Some Thoughts on the Best Actor Race

by Eric Blume

While Nathaniel updates the Oscar charts over the next two days, I thought I'd chime on with some thoughts on one of the year's most packed-with-candidates categories, Best Actor.  It's always good for TFE readers to talk about the big races, and I'm here to offer a perhaps unpopular take. Since the debut of King Richard at TIFF in September, many have crowned Will Smith as the runaway winner of this year's Oscar.  Smith is a well-liked, bona fide movie star with twenty years of box office hits and solid performances.  He may indeed be our victor.  But after finally catching up with the film this past weekend, I'm going to put it out there that I don't think his victory as assured as so many do.

Sure, Smith gives a charismatic and spirited performance in the film, and his megawatt charm holds the picture together despite its weaknesses and cliches.  But there's not much of an arc to this character, who finishes the picture right where he starts it...

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The AFI Top Tens are here - what does it mean?

by Nathaniel R

One of the hit and miss traditions of year-end hoopla is the American Film Institute's Top Ten List. This list, which has a rotating jury, began as something kind of unpredictable but it's been veering towards straight up Oscar Best Picture frontrunners mirroring for some years now. The ten titles they've cited this year are...

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Best Supporting Actor is unusually confusing for mid-November!

by Nathaniel R

19 of the Oscar hopefuls in this category

If you've been reading The Film Experience for more than a year you already know that we do our best to avoid the typical Punditry habit of giving out Oscar statues before nominations are even announced. That's the super gross reductive part of Punditry and its far more exciting (and generous) to focus on who might and who should be nominated. Every once in a while the awards gods will comply and throw us a truly confusing race. Such is the case with Best Supporting Actor this season.

Depending on how you look at it there are anywhere from 10-20 contenders still in play and this is just the way we like it...

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Best Picture, Directors, Screenplays. Where are we at?

by Nathaniel R

With virtually every late year release, save arguably House of Gucci, meeting an enthusiastic response even if they weren't quite expected to (hello showbiz drama Being the Ricardos and all star satire Don't Look Up) and two more potential behemoths about to start screening (West Side Story and Nightmare Alley) the Best Picture race is yet more crowded and confusing. Let's break it all down...

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Kidman rising, Stewart holding for Best Actress. But who else?

by Nathaniel R

Our favourite category! Not that Oscar chooses well but it's always the best acting category IN THEORY. So let's discuss Best Actress. You know you want to.

THE SURE THINGS
While Kristen Stewart has maintained the early frontrunner lead handily for her work as Princess Diana in Spencer, response to this past week's screenings of Being the Ricardos have suggested that Nicole Kidman could overthrow her for Oscar #2 for her work as Lucille Ball. She's sensational in the film, doing really interesting work (vocally and physically) differentiating between Lucille Ball and Lucy Ricardo, and also marrying some elusive internal issues like creativity, inspiration, ambition, with external stuff like a chain-smokers voice and the drama of the plot and multiple interpersonal conflicts. Ball's tetchy relationships and hot/cold rapports with each I Love Lucy cast and crew member is brilliantly differentiated and articulated. Besides, if any current one-time acting winner deserves a second statue, it's Kidman. This theoretical competition between Stewart and Kidman is interesting because both films originally raised eyebrows with their casting...

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