Viola Winning. Quvenzhané Accepting. Kerry Collecting.

I didn't want to let this little awards factoid get lost in the hubbub surrounding this year's Oscar nominees but here this: Viola Davis, last year's shouldawon Oscar casualty who handed Daniel Day Lewis his SAG trophy for Lincoln last weekend, just won her second consecutive Best Actress prize at the NAACP Image Awards. She was, of course, the big winner last season for The Help which also took the Picture and Supporting Actress trophies. This year her prize is for the far less heralded Won't Back Down. Residual affection from The Help or just another PSA that Viola is among the world's great screen actors and deserves those leading roles? (It's a surprising win when you realize that she beat both Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis from Beasts of the Southern Wild and breakthrough player Emayatzy Corinealdi from Middle of Nowhere to take that trophy again. (The other nominees were Halle Berry in Cloud Atlas -and Loretta DeVine in In The Hive)

Hushpuppy gets to give acceptance speeches even when she loses!

While the NAACP often goes in odd directions that make their awards a little hard to take very seriously (Red Tails over Beasts for Best Picture? Middle of Nowhere not even nominated? What the what now?) they can grab attention nonetheless. Away from the glare of the SAG/GLOBE/OSCAR spotlight odd detours abound: Viola Davis didn't show so Samuel L Jackson invited Quvenzhané Wallis (who lost) to accept the award on Viola's behalf!

Could you imagine that happening at the Oscars? 'I'm sorry you lost to this person but come on up and give a speech anyway!' ...the mind boggles considering the possibilities of acceptance speeches that coulda been any time Katharine Hepburn or Woody Allen won. (In fact, I wouldn't mind at all if they bring Quvenzhané up to accept on Jennifer Lawrence's behalf on Oscar night.)

Kerry crowned, thrice.Django Unchained lost Best Picture but was the defacto champ oanyway with an Entertainer of the Year prize for Jamie Foxx and both supporting acting trophies. Kerry Washington, the true queen of the event, tripled the win factor with additional prizes for her public service and for Best TV Drama Actress for "Scandal".

Curiously the NAACP doesn't update their site well so they only have this year's prizes as the nomination list still and the only photos are from other years. So I've had to scour the web for photos but the LA Times comes through with the complete winners list. (Don't they have interns at the NAACP to update their site immediately following the ceremonies?)

Podcast Nom Reactions Pt 1: Snubs, Squeals, Questions

A couple of days after the Oscar Nominations, I rang up Joe Reid, Katey Rich and Nick Davis to discuss the Academy's big reveal. In pt 1 of this hour long conversation we discuss:

1) The snubs that hurt us most.
2) The moments that made us squeal with delight.
3) Reader Questions. Thank you to the handful of people who were brave enough to ask them. 

Pt 1 is mostly focused on the "big eight": Picture (Amour & Beasts of the Southern Wild !), Director (Benh Zeitlin  - yes!, Ben Affleck -???), Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress (Amy Adams & Jacki Weaver mostly), Supporting Actor, and the Screenplays.

But high profile categories aside the masterful but snubbed Animated Short The Eagleman Stag gets a shout-out. And I promised I'd link up to it in this post, so here ya go. Watch it!

The Eagleman Stag. Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately snubbed.

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here at the bottom of the post. 

Squeals, Snubs, and Sass from Oscar Nomination Morning

10 Things I Link About You

Deal Central Anne Hathaway will star in a modernized version of Taming of the Shrew. Good luck besting braying fab Elizabeth Taylor, Anne. 
Movie|Line Michael Haneke is actually aware of that lolz twitter account in his name. Too cool or perhaps too Haneke to care.
AV Club Mike D'Angelo on the art of compression in Moonrise Kingdom (the letter sequence is my personal favorite in the film)

Vulture attends a slew of parties and eavesdrop on Jennifer Lawrence (who loves Kara Hayward from Moonrise Kingdom) and Damian Lewis who does it gangnam style... no really.
Pajiba on new television series in the works including a Heathers adaptation and a new drama from... Cher (!)
A Blogwork Orange on the director blame game regarding Oscar snubs
Movies on Demand has a ton of  nominees for your instant renting perusal. I almost didn't link to this because their press release was so condescending. Why yes, Movies on Demand, I do actually know just how Quvenzhane Wallis made history this week. Duh!

GLOBES MANIA
Jane Fonda recounts her red carpet weekend 
Stale Popcorn Glenn appreciates a gorgeous raven-haired threeshot of Lucy Liu, Marion Cotillard, and Salma Hayek. And the Globes surrounding it.
Nicks Flick Picks valiantly live-blogged the whole Globes experience (unlike myself who tried to go mobile and failed) in his usual entertaining way. Abilify!

Actress Battles: Jessica vs. Jennifer, Quvenzhané vs. History

In a rather beautiful turn of events, both Les Misérables and Zero Dark Thirty arrived to implications of raves (ah, pointless Les Miz embargo) and actual ones (ZDT had no embargo) and though neither are opening until Santa's elves are deep into overtime, they've made the forthcoming Oscar race much more exciting. What we have are real competitions in multiple categories. At least for now; precursor prizes have a way of flattening out the drama if they arrive at consensus too quickly. We've already discussed Les Miz's first screening and the Hugh vs. Daniel Best Actor race.

But while you're waiting for my Zero Dark Thirty review, let's discuss the confusing Best Actress race.

This particular shot is the second half of one of my favorite cuts of the year... from the screen she's watching to this face.

BEST ACTRESS
What's the confusion, you may be asking. Yes, Jennifer Lawrence is still the frontrunner for Silver Linings Playbook and yes Jessica Chastain will be nominated for anchoring Zero Dark Thirty with single-minded determination. More...

Click to read more ...

Predictions in Actressing: Few Locks, Many New Variables

It's entirely redundant to tell you that Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress are The Film Experience's favorite Oscar categories. This year's field continues to feel slippery, amorphous, unknowable which is... great. It should be hard to pin down the Oscar race before films have been widely seen and release dates have fully settled. The charts this month are quite shuffled so I hope you'll devour them.

ACTRESS Most pundits have assumed since the very beginning that Cotillard and Wallis were locked up done deals but I'm actually still not comfortable inking either of them in. They could happen, sure, but there are so many contenders and no one beyond Jennifer Lawrence (having one of those mega years that's impossible to deny) has cemented a position here. Especially with all the movement. Even one of these smaller films with rising stars (Olsen, Winstead, Fanning) could happen theoretically or at least siphon key votes if audiences and critics are kind and their campaign is strong.

We should note that little Quvenzhané Wallis has a new problem beyond her very young age in that SAG won't be nominating her (declaring the cast ineligible). Cotillard also has a significant problem in that she isn't the only reknowned actress killing it in a subtitled drama. Emmanuelle Riva anyone? The Hiroshima Mon Amour star is a powerhouse in a very difficult role in Amour. I've just seen the movie so perhaps it's wishful thinking but this is very moving work.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS The big new question mark for me is whether biopic mimicry -- Scarlett Johansson doing Janet Leigh's arched brow Psycho tics -- will finally win her Oscar attention after her breakthrough early misses nine years ago (Girl with the Pearl Earring and Lost in Translation... and to a lesser extent her Woody Allen hussy in Match Point). She stopped being an actress for awhile moving straight to über celebrity but after her Tony-winning run on Broadway and renewed vigor in her filmography, this could be the year. Or will various Psycho co-stars steal the spotlight. It's worth noting that Toni Collette can steal spotlights from anyone anywhere... and if her Hitchcock assistant role has a key scene or two that she can wow in, watch out! (That's a mighty big "if" of course in a film with stars this big playing famous Hollywood icons.)

I should also note that though I'm on the record as no fan of Helen Hunt's 90s Oscar win, I found her work in The Sessions to be very strong. To me it's unquestionably a leading role (it wouldn't be if we didn't spend time with her outside of the titular sessions but we do, making this a lopsided duet) and I'm a bit curious as to why Fox Searchlight so adamantly settled on a supporting campaign so early given that a lead Actress nod still doesn't seem unattainable for this previous winner.