Best Actor / Supporting Actor - Chart Updates!

by Nathaniel R

Netflix would like to have 80% of the BEST ACTOR field (Driver, Murphy, Pryce, DeNiro) but that will prove impossible.

The new predictions are in. Best Actor is more exciting and competitive than Best Actress this year which is a strange and unusual development... and we don't like it! We kid. The male actors deserve their moment in the sun occassionally, even if they're not as fun to shine light on. The strangest thing about the leading actor competition is, at least at the moment, Netflix literally appears to have about 1/3rd of the entire competitive field. But since their can be only 5, we think that this shotgun approach will only result in two nominees at best. Right now we're going with Adam Driver (who feels like the ultimate winner... though let's not pretend anything's locked up yet in late September) and Eddie Murphy (who could easily not happen given Netflix's other horses in the race).

As for Supporting Actor. It isn't that much different than Best Actor this year. This year has been fairly heavy with duet films for men (The Lighthouse, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Ford v Ferrari, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Two Popes) so naturally a few of the co-leads will definitely block out supporting players for the coveted nominations. We're mostly giving the side-eye to Willem Dafoe. He's the most egregious category frauder this year since you can't be a supporting actor in a cast of two! (There are technically a few other actors that appear in The Lighthouse but they're non-speaking cameos. It's a duet film from start to finish). It's a shame that Dafoe is competing supporting because we think he'd still be competitive for a nomination in lead despite the strong year. The only traditional-sized supporting role that we think won't be hurt by the co-leads muscling in is Alan Alda's divorce attorney in Marriage Story. In some ways he's the film's most loveable character, and Alda has been nominated for less (The Aviator). At 83 he'll have sentiment on his side, too.

UPDATED CHARTS
PICTURE | DIRECTOR | ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTOR | INTERNATIONAL FEATURE | ALL INTERNATIONAL FEATURE SUBMISSIONS 

TIFF Derring-Do Double: "The Aeronauts" and "Ford v Ferrari"

by Nathaniel R

Those magnificent men (and women) and their flying machines. What prompts people to build aerodymanic death traps in which to race at incredible never before accomplished speeds or go up up up to never before seen heights?  Today's double feature centers on just this type of man and their creations.  

FORD V FERRARI (James Mangold)
This very handsomely made film centers around a famous late 60s battle between the massive Ford Motor Company and the Italian boutique manufacturer Ferrari. How did Detroit's Henry Ford II come to battle Enzo Ferrarri in the European playground of Le Mans anyway? And how does the film get you to root for the Goliath rather than the David in this battle? That's the magic of this old fashioned well-paced movie. Older audiences might be familiar with this story but we weren't so it all played out like a fleet-footed and hot wheeled corporate drama mixed with inspirational sports movie...

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TIFF: "The Two Popes" is a Gentle Giant

by Chris Feil

Late in Fernando Meirelles’ The Two Popes, Jonathan Pryce’s Cardinal Bergoglio (who would eventually become the current Pope Francis) throws up his arms in befuddlement and spouts “Two popes?!” That kind of winning self-aware wit flows throughout the film, an unexpectedly comedic chamber piece that thrusts Pryce opposite Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI. Theirs is a gentle battle of minds as the film plays out mostly through several meetings between the two, with Bergoglio the somewhat progressive mind pushing for change in the Catholic church and Benedict adhering to stasis and tradition.

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Oscar Trivia, Weekly. A Pop Quiz!

by Eurocheese

Since Nathaniel is flying to Toronto as we speak (TIFF kicks off tomorrow and runs through Sunday, September 15th), I volunteered to handle this week's Oscar Trivia column for him. I thought it might be fun to throw out a little quiz. THE ANSWERS WILL BE AFTER THE JUMP – no peeking! -- and be honest in the comments. How many can you guess correctly?

1. The highest number of Oscar wins for a single person is a whopping 22. Name the person who won them.

2. Last year, Roma won three Oscars. That means it missed the record for the most Oscars won by a foreign language film, a record currently held by which two films?

3. Have there been more female or more African-American Director nominees in the Academy’s history? (Both are sadly too few... bonus points if you can name all of those nominees)

4. The longest screen time for an Oscar nominated performance ended up netting the performer a win. The shortest nominated performance of all time did not. Can you name these two performances?

5. Which country has won the most Best Foreign Language Film Oscars? And which country has been nominated most often in the category? 

6. Name the only actor or actress that has multiple posthumous nominations.

7. Only one person has an Olympic gold medal and an Academy Award. Name that person.

8. No film has ever won all four acting categories. Can you name the two films that came closest to that mark?

9. Name the most Oscar nominated woman in the Academy’s history.

10. How many times has a debut performance won the Best Actor Oscar?

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Oscar narratives being pushed out of Telluride & Venice

by Nathaniel R

Hmmm... let's see Joaquin Phoenix Joker and Adam Sandler Uncut Gems for Best Actor (blargh and double-blargh*), Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson for Marriage Story, A24's Waves for everything, Renee Zellweger's second Oscar for Judy, Christian Bale for Ford v Ferrari, Ad Astra for something or other (or will this go the First Man route of being wildly praised at its festival bow and then too "reserved" emotionally to actually catch on?) and... what else... what else.... Sure we missed something.  

It all feels dizzying right now since everything just began happening all at once, as is tradition this week of each year. The numbers of course don't add up. If you accept preemie buzz with no caveats about anything that happens after this week, we already have the Best Actor lineup (Phoenix, Driver, Sandler, Bale, and Banderas) and the supporting actor winner (Brad Pitt, OUATIH). But this is a small sampling of the movies and performances to come in the next few months of the year...

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