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Entries in Punditry (446)

Monday
Feb042019

Comment Party Fun: What will Meryl Streep's Oscar ballot look like?

We're just 20 days away from Hollywood's High Holy Night and voting on who will win the Oscars begins in just 8 days. Since 20 is the number for the day we're thinking of Meryl, the only actor in history to have amassed 20+ acting nominations (she's at 21 and the number will presumably climb) and we're wondering who she'll be voting for. Care to make a conjecture in the comments? We know from her speeches at awards shows that she really does watch, value, and think about work by other actors (even shouting out high quality non-nominees which is pretty rare as awards season behavior goes - remember when she praised Adepero Oduye's stunning debut in the little seen LGBT drama Pariah?).

Let's get silly in the comments and make presumptious guesses. Oh come on, you know you want to! I'll make a guess on Best Actor and Best Actress after the jump to get you started...

Click to read more ...

Friday
Feb012019

Best Actor & Best Actress. Vote on the Trivia-Filled Charts

by Nathaniel R

Lead acting nominees ranked by how many Best Picture nominees they've starred in.

We continue to expand the Oscar charts so we're hope you're enjoying them. All four acting charts are now complete, with Best Actress and Best Actor both newly updated with lots of trivia, theories on how the actors were nominated and more. Just like how we did with Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor. Don't forget you can vote each day on who should win. But for the here and now, here's some trivia in relation to all four acting categories combined:

BY THE NUMBERS
64 = average gross (in millions) of their nominated movies (box office numbers via a couple of days ago)
52 = number of Oscar nominations between them
47 = the average age of this year's nominees 
33 = average number of films they've appeared in
18 = number of children they have among them
9 = number of Emmys won by this group (Close x 3, King x 3, McCarthy x 2, and Malek)
5 = number of Oscars won by this group (Ali, Bale, Rockwell, Stone, and Weisz)
3 = number of Tonys won by this group (Glenn Close only)
2.6 = average number of Best Picture nominees that they've each starred in*
2.4 = the average number of Oscar nominations (in acting) for this year's nominees
2 = number of the nominees married to other famous actors (Elliott & Weisz)
2 = number of nominees who have played Meryl Streep's immediate family on film (Olivia Colman was her daughter in Iron Lady, and Glenn Close her mother in Evening... albeit in flashbacks with Mamie Gummer as the young Meryl)

PERCENTAGES
35% of the nominated characters are LGBTQ people
35% of the nominees were born outside the US (Adams, Aparicio, Bale, Colman, de Tavira, Grant, Weisz)
35% have also been Emmy nominees (Ali, Close, Driver, Elliott, King, Malek, McCarthy)
35% have also been Emmy nominees (Ali, Close, Driver, Elliott, King, Malek, McCarthy)
30% of the nominees are Water signs (3 Scorpios, 2 Pisces, and 1 Cancer) 
25% are former Oscar winners
25% of the characters nominated are politicians of some sort, professionally or in practice
25% of the characters nominated are musicians or employed in the music industry
20% of the nominated actors have performed on Broadway (Close, Cooper, Stone, Weisz)
20% of the nominated characters are dying or dead by the credit scrawl of these pictures.
20% are former Emmy winners
10% are former Tony nominees (Close & Cooper)
0% of the actors nominated are LGBTQ ...
(but Lady Gaga is mother monster so maybe she counts a little?)

RANDOMNESS
There are no Geminis nominated! It's the only sign not nominated and as a Gemini, we object!

* Those figures are much higher than they used to be pre 2009 when the Best Picture field expanded. It used to be uncommon to have lots of Best Picture nominees on your resume which makes Willem Dafoe's record particularly impressive. He's appeared in the most Best Picture nominees of this group of 20 actors, SIX in total, and yet only one of them (The Grand Budapest Hotel) happened in the current expanded Best Picture era. 

Saturday
Jan262019

Who will win SAG tomorrow?

by Nathaniel R

Is the Oscar race as locked up as we think, or will SAG hold some surprises? Care to conjecture about what will win? I'll confess, perhaps foolishly, that I think we could be in for some surprises. Conventional wisdom will tell you that Close, Bale, Ali, and Adams will be the winners... though conventional wisdom will not solve the case of "who wins Outstanding Cast?" since the arguable Best Picture frontrunner Green Book and two most Oscar-nominated pictures Roma and The Favourite are not nominated in that category. With three heavy-hitters out, and Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born, and BlacKkKlansman as the nominees, that prize is something of a mystery...

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Jan242019

Supporting Actor Fun: How were they nominated? What do they have in common?

RANDOM TRIVIA: Sam Rockwell is the only member of this shortlist that isn't tall! Did you know that 80% of the supporting actor category this year are 6'1" or taller? Only Sam Rockwell isn't at 5'8".

Did you know that 80% of the supporting actor nominees this year were born in California?! Now you do. Mahershala Ali (Green Book) was born in Oakland, Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) in San Diego, Sam Elliott (A Star is Born) in Sacramento, and Sam Rockwell (Vice) in Daly City. The only non-Californian is Richard E Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and though you might have assumed he was born in London, you'd be wrong. He was born in Swaziland, in the late 50s when it was still a British protectorate. The country has been independent for 50 years now and last year rechristened itself The Kingdom of Eswatini. 

On the newly updated Best Supporting Actor chart you can read more trivia about the nominees, vote on who you think is best in the category every day, and share in our speculation about how they snagged those coveted nominations this year. 

ICYMI: Picture & Director charts are also robustly updated. All other charts are updated with the official nominees and preference polls if you'd like to start voting but are not fully filled in yet otherwise. 

Tuesday
Jan222019

12 Things We Learned From the Oscar Nominations

Happy Christmas Oscar Nomination Day! Herewith quick observations on the 91st Academy Award nominations.

10 THINGS WE LEARNED (OR RELEARNED) FROM THE OSCAR NOMINATIONS

Cuarón with the first of his many wins this year1. All the times that Alfonso Cuarón made his (plentiful) Best Director acceptance speeches about Marina & Yalitza as the "heart" of his film, really paid off. Voters were paying attention, even if only subconsciously and both actresses were nominated in volatile fifth spots in their categories.

2. It's tough to snag a "lone" Oscar nomination for your movie if you're a non-legendary actor. Timothée Chalamet and Glenn Close and Willem Dafoe were all working at that this year and the one that dropped out was Chalamet for Beautiful Boy. He'll be legendary one day but he just became really famous last year and the film had no other boosts to keep him in the conversation...

Click to read more ...