Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

I truly loathe the idea that a performance has to be a certain length in order to be considered worthy of an Oscar and/or nomination. It's the impact and level of connection with the audience that the actor is able to establish in that short amount of time that should be used to evaluate a performa...

Even without having seen Once Is Not Enough , I feel completely confident voting for Lily Tomlin. A truly lovely performance from an actress I almost always like, in one of the great American movies. Barbara Harris gets my nod for the fifth nomination over Vaccaro, whose movie I really don't feel a...

Cortese isn't the best of 1974 by the titanic margin by which she would've been the best of 1973, but for the second year in a row, it simply would not be right to give it to any of the other nominees instead of her. And this year, we actually have the chance to reward her. So I'm taking it. If the...

I have a very strong bias against voting for leading roles in the supporting categories, even though O'Neal is miles ahead of the others this year. Moving her up to lead where she belongs and replacing her with Cries and Whispers ' Kari Sylwan gives you my personal lineup, made up entirely of perfo...

Three excellent performances, and at least one perfectly good one. (I haven't seen Pete 'n' Tillie .) Heckart and especially Tyrrell could easily get my vote here, but I never cease to be amazed by how well Elaine May and her Heartbreak Kid cast do at creating real, identifiable (if not necessarily...

Leachman is the easy choice for me, though I also really like the other three I've seen. I haven't seen Who Is Harry Kellerman? , and on Italiano's recommendation I may track it down for Harris' performance, but with even the performance's defender trashing the movie, it's hard to believe she'd be ...

Another vote for Karen Black here. Kellerman and Grant would've been fine choices too, but Black is on another level. I'd've replaced the Airport ladies with Black's Five Easy Pieces co-star Lois Smith and The Ballad of Cable Hogue 's Stella Stevens, with Grant's Landlord castmate Pearl Bailey a cl...

Locke, to me, is in the right category; I don't remember anybody but Arkin having a lead-level role in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter . And I love Carlin's nomination; very raw, very real, and very not in keeping with what got Oscar nominations at the time, which endears it to me all the more. But ho...

I'll admit, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to "star" vs. "newcomer" or billing or what have you when I try to figure this stuff out. My memory of A Taste of Honey is that it's a movie about Tushingham's Jo, and Bryant's Helen is simply a scene-stealing supporting character.

When I feel like I'm faced with two performances of more or less equal quality, I'll ask myself who's in the better movie and use that as a tiebreaker. For this year, I consider Parsons and Natwick to be on equal footing in terms of skillful displays of acting, so I err on the side of the one who's...

A Taste of Honey was ineligible. It wasn't released in the U.S. until April, 1962. When dealing with movies that didn't score any actual Oscar nominations, I'm willing to fudge my own eligibility rules and go by whatever release date will help me put together a stronger lineup. It's a bit of a cop-...

Since my vote-getter is in the lead here with none of the comments so far going in her favor, I'll weigh in. I find Merkel completely unmemorable in Summer and Smoke , and would have given her spot to Dora Bryant for A Taste of Honey . Garland is fine in Judgment at Nuremberg , but as others have s...

As one of the "silent voters," my reasons for not voting for Richards are pretty much exactly in step with BJ's, and my reasons for not voting for Channing are pretty much exactly in step with Italiano's (she comes across to this under-30-year-old like a relic from an alien showbiz milieu...

For me, this is an extremely close four-way race between Tatum O'Neal, Casey Affleck, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Jamie Foxx. Ultimately, I'm going with Gyllenhaal, because not only was he a lead taking up a spot that could otherwise have gone to a worthy supporting actor (in a year that had so many I sti...

Best Picture [/u] • Avatar • Fantastic Mr. Fox • The Hurt Locker • Inglourious Basterds • A Serious Man Best Director [/u] • Kathryn Bigelow — The Hurt Locker • Neill Blomkamp — District 9 • James Cameron — Avatar • Joel Coen & Ethan Coen — A Serious Man • Quentin Tarantino — Inglourious Baster...