The Halfway Mark Pt 2. Actors & Actresses

I assume that the entire time you were reading the Halfway Mark Best Screenplays & Pictures you were thinking "get to the actors already!" because, damn you're predictable and also so am I and I love to pay homage to great performances. So, here they are in six categories for your perusal and debate and "I guess I'd better watch that" list-making pleasure.

Best Actor in a Limited or Cameo Role (THUS FAR): Lior Ashkenazi (of Late Marriage fame) temporarily energizes the unfortunately bland Yossi by temporarily attempting to to rub off on and up against Yossi himself with pushy sleaze; James Badge Dale, who also won a nomination in this category at 2012's Film Bitch Awards for Flight, is in every big movie now (World War Z, The Lone Ranger, Iron Man 3) and pretty much great in all of them though the roles are growing exponentially and he's already too large for this category!; Kyle Chandler memorably flips his 'clear eyes, full hearts' image on its head as an absent father in The Spectacular Now; Cheyenne Jackson is robbed of his signature voice entirely in Behind the Candelabra as a disgruntled employee/protege/lover but it turns out he doesnt need it absolutely nailing every tiny gesture and facial expression; and finally, I liked Jamie Sheridan's conflicted big business father in The East.

Best Actress in a Limited or Cameo Role: Hillary Baack, is moving in a key brief role as The East's hearing impaired member; Zoe Kazan wins best in show for a group acting exercize masquerading as a movie called Some Girl(s) with an agonizing backstory; Debbie Reynolds, is a real hoot and unrecognizable in the Liberace flick Behind the Candelabra; Orly Silbersatz Banai adds wonderful depth and shading to her history of denial in Yossi; And in a fine cast in Stoker, Jacki Weaver, makes the most of her tense few scenes as the deservedly worried unannounced visitor Aunt Ginny; and my apologies to Grace Gummer in Frances Ha who I didn't quite have room for but I liked her prickly Ivy League alumna

4 More Acting Category "Bests" after the jump

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Will Smith Doesn't Know His Oscar History

Have you read this incredibly obnoxious interview with Big Willie & Son on working together and the family business "patterns, boom!" There are a lot of ridiculous pull quotes but this one, on the Oscars is naturally my favorite. To mock.

Do you think there is a single theory to everything?
Jaden: There’s definitely a theory to everything.
Will: When you find things that are tried and true for millennia, you can bet that it’s going to happen tomorrow.
Jaden: The sun coming up?
Will: The sun coming up, but even a little more. Like for Best Actor Oscars. Almost 90 percent of the time, it’s mental illness and historical figures, right? So, you can be pretty certain of that if you want to win—as a man; it’s very different for women. The patterns are all over the place, but for whatever reason, it’s really difficult to find the patterns in Best Actress.

It's not 90 percent unless you include physical disabilities in there!!! Will Smith is neither Oscar buff nor actressexual apparently, since he's obviously dreamt of winning Best Actor (but not hard enough to push himself out of his comfort zone - turning down Quentin Tarantino is a sign that you're getting in your own way in this regard) and never given much thought to its distaff counterpart. Which is, if you think of it, totally a no brainer given his filmography. Women in his movies are merely decorative and usually extraneous and apparently, from what I've heard of After Earth, that isn't changing any time soon.

So we should help him with the Best Actress patterns in the comments. I'll start...

• Haven't you ever heard of "de-glamming", Will? That's been a popular winning strategy since Grace Kelly beat Judy Garland in 1954.

• And speaking of...
Doesn't the Fresh Prince know anything about The Princess Factor? Hepburn over Kerr, Kelly over Garland, Matlin over Turner, Foster over Close, Paltrow over Everyone, Roberts over Burstyn, Cotillard over Christie, Portman over Bening, Lawrence over Riva -- the popular 20something to early30s fresh star beauties are always beating their legendary older rivals.

• Historical figures (nowadays this has morphed into "biopic mimicry") aren't just a winning strategy in Best Actor! 

Cannes Closing Ceremony. Which Actress Do *You* Own?

I've been watching the Cannes closing ceremonies with Glenn and having a laugh or five. My favorite bits are many but include...

 ...host Audrey Tatou's chirpy "oh la la" before the Palme D'Or

...president Steven Spielberg's weirdly nervous reveals of the winners

...Bérénice Bejo's surprise at winning Best Actress (damn is she ever looking gorgeous). Well, she was getting so good at losing.

...Ang Lee's entrance (why does the mere sight of him always fill me with joy?)

Awesome female directors, stage orgasms and actresses we now own (???) after the jump...

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Best Actress Predix: Authors & Astronauts & Immigrants (oh my)

And princesses too! Actually I'm predicting neither Princess Grace (Nicole Kidman) nor Princess Diana (Naomi Watts) for the eventual shortlist though their names will undoubtedly continue to come up. Yes, the Best Actress Chart has arrived. 

Who wins ANOTHER Oscar this year? So many previous winners are back

My final shortlist is all Oscar winners -- which has only ever happened once (just last year in Supporting Actor ) but this is what my crystal ball is telling me so I obey. And anyway, it's a Previous-Actress-Winning Heavy year at least in terms of who got jobs headlining major motion pictures. Even lower in the charts there are a lot of Oscar winners, all told.  It's (maybe) that kind of year... though I could see a scenario where unOscared supporting chart players hop over to Lead Actress if they see a window and their roles are substantial enough (Adams? Harris? Winfrey?). And with 235 days left to go before Oscar nominations are announced, a lot could change: a quickly filmed or under-the-radar movie could hit it big on the fall festival circuit; holiday box office could shift focus around substantially at year's end; films could suddenly be moved to '2014 TBA' status.

Marion Cotillard will win Cannes Best Actress for... oh wait, people said this last year too and it didn't happenThe Wild Card
This time it's not a person but The Weinstein Co. themselves.  They've got more actress hopefuls than even they can handle since they're representing Grace of Monaco, The Immigrant, Philomena, August: Osage County and The Butler. (Does this clear the way for Sandra Bullock to win a second Oscar? I'm only mostly kidding) There is about a 1% chance that TWC will stay supportive of all of those films since they regular abandon their runts rather than nurturing them, to concentrate on the pick of the litter. Some of the ladies in question can generate some degree of media and internal industry interest even without puppet masters behind the scenes but not all of them. What do you think TWC will do when it's time to play favorites?  

Fun Trivia About The Top Ten on This Chart

• They have 47 acting nominations and 11 acting Oscars between them
• They range in age from 37 to 78 (will it really be a year skewing that mature?)
• 6 of them have competed directly with Meryl Streep for Oscar glory but only one, Sandra Bullock, has ever prevailed in head-to-head combat. (7 & 2 if you count Nicole winning the only Best Actress nomination from The Hours.)
• 3 Australians, 1 French, 3 Brits, 3 Americans

All First Wave Oscar Predictions
Index | Picture | Director | Actor | Actress | Supporting Actor | Supporting Actress |  Screenplays | Visuals | Sound | Animation 

Q&A: Disappointing Actresses, Mixed-Up Hunks, Subtitled Crickets

And now the return of the 'Ask Nathaniel/Q&A' series wherein you asked me questions and I pick two handfuls to answer. 

Disposable project on the line for Emily. Yes, another one.DAVID: Which actresses filmographies are you most disappointed in? I'm thinking in terms of actresses you admire and think are incredibly talented, but, for whatever reason, end up working in subpar films.

NATHANIEL: I think the popular answer here is Rachel McAdams but aside from Mean Girls I've never cared too much. The answer that came immediately to mind was Emily Blunt. It’s not that she’s making terrible films per se, it’s just that given how Oscar worthy she was in that plum comic part in Devil Wears Prada seven long years ago, and then how sexy she was in that blink and you’ll miss her bit in Charlie Wilson’s War soon thereafter, I expected her career to explode in the way, say, Carey Mulligan’s did post An Education or at least for her to be more direct competition for Anne Hathaway. I wonder why Blunt isn’t either in more demand or more interested in challenging herself. Maybe it's just bad luck. She seems to be working exclusively in indies that don't crossover, mainstream films that are quickly forgotten or headlining gigs which don't really work in some crucial way (Young Victoria, Adjustment Bureau). I’d love to see her really challenged either by a role or by an auteur. Will Into the Woods bring a happily ever after to that heat-losing career?

The second choice is Evan Rachel Wood who seemed to chuck what looked like incredible range and promise to the side for a long procession of Very Bad Girls. This was, in no small part thanks to her inarguable electricity in Thirteen (2003) but when you play variations on one theme too often you either become a superstar or people lose interest. I thought she was good in Ides of March (2011) but it isn't what she needed. What she needs is a total about face role.

JOHN T: The last foreign language film to clear $20 million was Pan's Labyrinth, almost seven years ago. What do you think it would take for a foreign language film to catch on in that way again?

Amy Adams, Oscar Tragedies, and a Beefcake Triple after the jump...

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