April Foolish Predictions #8: Lead Actor

by Nathaniel R

It won't be hard (qualitatively) for Taron Egerton to outdo Rami Malek in the biopic rock star acting department. But will Oscar feel like "we just did that"?

We didn't forget about our April Foolish Predictions, but just got a wee bit sidetracked. Today's update is the marquee category of Best Actor. Our crystal ball shows us virtually nothing this year in regards to this category with everyone feeling both likely and unlikely for various reasons. One of the most confusing elements is that we know Oscar loves non-fictional characters best but half of those performances seem to be in Netflix movies and you never know which they'll give the big push to, or even release in theaters at all. In the absence of sure things, even on paper, we decided to take some wild swings. For example: Daniel Kaluuya for Queen and Slim which might prove way too divisive since it was introduced as "protest art" at CinemaCon; Ben Affleck, who never has been praised all that much for the acting side of his career, for his addiction drama Torrance. We almost went with Mark Ruffalo who reads like a safe bet in a potentially great role in Todd Haynes's untitled new film. On the other hand, Haynes is not a speedy filmmaker so the likelihood of 2020 for that feels strong.

The safest bet on paper is surely Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. But they passed right by Hanks for Captain Phillips, Saving Mr Banks, The Post, and Bridge of Spies, any of which might have netted him an easier nomination in the 1990s when they couldn't get enough of him. So you never know.  Check out the chart to see where all the big names and rising stars rank. Do you have any hunches this early? 

PREDICTION INDEX / BEST ACTOR PAGE

1972: Soaked in Booze with "The Ruling Class"

TFE will be periodically looking back at the 1972 film year before we hit the Supporting Actress Smackdown at month's end. Here's Anna from Defiant Success

Adapted from the play of the same name by Peter Barnes (who also serves the film’s writer), Peter Medak’s The Ruling Class establishes its bizarre nature early on. The plot kicks off after Ralph Gurney, the 13th Earl of Gurney (Harry Andrews) accidentally hangs himself while performing autoerotic asphyxiation. Upon his death, his only surviving son Jack (Peter O’Toole) becomes the 14th Earl of Gurney. One problem with this new arrangement: Jack firmly believes that he’s Jesus Christ...

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The Next Best Actor Race

by Nathaniel R

Pacino & DeNiro together for the fourth time in "The Irishman"

A month ago we started brainstorming about Best Actress 2019 so before the April Foolish Oscar Predictions are announced let's brainstorm about possibilities in the male acting categories. It looks thin to us thus far, reminding us that we'd be happiest with 4 female acting categories instead. That said, it's hard to keep track of everything in every stage of production so we hope you'll share anything you're exciting about that we may have missed or any hunches you have about upcoming films.

These are neither value judgments (since so few films have been screened) nor predictions (that's in April) but merely a listing of performances that are on the way...

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Nathaniel's Ballot: Best Actor / Supporting Actor

'It's not redundant to still be handing out awards after the Oscars as long as the awards themselves aren't the same!' This is what I tell myself as I wrap up the Film Bitch Awards two weeks later than is proper! There's just 3 categories to go now (so we'll be done by next weekend) before we can hold the world's fastest awards ceremony. It involves a behind-the-scenes slapping of gold, silver, and bronze visual designations onto three of the nominees in each category.

Today, we're talking about the men...

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Ranking the Oscar Clips

by Ben Miller

Of all the decisions the Academy Awards producers/directors must make, the Oscar clip decisions are surely the most covetous -- who among us wouldn't want to chose? They're fairly crucial, too.  I ranked all the clips last year, and Nathaniel was nice enough to let me do it again.  The clips preceding each of the categories ranged from brilliant to “what the hell was that?”  Let’s rank them 20-1…

Cringe-worthy

I sometimes wish I'd never been born at aaaaaaallllllll 🎵

20. Viggo Mortensen, Green Book
19. Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Woo boy.  I would personally defend the work of both of these performances, but the snippets shown on Sunday did not lend any firepower to those arguments.  Viggo gets to wax on like an idiot about not knowing the difference between Russian and German before laying on some casual racism. Malek has plenty of good moments in the Queen biopic, but a simple shot of him lipsyncing reads like an Oscar producer’s opinion on the performance itself seeping through.

Not Doing Anyone Any Favors...

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