Questions we're asking ourselves about Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor

All Oscar charts are being updated over the next four days but we started with Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor because there are so many questions haunting us. So go ahead and answer the following quandaries if you can...?

1. Can Tom Hanks finally break his strange Oscar curse?
Before anyone had seen A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood he was a lock "on paper" in Best Actor. But the movie turned out to not be a biopic at all but something far more creative and we'd argue more successful than a biopic would have been, in which Mr. Rogers is more of a symbol and catalyst for another man's journey. It's a gorgeous movie but the switcheroo from expectations to reality will likely throw some Oscar voters as well as general moviegoers. Hanks has been delivering better performances of late than the kind he used to win Oscars for but AMPAS hasn't nominated him in 19 years. Should we expect that they'll continue that "you already got yours" cold shoulder rather than be predicting him? 

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Horror Actressing: Kirsten Dunst in "Interview With the Vampire"

by Jason Adams

All of the best moments in Interview With the Vampire belong to the eleven-year-old. Re-watching the film now here on its 25th anniversary there's a lot to like (Tom Cruise allows himself to be camp in ways that he usually is but this time purposefully, and Neil Jordan floods everything with opulent blood-red atmosphere) and there's a lot to hate (it's a slog and Brad Pitt is awful) but there's really only one thing to love, and that thing is Kirsten Dunst every single second she's on-screen as the immortal vampire trapped in a little girl's perpetual curls.

The story goes that Dunst was the first girl that they auditioned for the role of "Claudia" but that she auditioned twice -- her agent supposedly told her she was terrible the first time through and forced her back into the room to do it all over again. "How avant-garde," indeed. Still that gambit worked, and one of our greatest actresses got her start by slashing up multiple nannies and kissing Brad Pitt on the mouth -- an experience Dunst maintains was "gross," speaking for exactly zero other people aged eleven to one hundred and eleven...

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Podcast: The Irishman, Terminator Dark Fate, and Oscar Buzz

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R 

Index (60 minutes)
00:01 Murtada's New Fest jury duty
03:00 Martin Scorsese's The Irishman and why it should have been called I Heard You Paint Houses.  Thoughts on the running time, Thelma Schoonmaker's editing, the de-aging visuals, and the performances of Anna Paquin, Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino. And a trend in 2019: directors revisiting their favourite themes reflectively this year: Scorsese, Almodóvar, and Tarantino
23:30 The Best Supporting Actor Oscar race: Pacino versus Brad Pitt? Plus tangents about Marriage Story, Ford V Ferrari, Dolemite is My Name, Just Mercy and Honey Boy
43:00 Best Actor and Best Director races and what The Irishman's true competition is
50:00 Terminator Dark Fate  and Harriet
57:45 The Best Actress race - is Cynthia in?

READ: A thoughtful positive review of Harriet from K Austin Collins
SHARE: Two tweets we mention...

Harriet is not my favorite film of the year but if you gave hours of your life to see Darkest Hour and The Theory of Everything, you have time for a Harriet Tubman movie.

— Murtada Elfadl (@ME_Says) October 29, 2019

TERMINATOR DARK FATE not giving us an ass shot of Gabriel Luna (the first time traveller not to get one in the franchise) is homophobia. pic.twitter.com/5bR2hgcxGl

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) October 23, 2019

 You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

I Heard Scorsese Paints Houses

Top Ten: Greatest Supporting Actors of the Decade Who Weren't Oscar Nominated

A truth. Year after year, Best Supporting Actor is the category with which we have the most disagreement with Oscar. Before our hearts are broken anew this impending season we wanted to celebrate the decade that's nearly behind us. We tend to view it Best Supporting Actor as the category wherein the Academy acting branch is at their absolute laziest each year, though we've never quite figured out why so much of their laziness funnels into this category ("whoever's in a best picture! YOU")

Today, for fun, a grumpy what-coulda-been list celebrating ten performances that rank among the best supporting work this decade...

10 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR PERFORMANCES OF THE '10s
THAT WERE NOT OSCAR NOMINATED

10 Tracy Letts, Lady Bird
Oscar nominees he was superior to that year: All but Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project

Want to buy him all the "World's Greatest Dad" mugs for this performance. This kind of warm performance easily finds a home in Supporting Actress but "Supportive" fathers are a no go for voters for reasons we've never been able to ascertain apart from basic toxic masculinity... and that being supportive is just not considered an interesting or valuable thing in a male role... 

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News & Tidbits: France, Brad Pitt, Julie Andrews and more...

Deadline France will send contemporary police/citizens/gang tensions drama Les Miserables to the Oscars (sorry, Portrait of a Lady on Fire fans)
Latino Entertainment Journalists Association - In their first ever TV awards, Barry, When They See Us, Chernobyl, and Euphoria lead the nominations. Jimmy Smit (Lifetime Achievement) and Isabella Gomez (Breakout) will also be honored.
Indie Wire - Have you heard that Brad Pitt is “abstaining” from Oscar campaigning. In our long years of following the Oscar race this only works for mega-stars and those who have just given undeniable performances (like Mo’Nique in Precious). Everyone else has to play the game. 

After the jump Julie Andrews, Maggie Cheung, Downton Abbey, Kevin Spacey and more…

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