OVP: The Thin Red Line (1998)

Film: The Thin Red Line (1998)

Stars: Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, John Travolta

Director: Terrence Malick

Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Score, Sound, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

As part of our month-long celebration of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, I am completing all of the remaining gaps in my Terrence Malick filmography (one of my favorite film directors) with what we're calling "Terry Tuesdays" throughout June.

Terrence Malick took 20 years between Days of Heaven and his next picture.  During that time, he wrote a number of screenplays that were never produced, including one called Q that would later serve as the basis for two of his films, The Tree of Life and Voyage of Time.  He finally returned, after two decades of time off to film an adaptation of James Jones' classic novel about World War II, The Thin Red Line.  Malick at this point had not entirely abandoned the concept of a truly linear plot, but it was obvious that was where he was headed.  You could make a legitimate argument that this is the last movie with characters that really seem to run together, with actual spoken dialogue that grounds together a story (though The New World and The Tree of Life have this to some degree, even though they become more-and-more abstract).  The film, though, would become legendary given it would establish Malick's strange reputation as someone who could assemble a gargantuan movie star lineup...and then become distracted by a parrot in the cutting room floor.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with Private Witt (Caviezel) stuck on an island in the South Pacific after going AWOL.  After being captured, he's allowed to return to the military rather than face certain imprisonment, but he must do so as a member of the 25th Infantry Division as a stretcher bearer, as they are invading the island of the Guadalcanal.  The days that follow are a series of attacks on the island against the Japanese, as they come face-to-face with death, intimately seeing the perils & pitfalls of war.  One soldier (played by Woody Harrelson) dies not from enemy fire but from accidentally pulling the pin out of his grenade and blowing himself in half.  Throughout this time, we see personifications of the glory of war in Nick Nolte, the glory of peace through Caviezel's Witt, the glory of humanity in Elias Koteas loving Captain Staros, and the reality of survival through Sgt. Welsh (Penn).

The movie has about a 50/50 split between spoken dialogue and narration, and there are moments when this is confusing.  The movie hires a number of well-known actors, some of whom are easily identifiable as narrators (Sean Penn & Nick Nolte are difficult to mistake), but because there's so little traditional character-buildling outside of Nolte, Penn, Koteas, & Caviezel, when they aren't the narrators (which is often) it's sometimes hard to distinguish who is who.  Similar to The Tree of Life, which was overwhelming the first time I viewed it, I suspect I'll find that it's easier to decipher upon repeat viewings.

Because there will be repeat viewings of this.  We are 3/3 in masterpieces out of Malick, as I see the last "important" film of his career (we have one more late stage Malick next week that I haven't seen that will cap this collection).  The movie is probably the most-lauded of Malick's epics, getting seven Oscar nominations, and while part of that is the subject matter (war films tend to do well with AMPAS), it's also deserved.  The film's alternating perspectives on different characters gives it a sense of balance while sticking to its central thesis that war is tragic, no matter one's views on the merits of the conflict.  We see young men, barely into the prime of life, torn apart.  There's a terrific bit of dialogue late in the picture where a young man says something along the lines of "I've had a long life even if I'm young" and while in another movie that would've read as "proud & brave...imagine what these men have been through" here it reads as pablum.  This man is ready to give up his life, but he hasn't even lived it yet & has no concept of what he's saying, sacrificing his youth for ivory tower figures like those played by John Travolta who has no concept of the early days of war anymore it is such a distant memory they only believe the pablum.

The cinematography, by Oscar winner John Toll, is stupendous.  Malick & Toll underline their script not just with grand looks at the ocean & tall grass providing these men minimal cover for their lives, but also with throwaway shots like a panning look across a rocky cliff, the only sign of these men's sacrifice a littered pile of bullet casings that may sit on this island in the middle of the Pacific for the next 50 years without movement, the entire lifetime of the men who shot them...had they not died.  Combined with an iconic Hans Zimmer score (some of his best work) and realistic movie makeup (the dying-and-blood feels very real, particularly by the standards of 1998 with only traditional visual effects on display), and you have one of Malick's most proficient technical films.

The editing, apparently cut down from a five-hour runtime, is the stuff of Hollywood legend at this point.  George Clooney has laughed about this in interviews, saying how much he was basically trimmed out of the story to only appear onscreen for about 90 seconds.  Adrien Brody found it less funny.  In the book, his character is central to the story, and so for Brody, who was a young actor who  hadn't struck it big yet (unlike Clooney, then in his ER heyday), it was a big deal.  But at the premiere of the film, Brody supposedly found out that he was not only not the lead, but had been trimmed down so much that he was barely in the movie.  Indeed, if there was an actual line spoken by Brody directly onscreen as opposed to just talking in a group shot, I missed it...his wide eyes more a prop to help him standout in a crowd shot than the lead part, which is delegated to Caviezel in particular.  This would become something of a refrain for Malick, who would increasingly see major stars trimmed from his movies, some deeply upset about it even when they're still in a large chunk of the movie like Christopher Plummer (whom, it's worth noting, I would've cited for the Oscar for his work in The New World).  Next week we will conclude our look at the films of Terrence Malick as I watch my final gap in his filmography.

OVP: Supporting Actor (2017)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2017)

The Nominees Were...

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project

Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water

Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World

Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

My Thoughts: We are hitting the final stretch of the 2017 races over the next week-and-a-half, doing our supporting races in the next three days, and then the final four (plus our ballot!) all of next week.  We'll start that out as always with Best Supporting Actor, a field that included a lot of names but that I (looking back on my predictions) got exactly right.  Part of that was correctly calling out an actor who was only in this category accidentally, the late Christopher Plummer.  Plummer had one of the biggest late-staged comebacks in Oscar history, getting three nominations over the age of eighty, an unrivaled situation that no one else will likely ever match.  We'll commence our writeup thus with Plummer as our entry point.

Plummer plays his J. Paul Getty less as a feeble old miser and more as someone who has lost his grip on reality decades earlier, having unlimited wealth in a way no man can have without it warping his mind.  Plummer's performance here is good, particularly his chaotic one-on-one scenes with both Mark Wahlberg & Michelle Williams, where he unfolds what it's like to be a man no one says no to in real time.  The performance feels a little bit half-baked, as Plummer famously only had a few weeks before the movie's release date to replace Kevin Spacey after Spacey became unemployable, and there's a whiff of the industry acknowledging Plummer for doing them a favor by stepping in at the last minute to this nomination...you get the sense that even if he was terrible he'd have gotten this citation as a "thank you."  He's not, he's good, but it's a pity he hadn't been cast at the beginning since I think some more time to parcel through this role might've made this his worthiest of nominations.

Richard Jenkins was cast from the beginning, but I can't help but feeling he also should've been recast in The Shape of Water.  It's refreshing to have an average-looking man play a gay character onscreen (too often we see aging gay men only when they're about to die in the movies), but I couldn't help but feeling there's something authentic lacking here.  Quite frankly Jenkins, who is straight in real life, is not convincing as a gay man, never understanding the tragedy of his sad character and other than one late scene, feeling simply to exist as a "sassy gay friend" for our more fully-drawn main character of Eliza.  The script doesn't care about him, and Jenkins doesn't define the role enough to rise above that castoff.

Willem Dafoe has been on fire in recent years, getting a well-deserved career renaissance that spurred from The Florida Project.  His work as a motel manager, left to deal with people living week-to-week, paycheck-to-paycheck is so well-done because his motives remain unclear.  Whom does he care about other than himself as the movie progresses...how much did he actually help the patrons who are clearly about to have their lives thrown away if they can't stay in this motel (it's literally the only place keeping them out of shelters or the streets)...Dafoe keeps this vested inside, but lets enough out to finally get you to understand his character in the movie's final moments.  It's a master class of understatement from an actor not necessarily known for such restraint.

Our final two nominees are both from Three Billboards, the first time there was a double supporting actor nominee from the same film since 1991's Bugsy.  Of the two, Woody Harrelson is my favorite.  I loved the way that his world-weary cop unfolds against the plot.  Harrelson, like Dafoe, is not known for understatement in his professional work, but here he finds it as a man who is in a new marriage, someone who understands the plight of our main character of Mildred, but also knows the parameters of what the law will allow him to do-he is the center of this film, keeping it tethered to reality, and also bears the weight of all of the unsolved cases that have come before him.  It's a great, small piece of acting in a film that loses its grounding when he disappears from the story.

Which leads us to Sam Rockwell.  Rockwell is not one of my favorite actors...in fact, I've always struggled with him as an onscreen performer, frequently feeling too flashy, too scenery-chewing...in some ways my reaction to him is similar to some of that of Philip Seymour Hoffman in the early Aughts, an actor who could be great but oftentimes gave into his theatrical roots when the character doesn't call for it.  It doesn't help Rockwell that the script doesn't have a clue how to handle his racist cop, but you shouldn't be forgiven & given an Oscar if you get saddled with a bad screenplay and don't make it worse.  Throw in a borderline case of category fraud, and I'm still baffled as to why this was the performance that finally won the long-neglected Rockwell over to the Academy.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Sam Rockwell as their victor against Plummer, Jenkins, Dafoe, & Armie Hammer (Call Me By Your Name), while SAG chose Rockwell atop Jenkins, Harrelson, Dafoe, & Steve Carell (Battle of the Sexes).  BAFTA completed the set for Rockwell, beating Plummer, Dafoe, Harrelson, & Hugh Grant (Paddington 2), the latter of whom wasn't eligible for Oscar until the following year due to release date timing (he didn't get nominated for the Oscar, but I nominated him in 2018 for My Ballot as he's excellent in this movie).  In terms of sixth place, I called this entire lineup right (as I said above), mostly because I figured that the two actors from Call Me By Your Name (Hammer & Michael Stuhlbarg) would split the vote enough that neither would make it.  My gut says that Stuhlbarg, who has the aura of a "character actor who gets his one Oscar nomination at some point" was in sixth since he was also in Best Picture nominees The Shape of Water and The Post, but Hammer in 2017 had also been itching around an Oscar nomination for a while & that would've been a possible place for him (at this point, of course, Hammer, like the aforementioned Kevin Spacey, is unemployable, but coming off of The Social Network and J. Edgar a nomination felt inevitable).

Performances I Would Have Nominated: Hammer is undoubtedly the lead in his movie, and while I'll try to base that category solely on the performance (so he's a probable nominee for me even with his personal life being a horror show), this is not the place for him.  Stuhlbarg, on the other hand, with his fantastic final monologue...Oscar has no excuse for skipping.

Oscar’s Choice: The Globes had a choice between honoring the long-neglected Rockwell or the long-neglected Dafoe, and they chose the former...to which every other awards body followed suit in the most lock-step acting award season in recent memory.

My Choice: Easily it's Dafoe-this is the performance of his career, and deserved the Oscar, particularly against an otherwise average lineup.  I'd follow with Harrelson, Plummer, Jenkins, & Rockwell in the back.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you go with the entire awards season & the work of Sam Rockwell, or do you want to come over and sun with Willem Dafoe & I in The Florida Project?  Why do you think it's so rare to have double nominees from the same film in supporting categories today (it used to be far more common)?  And which of the Call Me By Your Name men was in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2017: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2017

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019 

OVP: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Film: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Stars: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn
Director: Matt Reeves
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We live in an era of the revived franchise, an era focused on how we can mine our childhoods (or our parents' childhoods) for any bit of nostalgia.  It's an understandable concept (in the era of Donald Trump, who wouldn't want to reach back for happier times?), but it also makes for relatively boring film.  At best, many of the superhero and live-action retreads that have come to our summer blockbusters are middling at best, rarely finding something new to say that rivals the original.  Frequently, they suck the joy out of what is in front of them, making something more violent-and-edgy (every filmmaker appears to have seen The Dark Knight and is using that as a template).  So it's still surprising to me that of all of the franchise revivals, it was Planet of the Apes that somehow genuinely got it right.  We haven't had a chance to review the third installment yet on this site, a fact I'm going to correct today, but it's worth remembering what a joke these seemed to be when the first picture came out in 2011 (I literally remember people laughing when the title card came out the first time I saw a trailer for it at the theater), and how Andy Serkis's work (and some brilliant special effects artists) crafted together a truly compelling trilogy (and now that Disney owns Fox, almost certainly they'll go back to extending and pulling the franchise into a host of different directions, lessening this impact, but let's focus on the here-and-now).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place two years after the ape uprising in San Francisco, where Koba's faction went up against Caesar's (Serkis).  Caesar is hardened from the ape he was two years earlier, frequently trying to find a foothold in the war against the humans, which increasingly looks like something the apes are winning (even though most of this film itself is focused on one particular battle rather than a larger war).  We don't know why we get this feeling until later into the film, when the main human antagonist the Colonel (Harrelson) reveals that the Simian Flu (alluded to in Rise of the Planet of the Apes) has mutated, and the humans infected with it are becoming primitive and unable to speak.  Thanks to his own prejudice (confiscating a human toy from Caesar), the Colonel infects himself with the flu and kills himself before he has a chance to start to show the symptoms.  In  an epic battle, Caesar himself dies as a result of wounds he sustains, but not before he leads the apes, as well as a young girl, to a promised land, a place that surely is intended to be a callback to the original series (though there's problems if you want to get your inner film nerd on with the timeline), as we now have characters like Cornelius & Nova ready for Charlton Heston to land on the planet.

The film feels more cloistered than the prior pictures, and more reliant on the audience having invested in Caesar and his ape brethren than the previous installations, where we got a heavy amount of back story to invest in what was happening onscreen.  This is a risk for people who are casual film-watchers.  After all, if you're like me and haven't revisited the films other than your initial watch of the movies in theaters, you might struggle to be invested in what's happening in the flick, or honestly leave confused.  This isn't the fault of the directors, and it's not a small problem, but there were moments in the movie I felt like it almost needed to adapt to the new "binge-watching" strategy employed by Netflix where you need all of the titles at once, rather than several years apart.

But the movie is otherwise terrific.  Serkis is excellent, finding a core to Caesar that makes him stand alongside Gollum & Kong as some of his best work.  Few actors imbue their creations with such sensitivity and nuance, and Serkis manages to do that without even showing his face.  Harrelson is also great (though lately, when is he not?), giving the best performance by a human in the entire revived series.  I loved the special effects work-we've already seen what brilliance they can do with Serkis & Caesar (as well as supporting characters like Steve Zahn's Bad Ape), but the battle effects are on-point as well, with an army of men & apes fighting against (and sometimes alongside) each other.  I still feel like the second movie hit the biggest heights, but this is a strong closer to a trilogy of films that had no business being as good as it was, and one that should stand apart in a similar way to the Nolan Batman movies distinguishing themselves from the rest of the franchise.

OVP: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Film: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Stars: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Paul Bettany
Director: Ron Howard
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I never quite know whether or not to qualify myself as a proper Star Wars fan.  During my youth, I kind of dismissed the franchise as a bit gauche, I was so into more prestige cinema, and admittedly there are a lot of faults in the film's dialogue and repetitive character structuring.  This was proven accurate when the prequels came out and everyone abandoned the franchise, or at least qualified their love.  But in the years since, heading into The Force Awakens, I changed my tune a bit.  I now have a Star Wars shirt, and genuinely, gleefully shouted out loud when I saw the new trailer when Billy Dee Williams came in laughing.  It might be because there are so few filmic series that rival some of the obsessions people have otherwise in pop culture with video games or television shows that I can't really dismiss one of the few franchises that genuinely inspire such passion, even if I don't always return that ardor.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is all to say that when a movie like Solo comes along that sharply divides the major fandoms of Star Wars, I'm one of the few people who go into it ready to judge it on its merits, rather than feel some sort of betrayal if it doesn't match what I want from the film, or be ambivalent because I didn't care about what came before it in the series.  The film, the second stand-alone Star Wars movie, looks at a young Han Solo (Ehrenreich) who starts the picture escaping from the law, and loses his love Qi'ra (Clarke) when she's apprehended during their escape; he eventually joins the Imperial Navy.  We thus explore the origin story of Han Solo, learning how he initially met Chewbacca & Lando.  We also see him reunite later with Qi'ra, but she's now the lientenant of Vos (Bettany), a chief aide in the Crimson Dawn, run by Darth Maul (whom you remember from the prequels, and in a moment that made quite a few people in my audience gasp, is reprised briefly by the original actor Ray Park).  With his rough-and-tumble friend Beckett (Harrelson), Han and Chewbacca try to steal some coaxium (hyperspace fuel) from Vos, but in the process Vos is killed by Qi'ra (who takes his job in Maul's regime, though specifically not betraying that it was Han who was involved in the crime), and Han realizes that he's been double-crossed by Beckett, whom he kills.  The film ends with Han winning the Millennium Falcon from Lando, after discovering that Lando is cheating in his card games (a fact that will surely be employed in The Rise of Skywalker, right?).

There are two directions I go here.  The first is that it's difficult to imagine anyone else playing the title role other than Harrison Ford, and Ehrenreich in some ways was destined for failure here.  It's not that you can't reinterpret classic characters (though perhaps you shouldn't-hint hint Hollywood), but it's also that Ford is kind of in a different league when it comes to action heroes.  In his prime, Harrison Ford might be the greatest action-adventure star of all time, and his best creations (Han and Indiana Jones) are so completely identified with him that making another actor take them on seems cruel.  Yes, you could claim that eventually Daniel Craig lived up to the likes of Sean Connery, but we had to go through four other actors to get there, and Ford is better as Han/Indiana Jones than even Connery was as Bond.  As a result, Ehrenreich can't find the same sort of roguish charisma here, coasting on his easy handsomeness and charm (which, if you saw Hail, Caesar! is definitely there), but falling short of what we'd expect from someone playing Han Solo.

The reality is, though, if you can take this film outside of the lens of what you'd expect (and I'm not sure that you should, considering they slapped Star Wars on the title and incorporated Han, Chewbacca, and Lando into the franchise), this is still a fun movie.  No, no one is breaking the bank when it comes to great acting (Glover is more doing something inventive than giving a great performance), but it's not like the original Star Wars films didn't also have their problems, and I found this movie really fun.  It's lighter fare than we're used to in this franchise, but it doesn't have the plot holes and questionable visual effects of Rogue One, and there's enough scamp in the work of Glover & Harrelson to make it feel like a light, fluffy ride.  I get why super fans don't love it because it takes a lot of leeway with a classic cinematic character, but as I said-I'm a devoted, but casual fan, and I don't have that same level of attachment.  As a result, I'm going with three stars-it's fun on its own, and considering the box office, that's probably where it stays.

Oscar's Long-Suffering Gentlemen

As you may have guessed due to the massive increase in articles on this blog in the past two weeks, I'm in a bit of a house-cleaning mode for the blog, getting all of the articles I meant to write in 2018 but never had time to, out the door for your enjoyment before we dive into some of the new series/articles of 2019.  While doing so, I was looking through my drafts folder and realized that I owe you a sequel to an article about Oscar bridesmaids that I wrote in December.  There I took a look at the living actresses who have been nominated 3+ times but never won a competitive Academy Award.  At the time, it seemed possible that both Glenn Close & Amy Adams could be removed from such a list, but instead they just moved further into the front, both still waiting for an Oscar that might never come (but don't tell them that).

Today we're going to look at the 12 men who are living and don't have an Oscar, but have lost at least three times.  Despite the focus on Close & Adams, there are actually three men on this list who moved up thanks to this past year's ceremony, and we actually had a tragic change in this list from what it would have been had I finished it in December, as the man who would have been our #1, Albert Finney, passed away last month.  Since I didn't have time to write him an obituary at the time, consider this a bit of a memorial post to the fine actor.

Finney was very rare when he died.  I wrote in my December article that only 11 women have died with 3+ Oscar nominations and never winning a competitive one, but for men it's nearly as rare, with 13 such men who have died without a competitive Oscar.  This list includes such icons as Mickey Rooney, Peter O'Toole, and Charles Boyer, all of whom won Honorary Oscars, as well as noted character actors such as Clifton Webb and Charles Bickford.  Below you will find an additional dozen that are waiting for that competitive Oscar-speculate in the comments which ones you think have the best shot at actually taking a trophy home before their final curtain call.

Honorable Mention: Warren Beatty, Matt Damon, and Brad Pitt have 3+ acting nominations without ever taking a trophy for their thespian abilities (and are still with us), but they all have competitive Oscars of their own.  Beatty won Best Director for 1981's Reds, Pitt won Best Picture in 2013 for 12 Years a Slave, and Damon won Best Original Screenplay for 1997's Good Will Hunting.  As a result, I kept them off of the list even though technically they'd qualify.

Note: These are ranked by how many nominations an actress made, then by who got their most recent nomination the latest, and then by who got their first nomination first.

12. Viggo Mortensen

Nominations: Eastern Promises (Actor in 2007), Captain Fantastic (Actor in 2016), & Green Book (Actor in 2018)
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Casey Affleck, & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: It would have been 2018 had awards bodies not A) fallen weirdly in love with Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody and B) Green Book hadn't gotten a significant amount of flack for its treatment of black characters, though that latter hardly stopped it in the Best Picture & Screenplay categories so maybe it was just the former.  You could make an argument that Mortensen may have been a more palatable choice than, say, Christian Bale had Malek not been on a missile trajectory to winning his Oscar.
Well, He Still Won...: Mortensen hasn't been very lucky with awards bodies.  About the most notable trophy he's picked up would be for Best SAG Ensemble for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but he's never won a significant award for his solo acting.
Is This Happening Someday?: I don't know.  Aside from Green Book, Mortensen's past nominations were genuine surprises, and ones that had no chance of actually winning.  If he continues to make populist films like Green Book this could theoretically happen, but he's not the type of actor who seems comfortable with campaigning, and as a result I'd wager he won't take this, unless he gets the right biopic.

11. Woody Harrelson

Nominations: The People vs. Larry Flynt (Actor in 1996), The Messenger (Supporting Actor in 2009), and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Supporting Actor in 2017)
He Lost to: Geoffrey Rush, Christoph Waltz, & Sam Rockwell
Closest to the Win: The Messenger?  1996 he was in fourth or fifth place, and Three Billboards was a near-miss for a nomination, so The Messenger you could quite plausibly state that he was second place, though a distant second place to Waltz.
Well, He Still Won...: Harrelson has never won a major trophy for film, but he did take an Emmy for his time in Cheers.
Is This Happening Someday?: I think so.  Harrelson is the sort of actor who demands respect at this point, and appears in prestige films regularly (he works regularly, period).  Give him the right supporting part in a film, and it feels like he'd be able to sneak in as a career-capper sort of trophy.

10. Mark Ruffalo

Nominations: The Kids are All Right (Supporting Actor in 2010), Foxcatcher (Supporting Actor in 2013), & Spotlight (Supporting Actor in 2014)
He Lost to: Christian Bale, JK Simmons, & Mark Rylance
Closest to the Win: None of these movies.  I honestly can't even wager-he was at least in third for all of them, perhaps no higher than fourth.  Ruffalo's nominations are weird because all of these felt like citations you could predict, but also are for work that was never going to come close to an actual win.
Well, He Still Won...: Ruffalo took the Emmy for Best TV Movie for his work as a producer on The Normal Heart but he hasn't picked up a major trophy yet for acting.
Is This Happening Someday?: Yes, it is.  Ruffalo just turned fifty, is well-liked (all of his costars seem to adore him), and now that he's not under contractual obligation to Marvel, he's got more time to make arthouse films, which feels like where he's at home.  He just needs to get in on a Best Picture nominee, and he could win...I honestly think he's famous enough he could win lead.

9. Edward Norton

Nominations: Primal Fear (Supporting Actor in 1996), American History X (Actor in 1998), & Birdman (Supporting Actor in 2014)
He Lost to: Cuba Gooding, Jr., Roberto Benigni, & JK Simmons
Closest to the Win: Call me crazy, but maybe 1996?  The Academy was feeling frisky that year (just ask Lauren Bacall), and he had just won a Golden Globe.  Most pundits, if you look back, thought it was a battle between Gooding and William H. Macy for Fargo, but I wonder if Norton (who also appeared in Everyone Says I Love You and The People vs. Larry Flynt) was more in the thick of the wins than people gave him credit for at the time.
Well, He Still Won...: Norton lost the Oscar to Gooding, but managed to pick up a Golden Globe in 1996 for Primal Fear.
Is This Happening Someday?: I'm going to guess no.  Norton has had a lot more pits than valleys in a career where he's never really stopped working.  I think he's the definition of an actor who starts out strong (surely everyone assumed he was the next big thing by 1999), but Birdman feels more the exception than the rule, and he's not the type that will go after the (quality) Oscar-bait projects.  They'll need to come to him.

8. Joaquin Phoenix

Nominations: Gladiator (Supporting Actor in 2000), Walk the Line (Actor in 2005), & The Master (Actor in 2012)
He Lost to: Benicio del Toro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, & Daniel Day-Lewis
Closest to the Win: None of these are close wins.  Walk the Line couldn't even get a Best Picture nomination, and that's the one that makes the most sense when you compare it to its competition (and he's at best in third behind Hoffman & Heath Ledger).
Well, He Still Won...: It always feels weird to say this, but the only major trophy that the deeply method & dark Phoenix has ever won was for the Comedy Golden Globe (for Walk the Line).
Is This Happening Someday?: I don't think so.  If anyone on this list is the modern successor to Albert Finney, it's Phoenix, who is an actor that is too good not to occasionally be nominated for awards, but also clearly hates them and I doubt the Academy would ever want to give him a microphone.

7. Nick Nolte

Nominations: The Prince of Tides (Actor in 1991), Affliction (Actor in 1998), & Warrior (Supporting Actor in 2011)
He Lost to: Anthony Hopkins, Roberto Benigni, & Christopher Plummer
Closest to the Win: You could make a sincere argument that he was the frontrunner in 1991, with tough competition from Hopkins and Warren Beatty (Hopkins victory has aged very well, to the point where we feel like it was inevitable but that was not what people thought at the time).  However, he was also in the thick of things in 1998, when James Coburn stunned for a victory in Supporting Actor, so there was clearly a lot of support for Affliction (considering how Benigni's career aged, the Academy probably wishes they had given it to Nolte).
Well, He Still Won...: Nolte nabbed the Golden Globe for his work in The Prince of Tides (hard to believe in this era of uniform awards seasons, but Nolte managed to win Drama Actor over the man who'd eventually take the Oscar)...please take note AMPAS-creativity is a good thing.
Is This Happening Someday?: No.  Nolte's shot at ever winning this Oscar died the day that infamous mugshot was taken.  He's nearly 80 years old, and he wouldn't be an awful choice for an Honorary Oscar if it would occur to anyone, but a competitive trophy ain't going to happen-the Warrior nomination was probably the closest he was ever going to get to a career honor.

6. Johnny Depp

Nominations: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Actor in 2003), Finding Neverland (Actor in 2004), & Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Actor in 2007)
He Lost to: Sean Penn, Jamie Foxx, & Daniel Day-Lewis
Closest to the Win: Pirates, for sure.  The 2003 Best Actor race was a genuinely close affair, with Penn, Depp, and Bill Murray all in a threeway locked race.  I remember at the time some people even speculated that it could end in a tie of sorts.  Can you imagine a year where the Globes and SAG honored three different lead performers in this era?
Well, He Still Won...: Depp is beloved by the Golden Globes (he's been nominated ten times, including multiple citations before Oscar gave him the time of day), but only won once, for Sweeney Todd (the year of the strike, so we've never seen a major Johnny Depp speech)
Is This Happening Someday?: Probably not.  Depp has become something of a pariah, a sellout on-par with Nic Cage at this point, and the abuse allegations against him will age more poorly as time goes by.  I honestly don't think he'll even get an Honorary Oscar considering how much of his once darling arthouse reputation has been drowned in a series of big-budget schlock.

5. Tom Cruise

Nominations: Born on the Fourth of July (Actor in 1989), Jerry Maguire (Actor in 1996), & Magnolia (Supporting Actor in 1999)
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Geoffrey Rush, & Michael Caine
Closest to the Win: Cruise has genuinely been close to winning all three times he's been nominated.  Day-Lewis won in 1989 because Cruise was too young and too new to prestige, Jerry Maguire was a loss because Cruise, like his idol Paul Newman, probably was still too rich & famous to need an Oscar to complete the ensemble, and Magnolia would have happened had Miramax not been shoving caviar down the entire Academy's throat (also, everyone's worked with Mike Caine, and seems to love him, so him being thirsty for the thing probably helped).
Well, He Still Won...: Proving you learn something new every time you research an article, Cruise won the Golden Globe every single time he was nominated for the Oscar for the same film.  Oscar just never bit compared to the starstruck HFPA.
Is This Happening Someday?: I can't tell.  Cruise is still famous enough that he could make this work if he really wanted to, and I think (unlike Depp) he'd be forgiven his baggage.  I just don't think he wants to make the types of pictures that would allow him into an awards season, and honestly-can he still pull off such a character?  He hasn't done something like Magnolia or even Jerry Maguire in so long I honestly don't know if he still can, well, act.  An Honorary Oscar could be in the cards though, especially if they set precedence with Harrison Ford or Sly Stallone.  A lot of Academy members paid their mortgages thanks to Cruise's star power.

4. Kirk Douglas

Nominations: Champion (Actor in 1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (Actor in 1952), & Lust for Life (Actor in 1956)
He Lost to: Broderick Crawford, Gary Cooper, & Yul Brynner
Closest to the Win: At the time, most people assumed that Kirk Douglas, then one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, was a shoo-in for a trophy for Lust for Life.  The Academy, though, seemed to like Oscar-lookalike Yul Brynner more in the crowd-pleasing The King & I and so Douglas went empty-handed.  One has to assume if they had known at the time that he'd never get another nomination that he might have won, but who knows what the Academy would do, even with hindsight.
Well, He Still Won...: Douglas deservedly won the Honorary Award at the 1995 Oscars, back when they still broadcast the Honorary winners at the ceremony, so the world was treated to his emotional tribute to his son.  In addition to a slew of Honorary trophies (everything from the DeMille to the Kennedy Center Honors to the AFI Life Achievement Award), he picked up the Golden Globe in 1956 for Lust for Life.
Is This Happening Someday?: No, obviously not.  Douglas is retired and 102.  He got his Honorary Award, and basically every other lifetime achievement award the industry could throw at him, and he'll die a legend.  Kirk Douglas will still be one of the iconic movie stars of all time even without a competitive Oscar, which is surely better than a statue.

3. Bradley Cooper

Nominations: Silver Linings Playbook (Actor in 2012), American Hustle (Supporting Actor in 2013), American Sniper (Actor in 2014), & A Star is Born (Actor in 2018)...he also was nominated for Best Picture for American Sniper & for Picture/Adapted Screenplay for A Star is Born
He Lost to: Daniel Day-Lewis, Jared Leto, Eddie Redmayne & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: American Sniper felt at the time like it was on the rise, and honestly I wonder if with two more weeks of gargantuan box office if Cooper could have bested Eddie Redmayne.  Also, still not sure what happened this year with the similarly-gargantuan box office for A Star is Born...though at least there Malek came with his own pile of gold.
Well, He Still Won...: Cooper has competed at the Golden Globes, BAFTA's, and Tonys in addition to the Oscars, but like Dafoe, he's never picked up a major trophy.
Is This Happening Someday?: We enter a trio of actors who have been nominated four times without a victory (with Finney's death, no living male actor has received five nominations without winning at least one of them).  Cooper arguably should be first on this list since he has more losses than anyone, but I'm only counting acting trophies.  Also, he's going to win someday unless we're witnessing a Kirk Douglas situation.  Cooper surely has the respect of the industry, and has a hunger for that trophy, which they usually award (especially in men), though he may have to be a little less pretty to finally get there.

2. Willem Dafoe

Nominations: Platoon (Supporting Actor in 1986), Shadow of the Vampire (Supporting Actor in 2000), The Florida Project (Supporting Actor in 2017), & At Eternity's Gate (Actor in 2018)
He Lost to: Michael Caine, Benicio del Toro, Sam Rockwell & Rami Malek
Closest to the Win: I would guess that last year Dafoe was in second place, and I still think it's a bummer that he didn't gain more traction for a clearly better role than Rockwell's, but he hasn't really been close for any of his other work, so I'd go with that film.
Well, He Still Won...: Dafoe has won a mountain of critics' prizes, but never picked up one of the major televised awards.
Is This Happening Someday?: I would assume not, but honestly that fourth nomination threw me a bit.  There were other more obvious contenders (John David Washington, for example) that could have easily snuck in and taken the fifth slot for Best Actor, and Dafoe doing so indicates that there's some appetite to get him an Oscar...but if there was a proper appetite, wouldn't he have won for Florida?  He works with high-profile auteurs, so if one of them gets a film with a little more traction/nominations it could happen, but it'd help if it was in the next couple of years since he's got some recent losses under his belt.

1. Ed Harris

Nominations: Apollo 13 (Supporting Actor in 1995), The Truman Show (Supporting Actor in 1998), Pollock (Actor in 2000), and The Hours (Supporting Actor in 2002)
He Lost to: Kevin Spacey, James Coburn, Russell Crowe, & Chris Cooper
Closest to the Win: Other than The Hours, Harris was close on all three of the other films.  It was down to he & Kevin Spacey in 1995.  In 1998, it was down to he and Robert Duvall (and then in a huge upset James Coburn won, proving that this "closest to the win" is very much a guessing game).  And in 2000, he was surging at the last minute enough to get his costar Marcia Gay Harden across the finish line, but he wasn't able to invade the Crowe/Hanks battle.
Well, He Still Won...: Harris grabbed Golden Globe awards for The Truman Show and Game Change (the HBO TV movie).
Is This Happening Someday?: I doubt it.  Harris still works (Westworld), but he refuses to campaign, and honestly has gotten to the point where I don't even think he'd show up to accept it (he didn't for Game Change), and unless you're Maggie Smith, you don't win if you don't show up.

OVP: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Film: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Stars: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges
Director: Martin McDonagh
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actress-Frances McDormand*, Supporting Actor-Woody Harrelson, Supporting Actor-Sam Rockwell*, Film Editing, Score, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Modern culture is strange in terms of how we assess film.  In a deeply, politically-charged world where literally everything anyone does can be met with the height of people screaming from the rooftops (I'm not even a little bit immune here, though I've been trying to check myself lately), it's interesting to watch how other people's reactions to a film can affect our own, and how something as immersive as sitting, alone, in a quiet theater can occasionally result in you not noticing the politics of what you're viewing until you're out of the theater.  This was my initial thought on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a movie whose rough edges don't hang well when you let them sit for a while, but undeniably has some interesting moments & framing devices.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's plot is relatively straight-forward.  Mildred Hayes (McDormand), after her daughter is raped-and-murdered but the suspect is not brought to justice, puts up three billboards outside of her town calling out Police Chief Willoughby (Harrelson) for not making enough progress in the case.  As these things do in modern culture, the media picks up on the story and the police department are at a standoff of sorts with Hayes and the legality of her calling out the police chief, with one particular office Jason Dixon (Rockwell) taking a lot of chagrin to Hayes's actions.  The film unfolds with Willoughby committing suicide as he's suffering from terminal cancer, and both Jason & Mildred coming to terms with their shortcomings, eventually setting off to kill a man they suspect of raping a woman, though not Mildred's daughter (the film doesn't ever reveal who killed her daughter, and we're largely left to believe no one will ever know).

The film has a lot of complicated questions hanging over it, and this is almost certainly where the controversies surrounding the film started.  After all, we live in a world where we answer questions in a 140 (err, 280)-character soundbyte, and that doesn't really allow for nuance.  Some of these controversies I think are interesting.  I like the way that they handle McDormand's reaction to her daughter, and the fact that, she's right-the longer you keep a case in the public eye, the longer our ADD-addled media will focus on it (making it more likely that there's an arrest).  Some of the film's comments on the media are dead-on, and I think creative protesting is always interesting (and easily duplicated, apparently).

That said, the film's problems lie more in the controversies surrounding Sam Rockwell's Jason Dixon, and the film's inability to handle a heightened reality.  It's hard to judge Rockwell's performance (he's the strong favorite for this Sunday's Academy Awards), as his character is so poorly written, and I'm kind of flummoxed how this is the performance that both won the longtime character actor his first round of accolades as well as that he's besting both his (significantly better) costar Harrelson & the miles-ahead-of-him Willem Dafoe.  Dixon is outwardly, and near constantly racist, driven in part by an odious mother who has a nasty relationship with her son.  He's had multiple instances where he abused his power to hurt the African-American community in his town, and yet is still on the force.  That's not uncommon in this day-and-age (Black Lives Matter is a movement for a reason), but the film handles his racism callously.  In a lot of ways it reminded me of Matt Dillon's work in Crash, where we're expected to dismiss all of the hate that was in his heart earlier in the film because he has a sick father (in Rockwell's case, a domineering mother), but I'm not buying it.  No character gets away with being the proper hero here (only Lucas Hedges' Robbie can clearly be called innocent on all accounts in the film), but the ending where he is now tied to the "root for her" character of Mildred rang super false to me, and made me wonder what was the point of McDonagh's script.  Sharp banter and wordplay are injected in this film with relish, but that doesn't make up for some serious gaps in its plotting.

And while the dismissive attitude toward racism may be the film's most egregious sin, it's not the picture's only one.  For starters, it's never clear how grounded we are in reality here.  One could argue that in a highly-conservative rural town, that John Hawkes' character might get away with burning down the billboards or that Sam Rockwell might get away with mistreating the black community (this is wrong, but not without a toe in reality), but Mildred Hayes would have ended up in jail long before she and Jason became Thelma-and-Louise.  After all, she clearly burned down the police station, and assaulted three teenagers in broad daylight.  The film wants to be both a grounded drama AND be in the vein of some of McDonagh's past works like In Bruges, where it creates its own heightened reality.  You can't have it both ways, and the ending of the film doesn't jive with these moments.  Combined with a lot of very convenient plot points (Jason just happens to be in a that bar when he has a complete dead-end...I mean, come on!), this is lazy writing from McDonagh, a filmmaker who is way better than that as In Bruges proved a decade ago.

That said, this is not a film without merit, and I get why people like it.  A disappointing ending doesn't stop the fact that the story at its center is compelling.  McDormand carries the picture well, even if I didn't care for Rockwell (who is not a supporting part, and I'm not hearing enough people point that out), and I love some of the places she took the performance.  There's a great scene about halfway through when we get an insight into her relationship with her daughter Angela (Kathryn Newton), and realize some of her anger is aimed at herself, and that Angela wasn't the cherubic girl we assume earlier in the film when we assume she's similar to Robbie, but instead the "bad girl" who is so often blamed by the plot for her actions.  It seems odd that McDonagh takes a more progressive stance when it comes to his treatment of women than of race, but it's out there.  I also loved McDormand's unspoken history with John Hawkes, showing the strange pull of both loving-and-hating a man (both actors nail their parts), and while I wouldn't have nominated him, Harrelson continues to be one of the under-sung character actors of our era, giving a great first-half arc to his part.

It has to be said that while I'm giving this a low score, it didn't start that way.  Some movies age well in the memory, others you are forced to pick apart when someone points out obvious flaws in their structure and when you suddenly realize that you were swept up in the fine acting and quick banter.  Three Billboards is one of those pictures, so while I get why it might win the Oscar on Sunday (it's not a movie that's as obviously bad as say Crash was a decade ago), it's still not an appropriate Best Picture winner.

Emmy Predictions: The Dramas

We’ve hit the movies and the comedies, so with just one day left until a lot of Hollywood stars are either ecstatic or firing their agents, we’ll move into the five Drama categories.  As I’ve mentioned before, the higher the ranking, the more likely I think it is that someone will be nominated (not necessarily win, though).

Best Drama Series

1. Breaking Bad

2. True Detective

3. House of Cards

4. Game of Thrones

5. Mad Men

6. Downton Abbey

The Lowdown: This looks extremely familiar, because, well, it is.  The only show that I’m skipping from last year is Homeland, which has become a shadow of its former celebrated self.  I do feel like new blood could oust the aging Mad Men and Downton Abbey, but no show aside from True Detective seems like it could be elevated onto this list.  The Americans is more a critical than an audience fave (which matters with ratings-conscious Emmy) and The Good Wife missed last year (usually a death knell) and this category has been very resistant to network dramas.  I say that this is the lineup, though don’t be surprised if Downton or Mad Men become the surprise miss of the morning.

Winner?: I mean, Breaking Bad has milked that double season for all it’s worth.  True Detective could be a factor, but that seems more of a lead actor situation.  Walter White wins in his final showdown.

Best Actor in a Drama Series

1. Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad

2. Matthew McConaughey, True Detective

3. Kevin Spacey, House of Cards

4. Woody Harrelson, True Detective

5. James Spader, The Blacklist

6. Jon Hamm, Mad Men

The Lowdown: Once again, prestige (a pair of Oscar winners) and love of their shows will cement the top four easily in place.  James Spader was once a major Emmy player for Boston Legal, and I suspect the ratings on this show will ensure him a nomination (perhaps I am underestimating it even for Best Series?).  The final slot is a showdown between previous winner Jeff Daniels and long-suffering loser Jon Hamm.  I’m going to go with Hamm because his show is more established with Emmy and didn’t get a gut-punch cancellation.  That said, Mad Men is clearly weakened going into this year, and I think at least one of its perennials will miss.

Winner?: This is going to be an amazing showdown between the recently crowned Oscar Best Actor and a longtime Emmy favorite retiring his iconic character.  I don’t dare predict who will win until I see how their shows fare in other categories, but this is going to be one for the ages.

Best Actress in a Drama Series

1. Robin Wright, House of Cards

2. Kerry Washington, Scandal

3. Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

4. Claire Danes, Homeland

5. Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men

6. Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black

The Lowdown: Occasionally getting snubbed when you were expected to get in has a HUGE effect the next year (see Sean Hayes for a good example), and I think that’s what Maslany is going to be this year.  Michelle Dockery for Downton Abbey or Lizzy Caplan for Masters of Sex or even Keri Russell in The Americans all would make more sense, but Orphan Black is a major part of pop culture right now and she’s easily a breakout star.  The rest of the women seem pretty set, though Moss could be vulnerable if Mad Men love completely falters.

Winner?: Margulies may have had one helluva a season, but I think this is a battle between Washington and Wright (Danes has slipped too far to win, though she’s got at least one more nomination in her before the sun sets on her series).  Washington is on the biggest show on network television right now if you go strictly on buzz, and I still think that she’ll win for this role, but the fact that she missed last year (when Scandal love seemed to peak) could mean Wright’s ice queen will enjoy this trophy.

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

1. Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad

2. Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones

3. Dean Norris, Breaking Bad

4. Jon Voight, Ray Donovan

5. Josh Charles, The Good Wife

6. Mandy Patinkin, Homeland

The Lowdown: I don’t watch Boardwalk Empire anymore, but it does appear that Bobby Cannavale is not in contention this year (I suspect his character may have been a one-season arc), so we’re left with only a handful of actors from last year that could be returning, chief amongst them Aaron Paul, Mandy Patinkin, and Peter Dinklage.  Dean Norris also seems to have gotten a lot of press for Breaking Bad and it’s hard to argue with an Oscar winner at the Emmys, so I think Jon Voight is probably going to be up here as well.  That leaves one last slot, and I think that Josh Charles major season on The Good Wife coupled with his nomination a few years ago for the same role will be the push he needs to take out someone like John Slattery in Mad Men or Kit Harington in Game of Thrones.

Winner?: Breaking Bad is going to be hard to beat, and Aaron Paul seems quite likely to pick up a third trophy for his final season on the show.  That being said, Dinklage has had a marvelous actorly showcase this season on Game of Thrones, and he has been favored by Emmy before-it could happen again.

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

1. Anna Gunn, Breaking Bad

2. Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey

3. Christine Baranski, The Good Wife

4. Michelle Monaghan, True Detective

5. Christina Hendricks, Mad Men

6. Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones

The Lowdown: Emmy likes to repeat-that’s the best way to make sense of this list.  While Gunn, Smith, and Baranski all seem pretty well-set (Baranski doesn’t have quite the heat she once did, but Emmy loves her to bits considering she has eleven nominations so far), the final three slots are a bit harder to sell.  I suspect we’ll see Monaghan (someone other than Harrelson/McConaughey need to score from that show), and I am going to pick Hendricks/Clarke for the final two slots because they managed to make it in last year in a tough competition.  Emmy could of course go with someone they once had the hots for like Archie Panjabi in The Good Wife or Joanne Froggatt in Downton Abbey or even someone outside the box like Bellamy Young for Scandal or Lena Headey for Game of Thrones, but my money is on Clarke/Hendricks for now.

Winner?: If Maggie Smith ever bothered to show up for one of these awards shows, I suspect they would call off the voting and just proclaim her the winner, but her absence makes it harder to vote for her.  I suspect Gunn will win her second trophy for her show’s final season, with Christina Hendricks continuing to stew over the fact that no actor from Mad Men will ever win an Emmy.

And there you have it folks-tune in tomorrow to see my thoughts on the Emmy roundup, but before we get there-which dramatic contenders are you rooting for?  Are you expecting?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Supporting Actor (2009)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2009)

The Nominees Were...

Matt Damon, Invictus

Woody Harrelson, The Messenger

Christopher Plummer, The Last Station

Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones

Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

My Thoughts: We’re going to head straight into the Top 6 here, rather than dilly dally (plus, there’s nothing big politically happening except Hillary’s book and I haven’t received an advanced copy for some reason).  With Supporting Actor, we’re entering the categories that I’m guessing you’ve probably seen all of the nominees AND have opinions on, so I shall naively hope for comments below.

I should start out and say that Stanley Tucci deserved this Oscar.  After all, that might get someone to post, but alas, I cannot put out such lies into the universe.  Stanley Tucci is one of the worst performances in recent years to have been nominated for an Oscar.  I get where they were coming from here.  He’s a very likeable star (someone whom you suspect is genuinely popular off-screen) and has that sort of character actor glamour of someone who is too good of an actor to not at least nab one Oscar nomination in his career (see also David Strathairn, Richard Jenkins, Gary Oldman, etc).  But this was the wrong way to go-his work as George Harvey is all overactive tics and bad line readings.  Everything is heavy-handed and without a trace of subtlety.  Who honestly wouldn’t assume this guy was a serial killer?  Where is the least bit of restraint in his performance?  You can go over-the-top in a character if you want (Bette Davis did it marvelously as Baby Jane Hudson), but you cannot if you’re going to sacrifice reality.  Tucci does this (it doesn’t help that the film is awful), and gets one of the worst nominations I’ve seen in my Oscar-watching career.

The one thing going for Tucci is that this was a WILDLY uninspired list of actors.  Supporting Actor hasn’t really been a great slate in a few years, and 2009 was a piss-poor year for this category even if you include all nominees, but that doesn’t mean they had to get so lazy.  Another clear example of this is Matt Damon in Invictus.  Honestly-what was the Academy thinking here?  Damon is a strong actor, and deserved to get a second nomination after Good Will Hunting at some point, but what about The Talented Mr. Ripley?  Syriana (don’t hate-he’s better than Clooney in it)?  Instead they go with his always reflecting soccer player.  Damon’s character never becomes interesting, never becomes more than just stoic athletic cliché.  Perhaps the Academy got distracted by the ridiculous things Damon’s physique was doing in this movie (damn girl!), as that’s the only explanation for why they would give him a citation for such a mundane role.

We’ll finish off the trio of banal with Christopher Plummer in The Last Station.  Here I at least understand where the Academy was coming from-Christopher Plummer is Stanley Tucci if Tucci never got an Oscar nomination.  He deserved to be called Oscar-nominated.  It’s a darn pity that AMPAS didn’t know that Beginners would be coming two years later and that they’d have a perfect way to acknowledge him because his work as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station is okay (at my most generous).  Plummer laughs and knows how to sell his chemistry with Mirren (then again, who doesn’t have chemistry with Helen Mirren?), but his character is all surface-level.  We never get inside of this man, and coming from an actor as accomplished as Plummer (one of the great stage actors), that’s a disappointment.

Moving on to actors who probably DID deserve their nomination (or at least can credibly carry one) we have Woody Harrelson in The Messenger.  Harrelson has been so good so often these days you’d be forgiven for almost overlooking this work (side note: I particularly remember that the Oscar ceremony was hitting a low point that year when Alec Baldwin made a dated Harrelson/pot jokes).  He’s not quite as strong as you’d assume here-he doesn’t always find a human switch in this character, and occasionally is too robotic to be believable, but his scenes, particularly with the “NOK” are devastating and you see the empty spirit of this man.  Harrelson gets the crutch of a showy role, but he knows how to use it to be most effective.

Finally we have the scene-stealing savior of this category.  Sometimes I feel that you can excuse an entire field if they got the winner right, and there’s no denying that hilariously evil Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa (it always says something when you remember a character’s name and don’t just refer to them by the actor's moniker) is the best-in-show here.  I love the way that he’s also a true supporting player (not like the Django situation) and that he draws himself into each scene he’s in, having that great puncturing diction that knows he’s in control.  It’s a work of comic genius, and unlike Tucci, he knows to ground his scenery-chewing into a reality (he can do whatever he wants, include be a mad men-he’s still in control).  Waltz may never do anything as memorable or as entertaining, but that doesn’t stop the fact that this was the third in a series of three incredibly satisfying villains to win the Supporting Actor Oscar.

Other Precursor Contenders: We always end with the BAFTA’s, so let’s start there this time.  The field was somewhat different (though with Waltz still winning).  Alfred Molina in An Education (a surprise) and Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles (less of a surprise) got in while Damon and Plummer missed.  Proving how boring this category was, the Globes and the SAG Awards copied AMPAS (I know they came first, but clearly they were just catering) both with nominees and the victor.  As far as sixth place, McKay makes the most sense (Ann Dowd should worry about how little of a career he had after missing here), though I would also entertain the notion that Anthony Mackie was in sixth place.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Like I said, it wasn’t a great year for the category.  Still, I would have certainly put in Michael Fassbender for his wonderful scene-stealing in Inglourious, and probably would have found some room for Heath Ledger in Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus as well as Burghart Klausner for The White Ribbon.  And though it would never have happened in a million years, Jim Broadbent in Harry Potter as Professor Slughorn (I loved the fish scene so much!) would have rounded out the nominees.

Oscar’s Choice: Oscar couldn’t deny Waltz (no one really could), though I wonder who was in second place.  My heart says Harrelson, though I shudder that it might have been Tucci.

My Choice: Oh Waltz, obviously (he would have won for me over all actors that year in this category).  Harrelson is a clear second, with Plummer, Damon, and Tucci finishing things off.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Does anyone vote against Christoph Waltz over one of these contenders?  Can anyone defend Stanley Tucci’s inclusion?  And which actor had the best supporting actor performance of 2009?  Share in the comments below!

Also in 2009: Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Film, Animated Feature, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2009

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2010, 2011, 2012