Oscar Index: Descendants, Artist, Help Set for Ménage à Trophy

The Leading 5:

1. Viola Davis, The Help

2. Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

3. Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

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; Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia; Keira Knightley, A Dangerous Method

The Governors Awards were a crucial opportunity for the year's Oscar hopefuls to unofficially declare their intents (or at least their studios and/or distributors' intents) to campaign, and the Index class of 2011 (including Davis, Close, Swinton and Mara) was most definitely represented. Streep, meanwhile, didn't need to stand in front of a giant Oscar to prove anything -- she just needed to finally have someone get a look at The Iron Lady, which found true believers in the UK. Well, sort of: The Guardian's Xan Brooks called director Phyllida Lloyd's biopic about Margaret Thatcher an "often silly and suspect picture" but raved about Streep as its "one secret weapon":

Her performance is astonishing and all but flawless; a masterpiece of mimicry which re-imagines Thatcher in all her half-forgotten glory. Streep has the basilisk stare; the tilted, faintly predatory posture. Her delivery, too, is eerily good - a show of demure solicitude, invariably overtaken by steely, wild-eyed stridency.

The Telegraph's David Gritten adds: "Awards should be coming Streep's way; yet her brilliance rather overshadows the film itself."

There is, of course, good news and bad news about such qualified praise, the good news being that at least Streep has something to show for a week when Viola Davis rode the Oprah wave in front of God, the Academy and everyone. The bad news is that anything breathlessly labeled "first review" is due a merciless treatment by those critical afterthoughts in Los Angeles and New York who come second, third or worse. Such pettiness is a sad fact of Oscar season, but even if it weren't, the other bad news is that if Leonardo DiCaprio -- who's never won an Oscar, let alone two Oscars -- may not withstand J. Edgar's poor showing to get over the Best Actor hump, then why should Streep hang on in Actress? This is a congested year in both Lead acting categories, so look at it from a sports perspective: There's a reason why MVPs don't come from losing teams, and too many members of the actors' branch know this.

Nevertheless, we'll deal with that if and/or when it happens. Streep's entitled to her boost -- as is Swinton, who attended a jam-packed SAG screening of Kevin this week in New York. The reception was through the roof, she was in typically adventurous and articulate form, and most importantly, Swinton stressed her pride in having helped shepherd Lynne Ramsay's film to the screen in recent years as a producer. With this being the culmination of more than decade's worth of acting/producing work that finally yielded Julia, last year's I Am Love and now Kevin -- and all the bill-paying roles in between -- Swinton is hinting publicly that a long hiatus might be in order. That's a compelling tack to take opposite the Davis/Streep orthodoxy and the fluid fortunes of Close and Theron; why threaten to retire when you can simply say, "I've done everything I want to do -- for now -- and I just want to be able to savor it"? That's art.

Speaking of retirement...

The Leading 5:

1. George Clooney, The Descendants

2. Jean Dujardin, The Artist

3. Michael Fassbender, Shame

4. Brad Pitt, Moneyball

5. Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar

Outsiders: Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Michael Shannon, Take Shelter; Ralph Fiennes, Coriolanus; Woody Harrelson, Rampart; Demian Bichir, A Better Life; Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March

Brad Pitt may or may not have intended his professed three-year plan as a legitimate awards strategy (i.e. "You never know if I'll ever be as good in anything else as I was in Moneyball, so cover your ass, Academy..."), but while he was yakking about hanging it up, Dujardin was putting in the hours where it counts: With the Academy and with the press. "True," Scott Feinberg observed, "he still can't speak much English, but that hasn't kept him from attending virtually every possible gladhanding opportunity, just like Roberto Benigni and Marion Cotillard in years past, and things worked out quite nicely for them." No kidding. Fassbender made himself slightly scarcer, splitting himself on his media run for both Shame and A Dangerous Method but partying with Shame director Steve McQueen at the Governors Ball.

And while even Descendants skeptics like Movieline's Stephanie Zacharek put in a good word for George Clooney, it's tough to argue with Grantland's Oscar oracle Mark Harris about a "Clooney vs. Pitt vs. DiCaprio contest":

[It] has a slight whiff of "Which of the three richest, handsomest, most popular boys in the school are we going to choose as class president?" They are, in short, the 1 percent -- and this is not an ideal year to be in that category. At another Oscar moment, the now-widely-reprinted news that DiCaprio took only one-tenth of his usual fee to make J. Edgar might get him some traction. This year, people are more likely to note that one-tenth of his usual fee is $2 million, which means that the notion of personal sacrifice should probably be left out of the argument.

I'm not suggesting that all of these guys don't have good chances at nominations. In fact, one of them might win. But what's missing here is, perhaps, the sense of urgency, importance, or sheer pleasure that impels voters to carry an actor all the way to the finish line.

Amen. That said, I have an increasingly hard time believing that Rampart and Coriolanus's bare-bones qualifying-run strategies are going to do the trick for underdogs like Harrelson and Fiennes, or that even a performance as affecting as Shannon's can overcome the too-little-too-late anemia of Sony Classics' campaign for Take Shelter. If DiCaprio falls out, then it's likely Oldman's slot to lose, if only because for Oldman, "It's time" means time to simply be nominated -- a career first. Who wouldn't get behind that?

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