Oscar Index: So an Artist and a Horse Walk into a Bar...

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. Charlize Theron, Young Adult

Outsiders: Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin; 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

Streep's redoubtability was affirmed this week by authorities from the NYFCC to the even tougher Steve Pond, who had the most specific, persuasive comments of the week regarding the front-runner:

I didn't care for the movie [...], but Streep is undeniable as Margaret Thatcher - and if the first images of her in the role made her look like a nomination waiting to happen, the performance certainly delivers. Streep supplies not only the uncanny mimicry that was no doubt inevitable, but also the real sense of a woman for whom intransigence was both calling card and Achilles' Heel. And it certainly helps that Streep's old-age makeup is brilliantly effective. In J. Edgar, Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer never appear to be anything but themselves acting through layers of makeup; in Iron Lady, Streep absolutely appears to be an 80-year-old woman, and the makeup is essentially in allowing her to disappear into the character.

Which is a good thing, since Streep's Weinstein Co. stablemate Michelle Williams did her own share of disappearing last week as the titular sexpot in My Week With Marilyn. Critics were over the moon -- to an extent. "My Week with Marilyn has a TV-biopic sheen, and you could dismiss it easily -- except for the fact that Michelle Williams, as Marilyn, both anchors the movie and upends it," wrote Movieline's own Stephanie Zacharek. "Miss it and you'll miss one of the finest performances of this year." That pretty much harmonizes with most impressions from around the critical ranks. Viola Davis stayed in focus with a Performer of the Year announcement from the Santa Barbara Film Festival, with a glitzy awards-season luncheon on the books for this Friday in New York. It's what the Help star has to do just to keep up, especially with Swinton preceding her in the Manhattan whirlwind and Theron taking home honorary hardware at the Gotham Awards.

Of these four, though, thanks in part to eligibility restrictions and not just a little politicking, only Williams made the cut -- along with Olsen -- at the Indie Spirits. And right now, all I can think of was a very pregnant Natalie Portman on the Spirits stage last February, accepting her Best Actress trophy the night before she became an Oscar winner. Coincidence? Delusion? We'll see...

The Leading 5:

1. Jean Dujardin, The Artist

2. George Clooney, The Descendants

3. Brad Pitt, Moneyball

4. Michael Fassbender, Shame

5. Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Outsiders: Leonardo DiCaprio, J. Edgar; Michael Shannon, Take Shelter; Woody Harrelson, Rampart; Demian Bichir, A Better Life; Ralph Fiennes, Coriolanus; Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March

Pitt enjoyed one of the sharpest boosts enjoyed by anyone in this category all season, thanks in part to NYFCC, Moneyball loyalists like Anne Thompson ("The movie is going to show serious staying power in this Oscar marathon for several reasons. First, it's well-reviewed. Anecdotally, it's popular among Academy voters, who regard Pitt's performance as one of his career best"), and Pitt's endlessly endearing talent, glamor and campaign-trail sangfroid:

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill sat for a q & a [...] with Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger after a screening of Moneyball at Sony Studios. I'm not ignoring what they said or the still-potent pleasures of the film, but the standout moment was Pitt's gentle handling of a strange, inappropriate confession from a gloomy guy in the left-front row who said he'd been feeling depressed and was "contemplating suicide." Everybody in the room whispered "what the fuck?" but Pitt took it in stride and offered a nice brotherly reply. Cool-hand Pitt delivered a common-sense riff about the up-and-down-ness of things, and in a relaxed, no-big-deal sort of way. He gave the guy a little "chin up" and "I know it's tough but it'll get better." The sound system was really echo-y so it's hard to hear much but Pitt said that "life is cyclical...when you're up and you're up and when you're down you're down...it is tough, man...it's tough...but man, it's cyclical."

Can Clooney work like that? Can DiCaprio? I mean, we know Uggie can, but still. This is getting good!

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