Prediction Updates: Lead and Supporting Actress

Oscar obsessives around the web, including myself, have been hung up on the Glenn Close vs. Meryl Streep Best Actress '80s Rematch! narrative for quite awhile now with Albert Nobbs and The Iron Lady still without real movie trailers to give the already popular media angle extra flavor. Less often discussed, and it's been nagging me for awhile now, is which young actress the Oscars will glom onto this year. Best Actress is often, statistically speaking, a beauty pageant who's who of hot 20 and 30something stars. This is not to say that the main race can't be between two 60-something ladies (it can if their names are Close & Streep) but we already know that that won't be the whole story even if it does turn out to be The Story.

There are three more slots to consider and more than that if you include the possibility that Close or Streep might not happen, if you include the precursor awards (which have room for more players) and the Supporting Actress category which has slightly more diverse preferences but which is still a sucker for a new "it" girl.

Which young beauties will be competing for gold? There isn't room for all of them.

Fresh Faces.
Which will Oscar get a Mulligan / Lawrence style insta-crush on?
ROONEY MARA, 26, with sociopathic edge and punk styling in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
FELICITY JONES, 27, doing young romance drama in Sundance hit Like Crazy.
ELIZABETH OLSEN, 22, winning acclaim as cult member in Martha Marcy May Marlene and probably winning credit for being talented younger sibling of the gajillionaire Olsen twin sisters.
MIA WASIKOWSKA, 21, proving she can carry a film and also be excellent while doing so in Jane Eyre.
ANDREA RISEBOROUGH, 29, soon to be winning "best in show" attention for W.E. 
JESSICA CHASTAIN, 30, seemingly in every other movie released in 2011 and hardly recognizable from one to the next.  

Already Stars.
Oscar's sweet spot for Best Actress wins is late 20s to early 30s. 
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, 26, serving mental patient realness in A Dangerous Method.
KIRSTEN DUNST, 29, undoubtedly memorably victimized in Von Trier's Melancholia.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS, 30, doing biopic iconography for My Week With Marilyn and romance for Take This Waltz 
EMMA STONE, 22, who won't get nominated for The Help but the enthusiasm about her career this year is totally hogging some of the spotlight that the other hopefuls are going to need. 

Who do you think will be showered with love and media attention 'round the holidays this year? Who will come up wanting? Which of the newbies will ever have careers as big as the "already stars"? Share your projections / wild prophesies in the comments.

Best Actress chart | Best Supporting Actress chart

Stoke Yourself For Stoker

JA from MNPP here, curious if y’all have been following the delightful casting news that’s been coming out bit by bit day after day for Oldboy director Park Chan-wook’s first English-language film Stoker. I mean just the fact that PCW is making an English-language movie’s exciting enough – not that I have trouble with subtitles, I'm fervently infatuated with every movie he's made, but it means one of my favorite directors is getting to round up some of my favorite Hollywood actors, which he’s doing in spades.

First, some background: Stoker’s script was written (under a pseudonym) by Prison Break actor Wentworth Miller, and is described as “a dramatic thriller about a young woman whose eccentric uncle comes back into her life after the death of her father.”

Attached to the script way back when it was first being talked about were Carey Mulligan and Jodie Foster, which already got us thinking something really good is going on with the script or Park's exciting enough all on his own to snatch up such solid names... hopefully both! Unfortunately scheduling got drawn out and Carey took off to star opposite Michael Fassbender in Steve McQueen’s upcoming film Shame (can’t blame her for wanting to go hang with Fassy for awhile) and Jodie went to work with Roman Polanski on Carnage (also can’t blame that). But Park & Co. managed no downgrade in their replacing – Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman (making up for this) stepped right in. Now them's a two-fer.

The role of the “eccentric uncle” was rumored for awhile to be recent Oscar picker-upper Colin Firth, but somebody apparently decided to age the character down a whole bunch and the role went to the 50 year old Firth’s 33 year old Single Man boyfriend Matthew Goode instead. Even though he might not pack the immediate wallop that Firth does, Goode’s shown a lot of promise in the past – he was mesmerizing in The Lookout.

We don’t have word yet when filming begins, but we're thinking it must be soon since three more names have hopped on board over the past week – Lucas Till, who played Havoc in the recent X-Men movie; Alden Ehrenreich, a cute young thing that caught Steven Spielberg’s eye and can be seen in both of Francis Ford Coppola’s most recent efforts; and most awesomely Jacki Weaver, who shoulda won that Supporting statue last year for her terrifying turn in Animal Kingdom just for the way she arched her eyebrows and smiled that sinister Grinch’s smile. If you’re keeping count, that's three count ‘em three singular Aussie actress sensations for the price of one. Can’t beat that!

Waif vs. Waif: Mia Wasikowska vs. Saoirse Ronan

[This guest post is from Ester Bloom, recently reader-spotlighted. She and I were speaking off-blog about how much we missed the old shuttered website Fame Tracker. Ester whipped up this homage to one of their best series "Two Stars: One Slot". We hope you enjoy. -Nathaniel R.]

Battle of the Stars With Unpronouncable Names

Mia & Saoirse on May 2nd, 2011 at the Met Costume Gala

Saoirse (“Sur-shuh”) Ronan and Mia Wasikowska (“Vash-i-kov-ska”) burst upon the scene at roughly the same time: In 2007, S. Ronan lent much-needed eeriness to Joe Wright’s Atonement in her first major role and received an Academy Award nomination. In 2008, Mia W. elevated both the HBO series “In Treatment” and the Daniel Craig vehicle Defiance, earning a place as one of Variety magazine’s “Actresses to Watch” in the process.

Since then, neither actress has sat on her hands. S. Ronan gave critics something to praise about Peter Jackson’s misconceived but lush adaptation of The Lovely Bones. Mia W. brought gravitas to Tim Burton’s misconceived but lush adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and helped made 2010 The Year of the Teenage Virgin with her role as the daughter in Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right.

Mia W. skipped ahead with a career-defining turn as the fierce, independent, young star of Jane Eyre, matching the intensity of Michael Fassbender. S. Ronan caught up by embodying another titular character: the fierce, independent, young star of Hanna, where she matched the intensity of Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett.

Mia as "Jane Eyre" & Saoirse as "Hanna"

Both parchment-skinned, fiery-eyed women hail from the former British Empire: though S. Ronan was born in New York, she was raised in Ireland, and Mia W. is from Canberra, Australia. They are only five years apart in age, and in many ways they could be sisters: they share a self-possession and a grace not easily found among Hollywood starlets. (Try to imagine either of them falling out of a limo, half-dressed.)

But where do they go from here? S. Ronan appears later this year in another popcorn flick about teenage assassins called Violet and Daisy directed by Geoffrey Fletcher (an Oscar winner for the screenplay of Precious). It could be good—Hanna is good, anxiety-inducing fun—but the presence of Alexis Bledel as a co-star doesn’t inspire confidence. After that, S. Ronan will return to form (and to screen with Cate Blanchett) in another, hopefully better, Peter Jackson vehicle, The Hobbit.  

Mia W. has chosen a more indie route, joining the crew of Gus Van Sant’s Restless and Rodrigo Garcia’s Albert Nobbs, as well as several other small-budget projects. 

Both of these steely sylphs have it in them to succeed despite their tongue-twisting names. Who has the edge? S. Ronan’s Hanna scared the bejesus out of audiences and Manohla Dargis, and she is already one of the youngest actresses to get an Oscar nomination; she has proven she can play to the mainstream and to art houses. Mia W. could manage a Best Actress nod this year for Jane Eyre and has plenty of other roles that will be catnip to Oscar on the horizon, but she hasn’t yet proven her box office chops. We have faith in both and this could easily be a draw, but Mia W., with more serious projects coming up, gets the edge.

Advantage: Mia W.

Podcast: Jane Eyre

New season of the podcast starts now. Though Oscar season is still many months away the Big O (and I don't mean Oprah) is not required for hearty movie conversations. Even if he likes to muscle his golden way in from time to time. In this week's episode Nick and Katey and I have gathered to talk about the dreaminess of Michael Fassbender, the skill of Mia Wasikowska, the promise of Cary Fukunaga and drafty manor houses on the moors filled with dark secrets.

For those who haven't yet read the book or seen the movie we pull back from the spoilers so fear not. But go see the movie! All three of us were fans of this particular adaptation. Also discussed, however briefly: Rango, Certified Copy and Andrea Arnold's forthcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights. It's a big year for those Brontë girls.

Podcast: Jane Eyre

This & That: Balloon House, Birthday Party, Bookshelf Franco

Refiner 28 James Franco's bookshelf analyzed. Hee.
Crave Pixar's Up (2009) balloon house recreated in real life!
Small World a follow up story to that bit about The King's Speech producer's daughter who dropped the Oscar. This one stars BANKSY.
Rope of Silicon Rememeber that movie that 50 Cent lost all that weight for? I had forgotten all about it, too.
Cinema Blend assembles / decodes all the news and rumors about Stoker which may star the impressive lineup of Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth
Variety on Julie Taymor's possible departure from the Spider-Man Broadway musical and a shutdown for the show itself.
Jacki Beat needs work, gurl! I love that Miz Beat is classy/funny/perverse enough to ask for work on her blog and threaten you with crimes simultaneously. The world needs more dangerous drag queens. I also need work but I have no funny jokes about it. Times is tough.
Movie|Line talks to Jane Eyre star Mia Wasikowska about the book and working with both Michael Fassbender and Jamie Bell.

M|L: In terms of your other love interest, you got to reunite with your Defiance co-star Jamie Bell, which was fun for me as a viewer, thinking “Forest wife!” to myself in the theater.
Mia Wasikowska: I know! We’ve already been married in a previous film! It was so much fun — Jamie is one of my favorite people to work with. We had a blast.

Also, I'm not sure how I missed this but here's Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds at La Liz's birthday party last week (you'll remember her actual birthday was Oscar day).

This casts a whole new light on that bit in Carrie's stage show mapping the complex tabloid-ready relationships of Elizabeth Taylor to her parents Eddie and Debbie.