Acting Chart Updates. Four Questions

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?

ALL OSCAR CHARTS ARE UPDATED HERE

Thoughts I Had... on THR's Actress Roundtable Cover

The annual tradition commences. Thoughts that came to me in the order they came to me with a few interjections from others...

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Fences, His & Hers

The adaptation of August Wilson's Fences is under embargo so we're not supposed to review it. I notice that hasn't stopped anyone but I play by rules (sigh). Let it suffice to say for now that it's super. Denzel Washington stays out of the play's way and the play is so grand that that's all you need. Can we reverse time and have him do this for August: Osage County and Doubt? They both derailed themselves with nervous attempts to jazz up the material to be A MOVIE.

There's no awkward attempts to "open" Fences up, and that tightness, that feeling of no escape informs this in the same way it informed the plays of August and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which all use their single settings brilliantly to inform and confine and reflect the characters. Fences is just these characters (seven of them in total), this time (the 50s), and this place (Pittsburgh) and it's beautifully acted. 

P.S. So depressed that they aren't gunning for His & Hers Leading Oscars to match their His & Hers Leading Tonys.

Min-hee Kim's Secrets and Lies in "The Handmaiden"

by Chris Feil

Much of the praise for Park Chan-Wook's The Handmaiden has favored the director's twisted vision, the sumptuous design elements, or its grinning audacity. Sure the film is as immaculately crafted as all that talk has promised, but there one thrilling puzzle inside the film worthy of equal regard is the lead performance by Min-hee Kim.

For a film as plotty and opulent as The Handmaiden, you can understand how any performance might not be the first takeaway. But believability of the narrative's many twists falls largely on Kim's coolly dexterous shoulders...

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On Ruth Negga's emotional power in "Loving"

by Murtada

Ruth Negga gives Loving its heart and soul. From the very first frame, director Jeff Nichols relies on her expressive face to tell the story of Mildred and Richard Loving, the mixed race couple at the center of 1967 Supreme Court ruling that changed anti-miscegenation laws. The Lovings paved the way for generations of mixed race families. Nichols starts with Negga, his camera moving into a close up. A silent moment as we take in her big-eyed, made-for-cinema face. Then the line “I’’m pregnant” and we're swept right into this couple’s story. No need for us to see how they met and fell in love. Negga tells us the whole story with her face and delivery of that line.

Throughout the film, which puts the court cases to the periphery, it’s Negga's face that continues to tell the story...

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