OVP: Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Film: Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Stars: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack O'Halloran, Sylvester Stallone

Director: Dick Richards

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Sylvia Miles)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Chinatown is one of my favorite movies (as I get older, it becomes basically impossible to corner my favorite films to more than 4-5 films as it genuinely changes based on the day, but know this would be in contention for the crown).  I have not, however, spent a lot of time focusing on the films that came after the success of Chinatown, and honestly hadn't really thought about the strange history of the neo-noir film in the 1970's, which Chinatown was obviously the crown jewel of, but featured a number of films, some starring very important actors.  That's the case with Farewell, My Lovely, filmed in the wake of Chinatown (which you can tell based on the way the movie is shot), and starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe, a role that the actor was taking on for the first time & feels born to play (he is the only actor to have played the part, which saw actors as diverse as Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, James Garner & Elliot Gould take on the role, twice).  While Mitchum is well-cast, the movie itself struggles, not just in comparison to Chinatown, but also in trying to match that film's pacing & plotting twists.

(Spoilers Ahead) Mitchum's Philip Marlowe is hired by bank robber Moose Malloy (O'Halloran) to try to find his old girlfriend Velma, whom he hasn't seen since he got arrested.  Marlowe starts chasing down Velma, initially thinking she's a woman that has been locked up in an asylum, but this appears to be an imposter.  The real Velma we only learn in the last minutes of the film is Helen Grayle (Rampling), the trophy wife of a wealthy local judge.  As the film goes, we learn that Helen was a prostitute who helped with the bank robbery that Moose had perpetrated, though she didn't go to jail for it, and has been slowly killing everyone that is connected with her past in hopes of erasing it, getting to restart her life of privilege with her rich, oblivious husband.  The film ends in a giant shootout on a boat, where pretty much everyone except Marlowe ends up getting shot, and he lives to see another day as a detective, once again wisened by the streets.

That's the plot in a nutshell.  One of the defining characteristics of film noir is that it has a lot of story-there are tons of twists & turns, frequently characters, especially beautiful women you shouldn't trust, & where you start is never where you land.  This is what I love about it-it requires you to expect the unexpected.  But Farewell, My Lovely doesn't handle the extra plot well enough because it seems to be so obsessed with Chinatown.  In some ways this works-the music by David Shire is properly moody & delicious, and the cinematography is gorgeous and I'm surprised wasn't nominated for an Oscar that year.  But while Chinatown's difficult-to-comprehend plot is anchored by three strong performances (as well as Roman Polanski's precise direction), Farewell, My Lovely doesn't have actors ready to gloss over the movie's constant twists, oftentimes throwing in too many characters at once (which makes them difficult to track, and more importantly, difficult to vest into).  This isn't because these aren't great actors (Charlotte Rampling, Harry Dean Stanton...come on, this is a good call sheet), but they aren't able to elevate the material.

This is particularly true for Sylvia Miles, the one Oscar nominee from the film.  Miles is famous in some sections of Film Twitter for delivering two tiny performances that got nominated for an Oscar (her combined Oscar nominations make up less than 13 minutes of screen-time, less than any of the eight women she competed against at either of her Oscar ceremonies), but this isn't one of those mind-blowing cameos that you can't stop raving about.  She gets two scenes, the first as a relatively capable drunk attempting to mine booze from Marlowe (no matter what danger the information she's sharing will bring to her), and the latter scene is a throwaway moment, a return to a character that only left an impression because there's so few women in this movie.  Miles has no bearing on the plot, and honestly feels like the sort of role that people mine meaning from because she's so distinctive, not because she's giving something radiant.  Personally, I would have much rather one of the many women giving sensational turns in Nashville have gotten a third Supporting Actress nod from that film rather than a blink-and-you'll-miss-it return for Miles here.

OVP: Supporting Actor (2015)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2015)

The Nominees Were...

Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed

My Thoughts: After over a year profiling this (I say this every time, but I mean it this time-we are not taking as long when we do the next year which I plan on starting in July), we are now arriving in the Top 6 of 2015, the big, iconic races that even lax Oscar fans might remember.  The Best Supporting Actor race of 2015, I'm going to admit right now, was never going to be a great race.  Unlike the female acting contests, which featured some of the best work Oscar had seen in a while, the male races were pretty underwhelming, and even if I was to replace it with my own choices, I wouldn't do that much better as it just wasn't an amazing year for supporting actors.

The best way to indicate that is to look at the actual winner of the Oscar race, Mark Rylance.  Rylance IS one of the great actors of his generation if you count his stage work.  I saw him in Jerusalem in 2011, and I still talk about the performance-it might be the single greatest performance I've ever seen on Broadway.  That said, this performance is fine.  It's admittedly pretty subdued, and he finds the quieter moments in Rudolf Abel, particularly the scene by his desk before he's eventually arrested, but there's not a lot there, particularly when he treads familiar territory with Hanks (and certainly for Spielberg) in the bonding period in the back half of the film.  It's the sort of performance that people applaud Oscar for recognizing since it rarely goes for introverts, but it feels like the sort of win that only happened because there wasn't an obvious, showy piece-of-work to go after.

Then again, there probably was a showy performance of sorts that Oscar could have gone for, but thankfully they didn't.  Mark Ruffalo has been on the outside-looking in with three Oscar races now, but he should have just been watching at home for his work in Spotlight.  Arguably giving the worst performance in the Best Picture winner (and I love Mark Ruffalo usually, so don't come after me in the comments), Ruffalo plays for the rafters with Michael Rezendes.  The giant speech "it could have been any of us" is meant to be a big coming-together moment, trying to unite the journalists with the victims of abuse, but Ruffalo goes so large, and is so bombastic it almost ruins the movie.  It's easy to see why this performance was nominated, but considering that Michael Keaton is nailing his role in the film and easily could have been cited instead, I don't think the "why" is forgivable with actually going through with nominating Ruffalo for one of his lesser efforts.

Tom Hardy is easier to forgive since this is his first time to the dance (I always struggle going too hard after a first-time nominee), and is considerably better than Ruffalo.  That's not to say that Hardy is doing something remarkable here, but there's more nuance in his performance than Leo is giving to his role, giving him more layers and a better trajectory for his character, relying on actual acting and the work of his eyes more than sheer physicality.  That said, he's stuck in a bad movie, and he's not given enough to be able to save it fully.  There's no actual interest in character development from the director, so Hardy's touches don't create something fully-fledged, just a more interesting personage than you'd expect given what the rest of the actors are doing.

Bale has a director who does care about his characters, albeit one whose idea of character development is simply stating "and now the character is like this" rather than growing the story through subtle changes in direction (Adam McKay is many things, not all of them bad, but he is decidedly not subtle).  Bale is also not a subtle actor, and while he is impressive in his ability to inhabit characters, he rarely finds time to grow them without big jerks, going in heavy on the tics that Michael Burry brings to The Big Short, but never finding reasons as to why he eventually has a change-of-heart about the corruption he's profited from.  Bale is hindered by McKay not really understanding the ramifications of the movie he's made (he is also a millionaire who might not be the best representative of the common man's struggles), but you can't blame the scenery-chewing on McKay-that's this actor's constant handicap.

Our final nomination is an actor that almost no one would put in the same thespian league as Bale, mostly because he's played the same character over-and-over for 40+ years, but Sylvester Stallone in Creed is proof that you can find new ways to reinvent a character you know by heart.  Stallone's performance gets the unfair advantage of nostalgia, something no other actor on this list has; there's a lifetime's worth of screen memories in his worn face, his expressions, the way that he has almost a boxer's beaten tenor to his voice at this point.  But there's also a knowledge here in the way he pushes out sentences that would be a struggle for a boxer in his twilight years (knowing what we know about the impact of concussions) and he brings such calm as he hands his baton to the next generation of fighters.  This is an actor who might have only had one truly great character in him, but he plays the part with such care you can't claim he's an actor of limited scope even if you might claim he's of limited range.

Other Precursor Contenders: This category actually had more room in the precursors than I remembered.  Stallone took the Globe, besting Rylance but also Oscar-skipped Paul Dano (Love & Mercy), Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation), and Michael Shannon (99 Homes).  SAG, in what should have been an ominous sign dropped the Globe-winning Stallone, but stuck to Oscar's Bale & Rylance, also favoring Elba, Shannon, and Room's Jacob Tremblay, with Elba winning despite eventually missing with Oscar.  BAFTA skipped Stallone & Hardy, favoring Elba and Benicio del Toro (Sicario) for the nominations instead, and gave it to a third winner, Rylance.  In terms of sixth place, Elba has the most action headed into Oscar, but his nomination was clearly more of a "screw Netflix" rather than a "screw Elba" so I kind of want to guess Michael Shannon was sixth...Oscar seems to only like him when he comes out of nowhere.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: I'd probably throw out all but my winner here.  Sam Elliott was doing a better performance in Grandma than he would a few years later when he was cited for A Star is Born, while Michael Keaton definitely outdid Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight (plus, Oscar owed Keaton for skipping him in the obviously finest performance in Best Actor the previous year).  Oscar Isaac continues to be one of the best non-nominated actors currently working in the jaw-dropping Ex Machina (perhaps they felt that they had already cited Steve Jobs with Michael Fassbender, but they're both so good it's worth mentioning twice).  And lastly, Jason Statham is not a great actor.  He might not even be a good actor.  But if you're going to throw your persona for a loop in a comedy, I don't know that you could do it better than what he brings to his hilarious work in Spy.

Oscar’s Choice: Sentiment did not command the day with Oscar, as in an echo of Alan Arkin/Eddie Murphy a decade earlier, a quiet character actor in a Best Picture nominee took out an 80's icon who was trying to get an award he'd spent most of his career uninterested in winning.

My Choice: This feels so weird to say, but Sly Stallone totally deserved this Oscar.  He's so much better than the rest and had such a good narrative (and is reportedly a nice guy) I'm still flummoxed as to why he missed this trophy.  I'd follow with Rylance, Hardy, Bale, and Ruffalo.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with me that Stallone missed a perfect (and probably his only) opportunity to take a trophy, or are you with the more traditional choice of Rylance?  Is Mark Ruffalo ever going to win an Oscar?  And who was sixth place-Shannon or Elba?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2015: Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2015

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

OVP: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)

Film: Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Kurt Russell, Sylvester Stallone, Karen Gillan, Elizabeth Debicki
Director: James Gunn
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Few things have been as consistent (and as profitable) in the past few years as the Marvel Cinematic Universe coming out with 1-2 films a year, having people show up to the movies to catch the latest superhero installment (this also happens with the DC films, but no one seems to like them so it's kind of a bizarre conspiracy theory as to why they all seem to still be insanely profitable).  This May there was no exception, with the followup to one of my personal favorite films in the series, Guardians of the Galaxy (Winter Soldier is still the best movie by a wide margin the series has created, in my opinion) coming out.  Guardians set itself apart from Marvel and in particular the dour DC films by having a sense of humor about its crew, a motley group of space bandits led by a stuck-in-the-80's rebel named Peter Quill (Pratt).  Would the second film live up to the delight of the first?  Let's take a look...

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is centered around Quill, after a hilarious interaction with the Sovereign People (headed by the glorious and vastly-underused-in-every-film Elizabeth Debicki), finding his father Ego (Russell), who is essentially a god that has both created and exists concurrently as a man and as his own planet.  This leads to Quill realizing that he has some magical powers (Starlord, indeed), and bonding with the man whom he never knew growing up.  All-the-while, the Sovereign are intent on coming back and attack him for Rocket slighting them and stealing their batteries, while Yondu (Rooker), Quill's surrogate father, is also being chased toward the planet by his rebelling troupe, who are now under the leadership of Taserface (and yes, the name is properly mocked).

While the film has its fun moments, particularly anything involving Debicki as the Sovereign (easily my favorite storyline of the bunch), I will admit that this felt fun in the way that Pitch Perfect 2 felt fun.  It was great being in the saddle again with these characters, and in particular the chemistry between, say, Cooper's Rocket and Diesel's Groot, or Pratt with pretty much anyone but particularly Russell, is charming, but the wear is starting to show that wouldn't have in the entire series if there hadn't been a sequel.  This may be blasphemous, but the reality is that sequels aren't always a good thing, particularly when they point out ways the initial movie failed, and here it's that the characters are somewhat underwritten and occasionally one-note.  Dave Bautista's Drax, for example, becomes increasingly annoying as the film goes on, his unconventional reactions to social cues being relatively predictable and groan-worthy.  The film is more reliant upon you remembering the minutia of the first film than I was used to for a comic book film (I had to rely for parts of the picture more on my childhood knowledge of the Marvel Universe than I can remember having to do in any comic book picture since before the 2008 relaunch), and is too long.  The entire sequence with Taserface, for starters, is a bit of a drag, and while I enjoy Sly Stallone randomly showing up as much as the next person, between this and Andy Garcia in Passengers, is it in Chris Pratt's contract that an Oscar nominee has to show up and do almost nothing for a paycheck?  Seriously-unless Stallone is being positioned for a later movie or to be the Samuel L. Jackson of the Guardians pictures, I don't get what that was...was he James Gunn's matinee idol or something?  I generally like Stallone, but he had literally nothing to do here.

Still, it was not a film without charms.  Kurt Russell is such a joy to see onscreen always, and he relishes this moment in the spotlight.  In what has to be on either the Makeup or VFX clip reel for the Oscars later this year (from what I've read it was a combination of both), Russell's de-aging at the beginning of the film is the closest I've seen to actually avoiding the Uncanny Valley, perhaps because it's more makeup than CGI (it puts even Rogue One from last year to shame on that front).  In fact, the reliance on traditional makeup in the movie is intense-in a film that is a throwback to a different era (the 1980s continue their bizarre reverence in cinema), James Gunn wanted to celebrate such a time.

Additionally, the movie is funny at parts.  It's hard not to like this crew, even if I feel like the gimmick is being stretched now more than added to...no one wants to see Peter Quill become an Iron Man-level cascade of serious, but the world of Marvel's cinema has never been great about going deeper (the point of a sequel) without finding a solid balance between humor and drama.  This is all to say, I don't know where this goes in the third film, even if the post-credits sequence gives an obvious hint that Adam Warlock could soon be in-store for us.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Are you leaving pleased, but not entirely as pleased as you were the first time?  Where do you think that the Guardians chapter of the Marvel universe should go next?  Are you feeling good about Adam Warlock as the next big challenge for the crew?  And who else is still in-awe of that Kurt Russell effect?  Share below!

OVP: Creed (2015)

Film: Creed (2015)
Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Tony Bellow
Director: Ryan Coogler
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actor-Sylvester Stallone)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I'd be paying my hard-earned money, excitedly, to go and see yet another Rocky sequel, I would have laughed you into the next room.  Like almost every person who had cable in the 1990's (or went to the movies in the 70's/80's), I have seen multiple Rocky movies, catching them back when they used to be near-constant marathons on TNT, and we all knew the formula, frequently trading on the original Rocky, a major movie that won Best Picture in a field that included Taxi Driver and Network, and then went on to make Sylvester Stallone, "Adrian!" and those 72-steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art all movie lore.  And yet, Creed, after years of the franchise (which, like its star, became a bit of a pop culture punching bag in the years that followed) getting lukewarm reviews about how the myriad sequels have shaken the allure of the first film, has reignited the franchise in a way no one else could have suspected.  In a year where long-running series like Mad Max, Jurassic World, and Star Wars all made it back to the screen, perhaps no movie quite shocked this moviegoer quite like the kinetic Creed, an electrically fast-paced movie that features memorable long-take cinematography and proof that boxing movies, when done well, can still fire up a crowd.

(Spoilers Ahead) I think the thing that instantly started to set apart Creed was the way that the film, while obviously trying to find a place opposite that of Rocky, wasn't afraid to show the impact of Rocky and the ways that boxing has changed in the decades since.  Here we see both Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa not as characters whose heads we're trying to get inside, but instead as immortals in the world of boxing.  There's a scene late in the movie where Adonis Creed's (Jordan) opponent "Pretty" Ricky Conlin (Bellow) is fighting with Creed at a boxing press conference, and he points out that Creed is coasting on his name, whereas the man sitting next to him (Stallone as Balboa) is the "true" fighter on their team.  Creed, of course, eventually proves to Conlin that he can in fact fight, and that he isn't just a name, but it shows how immortal Balboa has become through the years-even his opponents can't help but respect him.

This is true in many ways of Stallone himself, who has started to gain Oscar buzz for this role, a career-capper after a few misfires in trying to cap his role in the Rocky sequels.  It's quite frankly hard to tell at times whether or not what Stallone is doing is truly great acting, or whether he's able to make decades of nostalgia and Hollywood iconography trick the audience into thinking that's what he's doing, but he's mesmerizing reprising his most legendary role.  Every scene, quite frankly, he seems to be in command of the screen, a magnetic force to be reckoned with; there's a naturalism here, as Stallone knows this character's every heartbeat, but with his age and our knowledge now of the effects of boxing on the brain and development, we see him in a different light as he speaks in short, gruff sentences, and his victories become us cheering on a childhood friend.  Michael B. Jordan, possibly the most exciting male American actor under thirty currently working, is also quite good and finds a wonderful balance with Creed (born in foster care, but eventually raised in intense privilege, his weird combination of entitlement and proving himself is hard act to create, but he nails it), also worth the price of admission but Stallone is the one you're begging to see.  When they finally show the "Rocky Steps" you're realizing what you're seeing is one of the best entries in this series.

The movie, of course, isn't without its faults.  The plot is intensely predictable, even the eventual outcome where Creed gets a technical loss like Rocky did in the first movie, setting up a theoretical sequel, and the film has no idea what to do with its female characters.  Talia Shire won an Academy Award nomination for the first film, but Phylicia Rashad and Tessa Thompson will just have to settle for another line in their SAG cards and hopes that they can command a bigger payday in the sequel, as they are mere window dressing, which is disappointing as a lot of care actually went into creating Thompson's character (whose hearing loss and burgeoning music career made for their own interesting subplot until the entire film dismissed it).  Plus, there's no new ground being tread here that the original film didn't already cross.  Still, the editing and direction are sharp, and the two leading men more than live up to the hype surrounding the performance.  This is a fight you should know you'll be in for a good battle, and you won't have to shell out $200 to HBO for the privilege.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Were you a fan of Creed, or is this the franchise that will never die?  Do you think Stallone can make Oscar history?  And for that matter, can Jordan finally break into the AMPAS club?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Sylvester Stallone's Quest for Oscar Trivia Glory

While Mad Max: Fury Road got all of the headlines yesterday, for me the moment of truth was Sylvester Stallone's victory for Creed.  Suddenly, in the ebb of massively positive reviews, pretty much the entire collective Oscar blogosphere (including yours truly) proclaimed Rocky Balboa one to beat in the Best Supporting Actor race.  This is a shock for a variety of reasons, principally because a few weeks ago I think most of us would be stunned to find out that Creed would actually be any good, much less a serious Oscar contender.  The movie, the seventh in the long-running Rocky franchise, is one that I admittedly haven't seen yet (it's toward the top of my list after all of this praise though, let me tell you), but we've all seen how Stallone's career and the movies that followed his initial Best Picture nominee ended up being kind of a joke-as a result it seemed impossible that he'd be back for another nomination for the same role (or, considering his somewhat limited macho action-hero appeal, another nomination period).  How rare is this?  Let's take a look at three select clubs Stallone is trying to join.

Actors Who Have Been Nominated Twice for the Same Role

Were he to be nominated, Stallone would be only the sixth actor ever to be nominated twice for playing the same part.  Other actors who have accomplished this include Paul Newman as 'Fast Eddie' Felson (The Hustler and The Color of Money), Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley (Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's), Peter O'Toole as King Henry II (Becket and The Lion in Winter), Al Pacino as Michael Corleone (The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II), and Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I (Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age).  All five of these actors, though, unlike Stallone, were far more beloved by Oscar when they won the second nomination.  Crosby and Blanchett already had Oscars, O'Toole and Newman were both many times over nominees, and Al Pacino was in The Godfather Part II, arguably the finest sequel ever made.  Of the five Stallone has to be hoping to emulate Paul Newman, who is easily his most hopeful doppelganger.  Both are longtime actors that seem to be well-liked in the acting community (everything I've read about Stallone seems to be that he's pretty popular in Hollywood, which helps when you're doing a comeback campaign), both were nominated for arguably their most iconic roles, and both went from being the young upstart to mentoring an emerging movie star.  The similarities between The Color of Money and Creed are quite incredible, and Stallone has to be secretly hoping that he can keep that comparison going.

Actors Who Have Been Nominated for Sequels

This is nearly as short of a list, and one that isn't 100% comprehensive online.  The reality is that Oscar doesn't go much for sequels, but in particular he doesn't like actors in sequels.  Honoring the same actors for the same role is a thing they do at the Emmys, and with the exception of the four above (O'Toole doesn't count here as his films aren't really connected), usually when you're cited for a sequel you weren't nominated initially.  In fact, most of the people nominated for sequels (like Robert de Niro, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Ingrid Bergman) weren't even in the initial movies.  Only Sigourney Weaver and Talia Shire come to mind of actors who got in when they weren't cited for the previous film.  The Golden Globes, actually, are far more likely to cite a sequel.  David Carradine, Johnny Depp, and Michael Douglas, for example, recently were cited for sequels even though they didn't translate over to the Oscars.  Stallone getting nominated here would be pretty damn rare, particularly if the film didn't also score in other acting categories or Best Picture (Weaver in Aliens is the only one I can think of that felt completely solo), so Michael B. Jordan or the film itself may be being underestimated at this point if Stallone feels assured.

Nominees Whose First and Second Acting Nods are More Than 20 Years Apart

While Stallone was nominated not only for acting in Rocky, but also for writing it, he hasn't been nominated in the 39 years since his first nomination.  Were he to be cited for Creed, that would put him in a very elite crew of nominees who waited twenty years or longer to be nominated for a second acting award.  Only eleven actors have actually pulled off the feat, in fact (years apart in parentheses): Henry Fonda (41), Christopher Walken (34), John Wayne (20), Kenneth Branagh (22, though he was nominated in other categories in the meantime so it's questionable whether this should count), Richard Farnsworth (21), Richard Harris (27), Ralph Richardson (35), Max von Sydow (22), James Whitmore (26), Helen Hayes (39), and Lynn Redgrave (32).  As you can see, Stallone would be on the longer end of this club, but that's no guarantee that he would win the second trophy-Wayne and Fonda were the only two actors to have lost the first time and went on to win the second, and though he's a pretty big star Sylvester Stallone is hardly John Wayne or Henry Fonda.  It's also (randomly) worth noting that Stallone, whose gap would put him in second place behind Fonda and tied with Helen Hayes, could potentially not even be the biggest gap this year between first and second nominations, as Lily Tomlin is making a play in Best Actress for Grandma forty years after winning a nod for Nashville.  It should be further noted that, while Walken, Branagh, and von Sydow are all still living, none of these people so far have won a third nomination, so if Stallone wants the win it's now or never.

And there you have it-three tidbits of trivia about Sylvester Stallone's potentially record-breaking bid for a second Oscar nomination in Creed.  Do you think he'll do it?  And do you think he can win?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!