Who Will Be This Year's Surprising Snub at the Oscars?

Coco here, ready to talk about the current Oscar race and the surprising snubs that wait around the corner.

Last week, I wrote about performances that might get nominated despite not having a lot of precursor support. This week, I'm writing about the opposite. If you're an actor and you're nominated for the Golden Globes, the SAG awards, and the BAFTAs, then you're widely assumed to be a lock for an Oscar nomination. This is true for the most part, but there are plenty of instances in which seemingly beloved performances that do great with precursors are nowhere to be found on Oscar morning. This has been especially true in recent years. We've seen at least one such performance be left off Oscar's list in each of the last four years.  

Here's a quick rundown... 

2014 - Jake Gyllenhaal's performance in Nightcrawler popped up at all the right places. What's more, the movie seemed to gain momentum consistently, scoring nominations from practically every awards-giving body throughout January. As you probably know, Jake didn't get the nomination. Maybe Oscar didn't like Nightcrawler as much as we were expecting. After all, the movie only got one nomination for Original Screenplay.  

2013 - This year was a bloodbath as far as snubs are concerned. The most surprising omission was Tom Hanks, who gave one of the best performances of his career in Captain Phillips. The movie scored six nominations including Best Picture, but Oscar couldn't make room for its lead star. Also ignored despite support from SAG, BAFTA, and the Globes were Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks and Daniel Brühl in Rush. Although neither of those films were as beloved as Phillips (Saving Mr. Banks only got one nomination for Original Score, Rush wasn't nominated at all). 

2012 and 2011 stats, as well as 2015 speculation after the jump. 

Click to read more ...

Who Will Be This Year's "Out-of-Nowhere" Oscar Nominee?

Coco here, ready to talk about the current Oscar race and the surprises that might pop up.

Last week, we discussed SAG's bizarre taste. The math works against it but we're desperately hoping the Academy breaks free of their influence. Perhaps we should focus our hope on a recent wave of surprising, "out-of-nowhere" nominations at the Oscars.  Ever since 2011 (the year the Academy turned Best Picture into a flexible category with as little as 5 and as many as 10 nominees), there's been at least one acting nominee that landed on Oscar's list without being previously nominated at either the Golden Globes, SAG, or BAFTA.

Here are the stats...

2011 - The shocking inclusion of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in Best Picture came with the legendary Max von Sydow in tow for his mute performance in Best Supporting Actor. 

2012 - Everyone was surprised by the amount of support Silver Linings Playbook had considering the supporting Actress nomination for Jacki Weaver. (Various precursors had usually included Nicole Kidman in the divisive Lee Daniels film The Paperboy or random shout outs to Dames Judi Dench (Skyall) and Maggie Smith (Marigold Hotel) and even the then lesser known Ann Dowd (who was pitched as supporting in Compliance though she had the film's central role). It's also hard to remember now, but Quvenzhané Wallis had none of the big three precursor nominations before she made the Best Actress line-up for Beasts of the Southern Wild (though she was included at Critics Choice and at the Spirit Awards)

2013 & 2014 stats. Plus 2015 speculation after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

FYC: Sarah Paulson, Carol's Best Supporting Actress

The Film Experience is proud to welcome back Matthew Eng for this personal FYC

Sarah Paulson photographed for VarietyThese days, to simply see Sarah Paulson’s name in the opening credits of any project is enough to make me sit back, relax, and sigh with deep and reverent relief that — no matter the lapses in storytelling, the dubiousness of politics, or the haphazard efforts of other actors — I am in the hands of at least one supremely assured and eternally convincing performer.

As someone who missed Aaron Sorkin’s infamous Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and the extensive list of sitcoms and serials she appeared in from the mid-nineties to the late-2000s (not to mention her numerous stage roles and occasional film appearances), my Sarah Paulson fandom is fairly recent. Of course, like many, I’d seen and admired her wry gal pal in Down with Love, which remains a fun but frankly flaky memory.

But truthfully, I wasn’t fully onboard the Paulson bandwagon until 2012, when she offered American Horror Story’s peak Asylum season a truly new and refreshingly tough-minded depiction of devastated-turn-mobilized female victimhood and then, a year later, sauntered into Steven McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave as one of contemporary cinema’s most memorably unrepentant villainesses, terrorizing Lupita and manipulating Fassy with ferocious, bone-chilling conviction.

When I heard Paulson had joined Carol, I took another of those deep and reverent sighs of relief, as if to say, 'Alright, this film will actually be as perfect as I need it to be.'  [More...]

Click to read more ...

"Tangerine" and the Case for Mya Taylor

Kieran, here taking a moment to talk about Mya Taylor’s Independent Spirit Award-nominated performance in Sean Baker’s Tangerine.

Being the calm in a storm is not as easy a dynamic to render on-screen as it looks. That’s what Mya Taylor is tasked with in Tangerine—playing the careful, contemplative counterpoint to Sin-Dee’s (Kitana “Kiki” Rodriguez) turbulent rampage through the streets of East Hollywood. When considering the two performances, both accomplished but in very different keys, I immediately thought of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Sadie and Mare Winningham’s title character in 1995’s Georgia (previously discussed here). Though both Alexandra and Sin-Dee’s lives aren’t exactly as diametrically opposed as Georgia and Sadie’s, there’s a similar thread of calm vs. irrational running beautifully through both films. Like Winningham, Taylor gifts her film with an unfussy balance of quiet observation and brimming, longstanding frustration. [More...]

Click to read more ...

Oscar Prediction Updates - Carol's Up. But What's Down?

Will Oscar voters love how obsessed with Oscar statues the SAG nominated TRUMBO is? It's been an enormously busy week with precursor decisions confusing and clarifying in equal measure. Even if you don't put much stock in the Critic's Choice Awards (also known as the BFCA, an organization that includes your host) it'll be interesting to see what they come up with since ballots were due today and so many questions remain. Though the organization prides itself on Oscar predictive power (a very weird thing to pride yourself on unless you're a pundit rather than a critic) the confusing nature of the race won't make things easy on any pundit.

While I've been accused of overthinking various races often (who, me?) such is the curse of punditry and Oscar obsessiveness. Here's where I think we stand now...

PICTURE & DIRECTOR If this race we're taking place in 2008 with the old school five-wide race it would obviously be Spotlight, The Martian, Carol, The Revenant, and Room at this point with one of the directors jettisoned for Mad Max's overachievement by George Miller. Beyond that it's so complicated both because we don't know how many nominees we'll get and because seven other pictures still seem plausible as a Best Picture nominee for one reason or another though they had shakier reactions in these first two precursor weeks. For instance: Creed hasn't been doing all that well but I still think it's a big Oscar possibility. Am I crazy or just concussed? And speaking of...

The SAG miss for Sir Ian McKellen could spell trouble for his Oscar dream

ACTOR While I don't imagine we'll see a repeat of Will Smith's Globe nominated Concussion performance on the Oscar shortlist it's one of about ten performances that still seem to be in the race. You'll have to cleave that in half in January. DiCaprio, Redmayne, Fassbender, and Cranston all have the key nominations (Globe & SAG) but each year at least one or two people across the four categories with that combo miss and you need #1 votes given the Academy's nomination tallying system. So which performances or beloved actors have the most passion behind them? This is why I still think Michael B Jordan or even Sir Ian could surprise despite the lack of SAG or Globe love; it's always important to remember that those voting bodies are quite dissimilar to Oscar's acting branch.

SUPPORTING ACTOR Precursors have coalesced around Michael Shannon, Idris Elba, and Mark Rylance but because the former two weren't what people widely expected, CHAOS REIGNS. Sly Stallone still feels like a potential winner IF he's nominated. And will Oscar really deprive anyone from Spotlight of an acting nomination? That would be so weird for such an actor's friendly Best Picture frontrunner.

but who will be on CHARLOTTE's ballot? ACTRESS & SUPPORTING ACTRESS We'll have to list these two together because of the ongoing controversy surrounding Rooney Mara (one half of Carol's brilliant romantic coupling) and Alicia Vikander (who has two films splitting supporting honors Ex Machina and The Danish Girl, even though she's the leading lady of both). The discussions around these two have sucked so much oxygen out of the room for other women (in both the leading and supporting races) that I imagine they're both still getting nominated for Supporting DAMNIT since voters likely haven't thought through their other options . The solution: quality longshots should be working their asses off for the next two weeks to remind people of their existence (We're talking to you: Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Banks, Julie Walters, and Cynthia Nixon)  since Academy voters don't get their ballots until the end of the year. Over in lead actress only four women feel secure (yes, that includes Charlotte Rampling. Come at me!) which means it's a true free for all for the fifth-slot. This week I chose Lily Tomlin as the lucky lady but it could be anyone from the second tier of the chart (or Mara or Vikander).

The other category charts will be updated this weekend -- SAG & Globe choices tell us virtually nothing about Oscar tastes when it comes to the other categories so we can think awhile longer on it.

Investigate the new charts and report back. What does your crystal ball say?