Oscar Volley: Who will take the fifth slot in Best Actress?

Team Experience will be discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Nick Taylor and Eurocheese...  

NICK: We’ve arrived at the most crowded acting category of year, which doesn’t necessarily mean this category will be difficult to predict. If you look at the fifteen women in Nathaniel’s Best Actress predictions -- I think Lesley Manville should be higher for Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris -- you can see that the fifth slot is going to be a bloodbath. It makes it even harder to narrow things down when so many of the turns are fantastic. The sheer amount of chaos offered from the this category in the past couple years makes it hard for me to feel comfortable with setting anything in stone even as we reach the end of the year. 

I wanna honor the messiness of the category, from year to year, and spice up how we order this volley. Euro, of all the leading actresses from 2022 with minimal-to-no Oscar buzz, who would you rank among the very best?

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TÁR dominates Indiewire's Critics Survey

by Cláudio Alves

© Focus Features

Despite their name, one shouldn't consider the Critics Choice Awards as an accurate reflection of critical consensus. More often than not, that organization seems singularly fixated on predicting the Oscars to the point it's hard to denote any idiosyncrasies of taste. To get a better grasp of what the critics think, one should regard such surveys as the one Indiewire did with 165 critics and journalists, among them our own Nathaniel Rogers. Though various titles are mentioned across nine lists, one picture stands tall above all the others, signaling a clear favorite from the season. TÁR obliterates the competition, damning them all to hell like the maestro herself, raving like a lunatic with an accordion in hand.

The survey results, plus some commentary, after the jump…

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Tweetweek

I will miss Twitter when it's gone even though it was kind of a hellscape. Anyway, here are some choice showbiz related tweets from the past couple of weeks, curated for this crowd here at TFE...

Cate Blanchett has yet to TRULY challenge herself as an actress by playing the role of a mentally sound lady who has a nice day

— Chelsea Pope (@chelseathepope) November 6, 2022

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"TÁR" is an exceptional film with a terrible ending

By Ben Miller

I can't say I went into Todd Field's TÁR, only his third film, with any sort of expectations.  Rave after rave of Cate Blanchett's performance piqued my interest but I wanted to go in with fresh eyes so I didn't read them. The opening credits hit.  We're in for something different.  Then we get Lydia Tár's introduction and her interview with Adam Gopnik.  All the way on board. The next two hours were magical, transfixing.  This is a perfect film. It might be my new number one of the year!  Everything was working.  The tone, the supporting players, the drama, the comedy.  Nothing was missing.

But then we reached the last 15 minutes. SPOILERS AHEAD - READ ONLY IF YOU'VE SEEN TÁR...

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Breaking: "Hot Ones" now a genuine stop during Oscar campaigns

by Nathaniel R

img via "Hot Ones" on YouTube

We're not the first to observe this but lately Oscar winners/hopefuls have been appearing on "Hot Ones". The popular YouTube show features celebrities testing their tolerance for increasingly molten hot sauce on chicken wings. They then try and promote their work while in visible pain. The show launched seven years ago and went viral in its second season with a Key & Peele episode. The early seasons were mostly musicians, comedians, and tv personalities but major actresses are appearing regularly now. Cate Blanchett's episode was released yesterday...

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