Oscar Chatter: If It's Yours To Lose, You Can Still Lose

Each year as the first "wow" factor players emerge in the Oscar race, pundits (professional and amateur alike), jump all over themselves to declare "winners!" in each of the acting races several months in advance. I always want to pass on analgesic creams when this begins to happen but then I'm more patient than some Oscar fans and prefer the slow sexy fight for nominations to the wham bam foregone conclusions of Oscar night.  If you believe the internet Cate Blanchett has it locked up in Best Actress (on the strength of her work in Blue Jasmine) and Oprah Winfrey has it locked up in Supporting Actress (on the rush of excitement that's greeted Lee Daniels' The Butler and her against type work... if you can have a type when you rarely act.) The only trouble is that no one has seen their competition. And your competition is half the equation at least as to whether or not you'll win. (One example: Does Reese Witherspoon's Walk the Line win in a highly competitive year? I think not.)

Oscar loves a drunk. Can Cate & Oprah both win while boozing it up?

The male categories are less clear though we've already heard quite a few "Leonardo DiCaprio finally has it for The Wolf of Wall Street!" (on the strength of his meme-worthy dancing and lively charisma in the trailer) and some have floated Bruce Dern as your future Supporting Actor winner for Nebraska... though his campaign remains a question mark. Nebraska, we know, is one of those Two Lead/Same Gender films that Oscar's acting branch has forgotten how to parse. Nobody ever tried to suggest that Salieri or Amadeus were supporting each other or that the true lead of Thelma & Louise was Thelma OR Louise but they would if those films opened today because times have changed and fans and campaign managers got increasingly shameless. 

So will any of these four win? Quite possibly, sure. But they could also all lose. One or more of them might not even be nominated! We haven't seen most of the competitive sets and until the great winnowing of December begins when the precursor awards race in to borify the entire race... let's keep an open mind and enjoy the wide world of possibilities!

OSCAR CHART UPDATES
Best Actress - Will Amy give Cate B a run for her money with Meryl maybe dropping out?
Best Supporting Actress - Can Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer stay in the conversation as Oprah sucks up all the late summer oxygen?
Best Actor -It might come down to Leo vs. Matthew unless Old Hollywood rallies for career honors for Dern or Redford or someone else surprises. Oh god, please let there be surprises this year!
Best Supporting Actor - only the editors know... seriously... nothing has happened yet. (sigh)

more updates to follow on the remaining charts

The Halfway Mark Pt 2. Actors & Actresses

I assume that the entire time you were reading the Halfway Mark Best Screenplays & Pictures you were thinking "get to the actors already!" because, damn you're predictable and also so am I and I love to pay homage to great performances. So, here they are in six categories for your perusal and debate and "I guess I'd better watch that" list-making pleasure.

Best Actor in a Limited or Cameo Role (THUS FAR): Lior Ashkenazi (of Late Marriage fame) temporarily energizes the unfortunately bland Yossi by temporarily attempting to to rub off on and up against Yossi himself with pushy sleaze; James Badge Dale, who also won a nomination in this category at 2012's Film Bitch Awards for Flight, is in every big movie now (World War Z, The Lone Ranger, Iron Man 3) and pretty much great in all of them though the roles are growing exponentially and he's already too large for this category!; Kyle Chandler memorably flips his 'clear eyes, full hearts' image on its head as an absent father in The Spectacular Now; Cheyenne Jackson is robbed of his signature voice entirely in Behind the Candelabra as a disgruntled employee/protege/lover but it turns out he doesnt need it absolutely nailing every tiny gesture and facial expression; and finally, I liked Jamie Sheridan's conflicted big business father in The East.

Best Actress in a Limited or Cameo Role: Hillary Baack, is moving in a key brief role as The East's hearing impaired member; Zoe Kazan wins best in show for a group acting exercize masquerading as a movie called Some Girl(s) with an agonizing backstory; Debbie Reynolds, is a real hoot and unrecognizable in the Liberace flick Behind the Candelabra; Orly Silbersatz Banai adds wonderful depth and shading to her history of denial in Yossi; And in a fine cast in Stoker, Jacki Weaver, makes the most of her tense few scenes as the deservedly worried unannounced visitor Aunt Ginny; and my apologies to Grace Gummer in Frances Ha who I didn't quite have room for but I liked her prickly Ivy League alumna

4 More Acting Category "Bests" after the jump

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Great Moments in Gayness: Smells Like "Gardenia"

Team Experience is celebrating Gay Pride with their favorite moments in gay cinema... although since it's the cinema sometimes it's Gay Shame! Here's Michael going wayback for some devious fey villanry in a noir classic... Happy Gay Pride Week Everyone!

Sam Spade’s secretary tells him there is a Joel Cairo to see him. She hands Spade a business card. He sniffs it and shoots Effie a look.

“Gardenia,” she says, identifying the scent. [more...]

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Early Bird Predix: "Best Supporting Actor"

And here we go... the acting categories you've all been very impatiently waiting for in TFE's first wave of Oscar predictions for the year.

Will Previously Honored Movie Stars With Weird Character-Actor Hairdos Rule This Year?

As faithful readers know I like to keep my crystal ball risky with the bouncing and hope it doesn't shatter. In the first wave of predictions "what if" scenarios and "wild cards" are espectially compelling in the Supporting races. I mean why not? So little is yet known about future important matters like Amount of Screen Time, Nature of the Ensemble Roles, Best in Show Scene Stealing and even Post-Production "we'll fix it in post" Switcheroos where a film is rethought to better spotlight its MVPs. This early on there's no point in making boring predictions in which Oscar favorites hog all the categories though sometimes they do -- witness last year's All Previous Winner boredom in this category. Which is why I'm taking a few big risks like imagining an implausible Tim Roth comeback in a Nicole Kidman vehicle or suspecting that stage actor Sean Mahon (so charming recently as an unexplored love interest in Higher Ground) will make the most of a key role in Philomena.

I'm betting on a field of non-winners and (Oscar) newbies. For now... That said sometimes you have to go "default" as I've done by predicting Javier Bardem. From a distance his new role as an Weirdly-Coiffed Embodiment of Evil for an Oscar-friendly Director (sound familiar) seems an awful lot like his roles in No Country For Old Men & Skyfall but considering that he almost got nominated for doing this again - in a Bond film no less ! -- I decided against pretending that his fellow actors don't just worship the ground on which he walks.  

And what of the Ensembles and Potentials For Category Fraud?

Foxcatcher has three major male roles: schizo John duPont (Stave Carell) and two wrestling brothers played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo (not pictured)

The one I'm most curious about in terms of story structure and "best in show" business is Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it's based on a true bizarre story about a wealthy eccentric (played by Steve Carell) who was also a schizophrenic and the two Olympic wrestling brothers (Channing Tatum & Mark Ruffalo) who he became friends with which did not end well for any of them. It's a three-handed story. Channing Tatum gets top billing but the screenplay is based on that brother's unpublished? memoirs so he might be your narrator/audience proxy (a la Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby) which means that Tatum will be demoted to supporting even if he's the lead. My guess is Carell with the showiest part is lead and the other two are relegated to supporting despite very large roles. Now pedigree-wise a movie starring Mark Ruffalo, Steve Carell and Channing Tatum who have 1 nomination and a lot of obstacles to Oscary respect between them (TV fame, light comedy history, hunkaliciousness) shouldn't scream "Oscar nominations for all!" but Bennett Miller is quality. He's only made two narrative features (Capote & Moneyball) but his favored milieu (true stories about famous or infamous men) is right in Oscar's wheelhouse and both of his previous pictures won a lead and a supporting acting nomination. 

Since Hollywood is always very focused on testosterone heavy stories there are usually multiple options of acting glory for men in any given film. Take these examples: The Counselor is headlined by Michael Fassbender but my guess is the colorful supporting cast (led by Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem) will pull focus; I know nothing (yet) about the breakdown of characters in The Monuments Men but there are A LOT OF THEM so who is to say which Friend o' Clooneys (Damon, Goodman, Balaban, Murray?) was given the best role or the most camera attention?; Wolf of Wall Street is also a sausage fest but it seems more likely to be The Leo Show - Wall Street Edition than anything else; I've noticed quite a lot of "Benedict Cumberbatch for the Oscar!" mania after the August: Osage County trailer premiere and, sure, he does emote more in the context of the trailer than anyone besides Julia Roberts but that role isn't really that big or that great and the men (Dermot Mulroney, Sam Shepard, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper) may find a hard time getting around the female driven narrative for any Oscar attention of their own in such a crowded film.

So take a look at the chart and tell me with your own crystal ball where you think mine is malfunctioning and which prophesies you also deem most likely to occur. (Up next: Best Actor)

Final Oscar Predictions

This article has been cross-posted at Towleroad

Yesterday on Kathy Griffin's new show she began with an Oscar monologue and brought out a gold trunks-clad model with his hair cropped tight and his body sprayed gold. I'll let it slide that he wasn't actually bald but he stood with his legs spread far apart and his hands behind his back. 

Had he never seen an Oscar statue before?

UR DOING IT WRONG! 

As you may have guessed I hold the Oscars sacred. You might call it my religion. I've been watching them since I was a little kid and as an adult I have spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over them and even made something of a career out of it. [A struggle!]  But never before in my life have I had such a hard time predicting the winners.

Oh sure, Argo will win Best Picture and Daniel Day-Lewis who many of us first fell in love with as a blonde gay punk working in that Beautiful Laundrette will win for becoming President Lincoln but elsewhere in Oscar's 24 Categories there's an awful lot of room for pundits to embarrass themselves this year!

Best Director, for one, is baffling. The tech prizes look like a very bloody battle between at least three pictures (Anna Karenina, Skyfall & Life of Pi). And so on. AFTER THE JUMP my Oscar predictions. If I get everything wrong please forget we ever spoke of this! 

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