BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Melissa Leo for The Fighter is basically a lock for a nomination with her Golden Globe win. Amy Adams will get one for the same flick. Helena Bonham Carter will get the nod for The King’s Speech because it’s British and good and the Academy loves it when things are British and good (and is often willing to overlook “good”). Those three are certain; that leaves two slots, which will go to some combination of Mila Kunis and/or Barbara Hershey for Black Swan, Hailee Stanfield for True Grit, and Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom. I’m going to bet on Hershey and Weaver; I think Hollywood will decide that Kunis’ work, while good, wasn’t really magnificent, and that Stanfield is perfectly solid but not amazing enough to get the “kid gets the nom” momentum. If I’m wrong, I think Stanfield is the one I’m wrong about.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christian Bale’s Fighter performance basically has this award set aside for him already, so it’s really a matter of filling out the other four slots here. Geoffrey Rush gets one for The King’s Speech for the same reason Ethan Hawke got one for Training Day – the movie is basically a two-person movie when all is said and done, and he’s the other person. I think John Hawkes’ turn in Winter’s Bone gets one, simply because he’s an underdog in an underdog film and everybody keeps talking about how he’s an underdog in an underdog film, and frankly I think he deserves the award more than Bale does anyway (and given that I thought Bale’s performance was superb, that should say something). The rest of the pack is Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right, Jeremy Renner for The Town, Justin Timberlake for The Social Network and Matt Damon for True Grit. (I think the Michael Douglas cancer sympathy train that led to him getting a Golden Globe nomination for Wall Street 2 is finally over.) Out of that pack, I pick Ruffalo and Renner; if I’m wrong about anything, I think it’s Timberlake, who probably snags either Ruffalo’s or Hawkes’ spot.
BEST ACTRESS: Natalie Portman for Black Swan, duh. Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right, also duh. Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone, obviously. They are locks. Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole seems to be an increasing consensus, although I haven’t seen it and can’t comment as to whether she deserves it. I think Michelle Williams snags the last spot for Blue Valentine, but it might be too racy (gasp) for Academy voters because she blows Ryan Gosling in it so the cynical thing is to say that instead Julianne Moore for Kids or Lesley Manville for Another Year sneak in. (Either of those could also replace Kidman, but I don’t think they will.)
BEST ACTOR: Colin Firth for The King’s Speech is again obvious, as is James Franco for 127 Hours (and I think this is probably the only big nomination the movie gets). Jesse Eisenberg should score a nom for The Social Network. That leaves one slot and there’s a lot of good options: Jeff Bridges for True Grit, Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter, Robert Duvall for Get Low, Ryan Gosling for Blue Valentine, Paul Giamatti for Barney’s Version, maybe even DiCaprio for Inception (although it’s unlikely). My money is on Duvall and Gosling, but Bridges or Wahlberg could upset, because after all Ryan Gosling did play in a movie where he got a blowjob and apparently that’s a big deal now, to admit that people get blowjobs. (Why didn’t this hurt Julia Roberts for Pretty Woman back in the day?)
BEST DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan for Inception, Tom Hooper for King’s Speech, Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan, and David Fincher for The Social Network are all givens. That leaves one slot and it should go to Debra Granik for Winter’s Bone, but instead will go to either the Coens for True Grit or David O. Russell for The Fighter. Probably the Coens. The Oscars love them some Coens.
BEST PICTURE: Black Swan, The Social Network, The King’s Speech, Inception, True Grit, The Fighter, The Kids Are All Right. Every one of them is certain. The remaining three will come from these five: 127 Hours, Winter’s Bone, Animal Kingdom, Toy Story 3 and The Town. My guess is that Toy Story 3, Winter’s Bone and 127 Hours are the nods here. Honestly, this category has gone from being the most fun to wager on to the least; the ten-picture rule kills the suspense because in any year there’s really only six or seven serious BP contenders.
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Yeah, they shouldn’t really have ten BP nominee slots.
I agree with most everything, but do you really think that Timberlake gets the Supporting Actor nod for The Social Network? I hope that it’s Andrew Garfield as Eduardo.
I’ve been out of the Oscar loop for a little while… but when did BP change to 10 nominees? That just seems horribly bloated. Much like Hollywood!
*rimshot*
You are right that everything thing seems to have been already decided. No surprises anywhere. The only one I really care about is Hailee Stanfield getting the nod for True Grit. I thought she was magnificent against two of the best actors in the business. She held her own in an epic story that was once an Oscar darling. Oscar loves to revel in their own history so I hope she gets the nomination and the film does too.
You didn’t think Stanfield was more than “solid”? I thought she was unbelievably good. Or are you saying that Hollywood will say this?
I thought Stanfield’s performance was all right. Kind of one-note most of the time.
Er… question. Why would Hailee Steinfeld be nominated for Best SUPPORTING Actress? She was the LEAD in True Grit. Shouldn’t she be nominated for Best Actress and Jeff Bridges get a Best SUPPORTING Actor? He does less in True Grit than Rush does in Kings Speech and if Rush would be nominated as a ‘supporting’ actor Bridges should only be on tap for that as well, IMO.
The part of me that is stuck in 2002 finds “academy award nominee: Justin Timberlake” to be a fun and awesome thing.
Sort of like “academy award winner: three six mafia”.
It is too bad he didn’t do a song for the film, because he could have locked that down, and they would have happily skipped the acting nom.
‘Rabbit Hole’ is an wonderful, incredibly moving film as a whole, although Kidman’s preformance is probably the most nomination-worthy of all the aspects. I’m glad to see that she’s getting some buzz for it: the nomination would be deserved.
Mind you, I’m a sucker for a good stage-to-screen adaptation (which this most definitely is), so I might be biased in my opinion.
“Why would Hailee Steinfeld be nominated for Best SUPPORTING Actress?”
Same reason Haley Joel Osment got the supporting, rather than lead, nom for The Sixth Sense. Sometimes it’s less about lead/secondary than about billing.
Traditionally the Best Supporting Actress category has been the one where the Academy makes out-of-the-box, unconventional choices, so much that it’s become its own convention. Child actresses have consistently been nominated in this category, including Jodie Foster, Tatum O’Neil, Linda Blair, Juliette Lewis, Anna Paquin and Abigail Breslin. Steinfeld is not only a lock for nomination, but she might win it.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see True Grit shut out tomorrow. Even though the film is excellent and a moneymaker, it arrived pretty late on the scene, and it’s been overlooked by a lot of precursors. Plus, there’s usually that movie that seems to have so much going for it on paper, but it never goes the distance awards-wise.
Also, part of me wonders if Inception could see some major misses. The Academy has always been cooler on Nolan compared to everyone else, and since the ten movie field is largely credited with The Dark Knight, there could be resentment there.
*to not with
On Toy Story 3, I thought animated films weren’t eligible for best picture since they have their own ghetto award of best animated picture.
KK: They’re eligible, they’ll just never win one.
And never mind that computer rendering is now just a matter of degree and not kind.
The Best Pictures went to ten nominations because there was a huge stink in 2008 that two of the top three critically acclaimed movies – WALL-E and Dark Knight – were snubbed for a bunch of artsy movies that no one admitted watching.
The Oscars did have in their early years a roster of up to 10 nominations for certain categories, but trimmed it down to five by the 1940s. Personally, I think 10 is too many but 7 should be a more acceptable cut-off mark: you can still be certain of at least one summer blockbuster that was actually good to have a chance at winning.
The thing that’s really bothering me: Sharlto Copley not getting a chance for his role as Murdock in A-Team. Fucker nailed the character, didn’t he?
“Same reason Haley Joel Osment got the supporting, rather than lead, nom for The Sixth Sense. Sometimes it’s less about lead/secondary than about billing.”
And sometimes it’s ALL about billing. It’s the only way to justify Steinfeld being a “supporting” actress in that movie given that she drives the plot, is in every scene, etc.
I think Inception will dominate the technical categories, get one of the Best Picture slots, and if Nolan gets a nomination it will be as compensation for snubbing TDK. No acting, even though I thought some of it (Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard for example) was rather good.
Ah, Oscar silliness, what fun!
Somebody please explain to me why The kids are alright is mentioned so much. I liked that movie ok, and I think Ruffalo did an amazing job, but the ending completely destroyed the film for me, and I don’t think Moore/Bening did anything worth of a prize.
AGREED. ‘The Kids Are Alright’ has its strengths, but the plot is very sloppily constructed: many things happen which have no relevance to the larger plot. If it gets nominated, it will be because Hollywood likes movies about queers right now. I am glad to see people making movies about these kinds of families, but I’m not going to like a movie just because it has lesbians in it.
Actually, that last sentence isn’t entirely true. But that would be an entirely different sort of movie.
I boldly predict that Javier Bardem will steal a Best Actor slot and that Nolan will be shut out of Best Director!
…now how do I hack in and change the timestamp on this poast…
(…NOW how do I hack in and fix my @#$*@#$ spelling…)
I’ve seen a few of the contenders, and reviewed 127 Hours myself. It’s still in my mind the best of the year, though King’s Speech is certainly deserving too. And True Grit’s an outstanding one too.