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 10: May 26

Underground, Serbia/France/Germany, dir. Emir Kusturica

A very sad anecdote in Citizen Cannes, the memoir by longtime festival director Gilles Jacob, finds Serbian film director Emir Kusturica spotting Francis Ford Coppola in the airport after the 1996 festival, where Coppola presided over the jury.  Kusturica is over the moon to meet one of his filmmaking idols, and also to share in their very rare status as two of only three men (at that time) to have scooped two Palmes d'or. He approaches Coppola, fawns over him, attempts to establish fellow feeling. Coppola has never seen his movies, and indeed has no idea who he is. Kusturica keeps throwing him lifelines, establishing his credentials as a globally renowned cineaste, while humbly expressing his feelings of inferiority in present company. Coppola just can't get interested, and never figures out who he's talking to. Jacob offers the story as an emblem of American ignorance, retaining absolutely no idea of what cinema means or who produces it outside of Hollywood's confines. And indeed, you'd love to live in the world where a movie as ambitious, as outsized, as risky and huge as Underground endowed its maker with worldwide renown . . . to fellow luminaries in his field, at the very least. Kusturica has his complexities, to be sure, as both an artist and, from what I understand, as a person, but to Coppola he may as well have been Edward D. Wood, Jr.

At least Jeanne Moreau's jury showed greater appreciation for Underground. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a better day for a Cannes competition than this one: two emblematic works by two figures prominent enough to later lead their own juries. In virtues and even in what I'd call their flaws, Underground and Ed Wood both seem to embody every hope their eccentric auteurs could have harbored for them, and both of them function, implicitly or explicitly, as valentines to a form that keeps thriving, even amid the devastations of land and people, even amid the merry assaults of the utterly talentless ...

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The Fifties 2014: Supporting Actor, Original Score, Adapted Screenplay

SUPPORTING ACTOR

NICK'S PICKS:

Carlo Cecchi, Honey (Miele): Because even if the film hints what he might be up to, the actor keeps you guessing, not just about what but about why.

Patrick d'Assumçao, Stranger by the Lake: Because he doesn't pity his character and pulls focus from all those penises, deepening the movie.

Jeff Goldblum, Le Week-end: Because even if we've seen this acerbic maybe-asshole from Goldblum before, he's especially spry and funny here.

Tom Hiddleston, Unrelated: For keeping within a limited spectrum, never getting fully attached to Anna but leaning toward and away from her.

Jake Lacy, Obvious Child: For playing a more vanilla guy than the genre or the lead usually invite but convincing us he's a happy accident.

Honorable Mentions: Joe Mantello, The Normal Heart, made for cable; Ethan Hawke, Boyhood, missed my cutoff
Runners Up: Àlex Brendemühl, The German Doctor; Ronen Rubinstein, It Felt Like Love; Johan Leysen, Young & Beautiful; James Corden, Begin Again

On the Radar: Sam Shepard, Cold in July; Don Johnson, Cold in July; Adam Levine, Begin Again

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The Fifties for 2013: Best Supporting Actor

Joe's Picks


Keith Carradine, Ain't Them Bodies Saints — Emory Cohen, The Place Beyond the Pines — John Gallagher, Jr., Short Term 12 — Ben Foster, Ain't Them Bodies Saints — Peter Sarsgaard, Blue Jasmine

Nick's Picks


James Franco, Spring Breakers — John Henshaw, The Angels' Share — Peter Kazungu, Paradise: Love — Yiftach Klein, Fill the Void — Ben Mendelsohn, The Place Beyond the Pines

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JOE: Nick, I came sooooo close to putting Ben Mendelsohn on my own list. For a movie I had a decent number of issues with, the uniformly strong cast went a long way toward keeping things on the right track for me, while Cianfrance worked his themes out. Of course I was highly tempted to once again throw my beloved Dane DeHaan some recognition, but ultimately, my surprise at Cohen's layered surliness won the day. Such a recognizable character for someone so closed off, and the friendship/bully axis he works with DeHaan unlocked a good deal of that movie for me.

I ultimately—and perhaps unfairly—disqualified Franco from my field because I was so disillusioned at how Spring Breakers became so enamored of him and promptly ignored the women whose story I thought we were following. He's certainly the performance from the first half of the year that people are still talking about. Buzz justified, I guess you'd say?

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NICK: Weirdly, I wouldn't say that.  I actually don't like Franco's performance as used in the film.  Where you see it as pulling focus from the girls (and I don't disagree), I hate how it locks down the preternaturally mobile and expressive camera into a series of Behold the Master close-ups and medium shots.  As a formal element, Alien is my least favorite thing in Spring Breakers.  But as much as I associate Franco with cockiness and am therefore tempted to blame him for showboating, I think the performance itself is a pretty sensational act of self-transformation and witty repackaging.  He almost lost his slot to an opposite performance—Alec Baldwin's small and utterly unshowy part in Blue Jasmine, playing to me the most plausible human being in the film—and he'll probably fall out later.

Say more about why Cohen isn't "overdoing it," which is the same critique Franco's vulnerable to, and one I've heard lobbied against Pines in general and Cohen in particular.  Then I promise I'll reply about Mendelsohn!

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The Fifties for 2012: Best Supporting Actor

Probably the most off-the-map of my acting lineups, though I'm still more sanguine than some people about the Bongo King's chances to wind up on the big year-end rosters.



Best Supporting Actor
Simon Russell Beale for The Deep Blue Sea, for holding a steady flame under his character's uxorious devotion, but keeping his shame, disdain, and mystification simmering alongside it;

Daniel Henshall for The Snowtown Murders, for finding new variations and a bearish modesty inside the trope of the disarming, fatherly sociopath, slipping him quietly into the movie;

Noé Hernández for Miss Bala, for staying elusive in a film that can feel overdetermined, hinting he is the girl's best ally and worst threat, working some layered agenda;

Matthew McConaughey for Magic Mike, for embracing while expanding his persona, blending camaraderie and self-interest, fears about middle age and voluptuous delight in his body; and

Brian Murray for In the Family, for serving the character and the film by keeping complexity at a minimum, showing us a very savvy lawyer driven by straightforward decency.

Honorable mentions start with Steve Carell for dialing down so self-effacingly in Hope Springs but reading as sincere, intelligent, and interested rather than blank; Dwight Henry for balancing volatility, eccentricity, and adoration in such complicated proportions in Beasts of the Southern Wild; and Bruce Willis for tacitly and tenderly putting across the fully dimensional adult character that Moonrise Kingdom sorely needs, without signaling immediately that the character is headed that way. Philip Seymour Hoffman has galvanizing moments in The Master, several of them nicely underplayed, though the performance also comes outfitted with scenes and flourishes that don't fully cohere (though that's partly due to the script). Seth Rogen manages his anti-typecasting well in Take This Waltz, yet he too suffers for some of his writer-director's miscalculations, as in his indulgent montage of post-breakup grief.  And no, I didn't forget Michael Fassbender in Prometheus; I just wasn't that taken with him, or surprised by anything in his perfectly skillful performance.

Best of 2011: Supporting Actor

If you're one of the folks who's clicking through for Honorees but then dashing away—can I interest you in a real review? I'm kind of proud of this one. No? Okay.



BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Viggo Mortensen, A Dangerous Method
... for being smug but also astute, a rich conduit of humor but not a hammy one, and a careful articulator of the veiled theme of anti-Semitism;

Chris O'Dowd, Bridesmaids
... for being raffishly un-typecast as the flawed prince we root for, helping us to balance our attraction to and exasperation with Wiig's Annie;

Gustavo Sánchez Parra, Leap Year
... for arriving subtly into the film, uncomfortably pushing the lead around, and signaling so many motives for and feelings about what they do;

Christopher Plummer, Beginners
... for showing us a good time and seeing fully and generously into his character, without selling him into cutesy comedy or milking the sadness;

Shea Whigham, Take Shelter
... for the subtlest, steadiest gaze by which we observe the hero, expressing friendship as guys do, even as tacit sympathy tilts into distrust.

Runners-Up: Brían F. O'Byrne as the patience-tested but unexpectedly loyal ex-husband in HBO's Mildred Pierce; Corey Stoll as a beacon of wit and a rough-patch of welcome texture in Midnight in Paris; Brad Pitt, playing a man aware of his shortcomings and expressive deficiencies but nonetheless mired within them in The Tree of Life; Niels Arestrup, so elegantly warm and so eloquently aggrieved in War Horse; Sergei Puskepalis, who passes from intimidating colleague to dangerous enemy in How I Ended This Summer; and Shima Ohnishi as the physically demanding, ethically unsalvageable husband in Caterpillar, bravely submitting himself to Wakamatsu's aesthetic of florid overstatement without losing the character inside the hyperbole.

For Distinguished Group Efforts: The colorful trio of henchmen that Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, and Mark Strong bring hilariously to life in The Guard; the vivid conclave of misguided but sympathetic managers, scouts, and board members in Moneyball, extending as well to Philip Seymour Hoffman's banked flame of inextinguishable animosity; and Peter Carroll, Chris Haywood, and Hugh Keays-Byrne as the unsettled and unsettling clients in Sleeping Beauty.

Additional Runners-Up: Marton Csokas for his believable spin on what is more or less the O'Dowd role in Julie Bertuccelli's The Tree; Kenneth Lonergan for nailing the desire for camaraderie but the helplessness at real intimacy as the cross-country dad in Margaret; Bryan Cranston, who's been limping around the borderlands of petty crime for so long in Drive that he's almost forgotten how quickly it can all end; Brian Cox for his fatigue, his knack for conciliation, and his weariness with a tone-deaf leader in Coriolanus; Patton Oswalt for bringing so much color and personality to Young Adult that you almost stop begrudging what a crutch his character is; Burt Young for blurring the line between a mental fog and a shocked reaction to shabby treatment in Win Win; Shahab Hosseini, for making us wonder and worry throughout A Separation just how unstable his character is; Guy Pearce for both his flaunted and his wounded vanity in Mildred Pierce; Markus Schleinzer for an unforgettable face and a failure to play his hunches correctly in The Robber; Kiefer Sutherland for half-tolerating and half-loathing Melancholia's effulgent wedding, perking up when something truly interests him, refusing to believe that his only source of pleasure might destroy him; Ezra Miller, giving his most plausible and well-shaded spin on his troubled-youth typecasting in the Sundance drama Another Happy Day; Nick Nolte for being so moving on the lawn and in the diner and in the dark of Warrior, despite some overshooting towards the end; Jamie Bell, for so concisely forcing us to ask whether St. John is a worthy partner or a hovering trap for the heroine of Jane Eyre; Goran Visnjic for his odd, impish boyfriend in Beginners, tempting us to question his sincerity before certifying his love past all doubt; Kevin Spacey for finally showing up to play ball again in Margin Call, after what feels like years; and Charles Parnell for taking a bemused interest in his daughter's rebel streak in Pariah until, suddenly, he doesn't—though even then, he keeps re-drawing the line between empathy and aloofness.

Maybe one day I'll regret that I'm leaving out Albert Brooks and the whole Tinker Tailor crew, but as glad as I am to applaud their solid work, none of them truly interested me as much as all of these guys did.

Films I Hated to Skip Before Posting: Cold Weather, Of Gods and Men

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)

The Fifties for 2011: Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor

Regular readers might recall that once I see my 50th commercial release in any given calendar year, inevitably in late August or early September, I take stock of what I've seen so far and publish a listing of mid-year bests: hence, "The Fifties". This year, I reached that milestone with the humbling, direct, and deeply moving documentary The Interrupters, which Chicagoans can still catch in the delightful, family-owned Wilmette Theatre (which is where I saw it) unless they want to brave another swarm of sellout crowds when the film returns to the Siskel in October. Block Cinema on the Northwestern campus will also be showing The Interrupters for one night next month, interspersed amongst a great lineup of recent Eastern European breakouts that includes one of the movies nominated below.

As usual, I've picked five favorites in "big" categories plus a list of Honorable Mentions whom I at least entertained for inclusion, if only briefly. A shame I couldn't count Drive, which I saw this morning and would crop up in at least a few races, including a possible mention below for Bryan Cranston. Then again, no one is likely to forget Drive by December, whereas a lot of the jewels of the winter, spring, and summer could use the extra stumping, which is why I keep this feature alive from year to year. That and people seem to like it, and it helps my increasingly Havarti-like brain from losing track of my own reactions. Without further ado, the first few winnerless "races"... and if you haven't seen the films, keep an eye out, or actively track them down!

(Once again keeping my rationales to Twitter length, to keep the verbiage from spinning out of control.)



Best Supporting Actress
Mary Page Keller for Beginners, because she brings the deceased mother to stirring, idiosyncratic life through her sharp economy of playing and her coherent connecting of dots;

Mélanie Laurent for Beginners, because she manages to suggest what is attractive and difficult about her quiet mooninees, simultaneously warm, sensitive, odd, and unreachable;

Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids, because even when scenes are handed right to her, her comic styling feels bold rather than coarse, her gags fresh, and her foregrounding earned;

Mirela Oprişor for Tuesday, After Christmas, for refusing to be too shrill or conveniently lovable, and then balancing poignant and petty reactions to ruinous news, in heroically long shots; and

Maria Popistaşu for Tuesday, After Christmas, for playing neither a naïve nor a cynical mistress, keeping remarkable poise in dentist's office, showing such quiet disillusion at mom's house.

Honorable mentions in alphabetical order to Jessica Chastain for The Help, Jennifer Ehle for Contagion, Vera Farmiga for Source Code, Sally Hawkins for Jane Eyre, Amy Ryan for Win Win, Octavia Spencer for The Help, Marisa Tomei for Crazy, Stupid, Love., and Morgan Turner and Mare Winningham for Mildred Pierce. Yes, I know it's HBO, but I'm counting it, which is an especially good thing considering...




Best Supporting Actor
Brían F. O'Byrne for Mildred Pierce, for quickly itemizing the problems in the Pierces' marriage but helping to develop their relationship into the series' most quietly touching;

Chris O'Dowd for Bridesmaids, because beyond his refreshing casting as the prince we root for, he helps us keep our attraction to and exasperation with Wiig's Annie balanced;

Gustavo Sánchez Parra for Leap Year, for making a subtle entry, ordering the lead around in uncomfortable ways, and signaling so many motives for and feelings about what they do;

Christopher Plummer for Beginners, for showing us a good time and seeing fully and generously into his character without selling him into cutesy comedy or milking the sadness; and

Corey Stoll for Midnight in Paris, because he so wittily maintains that thick and plummy comic line through the Hemingway persona that he almost singly redeems a stunted premise.

Honorable mentions to Marton Csokas for The Tree, Shima Ohnishi for Caterpillar, Guy Pearce for Mildred Pierce, Brad Pitt for The Tree of Life, Sergei Puskepalis for How I Ended This Summer, Markus Schleinzer for The Robber, Goran Visnjic for Beginners, and Burt Young for Win Win.

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 Supporting Actor

Khalid Abdalla for Green Zone, who avoids bare clichés of the outraged local or the shady ally yet keeps you guessing about his motives and engaged in his point of view;

Niels Arestrup for A Prophet, because even if he weren't in jail, you could see that he's trapped and rotting, no matter how much power he wields from that fireplug frame;

Pierce Brosnan for The Ghost Writer, taut and character-specific in revelatory ways, either as a weary ex-PM denied the respect he deserves or a lifelong dupe, but mad either way;

John Hawkes for Winter's Bone, because the tenor he brings to most of the perf does not match the spirit of the character's decisions and behavior, creating rich mysteries; and

Rhys Ifans for Greenberg, who could have oversold Ivan's sad backstory or his ire at Roger's recent abuses, but he stays quietly powerful, intent on keeping cool.

Honorable mentions to Ned Beatty for his plush, avuncular, but always operative antagonism in Toy Story 3; Hans-Jochen Wagner for being such an insufferable, sexist foil in Everyone Else without seeming fully against his friend, or just becoming a nuisance to the audience; Michael Shannon, who strays not very far from the usual Michael Shannon performance in The Runaways but is nonetheless a reliable generator of energy and needed flamboyance; and Ewan McGregor, working far from his Honorable Mention'd performance in The Ghost Writer as the fey lover-inmate in I Love You Phillip Morris, parsing stereotypes with noble discernment, invoking the familiar but avoiding the hackneyed, and winding up a gentle, sympathetic figure.

2009 Honorees: Best Supporting Actor

Start here if you're wondering why I'm only now getting to this. Otherwise, my selections for the Best Supporting Actors of 2009 were, and still are:



JAMES GANDOLFINI for Where the Wild Things Are, because it takes prodigious vocal and physical work to broadcast that much temper, pain, and complexity from within a huge woolly body suit;

STEVE MARTIN for It's Complicated, because he makes the pot scenes such pure joy and seems genuinely wounded, but maturely responsive, when Meryl's character lets him down;

SAUL RUBINEK for Julia, because his enabling takes almost as many forms as Julia's mania: sensitive, appalled, faux-casual, furious, manipulative, speechless...;

DARYL SABARA for World's Greatest Dad, because he's very funny and blisteringly hateful, without just riffing or auditioning for your dorm-room wall the way Jonah Hill would have; and

STANLEY TUCCI for Julie & Julia, because even when you're besotted with a world-class companion, you still have to step carefully around their oddities and their bruises.

Extremely honorable mentions to the three men who, on and off since January, have rotated in and out of what is finally the Martin spot: Benoît Poelvoorde, who is such an imposing, charismatic lover-patron-frenemy to Tautou in Coco Before Chanel; Woody Harrelson, who combines swagger and decency with just a bit of smugness in The Messenger, as he starts to show his cracks; and Sergey Makovetsky for 12, who saves his character from the usual high-minded, tension-deflating nobility by broadcasting more doubts and hinting at more potential motives behind his contrarianism. Admittedly, that might be a lead part, but he mixes beautifully with that florid Russian ensemble.

My next rung of contenders were haunted Ciro Patrone, quietly trying to beat the mob in Gomorrah, Red West's cranky but cliché-free work as a virtual co-lead in Goodbye, Solo, Fabrizio Rongione's inscrutable agent in Lorna's Silence, Rupert Friend's brittly appealing and very affectionate Albert in The Young Victoria, and Clifton Collins, so lived-in and humane in Sunshine Cleaning, and just waiting for the movie to lean more heavily on his character.

Actress Files: Simone Signoret

Simone Signoret, Ship of Fools
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
(lost the 1965 Best Actress Oscar to Julie Christie for Darling)

Why I Waited: Has anyone ever hustled to see Ship of Fools? 150 minutes of Stanley Kramer mixing and matching thinly archetypal characters with all of his typical subtlety?

The Performance: Voters handed eight nominations and two wins to Ship of Fools in 1965, so clearly they found something to like. Those dual wins, for Ernest Laszlo's sleek black & white photography and for Robert Clatworthy and Joseph Kish's luxe but elegant design of the cruise ship, even pass muster by Oscar's standards, which means having to accept the fact that, despite the splendid Best Director nod for Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes, it's too much to ask for that film's indelible visuals to snag the trophies they merited. But Ship of Fools, despite the famous Kramer imprimatur, arrived in port as one of those Best Picture contenders with no corresponding nod in Best Director, implying attenuated enthusiasm among the more sophisticated nominators. The actors were more generous with their balloting. Given their proclivities, I suppose there's no way they could overlook the twee stylings of 3'11" Michael Dunn, breaking the fourth wall with discomfiting, barker-ish merriment at the beginning of the movie—"My name is Karl Glocken," he avers directly to the camera, "and this is a ship of fools!"—and venturing a hollow, ironical knowingness in a bookending coda. Dunn predictably placed and justifiably lost the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but setting him aside, in the leading categories, the Acting Branch sent a strong message that for all the interlocking vignettes linking Vivien Leigh's caustic spinster to Lee Marvin's bellyaching bully to José Ferrer's hambone Nazi to Heinz Rühmann's optimistic Jewish salesman to Elizabeth Ashley and George Segal's amorous young bickerers, etc., etc., the rueful romance between Simone Signoret's condemned countess and Oskar Werner's stoical shipboard doctor was the obvious diamond in this pail of ice.

As a framing aside, I found Elizabeth Ashley lively and naughty, confiding about Segal's handsome, self-pitying boor that "David's an artist, a wonderful one... He's all caught up with social consciousness right now, but he'll get over it." Would that Kramer had ever done the same, though I'm impressed he would tolerate a line that inevitably sounds like a crack on his own sensibilities. The film moves briskly enough and there are some pert moments, as though enough of the actors see how badly Ship of Fools could use some humor and verve. When things did feel dull, I thought about poor Irwin Allen, who must have labored to survive this movie at some point in his career and thought, If only they'd collide with a tidal wave or an iceberg! Ship of Fools has the starrily-cast but perfunctory patchiness of a disaster movie without the disaster. Then again, for many viewers, all of these earnest declamations and ham-handed, heavy-hearted ironies are disastrous enough, thank you very much. My point is, though, that the actors were onto something in singling out Signoret and Werner for real praise. It's one thing to sidestep the crude literalisms of the script with tart bitchiness, as Vivien Leigh does. "Maybe you were too busy lynching Negroes to take time out for the Jews!" she slings at an American who fumes hypocritically about Ferrer's blunt anti-Semitism. Leigh must have figured this cruise-ship was the closest she'd ever get to doing Tallulah in Lifeboat, and why deny her her fun?

Signoret and Werner, though, opt for a more difficult course than leavening solemnity with tart flippancy. They find a way to play Ship of Fools in a key barely distinguishable, if at all, from the doleful one in which it's been written, but they find real aches and nerve-endings where one would forgive them for finding nothing but contrivances and canned tears. Signoret has been sentenced to die for aiding working-class insurrections in Cuba, offering shelter to revolutionary leaders on her colonial estate. When the ship picks her up from the arresting authorities, she is escorted up a gangplank after filing through a mob of cheering Cuban peasants. Their joy was so pronounced and her own demeanor so sober that, while my brain may already have been narcotized by other dimensions of Ship of Fools, I initially mistook her as someone that the Cubans were thrilled to behold in handcuffs, taking her public lumps. I wouldn't necessarily confide an error like that except that it gives you an idea how austere Signoret is in refusing to play the sanctified martyr. She wears her righteousness and her fate with the neutral formality of a guilty convict of the higher caste, determined not to disclose her emotions or give her arraigners any pleasure.

That's an extremely refreshing approach to screen heroism, particularly in a vehicle this earmarked for liberal self-recognition, even maudlin complacency that Now We Know Better. I probably run the risk in lots of these profiles of crediting entirely to the actress what is in fact a blend of the director's, the writer's and the performer's inspirations; since Kramer can be a difficult filmmaker to praise, I should admit that Signoret would never get away with the implacable humility of this performance if Kramer weren't allowing or even encouraging that take on the character. Yet there is something truly wise and rigorously un-narcissistic in the ways Signoret handles these dimensions of the character, which feel personal to her, exemplary of her acting style and her politics. (Just like yesterday, we're dealing here with a nationally iconic performer who was equally lionized for her outspoken efforts against dominant ideology.) After gently but firmly rebuffing that quandrant of the audience who might desire to behold a damp-eyed Joan of Arc or an indignant firebrand shaking her own chains, Signoret maintains her tight leash on any form of sentimental self-congratulation, even as her character divulges the motives and details of her radical sympathies to Werner's admiring doctor. In a key monologue, she recalls visiting a Cuban worker on the estate that fed her own fortune. "'Pardon me for my house, pardon me for the way it looks, pardon me for ...everything. Most of this place is a garbage dump and I'm just a piece of garbage,'" she quotes or maybe paraphrases the woman as saying, but Signoret doesn't pour unneeded bathos or pregnant pauses into the line. She preserves a downcast but determinedly cool, candid monotone, revealing the Countess to be a kind of chagrined, familiar journalist of the facts of poverty, not a sensationalizing vendor of the exploitable details of suffering. She exudes a heavy though not an exhausted fatigue in the face of the sheer pervasiveness of inequality—matter-of-factly plumping her pillows and angling away from the camera's gaze or from Werner's as she describes how she secreted key agitators in her private chapel, and providing them with arms.

You won't know if you haven't seen the movie, but simultaneously to all this, Signoret is powerfully, poignantly attracted to Werner's blond, clear-eyed doctor, and she has flirted with him repeatedly in advance of this scene—with dignity but still very openly. Obviously mindful of her death sentence, and eventually informed that he, in his own way, faces one as well, Signoret's middle-aged Countess doesn't seem especially embarrassed at trying to lure the doctor into a short-lived, middle-aged romance, even after he admits to being married, albeit dispassionately. Concisely signaling with her eyes the sad, self-conscious ridiculousness of her situation, the condamnée à mort seeking eleventh-hour succor, the handsome but (let's admit it) froggy-looking woman who can't help wanting to kiss this Aryan prince, Signoret's Countess is more than willing to play some well-worn roles: the woman who's seen it all, the addict in need of saving, the lonely diva imploring a lover's embrace with no strings. She says things that one of Tennessee Williams' fading, deluded flowers would say: "My darling, Love, for once let's kiss in broad daylight." Signoret is already smart casting, since there's a certain armature of reserve, lucidity, and integrity she seems incapable of relinquishing even in a dubious part like this one. Still, her avoidance of mawkishness is obviously the product not just of who and how she is, but of deliberate choices and vigilant self-monitoring. Humorous interludes help, as when she pretends to read Lady Chatterley's Lover to Werner as a sleep aid, only to reveal that she's making it all up, and the volume she's actually holding is a textbook called Natural Resistance and Clinical Medicine. But even amidst this campaign to endear herself to a handsome, only somewhat reluctant admirer, who even seems to find her political principles a major turn-on ("I haven't met many people in my life who have committed themselves to anything," he confesses), she still won't short-change a serious gesture she made in the name of social justice as a manipulable tool to entice an escort. I did wonder, though, through the retrospective lens of the Countess's overt yearning for human connection, whether her self-endangering commitment to the revolutionaries was at all motivated—not instead but maybe alongside the unequivocal rightness of the cause—by its promise of camaraderie. Was her valiant collusion one more way not to be so devastatingly lonely?

Signoret's performance raises interesting conundrums for this star-rating system, because I found it to be an impeccably judged approach to a role that scores of other actresses would have fumbled, lacking the tonal control or the palpable moral intelligence through which Signoret movingly humanizes and redeems it. Even her final "Bye" to Werner, at the end of a highly-charged scene, is piquantly quick and quiet. That said, the limitations of the role are such that it essentially prohibits a truly great performance. I can't imagine the wizardry that would be required to divest it of all traces of cliché, which Signoret hasn't done, and her admirable choice for deft, cool underplaying admittedly has the effect of keeping her within a limited stylistic and emotional range—one which so many of her other performances imply is close to a default alternative for her. If she had won the Oscar, I am sure I'd feel cranky that such a flawed part with relatively little screen-time in such a bulging, often listless picture had copped her the statue.

A winless nomination, though, seems like a fitting way to commend Signoret for actually thriving with an assignment that almost begs for failure. I wouldn't want to put the performance in a time capsule, but I would want to show it to any number of actors who think that stock, sentimental, or politically signboarded roles can't be rendered in a way that is smart and moving, and through congenital understatement, no less. Sometimes Signoret is an ace deflector of bathos, as when she receives the information about the Werner character's lethal heart condition by futzing with a stray thread in the tablecloth: who among us, much less in Hollywood, would have resisted this call for moist horror, the frozen, welling close-up that screams, Pity him! Pity me! Sometimes, too, she plays right into the contrived emotionalism of the part, combing her fingers through Werner's hair or firing a deep, searching look into his eyes—and in these moments, her success involves modulating the degrees of sentimentality, not substituting a less expected affect or a bit of actorly business in its place. I'm guessing the Countess would have disliked the film's glossy, melodramatized version of political messaging, and for all I know, Signoret did, too, even though she's humane enough not to judge the Countess for her own moments of grandiloquent feeling. It's an ersatz film, but a very good performance, and in its dignified resourcefulness, an even better acting lesson.

The Best Actress Project: 1 More Down, 22 to Go