Oscar Chatter: If It's Yours To Lose, You Can Still Lose
Sunday, August 18, 2013 at 4:27PM Each year as the first "wow" factor players emerge in the Oscar race, pundits (professional and amateur alike), jump all over themselves to declare "winners!" in each of the acting races several months in advance. I always want to pass on analgesic creams when this begins to happen but then I'm more patient than some Oscar fans and prefer the slow sexy fight for nominations to the wham bam foregone conclusions of Oscar night. If you believe the internet Cate Blanchett has it locked up in Best Actress (on the strength of her work in Blue Jasmine) and Oprah Winfrey has it locked up in Supporting Actress (on the rush of excitement that's greeted Lee Daniels' The Butler and her against type work... if you can have a type when you rarely act.) The only trouble is that no one has seen their competition. And your competition is half the equation at least as to whether or not you'll win. (One example: Does Reese Witherspoon's Walk the Line win in a highly competitive year? I think not.)
Oscar loves a drunk. Can Cate & Oprah both win while boozing it up?
The male categories are less clear though we've already heard quite a few "Leonardo DiCaprio finally has it for The Wolf of Wall Street!" (on the strength of his meme-worthy dancing and lively charisma in the trailer) and some have floated Bruce Dern as your future Supporting Actor winner for Nebraska... though his campaign remains a question mark. Nebraska, we know, is one of those Two Lead/Same Gender films that Oscar's acting branch has forgotten how to parse. Nobody ever tried to suggest that Salieri or Amadeus were supporting each other or that the true lead of Thelma & Louise was Thelma OR Louise but they would if those films opened today because times have changed and fans and campaign managers got increasingly shameless.
So will any of these four win? Quite possibly, sure. But they could also all lose. One or more of them might not even be nominated! We haven't seen most of the competitive sets and until the great winnowing of December begins when the precursor awards race in to borify the entire race... let's keep an open mind and enjoy the wide world of possibilities!
OSCAR CHART UPDATES
Best Actress - Will Amy give Cate B a run for her money with Meryl maybe dropping out?
Best Supporting Actress - Can Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer stay in the conversation as Oprah sucks up all the late summer oxygen?
Best Actor -It might come down to Leo vs. Matthew unless Old Hollywood rallies for career honors for Dern or Redford or someone else surprises. Oh god, please let there be surprises this year!
Best Supporting Actor - only the editors know... seriously... nothing has happened yet. (sigh)
more updates to follow on the remaining charts
Reader Comments (58)
I'd love it if Daniel Brühl got a nomination! Also, that's not him but the real Niki Lauda in the photo, or did you do that on purpose? :)
After seeing Blue Jasmine, I would not mine at all for Sally Hawkins to happen. I think she does good work and is actually getting underrated by some people. Don't under-estimate Sony Pictures Classics beyond their campaigning for Blanchett and Allen's script.
I'd flip Renner and Cooper in supporting categories- to the point I think Cooper is the only sure nominee besides Hill. I think he is helped by being a more recent nominee than Renner and although the 'discovery' is over it appears the movie is a triage of him, Adams, and Bale.
Blanchett is surely the one helped the most if the Meryl to supporting actually does happen. Roberts has a great part but VIOLET EFFING WESTON is a stage character for the ages.
I think Her might be a surprise push in major categories, most notably in Leading Actor.
I really want 12 Years a Slave and Mandela to both be good but, regardless of quality, one has Harvey Weinstein and one is directed by Steve McQueen whose first 'American' movie was an NC-17 rated movie that some Oscar voters refused to watch. I think 12 Years a Slave will be serious, good cinema but I have doubts it might play well to Oscar voters.
It's really hard to read the tea-leaves in The Butler. I feel like the movie is getting a more than fair shake because it is a. August b. off one of the worst, most critically split, zero-consensus summer movie seasons in recent memory and c. Lee Daniels' having this be the follow-up to The Paperboy has a lot of people saying 'restraint'.
Is Serena going to come out this year or not? Imdb says it's coming this year in Russia and that's it...
Nat, to be fair, both The Kids Are All Right and Frost/Nixon were campaigned as having co-leads. You shouldn't hold the fact that only one from each got nominated against them, but both Julianne Moore and Michael Sheen campaigned lead for their films as well. I'm sure Emma Stone campaigned lead for The Help.
Nobody has this race in the bag in August... Nobody!
That is why this site is is more refreshing compared to Gold Derby and Awards Daily where they seem to tell me what to think... Even this early on
Oprah has no competition at the moment. We have so many terrific
supporting performances yet to be screened. Early frontrunners usually
end up losing.
I'm hoping the narrative forming around Winfrey right now is enough to push Streep back into Lead Actress where she belongs.
No black contenders in Best Actress...
There are so many unknown factors in August that predictions seem at best fantasy guesses of what may or may not happen. The Butler seems powerful now - although many people have no interest in seeing the film - but it will be reduced significantly in power come next March. If August: Osage County delivers, that film will be dominant in acting categories. I also agree that there is no reason not to have a Meryl v. Julia best actress race, and it may still come to pass. As great as Cate Blanchett is in Blue Jasmine, I don't think the Academy will vote for her. It's not a sympathetic character and the movie a bit depressing. I also think it's rough going for Cate, Nicole and Naomi Watts - only one will get in is my prediction.
I can't see it happening at all for Sally Hawkins. Blue Jasmine is just completely and utterly absorbed with its titular lead, and as performed by Cate, it's just such an overwhelmingly mammoth embodiment, that everything else just seems a lot less developed in comparison, especially Hawkins' Ginger. Ginger, as written and performed, is such a hazy, non-specific creation, and with Cate so sublimely showing off, who really has time for her dowdy, downplayed sister? Is anyone actually walking out of this movie raving about Sally Hawkins? Also, I'm in the camp who feels that Ginger's sketchy conception, as well as the vagueness of her relationship with Jasmine, prevents Hawkins from really getting a handle on Ginger, especially when Woody barely has one on her himself. She's good and quite touching in some scattered, select moments, aside from that distracting accent that she never quite nails down, but she hardly belongs in that pretty impressive array of Woody's revelatory supporting actress performances. I can't imagine her maintaining any serious awards buzz past September.
Also, as someone who's sort of tetchy about running to see The Butler, are Winfrey's raves based on an actually effective and accomplished performance or the mere spectacle of seeing the Daytime Goddess herself act so sloppily and surprisingly out-of-character? You can barely tell from some of the reviews.
I still think EVERYONE is massively underestimating The World's End, which I think is pretty much secured for, no matter what it grosses, Original Screenplay. As for other categories? Well, a massive ($300 million+) gross smooths all pathways.
Safe:
Original Screenplay
Probable with massive gross, most to least:
Lead Actor (Simon Pegg)
Supporting Actor (fraud, though slight) (Nick Frost)
Editing
Director
Picture
Possible with massive gross, most to least:
Supporting Actress (Rosamund Pike)
Cinematography
Production Design
VFX
I agree, Nathaniel. It's bad enough that the actual awards season winds up being a bore due to lack of imagination and group think. It would be lovely if the debate and conjecture leading up to it continued to be open -- and open-minded.
I'd be less frustrated with the whole thing if people just admitted how much of their own biases are at play at this point. Matthew M is a good example. People are rooting for him, and that's great. But all the 'overdue' talk, physical transformation talk, etc... He's only been doing decent acting again for the past couple of years, that's far from overdue by any stretch, and physical transformations have been just as likely to fail as they have been to reward the actors. You usually need something more than 'lose/gain a crazy amount of weight'. I'm in the exact same position about him as I am with DiCaprio - we really need to see the movie and the performance before we call *anything* on them. I have no doubt that they are both contenders to be reckoned with and might very possibly get that nomination, but they're far from locks even on the nomination level. Calling them for a win at this point will only get ridiculous 'snubbed!!!!' protests later on, even though this year is stacked with other possible contenders and the movies might not actually be good.
It's the other side of the coin with Whitaker. The Butler sounds very much like The Help, release date and all. The Help, if anyone needs reminding, received the ensemble at SAG and three acting Oscar nominations (and one win), even though it wasn't a very good movie. Whitaker is a previous winner, so even though he's made some poor choices since his win, well, he's definitely got it in him. And yet, people needed to actually see the Butler and say 'you know what, not the best movie in the world but not the disaster we were predicting' to start taking Whitaker into account. Why? Because the movie/narrative doesn't agree with their biases.
(Full disclosure, since we're talking about biases: I have rarely seen a performance by DiCaprio that I was wowed by even though he's always serviceable, and I'm very much not in the 'he's overdue' camp. And as for Matt M... while I like his new foray into Movies-Which-Aren't-Rom-Coms, something just rubs me the wrong way about the whole process, on a personal level. Too fast, too Oscar-baity, too calculated. It feels at times like 'How to Become a Respected Actor 101, by Matthew McConaughey'. I don't know, hard to explain, and hey, Hollywood career, they're all calculated etc, but it does affect my willingness to give him all the credit and good will others have towards him. )
Does Volvagia work as a publicist for The World's End? No way that is happening in a zillion years. It's underperformed extraordinarily in Britain and isn't likely to do much better in the U.S.
Also Nat, please don't remind me that Felicity Huffman lost to that performance. Criminal.
I'm conflicted about the Oprah performance. I laughed and was moved, it was definitely a big star performance. But she didn't for one minute convince me that this was a real person as opposed to an actor's "turn". I don't know if this "turn" merits acting awards despite being enjoyably watchable.
Volvagia, I love Edgar Wright and Pegg/Frost but it is not happening with The World's End. Not an Academy movie in the slightest. None of the Cornetto Trilogy movies were. It may make some critical top ten lists and win some niche categories at the BCFAs but I will put money on it not happening.
I totally agree @Pitry. I find the predictions regarding DiCaprio surprising. The trailer for Wolf of Wall Street was impressively edited, but I don't even know why people are even expecting him to get a nomination based off that work - McConaughey and, yes, Jonah Hill both turn in more interesting work those few short scenes than he does, and AMPAS doesn't seem particularly predisposed toward him. (Though I, too, am hardly a fan of Leo's.)
I am still not totally convinced Meryl will go Supporting.
Jordan: First point: No, not a publicist. Just a fan, but one who CAN see the odd awards narrative that could form. Second: Disappointment. Yeah, especially since it's been nine years since Shaun of the Dead, and you'd maybe think the fan base would have gone out more. But I have a guess why. Third: You still have to remember The Crying Game? Didn't exactly light the box office on fire in Britain in it's first release but becoming a US financial hit led to a reissue and increased financial success in the home country. Fourth: In the UK, it was competing against (for the weird audience mix The World's End is really fighting for): The Bling Ring (which knocks out the art fan contingent), Pacific Rim (which knocks out a lot of the sci-fi vote) AND a big screen re-issue of Akira. (Which knocks out the rest of it's prospective audience.) What is competing for that disparate audience's attention in the US? They're not that interested in prestige fare like Lee Daniels' The Butler, they're not interested in low comedy like We're the Millers, and they're also not interested in something like Elysium. While I'm asking: What is on August 23 in the UK? Elysium (not chasing The World's End's dollars), The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (not chasing The World's End's dollars), Jurassic Park 3D (maybe sort of chasing The World's End's dollars), Lovelace (not chasing The World's End's dollars) and We're the Millers (not chasing The World's End's dollars) So...I'm pretty much saying Universal probably should have scheduled it as a same day US/UK release.
MY EARLY PREDICTIONS:
Picture: American Hustle
Director: David O. Russell- American Hustle
Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio- The Wolf of Wall Street
Actress: Amy Adams- American Hustle
Supporting Actor: Steve Carell- Foxcatcher
Supporting Actress: Oprah- The Butler
brandz -- i'm not convinced of that either yet. we'll see.
CMG: Oh, c'mon. What, are we supposed to think the Academy is just going to wait until 2018!? Or possibly longer, if he actually signs on to the Ant-Man sequel!?
I loooooooved The World's End, I have a Shaun of the Dead poster hanging over my bed, but I will eat my shoe if TWE makes money here in the US and/or gets any nominations. Edgar Wright just probably isn't gonna ever get that sort of recognition any time even remotely soon, and honestly, thankfully, he does not seem to give a shit. I mean the money part at the very least would be nice, but I still have the sad black cloud of Scott Pilgrim Vs the World hanging over me, and I just think he's stuck in Cults-ville til he gets Ant-Man out.
I was only not bored during The Burler when Oprah was on screen, I was impressed.
Edgar Wright is not going to direct an Oscar movie that gets anyway aside from tech awards. He's in the John Carpenter category than a potential Nolan. And that's completely fine with me.
BTW Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (hardly a black cloud for me but a candy-coated hold-over until Pegg and Frost were ready for another movie with Edgar) was ROBBED of visual effects and editing nominations.
I am still (forever) puzzled how Amy Adam keep getting mentioned and keep getting good role, multiple oscar nominations when she is really really just a mediocre actress... (She is not even pretty)
What did she do behind the curtain?
Haha so much for no more complaints about category fraud. Is there any chance we could see the medalists for last year's FB acting awards? Does it really take that long to put stars beside a name?
CMG: I suspect JA's sad black cloud has to do with Scott Pilgrim's box office. It looked (to me) like it would be a big hit, and then this wonderful movie was a giant flop.
Bewilder: if you think Amy Adams is a mediocre actress, watch Junebug. It will cure that right up.
Yeah like CMG said I meant box office, I left out the word "flopping" from that sentence accidentally. I loooooved Scott Pilgrim vs the World too. I thought it was going to be a big success, and then nothing. I don't have faith in the American public in embracing his weird wonderful movies now.
Mike
You are right about Adams... she was amazing in Junebug... I hoped after we saw that that she would become a big star ... who would have thunk??!!
You have to give Oprah some props for opening a movie at $25 million. She's a black lady and 60. That is like Haley's Comet. Rare. Give her supporting actress and let Meryl and Julia go head to head for best actress. Then you give Meryl her 4th and position Julia for the next 20 years. That makes sense to me anyway.
Ah, early year "locks." The stuff of broken dreams.
what?! hasn't cate blanchett won this?!
thanks, guys..
yes she was good in Junebug, but nothing she has done after impressed me, unfortunately..
::lights candle for SCOTT PILGRIM:: I too thought it would do much better at the box office. Still don't get how it didn't at least Visual Effects Oscar nom.
"Nobody ever tried to suggest that Salieri or Amadeus were supporting each other or that the true lead of Thelma & Louise was Thelma OR Louise but they would if those films opened today"
=> eventually they would, in the new 20/20 awards that looking back Oscar nomination and awards 20 years past, Thelma goes supporting.
Chech the link here, http://www.2020awards.org/nominees/2012/2020-2012-nominees-awards-winners-1992-oscars.php
what's wrong with the 2 lead films today?
tombeet - i cant even click over. that's just so wrong. Thelma & Louise should never be separated.
nathaniel, i realise this goes against everything you stand for but i'm curious -
can you poll the readers on who they'd choose as lead between thelma/louise and mozart/salieri? with no "both in the same category" option?
I have seen a lot of posts suggesting it's going to be Meryl and Julia competing each other or getting double nomination or if one goes supporting the other has a clearer shot at being nominated in lead. Meryl Streep yes her name alone can automatically mean being nominated, but for all we know Julia Roberts might not even get a nomination at all, no matter she goes lead of supporting.
She's a big star and that might be the biggest obstacle for her to get nominated. People look at her and see a star so even when she's really good in a movie we still see Julia Roberts in the role (very much like her Pretty Woman co-star Richard Gere). It's more likely they'll go for actress who they think it's more "actress" than "star" like Emma Thompson or Cate Blanchett. So stars like Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman will have to carefully campaign and position themselves to be seen more "actress" than "star".
Another factor is the "overdue". Like how Nathaniel put it in the remark for Kate Winslet, it's difficult once you've played the "overdue" card. Look at her record post her Erin Brockovich win. She got minor buzz for Closer, Charlie Wilson's War and Eat Pray Love but didn't convert into a real nomination.
Julia has the advantage this year of a great part in a prize winning play and co-starring with the Queen. I could be wrong but I sense comeback. Plus you have a huge PR machine behind Julia and she will campaign. She was box office queen for a long time and a Sandra vs. Julia face off is irresistible. Media catnip.
I'm in consort with Nathaniel on this: the more surprises, the better! I'm so tired of the likes of Nicole, Judi, Mery;, etc getting nominated. Hopefully we'll see strong solid performances from not so well-known actresses come year end and give Cate a good worthy run for that statuette.
@AnnaFarris: "You have to give Oprah some props for opening a movie at $25 million. She's a black lady and 60. That is like Haley's Comet. Rare. Give her supporting actress and let Meryl and Julia go head to head for best actress. Then you give Meryl her 4th and position Julia for the next 20 years. That makes sense to me anyway."
This is the most reasonable comment I have read in months. Meryl Streep wants (and deserves) a 4th Oscar, and Julia Roberts needs (and deserves) a nomination to maintain her 'wounded' starpower (and to redirect her career!). 'August: Osage County' is still the best opportunity in years of having a double lead actress nomination and, maybe, avoid category fraud in years to come.
I sense that the time is right after 25 yrs in the business for aJulia revival,Meryl won't win in supporting i feel due to her recent win,if she goes lead they cancel each other out and someone else wins either Dench or Adams,why the hate for Adams and her 4 noms,I don't feel anyone bar Field and Hunt desevred to be in 2012 line up for s/actress,she was fine but it's hard to pick a replacement,i mean Hathaway was just to ACTORLY in les mis..
I would like to point out that everyone's comments pretty much prove why none of the races can possibly be considered over. A large component of an actor's win or loss is the real-life narrative surrounding the nomination or person, regardless of the quality of the work. Russell Crowe's bad behavior, J. Hud's unceremonious dismissal from "American Idol," Heath Ledger's untimely death all most likely factored into whether or not they successfully crossed the finish line.
bonobo--Meryl needs a fourth Oscar? I would have stopped awarding her after her Kramer vs. Kramer win. She's so overrated.
Sweet baby Jesus...............Meryl has JUST won her third and people are already demanding her fourth......its exhausting.
Karen-- I haven't said Meryl needs a 4th Oscar, I have said she WANTS it... And I am not a big Meryl Streep fan (in fact I absolutely prefer Julia Roberts with all her limited acting range, within which she is so great), but I don't see why not to say she deserves another Oscar if she is as great as expected in this role.
I agree with your Cate B explanation; very very well said.
Meryl was in similar shoes with "Julie & Julia" and so was Annette Bening with "The Kids Are Alright" - big names in summer sort-of-hits or hits = both earned Oscar noms;
But I'm guessing Cate is reaching higher levels with her performance and it's much more Cate-centered than "Julie & Julia" was Meryl-centered etc.
A big plus - "Blue Jasmine" already stands at 9.5 million and it hasn't expanded yet.
If the Metacritics have finished saying what they have to say, we have a 77/100 score, which makes "Blue Jasmine" Woody's most critically acclaimed film (together with "Midnight in Paris") in centuries.
even if MERYL goes supporting AMPAS won't buy it just like they didn't back in 2008 with KATE WINSLET and the READER
MERYL will win every supporting actress award available since most award bodies just want to do / predict what OSCAR does and they miss the opportunity to throw trophies at MERYL for her role as / in the IRON LADY.
however, if MERYL does get nominated in supporting she is hands down winning; acting OSCARS usually come in pairs in short periods of time... look at MERYL's first two trophies [1979, 1982] and SALLY FIELD, TOM HANKS, KEVIN SPACEY, SEAN PENN, ROBERT DENIRO, JODIE FOSTER, HILARY SWANK.