Does Woody Harrelson spell trouble for Willem Dafoe?

by Nathaniel R

A police chief and a hotel manager, both overwhelmed and sympathetic and arguably the moral center of their movies.

It's been a long time since we had a double-nomination situation in Best Supporting Actor. The last time it happened was 26 years ago when Ben Kingsley and Harvey Keitel were nominated together for Bugsy (1991) - a curious event since Keitel was so much stronger in another Oscar nominated classic from that year. Given the rise of Woody Harrelson with that Screen Actor's Guild nomination and the overall assumed strength of Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri in the Best Picture race, it could well happen again. His co-star Sam Rockwell, already felt locked and loaded for the same movie in a (somewhat) larger part. 

But does this spell trouble for Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project? Consensus was beginning to form that Dafoe, who became famous in the mid 80s and has worked ever since, would easily walk away with the Oscar this year...

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Oscar Chart Updates: Actor & Supp Actor

All sorts of things could yet throw the Best Supporting and Best Lead Actor races into confusion. In a  somewhat uncommon development the former is much more crowded than the latter. The shallow pool of viable Lead Actors is very good news for candidates like Timothée Chalamet (someone Oscar might normally resist due to his age) and Jake Gyllenhaal (someone Oscar has resisted for reasons inexplicable to us).

What do you make of the Supporting Actor race in particular? They way it looks now it could be made up almost entirely of character actors with worthy careers who have never won an Oscar and that's a very exciting thing. More exciting if you happen to be a fan of either Michael Stuhlbarg, Sam Rockwell, Richard Jenkins, or Willem Dafoe. I doubt that all four of them will make it all the way to the shortlist but the buzz is currently in their favor.

UPDATED CHARTS
Picture | Director | Lead Actress | Lead Actor | Supporting Actress | Supporting Actor | Animated Feature | Original and Adapted Screenplays

TIFF: McDormand Dominates in "Three Billboards..."

by Chris Feil

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri unfolds in typical fashion for writer/director Martin McDonagh: unspeakable violence provides a backdrop to profanity of everyday people. Here McDonagh provides us one of his most righteous heroes in Mildred Hayes, a mother grieving the brutal murder of her daughter and the local police’s inability to bring justice. Verbal fireworks and bloody consequence is to be expected.

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In Ebbing

Jason from MNPP here with today's best news if you ask me, and you didn't, but here I am anyway -- perhaps you'd heard about In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh's new film when it first got announced back in September? You had to at least have heard the whooping sound I made since it was very loud, for Martin McDonagh's new film is going to star Frances McDormand.

Frances McDormand!!! You know her recently from scowling through last year's awards-shows even though she gave probably the best performance out of anybody at said awards-shows in HBO's Olive Kitteredge. Scowl away as much as you want, glorious Frances, you have earned it. (McDormand-related side-note: yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the release of Fargo, meaning yesterday was also the start of my 20-year torrid love-affair with Frances McDormand from afar, and over at my own site I made a list all about that movie's ladies -- check it out here.)

Anyway McDonagh's new film is called Three Bridges Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which is a title I want to give a great big bear hug to, and it's about a woman who takes on the local police after her daughter is killed. They are set to start filming in April, so today's news is casting news! The always-under-appreciated Woody Harrelson has just joined the cast -- Woody is very nearly always the best thing happening in his projects (he gave five times the performance McConaughey did in True Detective for example) and yet nobody takes decent notice. Take notice!

And then there's Sam Rockwell, who worked with McDonagh on Seven Psychopaths, who is also on board for Ebbing. He too is also a right and proper good egg, that Rockwell. All signs for this movie point to "Heck Yeah!"

One thing though: I do hope that we hear more actresses' names dropped into the cast, since McDonagh's films are always heavy on the sausage-fest (poor Abbie Cornish in Psychopaths) and having McDormand in the lead's giving me hope that he wants to broaden that POV out a bit with, you know, some broads. Wonderful broads!

Meet the Contenders: Sam Rockwell "Laggies"

Here's abstew with this weekend's profile of an outside Oscar contender. While this weekend's release is not quite as buzzy as other contenders, Rockwell is always worth celebrating.

Sam Rockwell as Craig in Laggies

Best Supporting Actor

Born: November 5, 1968 in San Mateo, California

The Role: Lynn Shelton's latest film (the director's previous work include mumblecore films Humpday and Your Sister's Sister), that premiered at Sundance this year, takes on a story of a woman with arrested development. Megan (Keira Knightley) is in her late 20's and all her friend's are doing adult things like getting married. But when Megan's own boyfriend proposes, she freaks out, goes into a quarter life crisis, and ends up hanging out with a teenage girl (Chloë Grace Moretz), while finding herself drawn to the girl's divorced father (Rockwell).

Rockwell took over in the role of Craig, which was originally supposed to be played by Paul Rudd. (Knightley also took over for Anne Hathaway who had to drop out due to filming of Interstellar.) And due to an illness that left him in the hospital, came in at the end of the shoot to film his part. He said that his recent hospital stay brought a more subdued nature that worked for his character. 

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