist interventions into the Oscar narrative. They should have more standing in themselves than I feel they are often given.

So, following this mammoth intro, Joe and I thought we might post a couple short pieces this season that fondly recall some moments when one of the voting groups we care about most (NSFC, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, or even that dotty old dowager, the NBR) lent their imprimatur to some really distinctive choice that meant something to us, or wound up meaning something substantial to the fortunes of the recipient. AMPAS didn't bite in any of these cases, and we don't care. Or at least, the point of this exercise is not to blow raspberries at Oscar, whom we'll never divorce, for better or worse, no matter how much he abuses us, and regardless of how many good things we got goin' on the side. (After The King's Speech, though, and Tom Hooper specifically, I'm very tempted to adopt separate residences, and file our taxes independently. Thank God I never took Oscar's name, though I prefer it to mine.) The point is rather to toss bouquets to the LAFCA, or the NYFCC, or whomever endorsed the work in question—sometimes creating the very prompt that led us to see the movie, and thereby facilitating a really moving encounter with an interesting piece of work.

These entries will be brief; the details are boring, but Joe and I are both having to spend a lot of extra energy on work these days and away from the movies we wish we could write about, read about, and talk about a little more. This is a small, stop-and-start contribution to awards season we can afford to make, and hopefully a welcome aperitif to other, more number-crunchy, more crystal ball-obsessed coverage. If you haven't seen the movies, or didn't realize they had won something big, check 'em out!

For example, if you haven't seen David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, and especially if your cinephilia was born in the era of A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, then you should really run, not walk, to pick up the DVD wherever you can still buy a DVD anymore. Dead Ringers got strong but divided reviews when it premiered in 1988. The Fly, which had done excellent box-office in 1986, and whose star, Jeff Goldblum, might have scooped some critics' prizes of his own if Bob Hoskins hadn't claimed them all that year, had at least primed mass-market critics to start extending Cronenberg new benefits of the doubt. Still, I think it helped Dead Ringers's case even more at year's end that 1988 was such a diffuse vintage in terms of critical consensus. Of the five groups I listed above (NSFC, NYFC, LAFC, BSFC, NBR), all five picked a different Best Picture, all five picked a different Best Director, and only two of them opted for the same movie in both categories. Furthermore, only two of the films (Accidental Tourist in New York, Mississippi Burning for the National Board of Review) and only one of the directors (Parker, for Mississippi) was slated at Oscar time. None won.

Within that climate of atomized opinions, it helps for a film to nail a tough, highwire task—the broodily philosophical eroticism of Unbearable Lightness of Being, the hilariously philosophical eroticism of Bull Durham, the, uh, unnervingly philosophical eroticism of Dead Ringers—in a way that galvanizes a self-selecting but implacably committed fan base. That's what seemed to happen for the Cronenberg movie. Jeremy Irons's unshowily showy double-performance as the doomed gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle had earned standout notices even in reviews that seemed uncomfortable with the film. Maybe it was no surprise that at least one group (the NYFC) would sing his praises, though this was still nervy territory for a group that had opted for upscale comedies or semi-comedies, all of them unmistakable as Oscar Pictures, for their Best Film prize in five out of six years from 1983-1988. Irons was so conscious of the boost in pedigree, reputation, and (best of all) creative opportunity that he gleaned from Dead Ringers and its critical laurels that, unusually, he thanked Cronenberg ("...and some of you may understand why...") in his speech when he later won his Oscar for another movie.

Irons's win was a great critics-prize moment, but I feel even more indebted to the Los Angeles crowd for gold-starring Cronenberg's disquietingly sleek, hypnotic, technically virtuosic, scarlet-and-chrome direction as well as the distinctively strong impression that Geneviève Bujold makes in the crucial role of Claire Niveau, a part that could easily have been played as a misogynistic freakshow, a histrionic addict, or a disembodied "everyone's addicted to something" placeholder within the script's thematic architecture. Bujold takes a woman who could be boiled right down to a grotesque high concept—a pill-popping actress and bondage enthusiast whose mutated, three-chambered uterus is an object of horror and fascination for the Irons characters—and she makes her mordantly intelligent, frankly self-confident, and incongruously "normal" without being boring for a single second. She never seems like she's not doing something for her scenes, whether inserting an unexpected pause or offering a smile when you expect a grimace or playing a confrontation as a seduction, and yet she never ever feels like she's acting for a camera. She suggests a filthy mind, a fond self-image, and a feminine practicality all at the same time, with zero signs of strain. She also puts as human a face on Cronenbergian mutation, in the unexpected register of wry understatement, as Goldblum more flamboyantly does in The Fly, in the (context-appropriate) register of operatic tragicomedy.

The arc and reception climate around Cronenberg's career shifted after Dead Ringers, but it shifted even more palpably after these prizes for Dead Ringers. At the box-office, the film had been neither a hit nor a miss on release, relative to its production cost. With respect to its genre, though, whatever you'd say its "genre" is, and with respect to its pair of admired but hardly bankable leads, and with respect to a filmography whose back-page titles included They Came from Within and Rabid, its awards haul was an absolute bonanza. The last 20 years of Cronenberg's career, if you ask me, turn as much on the pivot of December 1988 as on any other single moment. This is as perfect a case as I can think of of the critics on two coasts voting for no discernible agenda beyond their sense of what work most merited a trophy, and in calling out achievement for what it is—not for how plausibly they could vend that achievement to AMPAS or to the HFPA. In so doing, they effectively certified the film for a lot of connoisseurial audiences, in and out of "the industry," who would have ignored the slightly Guignol marketing and the skin-crawling storyline. The risk they took would have been very similar within a comparable career tone and timeline—and in valorizing spiky creativity and sudden transcendence of cult-driven status—to some group anointing Fincher, Norton, and Bonham Carter for Fight Club in '99, which of course no one seems to have even thought about doing. If that's a more historically accessible example for you, and you know what it would have meant to set aside a sprawling field of "safe" pictures as well as exciting experiments in 1999 to endorse David Fincher's schizophrenic demi-ode to pugilistic nihilism and to masculinity eating itself alive, then you've got the flavor of what the NYFC and LAFC did in '88.

You can't expect such prescience every time a critics' group meets, much less can you expect a validation of your own tastes, which of course this series is certain to flatter. Still, the Dead Ringers prizes in 1988 managed the gorgeous hat-trick—the three-chambered glory, if you will—of being perfect choices in the present, a bold endorsement of a filmmaker with a highly idiosyncratic past, and a direct propagation of his increasingly interesting future, built to an unusual degree off the boost the critics gave him and continued to give him. (The gongs for Naked Lunch in 1991, especially from the National Society and the New York crowd, were hard-won, delicious, and perhaps even more surprising, given the sturdiness of competition and the rococo uncanniness of Naked Lunch.) If that's not a perfect summation of year-end voting bodies at their absolute best, then it's at least a perfect summation of why they interest me so much... and why I have my fingers crossed for December 11, when the Boston and Los Angeles crowds both weigh in. Give us change we can believe in, dames and fellas, and any Cronenbergian film critics sporting your own self-evolved genders! Go ahead, win the future!

The Fifties for 2011: Fellas and Dames

So we end with a category that I wish I loved a little bit more, and a category that I'm tempted to say I'm already satisfied with. I have total immunity against the possibility of Close being too recessive or Streep too garish or Swinton too severe or whatever, because I could go from here to December revisiting these five performances. The fellas here are quite good, and I don't want to sound unfairly begrudging when I admit that, as in both of the Supporting races, I still find myself gunning for two or three performances that I am really passionate about. Even when it disappoints in other areas, Fall is usually reliable for that, so eyes are wide open.



Best Actor
Rob Brydon for The Trip, whose improvisations and comic riffs are even more uproarious than Coogan's, yet who also evokes his home life in limpid though indirect detail;

Steve Carell for Crazy, Stupid, Love, who can do "schlub in need of sprucing" in his sleep but makes his adoration of his wife so real, his late-born resentment of Gosling so potent;

Grigoriy Dobrygin for How I Ended This Summer, who must scramble past a missing motive in the script but shows us a scared kid, a self-reliant stalwart, and a nervous over-reactor all in one;

Joel Edgerton for Warrior, who yearns to keep his suburban life even more than he wants to escape it, and offers round after round of character details in the MMA scenes; and

Ewan McGregor for Beginners, who is constipated with depression, whose happier moments also incline toward quiet introspection, but who comes alive at odd, revealing moments.

Honorable mentions, many of whom could have taken the fifth spot in this list, to Mimi Branescu for Tuesday, After Christmas, Youssouf Djaoro for A Screaming Man, Michael Fassbender for Jane Eyre, Paul Giamatti for Win Win, Mel Gibson for The Beaver, Ryan Gosling for Crazy, Stupid, Love, and Andreas Lust for The Robber.




Best Actress
Juliette Binoche for Certified Copy, whose lambent yet full-bodied emotional candor seems an odd fit for Kiarostami's eggheadism, but she dazzlingly layers concepts and feelings;

Viola Davis for The Help, who doesn't break faith with the mid-grade film she's in but uses mature understatement and ironbound directness to feed us the film we deserve;

Shinobu Terajima for Caterpillar, who finds herself amid one of the most upstaging styles imaginable but still crafts a careful dossier of the repulsed, dutiful, and bitter wife;

Mia Wasikowska for Jane Eyre, whose processes of moral and spiritual reflection are as tangible as her feelings, via a Moore-in-the-90s-style precision with her subtle face; and

Yun Jeong-hie for Poetry, who must exhibit to us a modest woman receding into her mind even as she's learning to create with it, all amidst new needs to strategize with it.

Honorable mentions, surely worth mentioning but appreciably behind these five, to Nikohl Boosheri for Circumstance, young Morgana Davies for The Tree, Monica del Carmen for Leap Year, Sarah Kazemy for Circumstance, Kristen Wiig for Bridesmaids, and Michelle Williams for Meek's Cutoff.

And that's the Fifties! Thanks for commenting so energetically, especially those of you who shared your own suggestions. Please stick around for Chicago Film Festival coverage over the next month.

Everybody Goes to Mike's, and Nathaniel's

Slow going on this blog lately; ironically, I've been quite active on other people's. Last week, Mike's site served as the headquarters for our latest entry of the Best Pictures from the Outside In series, where he, Nathaniel, and I chatted up Gentleman's Agreement, 1947's earnest exposé of anti-Semitism, and Rain Man, 1988's innovative fusion of mushy drama, luxury car ad, autism-themed PSA, leaked actor's-rehearsal footage, odd comedy, incipient Reagan-era self-critique, and inexplicably didgeridoo'd kitsch object. Please read the transcript and leave your comments at Mike's place, but come back here to vote in our Reader's Poll of your favorite Oscar champs from 1943-47 and from 1988-92.

As you already know, I tend to exploit the typically long hiatuses between Best Pictures... installments as a reason to investigate other titles from the same years as our current headliners. I made a huge dent in 1947 when all was said and done, though I still have some luscious-sounding reader recommendations like Nora Prentiss, Daisy Kenyon, and The Unsuspected to hunt down. I opted to fill out a year where I hadn't seen much, rather than round out my bulkier albeit U.S.-centric viewing history in 1988, so that remains a bit of a loose end, with the Angelopoulos, Eastwood, Kusturica, Kieślowski, and Menges titles remaining especially enticing. Also, now that Pete Postlethwaite has passed, I'm all the more eager to at least take another trip to the sad but incandescent Distant Voices, Still Lives.

Meanwhile, over at Nathaniel's recently spiffed-up site, I added my voice to the semi-regular Oscar podcasts that he convenes with Joe Reid and Katey Rich. As is true of his apartment, Nathaniel's blog remains a host-space par excellence, and it's sweet of him to keep inviting me over. In the latest conversation, divided into a Part One and a Part Two, we pore over the tea leaves of what films and performers do and don't seem bound toward Oscar nominations on January 25th. We also gloss a few favorite semi-candidates (or, in my case, a non-candidate) who ought to have been walking in the front-runners' shoes.

The onetime front-runner that Nathaniel, Katey, Joe, and I all wonder (and maybe hope?) will find itself locked out of the Best Picture race is Danny Boyle's 127 Hours—which, in a fortuitous coincidence, will also be the title of my next Best Pictures... chat with Nathaniel and Mike, given how long it will take to re-screen Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, a Top Ten of 2010 should follow in the next week or so, and maybe another special feature to keep things going at a steady hum in the new year....

Voting Like It's 1947

After all this 1947 viewing I've been doing, considerably aided by your suggestions, I've hit the quotient of 30 U.S. release-year contenders that makes me feel justified in posting a personal Oscar ballot for the year. Which is the only framework in which I can really summon the will to discuss "ballots" and "voting" today. My only misgiving is that I've seen so many great performances, especially given the vivid and large ensembles of so many of the noirs and pseudo-noirs, that I wish the list hadn't just wound up looking like I did what Oscar voters so often appear to do: start with their five favorite movies and just keep ticking them off through every category. Lots of very close calls in arriving at these groups of five, and almost always at the expense of candidates whose films would have thrown more variety into the list.

So, by way of honorable mention, and since the main page for 1947 already clarifies my next stable of candidates for Best Picture...

Best Director: Alf Sjöberg, Torment; Jean Renoir, The Woman on the Beach; Carol Reed, Odd Man Out; Robert Rossen, Body and Soul; Robert Montgomery, Ride the Pink Horse or Lady in the Lake; Vittorio de Sica, The Children Are Watching Us

Best Actress: Joan Crawford, my beloved Possessed; Shirley Temple and Myrna Loy, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

Best Actor: Roger Livesey, I Know Where I'm Going!; Cary Grant, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer; Victor Mature, Kiss of Death; Robert Ryan, The Woman on the Beach; Ronald Colman, A Double Life; Edmund Gwenn, Miracle on 34th Street; Dana Andrews, Boomerang!; Nikolai Cherkasov, Ivan the Terrible, Part 1

Best Supporting Actress: Elsa Lanchester, The Bishop's Wife; Celeste Holm, Gentleman's Agreement; Marilyn Nash, Monsieur Verdoux; Gloria Grahame, Crossfire

Best Supporting Actor: Robert Alda, The Man I Love; Thomas Gomez, Ride the Pink Horse; Lloyd Gough, Joseph Pevney, and Canada Lee, Body and Soul; Lloyd Nolan, Lady in the Lake

Two bonuses: one is that Oscar's Best Supporting Actor lineup from 1947 turns out to be a really high-grade lineup, to include very solid work from Robert Ryan and Charles Bickford, though I preferred them both in other movies; the other is that, while I can't make up my mind about hypothetical Cinematography nods, I cannot see how the Academy omitted Body and Soul and Nightmare Alley. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is very, very pretty but not quite in the same league, and I can't speak from Green Dolphin Street, but as ever, I think I smell a rat.

Not done with '47 till the next Best Pictures installment goes up, so I may still sneak in a few more titles. Recommend away if you've got performances to stump for, in addition to the films you might have pointed me toward in the previous entry.

October Oscar Nomination Predix

Colin and Helena probably don't need to look quite so apprehensive about the names written on that sheet. I'm guessing theirs are both on it, and Colin's already got a winner's asterisk next to his. But since I'm feeling in a weirdly predictive post-midnight mood, here's the only stab I'm taking at Oscar nomination predictions until January rolls around.

BEST PICTURE 127 Hours, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, Love & Other Drugs, The Social Network, The Town, Toy Story 3, The Way Back, Winter's Bone
Alternates: Made in Dagenham, Another Year, The Fighter, True Grit

BEST DIRECTOR Danny Boyle (127 Hours), David Fincher (The Social Network), Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), Christopher Nolan (Inception), Peter Weir (The Way Back)
Alternates: Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right), Edward Zwick (Love & Other Drugs), Ben Affleck (The Town)

BEST ACTRESS Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right), Anne Hathaway (Love & Other Drugs), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone), Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right), Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Alternates: Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole), Sally Hawkins (Made in Dagenham), Lesley Manville (Another Year), Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)

BEST ACTOR Javier Bardem (Biutiful), Jeff Bridges (True Grit), Colin Firth (The King's Speech), James Franco (127 Hours), Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine)
Alternates: Robert Duvall (Get Low), Jake Gyllenhaal (Love & Other Drugs), Paul Giamatti (Barney's Version), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Helena Bonham Carter (The King's Speech), Lesley Manville (Another Year), Miranda Richardson (Made in Dagenham), Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom), Dianne Wiest (Rabbit Hole)
Alternates: Kristin Scott Thomas (Nowhere Boy), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), Kimberly Elise (For Colored Girls), Rebecca Hall (The Town)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), Jeremy Renner (The Town), Sam Rockwell (Conviction), Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right), Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech)
Alternates: Christian Bale (The Fighter), Colin Farrell (The Way Back), Ed Harris (The Way Back), Dustin Hoffman (Barney's Version)

Best Pictures: The Best Years of Our Lives and Driving Miss Daisy

No time to write a snappy post, not when I've got a highly divisive movie about a belligerent, misogynist multiple amputee to head off to, and then thoughts to share with strangers, in a bowling alley, with a bar, about "Sex on Screen." As I annually repeat, it's so lovely of Chicago to throw me this festival as a birthday present every year, but this really is a new way to party.

Meanwhile, my present back to you, in cahoots with Nathaniel and that recently reactivated review-writing supermachine Mike, aka Goatdog, is our latest installment of the popular Best Pictures from the Outside In series. We love having these conversations, and we especially love that the comments are always so engaging and detailed and rich and on-point. Jump on in! Especially because the Wyler, at least, is one of the greatest movies Oscar ever rewarded. And 1 out of 2 ain't bad. Pretend it's baseball.

The Fifties for 2010: Best Actor

Maybe it was just the weekend, but I could sense you all getting a little drowsy over the directors, cinematographers, and screenplays. I figure I ought to throw an acting category your way, although I hope this still means something in a world where Kyra Sedgwick has an Emmy.

Once again, we mostly have 2009 to thank for the bests of 2010 in the U.S., but that's par for the course in the first half of the year for commercial exhibition. And clearly, these perfs were worth waiting for...



Louis-Do de Lencquesaing for The Father of My Children, who looms as large in death as in life, not by acting overly grand, but by capturing the rising, tragic tide of an almost mundane anguish;

Lars Eidinger for Everyone Else, for nursing his regrets as a hen guards its eggs, and quietly goading his girlfriend to fall out of love, even when he acts silly or tender;

Michael Fassbender for Fish Tank, for wearing the character as close to his skin as a pair of tight jeans, keeping you seduced and at sea even when all arrows point one way;

Tahar Rahim for A Prophet, less because he sustains a mighty arc from fledgling to kingpin than because he's so assured, he never flaunts the scale of that evolution; and

Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right, for the undisguised duels of shyness and smugness he radiates around "his" kids, admiring them while relishing how they make him feel cooler.

I know some people will justifiably consider Fassbender's and Ruffalo's to be supporting roles. Still, most readers know by now that, under the Hannibal Lecter Rule, I'm usually inclined to promote roles that are completely pivotal to the feelings and ideas of their movies into the lead category, even when they have slightly less screen time than other "leads" in the film. I do grasp that these are borderline cases, but I can't imagine even a one-line synposis of either Fish Tank or Kids that doesn't incorporate Connor or Paul. Though it helps that I write such long sentences!

Honestly, I didn't have much trouble arriving at these five, but a few honorable mentions anyway, most strongly to Cyril Descours, a young guy who brought edgy, spontaneous, charismatic life to the character who begins Accomplices as an unidentified corpse. It's spry work that augurs well for the young actor. Ewan McGregor may not redefine the art in The Ghost Writer but he reminds us what an underrated stalwart he is: a pre-eminently skilled audience surrogate, even when he's making eccentric errors in judgment, and a dab hand at playing peevish incredulity without getting ornery. Speaking of ornery, Ben Stiller does well by the lead role in Greenberg, even if the hairpin turns in Roger's temper exceed his grasp just a bit. It's my favorite kind of part to see him play, even if Joan Rivers's witheringly terse dismissal of him hangs implacably over his head. Joining him in the category of hard-working and ideally cast actors whom I can't quite love, Tom Hanks shows again in Toy Story 3 what a marvelous creation Woody is—very possibly his crowning achievement.

2009 Honorees: Best Actor

You'd think I have very narrow tastes based on this roster, which brims with militarized men. The one character who isn't packing artillery nonetheless anchors a movie that's all about World War II. Maybe the Academy will have me after all? But of course the superficial impression of likeness belies five very different men, played splendidly by five commanding and prismatic actors, who jointly lead the charge of the year's most competitive acting category, by far.

SHARLTO COPLEY for District 9, who evolves so organically from doofus to terrorized victim to angry humanprawnthing, and whose work lingered mightily as the months passed;

BEN FOSTER for The Messenger, who projected a strapping maturity from a slight frame, who felt green but not naïve, who coiled in anger, shock, decency, and inadequacy;

ISSEY OGATA for The Sun, whose odd, fishlike tics and blank-faced diffidence made Hirohito a needfully enigmatic figure, edging toward a harsh metaphysical reckoning;

JEREMY RENNER for The Hurt Locker, whose reckless bravado and no-bullshit diligence feel bizarrely indivisible, even after a creepy mixup over a dead kid jars his equilibrium; and

CHRISTOPH WALTZ for Inglourious Basterds, who must be as tired of The Charismatic Nazi as we are, so he makes him jolly, urbane, Napoleonic, cobra-like, and a bit bonkers to boot.

Extremely honorable mentions to Anthony Mackie, whose watchfulness and ethical principles are almost as bracing in The Hurt Locker as Renner's struts and tremors; to Mark Duplass, whose comic timing and psychological dissection are so exquisite in Humpday that the movie's collapse almost doesn't matter; to Ben Whishaw for giving Bright Star an effete, sickly Keats who still registers strongly as a casual charmer and an object of mystery and passion; to Viggo Mortensen for taking fatherhood as seriously as survival in The Road, as a dirt-smeared Falconetti of haunted persistence; and to Robert Downey, Jr. for submerging his character's compassionate initiatives and his phobias about commitment amidst so much colorful, humanizing, offhanded detail in The Soloist that the movie never feels schematic or "inspirational" in the sticky way you expect.

Nearly as honorable are the truculent, focused pragmatism of In the Loop's Peter Capaldi; the mealy resentments and half-baked self-confidence of Patton Oswalt in Big Fan; the utter plausibility of Russell Crowe in State the Play, holding the screen even more surely than in more grandiose projects; the savvy, highwire balance of surface affectation and emotional truth that Jamie Foxx brings to his tricky part in The Soloist; the adolescent restlessness, combining comedic and dramatic instincts, of Jesse Eisenberg in Adventureland; and the noisome, big-bellied, aging-wolf magnetism of Oscar winner Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, full of deft details that battle valiantly against the haziness of the script and the film.

Even this wasn't all for the embarrassment of riches, given Tom Hardy's overdone but often electrifying turn in Bronson, Souleymane Sy Savané's gradually tested bonhomie in Goodbye, Solo, Gianfelice Imparato's controlled but anxious professional dispatch in Gomorrah, Paul Rudd's indefatigable charm as he faces new feelings in I Love You, Man, and Tom Hollander's space-cadet PM and Chris Addison's rationalizing wonk in In the Loop. Adam Sandler and Michael Stuhlbarg made smart choices and fostered memorable moments in the odd patchwork of Funny People and the off-putting, self-satisfied cynicism of A Serious Man, making them honorable honorable mentions, or something. But I have to start drawing the line somewhere.