Oscar Chart Updates: Supporting Categories

by Nathaniel R

While both Best Actress and Best Actor (recently discussed here and here) appear to have furious volatile competitions for the anxiety-provoking fifth slots, is the same true in the Supporting categories? 

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Oscar Trivia: Concerning double-acting nods. How many films could do that this year?

by Nathaniel Rogers

How many films will be nominated for acting this year? That question reads odd on the surface as there are 4 acting categories with 5 slots each. So the answer is obviously 20?. Nope! Usually at least a few films will score multiple acting nods, so 20 different films just doesn't happen.

But what we want to talk about specifically today is double-nominations within a single category. That's very common, happening more than half the time. In 55 of Oscar's 93 years to date, at least one acting category offered up a double from a single film. Sometimes more than one of the four categories will offer up a double nomination.  So what about this year...

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Oscar Chart: Best Supporting Actor's potential spoilers

by Nathaniel R

We live in fear of a Jared Leto nomination. Do you?

When we last dove deep into Best Supporting Actor just over a month ago it felt like there were 10-20 contenders still in the conversation. Sadly once the critics began to throw their weight entirely behind just two contender (Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Power of the Dog and Troy Kotsur in CODA) and the Globes and the Critics Choice came up with almost identical lists  (Kodi + Troy + Ciaran Hinds and Jamie Dornan from Belfast) the race began to look unlike a race at all but more of a slow waiting game until the Oscar nominations which are still five weeks away.

Is there reason to hope for the race to widen again? We'd like to think so...

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Interview: Mike Faist on nihilistic teens, stardom, and "West Side Story"

by Nathaniel R

Mike Faist on his "transcendent" experience making West Side Story

The reinvention of West Side Story (2021) has been the subject of much conversation since it opened, from Spielberg's incredibly enduring career, to the health of the movie musical genre, to the complicated subject of its Oscar prospects since the 1961 picture was a sweeper. The one thing that's felt especially unanimous in the response, though, is the exciting work from a trio of Broadway breakouts making a very big leap into movie stardom: Tony nominees Ariana DeBose and Mike Faist and Tony winner David Alvarez (Bernardo). I had the pleasure of sitting down with our new Riff, Mike Faist a couple of weeks ago to discuss the movie and his career (well, sort of. Read on).

He was in great spirits, laughing frequently, and filled with praise for his co-stars. Coincidentally we had both just been back to a Broadway show for the first time since the shutdown. He describes theater as an important "communal empathy project" and West Side Story continues that tradition.

Faist is funny and thoughtful. He is also, as it turns out, self-deprecatingly aware of his caginess around certain topics, like, his future and stardom...

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Best Supporting Actor is unusually confusing for mid-November!

by Nathaniel R

19 of the Oscar hopefuls in this category

If you've been reading The Film Experience for more than a year you already know that we do our best to avoid the typical Punditry habit of giving out Oscar statues before nominations are even announced. That's the super gross reductive part of Punditry and its far more exciting (and generous) to focus on who might and who should be nominated. Every once in a while the awards gods will comply and throw us a truly confusing race. Such is the case with Best Supporting Actor this season.

Depending on how you look at it there are anywhere from 10-20 contenders still in play and this is just the way we like it...

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