93rd Academy Awards: The Women of Best Actress

By Abe Friedtanzer

When I requested to cover this category just one week after Oscar nominations were announced, I didn’t realize quite how competitive it was going to be, putting us in a scenario where anyone could win. Day won the Golden Globe, Mulligan scored with the Critics Choice Association, Davis won the SAG, and McDormand won the BAFTA! Fortunately, this is a truly fantastic slate, and as a result, I’m not going to rank them in any order of quality. Let’s dive into a remarkable list of some of this year’s best female performances…

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BAFTA predictions? Why not!

by Nathaniel R

Rather famously the BAFTAs did a gigantic overhaul of their nomination process to insure gender parity and diversity in their nominations. Many of the individual category nominations were decided by tiny juries. But for the winners the whole voting body will vote. Given that the nominations themselves were impossible to foresee perhaps the winners will be too? So lets just try our hand at divining what might come to pass.

FILM

• The Father
• The Mauritanian
• Nomadland
• Promising Young Woman
• The Trial of the Chicago 7

WILL WIN: This is actually a tough call. BAFTA has disagreed with Oscar more than we commonly think for the top category...

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Does Having a Co-Star Nominated in the Same Category Help or Hurt a Frontrunner?

by Christopher James

"Judas and the Black Messiah" became the 19th film to earn two nominations in Best Supporting Actor. Both Lakeith Stanfield (left) and Daniel Kaluuya (right) were nominated.Daniel Kaluuya has won all the major televised awards of the season so far for his tour-de-force performance as Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. This should clear an easy path for him in Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. The one difference: he faces off against co-star Lakeith Stanfield in the same category for the first time this season at the Oscars. Is this a show of confidence in the film, further solidifying his imminent win? Or does this open up the possibility for vote-splitting?

Theoretically, having multiple nominees from a film in a single category should double a film’s chances at winning...

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So ... um ... who is going to win Best Actress?

by Nathaniel R

This is the way all awards seasons should be. Well, not the Zoom breakout rooms... but the uncertainty. There's no godly reason why sweeps should ever exist in awards season given that art is subjective. If you poll any group of people on anything you will see a vast array of opinions. Yet season after season there are sweeps wherein one performer snaps up every award in sight. It is extremely rare that this happens because the performer is miles ahead of their competition (like, say, a Blanchett in Blue Jasmine effect) or because the performance is gorgeous and it's also the very last chance (like say Ledger in The Dark Knight or Boseman this year). It is more commonly an effect of a lack of imagination and groupthink. If we ran the world every acting category almost every year would be like Supporting Actress was for 2007 and Best Actress appears to be for 2020. Each awards show that arrives throws punditry into disarray again and a season can close with joy knowing several actors were honored for great work...

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On the SAG winners: History making but will they prove Oscar & Emmy influential?

by Nathaniel R

Riz Ahmed was one of handful of stars hat operated as inadvertent hosts by having bits of an interview spliced in all throughout the show about their careers and such.

We watched the SAG awards last night with a mix of fascination and relief. Fascination at the winners chosen and relief that the ceremony accepted that it couldn't be a normal one and therefore became merely a swift presentation of wins with acceptance speeches on Zoom. Aside from swift "bits" where famous actors talked about their headshots or the "special skills" on their resumes, it was all just actors talking about the nominated actors and then the winners beaming from their homes on Zoom. It ran just a single hour long...

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