Oscar Index: Killing 'Lincoln' Is All The Rage As Academy Voting Begins
Best Actor
But not the Best Actor race. Award after Oscar precursor award, acceptance speech after stirring acceptance speech, tribute after film festival tribute, Daniel Day-Lewis (or just "Lewis" as Hugh Jackman referred to him in a Time magazine Oscar video feature) has not made a wrong move. He is the unanimous choice of the Gold Derby pundits. He is the favorite to win at this weekend’s BAFTA ceremony. More than one-fourth of Americans (26 percent) believe that he will take home the Academy Award for Best Actor, according to a new Reuters poll.
Through the Oscar campaign season, Day-Lewis has skillfully played down his status as a sure thing. “Members of the Academy love surprises,” he told reporters after winning his SAG Award, “so about the worst thing that can happen to you is if you’ve built up an expectation.”
1. Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)
2. Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables)
3. Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
4. Denzel Washington (Flight)
5. Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)
Best Actress
The Academy Awards looks to be the ultimate J-date, with Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain locked in yet another close race, or as the National Enquirer calls it, a “Vicious Catfight.” Lawrence this week continued her charm offensive with a memorable appearance on Conan. Chastain enjoyed panel time with Hugh Jackman on The Tonight Show, where she shared an amusing anecdote about Al Pacino (punchline: “Never eat anything off the craft service table”).
But Emmanuelle Riva is feeling the Amour from In Contention’s Kristopher Tapley, who used his platform this week to stump for the venerable French actress who will be 86 on Oscar night, and should she win, would receive the statuette from last year’s Best Actor winner, fellow countryman Jean Dujardin.
“No other performance touched Riva’s in my opinion this year,” he wrote. “There is zero artifice. It's not a movie star turn. It's not a firecracker starlet lighting up the screen. It's a drilled down examination of character. I ask you, what other definition would you apply to ‘acting?’”
1. Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
2. Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)
3. Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)
4. Naomi Watts (The Impossible)
5. Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
Comments
All the same, a film with 12 nominations that wins Director, Adapted Screenplay, Lead Actor and Supporting Actor without winning picture is also "patently absurd." They may genuinely like Argo, and they probably do, but there's no mistaking how many different ways Argo has to make history to win. It will be the first film to win the DGA, have no director nom and win Best Pic. The first film with the fifth most nominations to win. The record breaker before that was Chariots of Fire with fourth most nominations. Argo will have to beat that, dubiously, to win. The third way is the only one people know about and that's having no director nominations. The Academy opted out of nominating Affleck. They might decide that they would like to decide what wins, and not the guilds. But it's a cliffhanger, no doubt.
If Chariots of Fire could do it, Argo certainly can... as it is more rousing entertainment, Hollywood-centric and star-laden than Chariots. Not to mention the preferential ballot. If people want to vote Argo, don't talk them out of it. My guess is that many people with Argo as their number one (a surprise hit with the actors at SAG) would list Silver Linings Playbook as their number 2. And I sure as hell don't want SLP winning Best Picture. Just reading that "all SLP" Oscar ballot in Glenn Whipp's LA Times article made me want to puke.
At least "ARGO" isn't boring as f*&k like "CHARIOTS OF FIRE".
Hmmm.....I think there's going to be a surprise upset Oscar night. Everbody's gaze is on Argo and Lincoln, but I think PI and BOTSW could step up and win in some important categories.
That Silver Linings Playbook is in the running at all is sort of depressing... probably the most overrated film of Oscar season... an interesting film that devolved into the worst sort of tripe in the third act. There were a lot of movies I enjoyed this year, but very few of them had anything to do with these noms.
I'm pretty tired of it being taken for granted that Lincoln will win (and it just might) for all the wrong reasons... historical drama, tasteful production, and Spielberg. I found it to be not particularly interesting, and while I normally like Daniel Day-Lewis, I thought his Lincoln was a combination of historical re-enactors from the History Channel and a wax museum.
Argo was a fine film. Nothing more than an incredibly well-constructed thriller with a bit of humor, but a very fine example nonetheless. Certainly not the best picture of the year (for me, that would be The Master), but out of these noms - probably the most deserving.
And yet another credibility cloud hanging over "Lincoln" is that Doris Kearns Goodwin was accused of plagiarism for her book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" (details in Forbes.com article, 2002), and the charges were so serious she resigned her pundit spot on the McNeill Lehr PBS show.
Of course there was the "Amistad" lawsuit filed against Spielberg (though at least that was dismissed).
JR
my friend's step-aunt makes $76/hr on the laptop. She has been out of a job for 5 months but last month her pay was $13331 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Here's the site to read more http://xurl.es/c5zje