October Oscar Predictions: Best Supporting Actor

Who will follow Jared?

Sorry for the delay and lack of posts the past two days.  As I mentioned a few times last week, I have had the cold that has been going around most of Minnesota, and as a result I needed to spend the weekend in bed trying valiantly to get better (I also needed to organize my life a little bit, which got completely out-of-whack in the past few weeks, and the illness didn’t help).

That being said, I’ll give you a brief preview of the next couple of weeks on the blog before I start in our Oscar check-in.  While I will continue to strive to write two blog posts a day, I’ll actually be working on a few larger scale projects on the blog (as well as re-starting a writing project that won’t be on the blog, but I’m extremely excited to get started on again after dropping it for a couple of years), and so I cannot guarantee we’ll have two posts a day (the past two days will be an aberration though-we’ll always have at least one post a day!).

While the off-blog writing project will remain just for me to work on, the on-blog projects I will discuss right now.  We’ll be finishing up two of our series in the next two weeks, with both the 2013 OVP and the John’s Favorite Shows final two entries being created (those links click to the most recent installments-at the bottom of the posts are all of the past entries if you need to catch up).  We’ll also be doing an October check-in on the five main Oscar races (as well as perhaps some other Oscar categories, time permitting), and most importantly, we’ll be doing a series of gigantic posts detailing my predictions for the 2014 Midterm elections, which will be occurring two weeks from today (are you ready to vote-if you haven't gotten the message, the Democrats desperately need all of the votes they can get so make sure you're ready; if you're a Republican, I can suggest some movies that will be out then that could be worth checking out...kidding, kidding (kind of)).  This, along with a few film reviews are what you have to look forward to, so stick around!

We’re going to start with Best Supporting Actor mostly because that category is insane this year.  While the other categories have started to take shape, the Supporting Actor race feels wide-open, and definitely where a savvy Harvey Weinstein or Scott Rudin should be spending their time.  That’s because when Supporting Actor is wide-open, unlike the lead actor category, this field tends to settle on five names rather quickly.  Look at something like 2009’s Supporting Actor race for a hint: these five men were at one point part of a much larger lineup, but they became impenetrable despite all but Waltz and Harrelson at the time seeming like “sure-things.”

J.K. Simmons

While in October there’s really no such thing as a sure-thing, there are a few fellas that seem to be courting the "lock" banner.  J.K. Simmons in what looks like a co-lead role in Whiplash certainly feels like a nominee.  Major role from a character actor everyone likes, that’s the sort of thing this category was invented to honor, and it’s difficult to see him missing in the long-run.  The same could be said for Edward Norton in Birdman, a film that is getting terrific buzz and has an actor the Academy really liked once upon a time, making it pretty easy to see him score his third Oscar nomination.

Aside from these two, though, the field still has a lot of openings, mostly because a lot of men are either competing against costars or are in films whose strength with AMPAS hasn’t really been established yet.  That leaves room for a lot of names to rise to the top of the heap.

Toward the top, and ready to strike, in my opinion, would be Tom Wilkinson in Selma, a film that I still think could be a major player at year’s end if it campaigns properly, leaving Wilkinson (or his costar Tim Roth) room in the race.  Mark Ruffalo has a major film in Foxcatcher, but will they really nominate he and Carell but not Tatum?  That seems a bit of a question mark.  In the 1980’s, Robert Duvall would have been a certain nominee, and perhaps even a sentimental win for The Judge, but the film seems pretty “average” and didn’t do well with critics, so will they forget about him?

Domhnall Gleeson

Christoph Waltz has made a career out of getting nominated for lead performances in the supporting field, so if Amy Adams makes it for Big Eyes (still a bit of a tossup), we could well see Waltz do his thing.  Unbroken and Inherent Vice both have major casts, but at this point we can’t tell who the standouts will be (Domhnall Gleeson and Miyavi are competing for Unbroken, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, and quite randomly Martin Short are making a play from Inherent Vice).  Albert Brooks didn’t have great luck a few years back for Drive, but could try to disprove history with A Most Violent Year this cycle.  And then there’s Ethan Hawke, who might benefit from “why not me too?” in comparison to all of the attention being given to his onscreen ex-wife Patricia Arquette.

Then there are the names that it’s still early enough in the cycle to speculate on pulling an upset, even though common sense says that most of the fellas up-top are our contenders.  We have the two lads from Fury (Logan Lerman and Shia LaBeouf), though the former may be too novice and the latter too loathed to make the cut.  Harvey’s push for The Imitation Game could turn Matthew Goode into this year’s Alan Alda.  There’s also that chance that one of the men of Into the Woods (Chris Pine, Johnny Depp, or depending on how he is campaigned, James Corden) or Gone Girl (Neil Patrick Harris or Tyler Perry) could make the cut, though they would have to get to campaigning pretty quickly to cut away from the pack.

Finally, there’s the very special case for Michael Caine.  As we have profiled before, if Michael Caine were to pull off the miracle and get cited for Interstellar, he would become the first actor ever to be nominated in six separate decades.  For a beloved actor who loves Oscar campaigns (or at least is marvelously good at them), this may be too good of an opportunity to pass up.

My September Predictions: Lerman, Wilkinson, Simmons, Norton, and Duvall

My October Predictions: I’ll stick with Wilkinson, Simmons, and Norton, as all of them seem to be in a position to get nominated, but I’m dropping Lerman and Duvall for now (the former is too young and not getting enough buzz from his film’s debut, the latter in a film too easy to forget…though both are viable enough that they should stay in the conversation for now).  Part of me wants to pick Caine if only for the crazy trivia that it would bring, but instead I’m going to go with Josh Brolin and Mark Ruffalo, both of whom are on everyone who has actually seen the movies' lists, and as a result I feel may be in a better position to judge.