Halfway 2012. Supporting Actors (Thus Far)

We're surveying the "best" of the year thus far even if the pickings are slim. Previously we covered Actress, Actor and Picture. Now, the gentlemen in the sidelines.

SUPPORTING ACTOR  January through June Releases
Surveying what we've seen so far in this particularly category is challenging. In ensemble pieces from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to To Rome With Love, there just wasn't a breakout performance that rose so far above the film's limitations that you had to praise it. Mark Ruffalo's funny Hulk and Michael Fassbender's suave killer in The Avengers and Haywire respectively came closest but were better showcases for the commanding charisma of the actors than their actual skills. So if I had to turn in a ballot RIGHT NOW (god forbid) it'd go like so... 

Explanations and Team Experience survey  if you click to continue...

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Halfway House 2012. Lead Actor (Thus Far)

It's part three of our Halfway Mark rundown as we survey the film year thus far from January through June releases. It's been crickets thus far in terms of possible Oscar players (with the exception of one of these men -- but we'll get to him in a minute.) but that doesn't mean there isn't work to appreciate.

If I was forced to draw up a ballot right now...

explanations and Team Experience commentary after the jump

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Halfway House 2012. Lead Actress (Thus Far)

Don't you love to take stock every six months? At the very least it's a good excuse for list-making. Lists! Wheeee. If all Academy members did this before they sent in their nominee ballots in January, we might end up with a spread of nominees that wasn't so December slanted. I never decide who to vote for this early but I do draw up lists of performances I enjoyed /  respected to consider again later in the year when all the advertising rushes in an effort to shape the highly malleable collective subconscious and thus, votes.

If I had to draw up a ballot right now:

• Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  The movie is considerably less broad once it's reigned in by her warmth, laughter, and subtlety
• Valerie Donzelli, Declaration of War (France's Oscar submission 2011, US release in 2012)
  She still has raw wound access to what must have been a highly traumatic experience (she and her ex-boyfriend play fictionalized versions of themselves trying to save their nearly fatally ill child) but the turn has a wide range of feeling and levity via mischievous romantic impulses and gallows humor.
• Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games
  How soon till she's back at the Oscars? Maybe not for this... directly. 
• Stephanie Sigman, Miss Bala (Mexico's Oscar submission 2011, US release in 2012)
  Wonderfully naturalistic. She just vibrates with impotent terror. 
• Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild 
  A force of nature even while nature is whipping up mythological force all around in "the bathtub" 

Oscar thoughts and other fine performances after the jump...

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Pfeiffer Next Pfriday... "People Like Us"

I'm not supposed to talk about the movie yet but Pfans rejoice. I can't resist telling you that Michelle Pfeiffer enters the new drama People Like Us with a bracing cold snap. The movie has been racing along rather manically to set up its plotty-plot-plot and suddenly she's there slapping it with a "snap out of it!" move. Settle down, movie, settle down. 

Pfeiffer's Confession in PEOPLE LIKE US

She's wonderful in it. Three friends were seen afterwards arguing about how wonderful and no one agreed. Friend A: She's special in it if you haven't seen her seminal performances. Friend B: I thought she was great but there's no part... ugh, there's no part! Friend C: [unintelligble drooling] Pffeifffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffferrrr.

I confess. Friend C was me. (I'm not especially verbal immediately post-screening.) My point: It's easily her best work since Chéri. Not that there's been much work since Chéri. Shut up!

Pfeiffer hits the media circuit (Good Morning America) to promote People Like UsBut as for her current state of work. She promises more now that the empty nest looms in just one year's time. She recently made a rather grandiose statement in a Zap2It interview...

I’m always feeling that my best performance is still in me. And I think all artists feel that whether you’re a painter, actor, a musician — I hope so. I think it’s what keeps me going... I’ve noticed a lot of people who win the Academy Award — Best Actor, Best Actress — they go through a long period where they don’t work for a while and I worry about them. There’s sort of that wanting to achieve that, which keeps you going, and then when you achieve it, it’s like, ‘Well, what now?’ I don’t ever want to lose that fire that I have for it.”

Pfeiffer talking Oscar? Whoa. In a better entertainment world, that'd be leading story everywhere.

If this quote is indication, something has shifted in her headspace. I like to imagine that it was that campaigning for Jeff Bridges' Career Oscar (aka Crazy Heart) a few years ago. Does this mean we'll see her chasing the gold man again in prestige pictures and meatier roles?  I've learned not to expect too much face time from the elusive goddess but it sure would be a welcome sight.

Are you planning to see People Like Us? Or are you waiting for a great picture or a great role before welcoming her back.

The Diary of Peggy Siegal

High Powered Publicist Peggy Siegal's has just released her Cannes Diary at the Huffington Post. Better three weeks late than never. Peggy throws great Oscar shindigs here in NYC where much handshaking and FYC vote counting happened right before my very eyes last season (remember that party for The Help I wrote about? - that was one of my favorite pieces last year).

Can't wait for the festivities to begin again! For Peggy of course they already have.

Peggy @ Cannes with Michel Hazanavicius & James Woods

My favorite days of the name-dropping diary (Frank Langella would be proud) both happen to be Thursdays.

May 17th. Jacques Audiard's screening of Rust and Bone at the Palais is packed. Marion Cotillard portrays a marine-park trainer who loses her legs to a killer whale. Stop. It's a love story. A street fighter, played by Belgian Matthias Schoenaerts, literally sweeps her off her digitally-erased feet and I promise you, she is walking into the Oscars this year in a Dior Haute Couture.

Peggy promises! Translation: Take note.

Hey, it's not a bad bet. Even if Rust & Bone proves to outré for the bulk of AMPAS voters there's always Cotillard's other juicy lead role in the tentatively titled Low Life in which she plays a reluctant immigrant prostitute. If The Weinstein Company opts to give that one an Oscar qualifying 2012 release. (Oscar voters do love the world's oldest profession.) 

Kidman and Cotillard, both Oscar winners, won fresh buzz at Cannes last month. Will they snag their fourth and second nominations respectively?

Thursday May 24th is my favorite entry. It begins like so.

Lee Daniels shows the The Paperboy. Nicole Kidman is a trailer park Brigitte Bardot. Zac Efron, all grown up, lusts after Nicole wearing underpants. Matthew McConaughey is a hunky gay journalist and John Cusack is the crazy inmate on death-row in this erotic thriller set in1960s Florida.

Lee unabashedly announces at the press conference that his deep understanding of the nutty and violent characters are taken from his personal experience. As he says, "I know these people. My brother is in jail for 18 years for murder." He had Nicole interview seven real women who have long-term relationships with men in jail, adding insight to her stunning performance.

Arriving on Lady Joy, Denise Rich's 170-foot yacht, appropriately disheveled but always chic, Denise whisks me off to her stateroom and instructs her professional hair and make-up staff to fluff me up.

Famous love birds Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are staying on the boat and have just come up from their bedroom for lunch. Kim and I stare at each other's makeup as I sit as close as possible without invading her space. Her skin is like butter. She is quite beautiful.

I rant about every film I have seen. It's a tad too early for Kanye and Kim to digest all this information. Soft-spoken Kanye tells me about his short art film Cruel Summer. Filmed in Qatar, the short is inspired by theRomeo and Juliet-esque classic Middle Eastern tale Antar and Abla.

David Geffen sends the "Rising Sun's" tender, which is larger than my New York Park Avenue apartment to pick me up for lunch. At 453-feet, I board the sixth largest yacht in the world built by Larry Ellison for over $200 million and redesigned by Geffen. From sea level, I climb four flights to greet David. I have three words for him, "Not big enough."

Lunch is with Keith Urban and Wendi Murdoch on an outdoor deck. Again I rant about every film but to a more astute reception. David tells me he never leaves the boat. Would you, if you had a basketball court on board?

On the tender back to shore Keith tells me Nicole and he are moving to the South of France in September for three months while she films Grace of Monaco, a drama about thesp-turned-princess Grace Kelly.

My head is spinning from trying to imagine Kim Kardashian conversing about art movies though I have no trouble imagining the follow up with Keith Urban - he is married to our Nicole after all. But that's Cannes for you - an improbable mix of Household Name Celebrities Famous Just Because They're Famous who might never have set foot in an arthouse in their lives and films made by Household Names if your household happens to be composed entirely of cinephiles. (In which case, can I come over for dinner?)

Believe it or not, this is but a tiny sample. It's a must read. Poor Clive Owen even gets stuck in an elevator with fans for 20 minutes! 

P.S. Yes, I'll update the Oscar charts soon.