For our Moviegoers, Hollywood awards season is the most exciting time of the year. Upon the announcement of the nominees for the 84th Annual Academy Awards, the Moviegoers staff – Mack Bates, Kerry Birmingham and Joel Zawada – gathered to discuss this year’s batch of nominees, pick their favorites in the five major categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Actress in a Supporting Role) and predict who will walk away with Oscar gold.
Part One deals with the worst nominations of the year, and what was overlooked.
Part Two looks at the categories of Best Actor & Actress in a Supporting Role.
Part Three looks at the categories of Best Actor & Actress in a Leading Role.
Part Four looks at the categories of Best Director & Best Motion Picture.
Mack: The great thing about this race is that it could go any way. There are no clear frontrunners.
Joel: It’s one of the few categories they’ve left uncertain.
Mack: You’ve got Close, who is 0-6 at the Oscars. Streep just racked up nod 17, but has only won two, and hasn’t won since 1983. Davis is only the second black actress to be invited back to the show (with Whoopi Goldberg being the other). Then you’ve got three-time nominee Williams, who’ll surely be in the race again, and first-time nominee Mara, who could conceivably be nominated twice more for the same role.
Kerry: I hear just as many people baffled by Glenn Close’s drag performance in Albert Nobbs as enamored with it.
Mack: Close first played the role roughly 30 years ago in an Off-Broadway play, winning an Obie for her work, and has wanted to do a film version ever since. I have to give her mad props for the tenacity it took to pull it off and the years she put in to make it happen.
Kerry: Streep is here because she’s Streep, and this is what you do when Meryl Streep is in a movie.
Joel: I’m with Kerry. Close and Streep are nominated because of who they are, not what they did.
Kerry: To my mind, this is between Rooney Mara and Michelle Williams.
Joel: Between Mara and Williams, I’ve got to go with Mara. Michelle Williams’ performance was by far the best thing about My Week with Marilyn, but at the end of the day, she was doing her impression of an icon. She gave it life and depth, but she had plenty of reference material to study.
Kerry: Lisbeth Salander’s a hard character to get a handle on, to say nothing of the, um, physical demands of the role. Michelle Williams is probably going to have a dozen more nomination-worthy roles in her career, but Salander is an almost Ledger-Joker-style of immersion.
Joel: Mara faced the impossible task of living up to readers’ expectations, and she knocked it out of the park. She was positively electric in the role she fought for.
Mack: And Mara’s take on Salander had more dimension and vulnerability than Noomi Rapace’s in the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Kerry: If they go with Williams-as-Monroe, I suspect it will be more from the cultural reverence for Monroe.
Mack: I totally agree with that assessment. But if I had to choose one performance that was truly transcendent and elevated a good, solid film into something greater, I’d cast my vote for Davis. The woman is damn near peerless. She doesn’t have the same cache as a Streep or a Close, but could more than hold her own opposite either of them, which she proved in Doubt.
Kerry: Davis IS a perennially-underrated actress, I just wonder if she has the support.
Joel: If Octavia Spencer’s a lock – and we’re all pretty sure she is – then the Academy will feel it’s done its service to The Help. In my view, that makes Davis a non-starter.
Mack: That was the case at the Golden Globes, for sure.
Kerry: I’m going to say Mara takes it, which is how I would vote.
Joel: I agree. Mara should AND will.
Mack: If this were a fair race, it would be between Davis, Mara and Streep. I’d cast my vote for Davis, with Mara being my runner-up. Meryl Streep will get Oscar #3 for August: Osage County in 2013.
Kerry: Mack called it HERE first!
Mack: I see this as being between Clooney and Pitt, with Clooney a near-lock at this point. However, I’d love for Pitt to win because he gave the performance of his career to date as Billy Beane in Moneyball. It was a measured, impassioned turn by a star who’s long been short-shifted in terms of his acting ability.
Kerry: Pitt’s like Sandra Bullock, where they WANT to give him an award, he just has to be in a movie where they can reasonably justify it. Do you think Moneyball might be it?
Mack: Moneyball is a fantastic movie that a lot of people downplay as good but nothing exceptional.
Joel: They just need to nominate Pitt every so often so he and his wife keep showing up to the show.
Kerry: Clooney’s fine in The Descendants, but it’s not a very demanding role; I don’t see anyone being really wowed by his portrayal of a rich, middle-aged white guy – though I suppose it’s method acting.
Joel: I can’t see the Academy passing up the chance to hear a charming French actor give a charming French acceptance speech. They live for that stuff. Jean Dujardin by a mile.
Mack: They passed up Gerard Depardieu back in ’91 for Cyrano de Bergerac, so they can, but Gerard isn’t much to look at.
Kerry: If you’ve read my Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy review – and I can only assume you have, and have committed to heart – you’ll know that Oldman’s performance is a highlight. It’s extremely subtle, though, which is why I doubt he’ll get the nod.
Joel: That’s Oldman’s issue – he’s too subtle for award show voters. With the obvious exception of Dracula.
Kerry: Oh, he can chew scenery with the best of them. But yeah, it depresses me to think he’ll be passed over for something flashier, a la Bill Murray in Lost in Translation losing to Sean Penn in Mystic River.
Mack: Dujardin, on the other hand, has the potential to breakout bigtime stateside if he plays his cards right.
Kerry: I have doubts about Dujardin’s Stateside potential, but the performance speaks volumes, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Joel: I will not.
Kerry: He’s good, having to carry a movie with just his face, and he might just get rewarded for that.
Joel: He’s the French George Clooney, for god’s sake! That even trumps the AMERICAN George Clooney!
Mack: If I were a voting member in the academy, I’d have to cast my vote for Bichir in A Better Life. There was no finer performance delivered by an Actor in a Leading Role last year. He broke my heart playing an illegal alien living in LA trying to do right by his son. Their relationship was one you rarely see on the big screen. The last scene between Bichir and his son was superb in its subtlety and power.
Joel: Their relationship was one we rarely see on the big screen because most people didn’t see it, period. Certainly not enough Academy voters for a surprise win. Like Melissa McCarthy before him, his nomination is his award.
Mack: True, but it’s Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading role, not Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Film that Everyone and Their Mother Saw. If that were the criteria, The Hurt Locker would NEVER have won Best Picture over Avatar a few years ago.
Joel: Not everyone and their mother. Just Academy voters. Bichir’s only shot is a major studio campaign, and there’s probably not enough time between now and the ceremony to drum up awareness or support.
Kerry: I’m all for the underdog, Mack, and I’ll cheer if Bichir wins, I just doubt it will happen. A Better Life was under my radar, and I’m betting it will stay under voters’ radars, too.
Mack: I agree, as unfortunate as that is.
Kerry: My pessimism says Dujardin will win – which is hardly a great tragedy; like I said, it’s a worthy performance – but my optimism would tell me to vote Oldman.
Mack: Of the Leading Actor performances I saw in 2011, Bichir’s was by far the best, with Pitt a close second.
Joel: So: Dujardin wins, Bichir should.
