Acting Chart Updates. Four Questions
Friday, November 25, 2016 at 8:00PM Next week everything either begins to change or starts solidifying as the precursors begin. Woohoo, it's awards season! So ALL the Oscar charts were updated this week with the biggest gains this time going to Hell or High Water which wasn't just a momentary pleasure in the summer but a film people are still talking about - witness the Gotham and Spirit acting nods for Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster respectively.
have we been overestimating Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea? If she slips from the shortlist, who rises up?
BEST ACTRESS & BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
These categories are looking the most settled with 5 women in each chugging along smoothly toward the precursor glory. In fact apart from Oscar looking toward its default darlings (Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, who both did very fine work this year) it looks like Emma, Annette, Ruth, Isabelle, and Natalie all have reason to be hopeful. The same is true in Supporting Actress where five women (Viola, Naomie, Nicole, Michelle, Greta) have much more heat than others but they'll still have to fend off surging adorables like Molly Shannon in Other People and Octavia Spencer in Hidden Figures.
Q1: If Meryl or Amy place in the leading shortlist, which one of them and who gets the boot?
Q2: If voters promote Viola Davis to lead (where she totally belongs given that Fences is essentially a family/marital drama) who benefits in supporting and who suffers in lead? Imagine the chaos!
How many nods can Hell or High Water manage? We're predicting 5 at the moment.
BEST ACTOR & BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
These two categories are much more volatile because the men haven't generated half as much conversation this year.
Q3: Might we see BOTH Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster in supporting for Hell or High Water since people love that film so much? A dual nod in Best Supporting Actor hasn't happened since Bugsy in 1991?
Q4: Do you expect something like 2011 when underdogs like Demian Bichir and Gary Oldman rose up to take nominations that people initially assumed would go to Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Fassbender? And if so are Tom Hanks and Ryan Gosling pushed out and for whom?
Reader Comments (73)
Let's all watch the movie first to see if Davis' role in the film can register whether as lead or supporting. I honestly think she stands a better chance in supporting. I would love to see Kidman get another nom.
Adams is in, and also Huppert(!). Stone and Portman will be nominated too but I doubt they can win. If the overdue factor doesn't help Bening (and I hope it does), I can totally see Adams winning.
Edgerton will get a nom. Still holding a chance for Keaton. Still doubted Gosling.
Can we hold a campaign for Neeson?
@ jon
I like the ballsiness of your prediction of Asano from Silence for Best Supporting Actor, and I do think there's a long shot that a Japanese actor from Silence could get a nom in addition to Neeson, but if it goes to anyone, it will go to Yosuke Kubozuka, who plays Kichijiro. I've never heard of him before since, as far as I can tell, he's only been in Japanese movies, but Kichijiro is by far the meatiest supporting Japanese role (it's honestly a bigger part than both Neeson and Driver's roles, and definitely more crucial to the story. Also to continue to be a Silence stan, if the movie lands and gets the sort of reception that makes it a lock for a Best Picture nomination, there's no way that Garfield doesn't get nominated for Best Actor. A large part of whether the movie succeeds or fails is going to be due to his performance since his character should be in almost every scene, so to the extent that it does well, he will also get a nomination, if not also a win.
@ Craver
Davis is the female LEAD of Fences to this viewer.
On another note: I think I have to add Kevin Costner to the top of my Supporting Actor list and remove someone immediately. What was I thinking?
My list - which are obviously not predictions:
Best Actress:
Amy Adams, Arrival
Annette Bening, 20th Century Women
Taraji P. Henson, Hidden Figures
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie
Supporting Actress:
Viola Davis, Fences
Lily Gladstone, Certain Women
Janelle Monae, Hidden Figures
Lupita Nyong'o, Queen of Katwe
Rima Te Wiata, Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Best Actor:
Warren Beatty, Rules Don't Apply
Joel Edgerton, Loving
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Viggo Mortenson, Captain Fantastic
Michael Shannon, Midnight Special
Supporting Actor:
Alden Ehrenreich, Hail Caesar!
Stephen Henderson, Fences
David Oyelowo, Queen of Katwe
Dev Patel, Lion
Michael Shannon, Noctural Animals
This is what I'd like to see purely based off of performance and not narrative:
Actress : Davis, Stone, Huppert, Portman, Bening
Actor : Affleck, Gosling, Hanks, Mortensen, Washington
I'd be ok if Davis or Stone won. Washington or Affleck should win, too.
I'm dreading the backlash against the Emma Stone win.
Viola could take Best Actress easily if she campaigned there.
Ralph Fiennes also needs to pull his finger out and get campaigning, his is easily the best male performance of the year and he would waltz away with that Oscar in a year as uncertain as this - he has the performance AND the overdue narrative!
Fence, Arrival and Florence Foster Jenkins are Paramount's movies, so The Three Girls from 'Doubt" will be at the same table again at the Golden Globes (or/and SAG) if nominated.
I wish that the Academy, much like the American Theatre Wing, would develop some hard and fast rules regarding what exactly distinguishes leading and supporting performances from each other because category fraud seems to be getting worse every year. Hugh Grant, quite wonderful in Florence Foster Jenkins, is more of a lead than Meryl Streep herself, so his consideration as supporting actor is laughable.
Troy -- we've been fighting for that every year of our existence and we're losing. (sigh) there was a moment last year where I thought we were making headway... when actors were beginning to speak of and there was a chance precursors might reject the Rooney Mara "supporting" ridiculousness but everyone caved. (sigh)
Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner both have two very memorable scenes in Hidden Figures and I think they might factor in if the movie breaks out. I'd be more confident if the film was being released earlier.
I wish that the Academy, much like the American Theatre Wing, would develop some hard and fast rules regarding what exactly distinguishes leading and supporting performances from each other because category fraud seems to be getting worse every year.
Hollywood operates on a caste system. Category placement benefits awards bodies preventing them from thinking about how they'll fill out slots in the supporting category. And for those who struggle to win traction in the lead categories are taken care of there.
If Emma Stone wins,
the backlash is inevitable.
The same way it happened to Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Hathaway, Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lawrence.
Unfortunately... because I really like Emma Stone.
The backlash that Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lawrence experienced was deserved, as their performances was nothing special - and are becoming less and less special as time goes by.
The backlash against Paltrow was undeserved, I feel - because I really like her in Shakespeare in Love.
People hated her, hated her speech,
and that bled into hating the performance
and hating her.
The same with Hathaway - it was not so much the performance people hated - it was her personality, her campaigning, her "aw-shucks-what-a-surprise-that-I-won! -speeches.
But Stone has the advantage over Hathaway and Paltrow that she's more charming, likable - which I'm sure will help muffle some of the backlash.
@ Ulrich
Wait until you see the performance in comparison to the other potential nominees. Backlash guaranteed.
I agree with u, chasgoose. In everything!
Predicting Asano was like to say the same about William Hurt for A History of Violencr nomination.
But, no way THREE Actors for Silence will get noms for supporting (Neeson, Asano and Kubozuka). If two, Will be Neeson and Kubozuka.
I'm thinking that even Neeson could NOT be nominated If Kubozuka performance be oustanding.
About Garfield: If nominated, Will Win. And I really think that he Will Win one of the triple Crown of critics: NY, LA or National Society.
@Paul Outlaw - you're saying Emma Stone's performance is lightweight compared to the other potential Best Actress nominees?
Doing something that's "lightweight" and making it seem easy and effortless - with lots of charm and humour - is no small feat.
In principle it shouldn't be considered less than dramatic, heavy work.
But as I haven't seen any of the potential Best Actress nominees, except for Huppert in Elle, I can't do a comparison.
"The backlash that Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lawrence experienced was deserved, as their performances was nothing special - and are becoming less and less special as time goes by."
@Ulrich:
Natalie did not get that much backlash. All nominees that year had their backers but that was widely considered to be a deserving winner by the public and critics alike (and she had swept many of the awards - sag, bafta, globes,etc.). The only backlash she seemed to get was that she didn't really capitalize on that and continue to do great work after her win (except for now that is).
If you are trying to predict backlash for Stone, I think the comparison to JLaw is appropriate. A "light" comedic charismatic performance by a babe that people fall in love with vs. a couple of more dramatic complex portrayals that will have their very passionate backers (e.i. Riva, Chastain then and Portman and Bening now).
Similar to JLaw, if Stone wins, she'll be just fine but may have some grumblers on the internet who view her performance to be so inferior. With that said, like JLaw, she'll also have her backers too.
@huh:
It could very well be that the Portman backlash is mostly in my head! - just because I hate her Black Swan performance so much!
But I do recall there was some backlash concerning the movie's ballet scenes - people saying that she didn't deserve all the awards, because she didn't do her own ballet scenes and so on - even though the filmmakers and Portman insisted (and kept insisting) that she performed all the ballet scenes without the help of a ballet double.
(Portman's ballet double had come forward and said Portman didn't do that much, if any, actual ballet dancing.)
And much of the award traction, eventually amounting to the many awards, was devoted to her being a ballet novice before the movie, but then she trained for months and months, and did ALL her own ballet scenes in the movie!.
She got a lot of flack/backlash for that whole thing.
I don't care if she didn't do any of the ballet scenes.
I just care about (or don't care about!) her performance, which was/is shrill and one-note.
@ Ulrich
For me, it has nothing to with Stone's performance being "lightweight" compared to the other potential nominees. My point was not about degree of difficulty, but rather degree of success. Stone does an excellent job in LLL, I just don't think she is on the whole "better" or even as good in the role as Huppert, Bening, Portman, Negga, Streep, Hüller etc. are in theirs. And I haven't even seen Arrival, The Handmaiden or Aquarius yet.
Paul Outlaw - Davis is not comparable to Winslet in The Reader. Winslet was campaigning two separate performances that year - she asked to be nominated in Lead in one (likely because she was directed by her husband in it) and Supporting in the other. And she was the sole lead performance in The Reader, unlike Davis in Fences, which made her campaign as a Supporting Actress particularly egregious. There was some confusion over her category placement as a result. Davis has only one movie this year, there is no category confusion, and the film's trailer is marketing her as supporting Denzel.
"There is no category confusion..."
I beg to differ. There seems to be nothing but category confusion, except among people who have actually seen the film, who almost unanimously view Davis as the female lead
The clear parallel to the Winslet campaign is the attempt to shift the Lead category placement to Supporting in order to secure a nomination/win, for whatever reason.
I'm with Domgogo. As great as Ali was in Moonlight, Rhodes is so easily my MVP for that film and possibly my top choice for any supporting actor this year. I doubt he'll get a nomination but I so, so hope he does.
Ali and Holland gave the most polished and fully realized performances in Moonlight. I see both of them as potential nominees on Oscar morning.
@ Jon
I agree with you that if the film lands, Garfield is a lock for a nomination and becomes the instant front runner for the win. I still think the film would have to be a major juggernaut to drag Kubozuka in too, but based on the book, I feel like if Silence gets two Best Supporting Actor noms Kubozuka has a better chance than Driver. The only question is whether/how much Scorsese beefs up Neeson's role with flashbacks (and what flashbacks he adds/uses). There are things about Neeson's character that are described in the book, but not really depicted that could be meaty moments for Neeson if incorporated into scenes in the screenplay.