Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

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flipp525
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by flipp525 »

I don't recall Winslet's accent being "spotty" in Steve Jobs. In fact, I thought it was pretty damn near perfect.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Big Magilla »

Yeah, I've come back to Vikander. It will likely be either her or Winslet. Ask me just before the awards and I may have gone back to Winslet. It's the toughest call of all the races.

For Mara to win, Carol would have to have a resurgence that doesn't appear to be in the cards.

For McAdams to win, Spotlight would have to be a stronger Best Picture winner than most seem to think it is.

For Leigh to win, the sky would have to fall, but it's been such a strange year, maybe it will. More likely, though, Morricone will win Hateful Eight's only award, which will be deemed more than enough by most voters.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Mister Tee »

I've been intending to post to this thread for some time, but kept getting bogged down in my own verbiage (even more than usual). I'll try to keep it terse.

Though it's lost to history, way back in 1971, Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge was the overwhelming pundits' pick for supporting actress, based on career longevity and the leap in prestige the film/performance brought her. What prognosticators overlooked was how deeply many Academy members disliked Carnal Knowledge. Ann-Margret's loss turned into a principle for me: when voters dislike a film, they won't vote an award to it, no matter who's involved.

Here, though, we have a category 80% composed of such films. If Rachel McAdams had even a smidgen more interesting part -- one truly attention-getting scene -- I'd predict her in a minute.

Because it's hard to see how voters could pick one of the others, box-office/award orphans as they all are. Steve Jobs had the commercial belly-flop heard round the world, and couldn't get in for its dazzling screenplay. The Hateful Eight is Tarantino's biggest flop this side of Grindhouse, another one the writers ignored. Carol actually got a not inconsiderable six nominations, but its failure under film/director might as well have tacked a Cooties sign to its back.

And then there's our front-runner, featured in what might be the textbook case of failed Oscar bait. I know: Vikander was in other movies, too. But the only one that could be called a commercial success is Ex Machina, and the two TV awards that had a chance to pick her for that said "We pass". It seems very odd, even in this Island-of-Misfit-Toys category, that voters would go for her, in the one film that not only failed with audiences but also got the worst reviews.

But it's such a mess of a category, I could see almost any outcome. I'm not sure the idea of Jennifer Jason Leigh as way overdue is universally held -- one reason she's never been nominated in the past is, for everyone who thinks she's brilliant, there are others who've always seen her as ostentatiously mannered. Still, she has a prominent role, and the good supplementary credit in Anomalisa (I've had the odd thought that, were she nominated for that instead, the sympathetic nature of the role might have served her better).

Rooney Mara's work might indeed be too subtle -- I admit, that was my reaction first time around. But a second viewing impressed me a good deal more. Don't know how many people gave the film that much leeway.

Kate Winslet has a very strong role -- big enough it doesn't suffer overmuch alongside the obvious leads of Mara and Vikander -- and I doubt many voters would object to her as a two-time winner.

But maybe it'll come around to Vikander in the end. Or McAdams, despite how little she shines. As I said, a mess of a category.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Sabin »

I'm not either. She's is giving the most different performance of this group and she's easily the performer most deserving of a career award. I think the main thing working against her is that I honestly find it hard to believe that The Hateful Eight will walk away with two Oscars, but stranger things have happened.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by flipp525 »

I'm still not counting out Jennifer Jason Leigh as a dark horse winner.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Sabin »

Ed sums up everything I think about this race...

Oscar 2016 Winner Predictions
Supporting Actress
BY ED GONZALEZ ON FEBRUARY 24, 2016 IN FILM, AWARDS

True story: When I saw Titanic on opening night in New York City, Sam Waterston was sitting behind me and, within seconds of the credits rolling, was calling bullshit on the film. Almost 20 years later, his daughter, Katherine Waterston, gave two of the best performances of her young career in Queen of Earth and Steve Jobs, and given the response from critics and awards groups, it's almost as if she never gave them. That Kate Winslet, a great actress who so artfully disappears into her role of Joanna Hoffman in the latter film that you barely notice her spotty accent work, has arguably robbed Waterston of her time in the sun probably has everything to do with name recognition alone. Or, and maybe Sam will agree with me here, the Golden Globe and BAFTA trophies that Winslet has collected for her turn may be explained by some weird reflex by which Titanic enthusiasts see a win for Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio as a two-for-one special.

Though both actors have been nominated for Oscars before in the same year, they weren't close to being favored to win, so the idea that Winslet may be benefiting from her association to frontrunner DiCaprio as stars of one of the highest-grossing films of all time doesn't seem too far-fetched. But couple that with the fact that the Oscar telecast where Titanic won 11 trophies remains the most watched in history and my view about the media's complicity in making an Oscar winner sounds even more reasonable to even myself. A win for both actors would make for good copy, and there may be enough AMPAs voters willing to make it happen simply because it would be cute to read said copy on Monday morning. Laziness and self-congratulation, after all, are among the Hollywood industrial complex's greatest resources.

But, then, there's the sad reality of Steve Jobs's box-office failure. Winslet and Fassbender represent the only two nominations for the film, meaning that Titanic nostalgia can only take the actress so far, especially during an awards season where one of the biggest topics of conversation was category fraud. Both Rooney Mara and Alicia Vikander are nominated here for roles that are only supporting in a world where the definition of the word is its antonym, and as the very Oscar voters already enamored of their work and who got them into this race in the first place are unlikely to vote against them on principle, we don't see them suffering as a result of this confusion.

Mara once seemed like the one to beat, and in whatever category she landed, as soon as she won the actress prize at Cannes, but Carol's exclusion from the best picture and director races is just one of many signs that her chances remain as slim as Carol Aird's cigarettes. Even putting aside her SAG victory, Vikander enters this race checking off almost every conceivable box imaginable that has made many a winner here in the past. She's a hard-working ingénue who could just as easily have been nominated for her much-buzzed-about turn in Ex Machina, but instead was recognized for her Oscar-friendlier—and, admittedly, far richer—work as the grieving wife of the first identifiable person to undergo gender reassignment. That the film, The Danish Girl, was realized by Oscar golden boy Tom Hooper only makes the outcome of this race that much more transparent.

Will Win: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Could Win: Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Should Win: Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Reza »

flipp525 wrote:Vikander was also terrific in Testament of Youth (of which Reza was an early champion), one of the best films of the year that nevertheless got lost in the year-end shuffle. In a just world, Vikander would've been nominated for Lead in Testament of Youth and Supporting in Ex Machina; as good as she is in The Danish Girl (an otherwise terrible film), she's genuinely magnificent in the other two films.
Thank you, flipp. I'm glad somebody else remembers this film. I'm surprised this got totally forgotten because such films are right up the Academy's alley.

I think Vikander's performance in Testament of Youth was the best performance by a female lead in 2015.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Big Magilla »

Tell that to Lauren Bacall, Gloria Stuart, Helen Mirren (in Gosford Park), Kate Winslet (despite her double win) and Ruby Dee.

Vikander is the one I'd vote for, but I think the winds have changed since the SAG awards.

We'll know for sure ten days hence.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by The Original BJ »

Big Magilla wrote:SAG is not the best predictor of the winner in this category.
With all due respect Magilla, this is not a statement based in reality. I actually did a quick comparison, and statistically, SAG is actually THE best predictor of the winner in this category.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Big Magilla »

flipp525 wrote:Diane Ladd is pissed off about category fraud this year in Best Supporting Actress. She specifically mentions Rooney Mara in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbCN6E84vB8

She obviously has a point about category fraud getting out of control, but she's totally delusional to think that if they had been placed in the correct category she would have been nominated this year (is she implying that? I can't quite tell). Did she win some acting award for Joy from AARP?!

Fun fact: Ladd wrote letters to every member of the Academy as her campaign for Wild at Heart. And it worked! She was such a surprise nominee that year that the Academy didn't have a photo ready to show on the screen when they read the nominations. They had to scramble to find one and I think they used a black and white head shot or something. She also apparently cooked Academy members a spaghetti dinner that year and personally mailed VHS copies of Wild at Heart to them.

Shirley MacLaine must have been so mad that year. That was widely seen as her nomination (for Postcards from the Edge).

Edited to add: Okay, so I just dug up an article about the Diane Ladd spaghetti dinner thing written by none other than our own Damien!

http://www.ew.com/article/1991/03/01/ca ... elp-videos
You pray to God they go see the movie before they vote,” says surprise Best Supporting Actress nominee Diane Ladd, who put on an ”exhausting” Oscar campaign for her no-holds-barred turn in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. ”No one would take an ad in the trades for Diane Ladd. I had to do it myself.” Although the studios long ago stopped serving lavish meals when screening films for voters, Ladd herself cooked a spaghetti dinner for 20 Academy members, including Esther Williams, Abe Vigoda, and Shelley Winters, with Wild at Heart as dessert. She also wrote voters offering to lend them one of the 20 videocassettes she wheedled out of the film’s video distributor; she thinks 300 people saw her work this way.
And another fun fact (since I've basically fallen into a Diane Ladd wiki-hole today): Ladd said that she gets a residual every year from that small part in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. She said that it's the most money she gets all year.
Diane Ladd is perpetually pissed off. She placed a full-page add that ran as the back cover of the weekly edition of the Hollywood Reporter while nominations were in full swing.

Yes, she did win the AARP Award for Best Supporting Actress in their annual Movies for Grown-Ups awards. She probably wrote a nice letter to the editors. Of course the competition there is only open to actors over 55, so she had considerably less competition.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Big Magilla »

The Original BJ wrote:
Big Magilla wrote:If Vikander was unable to over Winslet at the Globes and BAFTA where she was nominated for the right film (Ex Machina) while also being nominated in lead for the wrong one (The Danish Girl) it's difficult to continue to see her as the most likely winner at the Oscars where she's nominated for the wrong film.
Except Vikander beat Winslet when nominated for the "wrong" film both at the BFCA and at SAG, so your logic puzzles me.

While I would agree with you that Vikander's performance is more interesting in Ex Machina, in terms of what mainstream awards bodies like in their acting winners, long-suffering wife in a bio is WAY more popular than any type of performance in a sci-fi movie. I think in terms of win potential, she most definitely was nominated for the "right" movie.
The BFCA voted for her because she was the leading contender for the Oscar at the time. SAG is not the best predictor of the winner in this category.
flipp525 wrote:Vikander was also terrific in Testament of Youth (of which Reza was an early champion), one of the best films of the year that nevertheless got lost in the year-end shuffle. In a just world, Vikander would've been nominated for Lead in Testament of Youth and Supporting in Ex Machina; as good as she is in The Danish Girl (an otherwise terrible film), she's genuinely magnificent in the other two films.

Except that Testament of Youth, which I agree was a terrific film, was deemed old-fashioned and something of a flop even in Britain where Vera Brittain's autobiography is still revered.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by flipp525 »

Vikander was also terrific in Testament of Youth (of which Reza was an early champion), one of the best films of the year that nevertheless got lost in the year-end shuffle. In a just world, Vikander would've been nominated for Lead in Testament of Youth and Supporting in Ex Machina; as good as she is in The Danish Girl (an otherwise terrible film), she's genuinely magnificent in the other two films.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by The Original BJ »

Big Magilla wrote:If Vikander was unable to over Winslet at the Globes and BAFTA where she was nominated for the right film (Ex Machina) while also being nominated in lead for the wrong one (The Danish Girl) it's difficult to continue to see her as the most likely winner at the Oscars where she's nominated for the wrong film.
Except Vikander beat Winslet when nominated for the "wrong" film both at the BFCA and at SAG, so your logic puzzles me.

While I would agree with you that Vikander's performance is more interesting in Ex Machina, in terms of what mainstream awards bodies like in their acting winners, long-suffering wife in a bio is WAY more popular than any type of performance in a sci-fi movie. I think in terms of win potential, she most definitely was nominated for the "right" movie.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by flipp525 »

Diane Ladd is pissed off about category fraud this year in Best Supporting Actress. She specifically mentions Rooney Mara in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbCN6E84vB8

She obviously has a point about category fraud getting out of control, but she's totally delusional to think that if they had been placed in the correct category she would have been nominated this year (is she implying that? I can't quite tell). Did she win some acting award for Joy from AARP?!

Fun fact: Ladd wrote letters to every member of the Academy as her campaign for Wild at Heart. And it worked! She was such a surprise nominee that year that the Academy didn't have a photo ready to show on the screen when they read the nominations. They had to scramble to find one and I think they used a black and white head shot or something. She also apparently cooked Academy members a spaghetti dinner that year and personally mailed VHS copies of Wild at Heart to them.

Shirley MacLaine must have been so mad that year. That was widely seen as her nomination (for Postcards from the Edge).

Edited to add: Okay, so I just dug up an article about the Diane Ladd spaghetti dinner thing written by none other than our own Damien!

http://www.ew.com/article/1991/03/01/ca ... elp-videos
You pray to God they go see the movie before they vote,” says surprise Best Supporting Actress nominee Diane Ladd, who put on an ”exhausting” Oscar campaign for her no-holds-barred turn in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. ”No one would take an ad in the trades for Diane Ladd. I had to do it myself.” Although the studios long ago stopped serving lavish meals when screening films for voters, Ladd herself cooked a spaghetti dinner for 20 Academy members, including Esther Williams, Abe Vigoda, and Shelley Winters, with Wild at Heart as dessert. She also wrote voters offering to lend them one of the 20 videocassettes she wheedled out of the film’s video distributor; she thinks 300 people saw her work this way.
And another fun fact (since I've basically fallen into a Diane Ladd wiki-hole today): Ladd said that she gets a residual every year from that small part in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. She said that it's the most money she gets all year.
Last edited by flipp525 on Thu Feb 18, 2016 2:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."

-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Big Magilla »

If Vikander was unable to over Winslet at the Globes and BAFTA where she was nominated for the right film (Ex Machina) while also being nominated in lead for the wrong one (The Danish Girl) it's difficult to continue to see her as the most likely winner at the Oscars where she's nominated for the wrong film.

Winslet's character in Steve Jobs is a highly paid executive and confidante of the title character, but in essence she is playing the supportive secretary that has been a Hollywood staple for decades. These roles rarely win major awards, but the fact she hides her natural beauty behind glasses and a dark wig and wears very unglamorous clothes, is something that often accounts for extra points in these things. Even though she has almost as much screen time as Fassbender, her role is clearly a supporting one in a year when the competition includes two leads slumming and two members of an ensemble.

There may also be something to the Winslet-DiCaprio closeness that makes voters want to honor her and the guy her kids call "Uncle Leo" on the same night.
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