Oscar Index: Actresses Gone Wild

The Leading 5:

1. Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

2. Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

3. Viola Davis, The Help

4. Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

5. Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Outsiders: Charlize Theron, Young Adult; Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Felicity Jones, Like Crazy; Keira Knightley, A Dangerous Method; Emma Stone, The Help; Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia

It is on. And depending on whom you want to believe, it's one of three women's prize to lose. David Poland came way out for Williams after Sunday's Marilyn premiere, raving in a piece entitled "Your Likely Best Actress Oscar Winner":

Williams great performances have, mostly, been about her skill is exposing herself emotionally... amongst the most raw, painful, real women you will see on film. But here, she finds that intense, sad, intimate truth, but also puts on a show as a showstopping sex bomb... and really brings to life how Marilyn's power was about the energy she offered and not just boobs and butt and lips. [...]

She'll likely be up against Oscar winners Streep and Theron, and perhaps former nominees Davis & Close. All great performances [...] but I can't imagine that any of them is the kind of magic trick pulled off by Williams... who also is in the classic winning position of having been previously nominated more than once, including last year.

Harris, meanwhile, likes Viola Davis for now, calling out the cognoscenti for War Horse-style "collective obedience" ("Making a prediction about a movie nobody has seen turns you into nothing more than a redundant marketer, a human 'For Your Consideration' ad that a film's releasing company doesn't have to pay for") and dismissing Streep's early front-runner status:

Meryl Streep is 2-and-14; in other words, she has lost more Academy Awards than any actor in history. She is zero-for-six playing real people. Phyllida Lloyd, The Iron Lady's director, has made just one previous film, Mamma Mia!, which is not remembered for its acting (at least, not kindly). So overall, there's little reason to believe Streep will win, especially since it's now a near-annual ritual for prognosticators to claim that it's her year -- for Doubt, for Julie & Julia, for whatever -- and then, when they find that narrative tedious, to start boosting an underdog.

Where to even begin? "Human 'For Your Consideration' ad" sounds like a Tom Six movie about a mad Oscar scientist and his unlucky awards-watching captives, and anyway, it's bullshit -- Hollywood is based entirely on assumptions about ideas, subjects, stars and storylines that are or aren't for certain segments of the moviegoing population. And while many are educated assumptions (e.g. Titanic 3-D), what does a 2-for-14 Oscar record even mean? In a few of those years, Streep herself was the underdog (The French Lieutenant's Woman, Adaptation) or never even likely to compete (Postcards From the Edge, Music of the Heart). And if Streep is "zero-for-six" playing real people, but actors playing real 20th-century Britons have gone 4-for-10 since 2001 (one of whom, Helen Mirren, was herself the sight-unseen front-runner for months), then what? And what are we to make of the other stats now being aggregated at Gold Derby -- the ones currently laying 1-to-20 odds for Streep to take home the hardware? It's not because it's safe, it's because, at least on paper (and especially after Julie & Julia got Blind Side-d), Streep is due.

None of this makes favoring Streep this early any more reasonable, I guess. Davis is most definitely for real (though not for everyone) and could easily triumph here, as could Williams. But we're not in a reasonable business; it's October, and hunches mean something. What can you do? Anyway, did I mention I'm a Dunst guy? OK, good.

The Leading 5:

1. George Clooney, The Descendants

2. Brad Pitt, Moneyball

3. Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar

4. Jean Dujardin, The Artist

5. Michael Fassbender, Shame

Outsiders: Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Michael Shannon, Take Shelter; Tom Hanks, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March; Michael Fassbender, A Dangerous Method; Woody Harrelson, Rampart; Damian Bechir, A Better Life

Insiders I talked to last week at the New York Film Festival, where Shame debuted to more rapturous acclaim, said that distributor Fox Searchlight absolutely intends on campaigning both Clooney and Fassbender full-steam-ahead through the end of the year, but The Descendants retains the cultural (NYFF closing-night selection, not facing an NC-17 rating) and status (that star! that director!) benefits that make it the infinitely more formidable challenger. Some now doubt that Fassbender has the juice to get nominated at all, while others observers here, there and everywhere are getting increasingly serious about Dujardin's chances -- not that he was ever a pushover, but he'll no doubt benefit from the cannibalism and bullshit that's already taking place in the upper ranks of the category. To wit: "Are Leo and Brad Too Pretty to Win Oscars?" (Hint: No.)

And don't look now, but the brilliant Shannon has the Jacki Weaver-ish groundswell of support that could force a guy like Fassbender or even Oldman off the bubble. Mark Harris (that guy again!) is behind him, with Anne Thompson and Adam Waldowski backing him up this week as well. It's not a whole lot, but it's more than Hanks, Harrelson, Gosling and the rest have at the moment.

Finally, to the tiny faction among you who keep insisting Gerard Butler is in the running for Machine Gun Preacher? STOP IT. He is not in the running. Nobody is talking about him or that terrible movie. It is not happening. Bring that wheezing horse to a halt. Climb off the horse, and remove the saddle. Shoot the horse. Saddle up another, healthier horse. See you back on the trail.

Pages: 1 2 3