Oscar Volley: Two locks for Supporting Actor... and then it's wide open?

Here are Chris James and Eric Blume to discuss one of Oscar's trickiest categories, Best Supporting Actor:

ERIC:  Chris, so happy to be reunited with you, this time to discuss the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.  This category is always one of the weirdest and often the worst... I'm still not done being angry that arguably-bad Troy Kotsur beat the genius work of Kodi Smit-McPhee last year.  But that's how this award often goes.  

Let's start with our "locks".  I think we have two:  Brendan Gleeson and Ke Huy Quan.  And that's great news, because they're both splendid performances and either would be one of the best winners in this category for the last decade.  Gleeson is the embodiment of tragicomedy, and Quan finds that perfect note between farce and realism in an incredibly playful piece of acting.  How do you feel about Gleeson and Quan personally, and would you agree they're locks? 

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Almost There: Don Cheadle in "Devil in a Blue Dress"

by Cláudio Alves

Noirvember can't end without a noir-themed write-up here at The Film Experience. It falls on the Almost There series to consider a style born in shadows, that cinema which came into its own in the aftermath of war and persists in perpetual reinvention. Though it'd be nice to look back on the origins of noir, most of the classics fell outside the Academy's radar. So it's only logical to wander into the depths of neo-noir, searching for a title that embodies the best of it all, combining classical sensibilities with a modern perspective. Thus, one arrives at Carl Franklin's Devil in a Blue Dress, a 1995 adaptation of Walter Mosley's book where a 1940s-set crime drama is reframed through the centering of a Black protagonist. 

However, it wasn't the film's hardboiled anti-hero who caught the attention of awards voters. Instead, those honors befell on a supporting player – Don Cheadle in his breakout role as a dangerous man called Mouse…

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Team Experience Predix - Round 1: Post-Thanksgiving Snapshot

We'll be polling Team Experience biweekly to get their (collective) take on the Oscar race. This week, the 'Big Six' categories and Screenplay prizes.

THE FABELMANS

BEST PICTURE

Click to get expanded view.It’s a dangerous business to be an early frontrunner. However, if anyone can handle that title, it’s Steven Spielberg...

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Almost There: Paul Dano in "Love & Mercy"

by Cláudio Alves

Paul Dano's film career has been awards-adjacent since the very beginning. At seventeen, he won the Best Debut Performance Spirit Award for his work in L.I.E. Five years later, he was one of the stars of Little Miss Sunshine, the first of three Best Picture Oscar nominees in the actor's filmography. Still, though the Academy regularly loves Dano's movies, they have never shown any affection for Dano himself. That might change this year with The Fabelmans, where the actor portrays a fictionalized version of Steven Spielberg's dad in what's bound to be one of the season's biggest award magnets.

To celebrate the actor's achievements and potential first Oscar nomination, let's look back to the last time Dano was on the Academy's radar. In 2015, he almost category frauded his way to a Supporting Actor nomination for his work as Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy…

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Which young male actors will factor into awards season?

by Nathaniel R

Gabriel Labelle in "The Fabelmans"

While rising stars are a semi-annual event in the female acting categories, Oscar voters have long been resistant to young male actors. The statistics bear this out. For whatever reason (cough *the patriarchy*) voters prefer their women young / full of potential and their men older / with lots of achievements already under their belt. Yes, those stats are beginning to change. For example, Oscar voters have been much kinder to 40something to 60something actresses in the past couple of decades than they previously were. With the men, though, things have stayed much the same. 

Once men enter their 30s, awards bodies tend to take them seriously but before the 30something years it definitely takes a very special combination of the right role in the right film in the right year and with the right co-stars. Do you think any of these men will make it this year? Here are eight actors, thirty or younger, that are in the conversation or adjacent to it this season...

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