Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Reza »

Sabin wrote:What's throwing me about Kate Winslet's chances for Steve Jobs, another film not well-liked by the industry (hell, The Danish Girl just faded away; Steve Jobs imploded), is that it seems odd for her to win for a leading role and then again for a supporting. I keep thinking of Cate Blanchett winning for The Aviator and then again for Blue Jasmine. Or Jessica Lange. I don't feel like wiki-tunneling to find how many times this precedent has occurred but those are circumstances that have been likelier although I can't imagine voters actively think about this stuff.
Helen Hayes and Ingrid Bergman both won supporting awards after winning in the lead category although their supporting awards came when they were much older and for character work. Maggie Smith won her supporting award while she was still very much a leading lady in films and is the right precedent for Kate Winslet this year.

Streep and Lange won their supporting awards at the start of their careers followed by Oscars in the lead category when they were well established as leading players. Blanchett was already a leading lady when she won her supporting award followed by her second on the lead category. Winslet and Blanchett are sort of similar cases. Both still young with long careers ahead of them as leads.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Sabin »

OscarGuy wrote
I think what gives her some credence is that the Globes and BAFTA have now both chosen her. That's not a great selection, but it's notable. Steve Jobs may have imploded at the Oscars, but she has a strongly-positioned counterpart in the Best Actor race and those who loved the film will want to rally around it somewhere. I don't think The Danish Girl has that level of support in terms of a rally. Steve Jobs may not have been big hit with the Academy overall, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have feverish support in certain circles. Will it be enough? I don't know.
I'm just not sure those feverish support circles exist for Steve Jobs. Honestly, I think the film that most likely wins out in that department is Carol.
OscarGuy wrote
Who's going to win? I'm still giving the edge to Alicia Vikander, but I would not be at all shocked to see Winslet win and while none of us believe that the vast majority of Oscar voters would use Titanic as a reason to create an Oscar Moment, there will be a few and that might just be enough in an incredibly tight race.
I think Alicia Vikander wins because of Ex Machina. This kind of logic has worked in the past as often as it hasn't, but it's logic that I'm going with.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by OscarGuy »

It's not the same, but Ingrid Bergman went from winning in lead to winning in Support. If an actress is well loved enough, they'll reward her for anything.

I think what gives her some credence is that the Globes and BAFTA have now both chosen her. That's not a great selection, but it's notable. Steve Jobs may have imploded at the Oscars, but she has a strongly-positioned counterpart in the Best Actor race and those who loved the film will want to rally around it somewhere. I don't think The Danish Girl has that level of support in terms of a rally. Steve Jobs may not have been big hit with the Academy overall, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have feverish support in certain circles. Will it be enough? I don't know.

However, I just think back to Tilda Swinton's late-breaking win at BAFTA being a sign that she was heading to an Oscar win. That year, I had been looking for someone to overtake supposed frontrunner Amy Ryan, an actress and a performance that I just felt wasn't going to net her an Oscar. Then Swinton arrived and it seemed utterly stupid to have considered anything else. Is it that there's overlap? Probably not. Is it that some Academy voters actually respect BAFTA enough to give credence to its choices? Probably. There's overlap for sure and the two groups are very much aligned in terms of how they represent the industry. SAG has a lot of TV and Radio personalities in their ranks. BAFTA doesn't have nearly the breadth, which could give some boost to the idea that BAFTA is more representative of the Academy than any other group right now.

Who's going to win? I'm still giving the edge to Alicia Vikander, but I would not be at all shocked to see Winslet win and while none of us believe that the vast majority of Oscar voters would use Titanic as a reason to create an Oscar Moment, there will be a few and that might just be enough in an incredibly tight race.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

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What's throwing my about Kate Winslet's chances for Steve Jobs, another film not well-liked by the industry (hell, The Danish Girl just faded away; Steve Jobs imploded), is that it seems odd for her to win for a leading role and then again for a supporting. I keep thinking of Cate Blanchett winning for The Aviator and then again for Blue Jasmine. Or Jessica Lange. I don't feel like wiki-tunneling to find how many times this precedent has occurred but those are circumstances that have been likelier although I can't imagine voters actively think about this stuff. Something that might work against Kate Winslet a little more is nobody is talking about Steve Jobs being any kind of breakthrough role for her. She's forty one and this is her seventh Academy Award nomination (!!!), but it's not likely to be on anybody's list of favorite Kate Winslet performances. Neither was The Reader for that matter.

Something interesting occurred to me as I was rifling through Kate Winslet's resume. For the most part, Kate Winslet has been nominated for just about everything that could have placed her in competition. She was nominated for Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, Iris, Eternal Sunshine, Little Children, The Reader, and Steve Jobs. The performances that "missed out" were what? Quills? Holy Smoke? Labor Day if we're being very generous? Her biggest omissions were Finding Neverland and Revolutionary Road which were both released when she got other nominations that year. She's pretty beloved. I've done this before but compare her with Leonardo DiCaprio. He has five acting nominations for What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Revenant. But look at the performances that didn't land. Marvin's Room, Titanic, Catch Me If You Can, The Departed, Revolutionary Road, J. Edgar, and Django Unchained. On paper, all of these look like winners and many of them were barely in the conversation or missed out likely by a hair. This Academy Award will be for persistence.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by flipp525 »

I just can't see them awarding Alicia Vikander with an Oscar for The Danish Girl, a film that very few people liked. I'm really just not feeling it. Doesn't Kate Winslet have a better chance at this point?

I'm still hoping for a Jennifer Jason Leigh dark horse/spoiler.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Heksagon »

Yes, but keep in mind that Vikander's Danish Girl nomination was in the Lead Category for BAFTAs.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Jefforey Smith »

Kate Winslet takes the BAFTA in this category for STEVE JOBS. This category is now officially a nail-biter for Oscar night! :D
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by CalWilliam »

This year's supporting performers screen time. Very enlightening.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/screen-t ... re-vulture
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by CalWilliam »

[quote="OscarGuy"]How often have subtle performances won Oscars? Seldom.[quote]

Yes, and in this category, since 1980, for instance, only Stapleton, Ashcroft, Huston, Wiest in Hannah or Swinton would fit into subtle territory, in my opinion.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by OscarGuy »

I think the one thing that makes it difficult for Mara to win is that while her performance is indeed great, it's submissive and incredibly subtle. How often have subtle performances won Oscars? Seldom. These voters love their bombast or their sacrifice or their obvious nobility. They don't often recognize simple, quiet or understated.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by Sabin »

I think Jennifer Jason Leigh has big one thing going in her favor. Her role is easily the most different role in competition. Whether or not the roles in this competition are supporting is debatable, but more or less the other performers are playing roles that are supportive. They are trying to help in some way. Jennifer Jason Leigh's role is destructive. She takes joy in being awful. While everybody else in this category is suffering or questioning how to be a good person, this is a character is plotting how to destroy everybody around her. In some ways, she's the first female analog to the "Trapped Villain" character. Like Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Javier Bardem in Skyfall, and Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek Into Darkness, she is a dangerous psychological threat even though she is imprisoned.

There are other things working in her favor too: 1) her film is the most seen, 2) you could make the argument that she is the actor most career-deserving of an Oscar, 3) she may not be a lead like Alicia Vikander or Rooney Mara but thanks to the film's running time she has possibly more screen-time than either one of them, 4) there is no real reason to think that Oscar voters want to give a consolation prize to Carol, The Danish Girl, or Steve Jobs more than The Hateful Eight, 5) while it is true that so far Quentin Tarantino has only managed to get Oscars for Christoph Waltz, he's definitely on a roll with two in a row. Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin hasn't managed that. Todd Haynes hasn't managed that. Tom McCarthy hasn't managed that. This points positively towards Tarantino and Tom Hopper.

I have no idea if she is going to win the Oscar. I have no idea who is going to win the SAG or the Bafta. But I know that for a good stretch in the 1990s, Jennifer Jason Leigh wasn't just under the bubble for a nomination, she was always in talks as a future winner in the same way as Nicole Kidman or Julianne Moore. If she had been in Casino or Leaving Las Vegas instead of Georgia in 1995, maybe she would have won (NOTE: not interested in having a conversation about the likelihood of that scenario, vis-a-vis whether she could beat a due Susan Sarandon; just making a point).
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by The Original BJ »

The tricky thing about this category is that there are four fairly strong performances, all of which are attached to movies that under-performed, and one actress in a movie it's clear voters really liked who just doesn't have a whole lot to do.

I feel like because Spotlight is a top Best Picture candidate, you can't totally rule out McAdams -- a lot of the famous upsets in this category (Geena Davis, Anna Paquin, Juliette Binoche, you could maybe throw in Tilda Swinton even though many of us predicted that) came from films with broad Best Picture support. But all of those performances were far more noteworthy as performances -- it's hard for me to imagine a majority of voters going for something as functional as McAdams's work, no matter how much they like the movie.

A lot of people seem to be coalescing around Mara as the favorite, and certainly the quality of the performance and size of the role are points in her favor. But the reasoning that voters will rally here to give Carol a consolation prize strikes me as questionable, sort of the way many thought Dreamgirls would have a big haul on Oscar night because voters felt bad it missed Best Picture/Director. If voters aren't that into a movie on nomination morning, they don't usually suddenly love it in the final balloting. I guess the question is, how many votes was Carol away from being a Best Picture nominee, at which point it would have had seven nominations including the top category, and it wouldn't look like a movie voters disliked?

But, of course, all of the other movies are nearly in the same boat. The Hateful Eight missed what seemed like a very possible screenplay nomination, and I imagine there's a lot about that movie that will be a turn-off to people, starting with the length. I even wonder if some squeamish voters might not even make it to Leigh's big scene. But she does have the most Oscar-clip moment of any of the nominees, she's been around a while, and has the Anomalisa extra credit. I think she's hardly an also-ran.

I reread the Steve Jobs thread the other day, after I watched the movie for a second time, and was amazed to see all of us talking about how the movie would likely receive a bunch of nominations. But not even Aaron Sorkin survived. So once again we have a movie voters just didn't really respond to, with an actress here who already has an Oscar. And yet, despite there not being much of a narrative for Winslet winning, the performance is VERY good, and she could win the Oscar for much the same reason she won the Globe: people just liked the work. And would people be terribly bothered by a second trophy for an actress as stellar as she is? (I'm going to have to say, I may just be optimistically naive, but for all the reasons voters choose actors to win Oscars, I truly don't believe a thing like "a Titanic reunion for Leo and Kate" is one of them. I totally buy people voting for their friends, or because it's an actor's "turn." But wanting to see two winners together in the press photos strikes me as more an Oscar pundit theory than anything based in reality.)

Alicia Vikander also has the advantage of a lead part, as well as the fact that she was everywhere this year, although to be honest, I just now had to look up her IMDb credits to see what movies she was in beyond The Danish Girl and Ex Machina, and a number of those credits weren't very widely seen. She's definitely something of an "it" girl at the moment, but I don't know if the idea that she dominated the movie year is as prevalent in the industry as it is on film Twitter. And while Danish Girl didn't under-perform according to our expectations...it clearly did according to what Focus had hoped for it. But she's young, and beautiful, and playing a long-suffering wife, and those are all pluses.

None of this was really leading to a prediction -- I'm very curious to see how this category goes at SAG. Much as I like Winslet, I'd actually prefer her NOT to steamroll through the rest of the prizes, just to keep things all over the place.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by FilmFan720 »

What's also really interesting about this category is that none of the big televised precursors will be able to tell us a whole lot because each of them is missing a key component. The Globes awarded Winslet, but that was without Mara or Vikander on the ballot; SAG is missing Leigh; and BAFTA has Vikander in for a separate film.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by flipp525 »

Big Magilla wrote:Leigh [is an] also-ran.
Umm, hardly. I actually think that Jennifer Jason Leigh has a strong chance of winning. Whoever it was down-thread who mentioned the similarities to Arquette's win last year is spot-on. Very similar profile. And, let's be honest, JJL should've racked up several nominations already. This could be seen as a body-of-work type Oscar, but JJL has the added bonus of having turned in a great performance as well.

The Titanic narrative is, of course, stupid as hell, but I wouldn't mind Kate Winslet winning for her very strong, almost surprising work in Steve Jobs. I agree that Alicia Vikander's Ex Machina performance would've been a more appropriate citation this year. She's good in The Danish Girl (even though the logic fails for her character really start piling up), but it's clearly lead work and I also think she's a bit new to the game to be awarded so early. Like Precious Doll, I thought Rooney Mara was wonderful in Carol (and clearly a lead), but I can't support the category-whoring that's happening this year, over-shadowed as it is now with other more-pressing controversies. Mara's is not the kind of performance this category was ever intended to honor and I'll be fighting it until the envelope is opened. Is there some desperate need to award Carol with something within the Academy? I'm not getting that impression at all considering the nominations it missed out on.

I've spoken about Rachel McAdams' work in Spotlight on this board already. The performance is fine, nothing really special and certainly not Oscar-worthy. She does happen to have the most interesting scene in the whole movie which could send some votes her way.
Last edited by flipp525 on Fri Jan 29, 2016 3:13 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Supporting Actress

Post by nightwingnova »

Critical acclaim and screen dominance, and unlikely to win anywhere else, I find it unlikely that Carol wouldn't get an award for Mara Rooney here.
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