Best Supporting Actor 2008

[flipp525]

Phillip Seymour Hoffman was surely at a disadvantage the moment he was cast in Doubt. He brings with him such a history of sleazy performances, and certainly has the look of a mysterious priest, that it took a lot of the questions out of the equation from the get go. He does his best, but like most of the film, he doesn't quite work.

I always thought someone like Greg Kinnear would've worked better in the role. As handsome and charming he is, it would've made Sister Aloysius come off as someone with more of a nonsensical grudge than someone with actual evidence of misconduct. It's no stretch of the imagination whatsoever to imagine Philip Seymour Hoffman as a child molester

[FilmFan720]

Playing catch up here...

None of these would have made my own list this year...a pretty weak field filled with actors I really like mostly in vehicles that they couldn't rise above.

My own choice on the year, hands down, was Bill Irwin in Rachel Getting Married. A touching, funny, wholly natural turn. The performance that I loved that no one else seemed to was James Cromwell's Bush Sr. in W. I thought that the material between 41 and 43 was some of the best stuff in the film, and a lot of that was due to Cromwell's love coming through no matter what he said and did. I think it might be his best film performance, and I don't understand why no one else singled it out.

As for the nominees, Robert Downey Jr. is sure a lot of fun in Tropic Thunder, but not enough fun to put him on the board (for all the complaining about comedies not getting nominated, when this and Melissa McCarthy got nominated, they weren't worthy. Find some worthy comedic performances people).

Phillip Seymour Hoffman was surely at a disadvantage the moment he was cast in Doubt. He brings with him such a history of sleazy performances, and certainly has the look of a mysterious priest, that it took a lot of the questions out of the equation from the get go. He does his best, but like most of the film, he doesn't quite work.

Michael Shannon is good in Revolutionary Road, but I wouldn't cite him for an Oscar for sure.

Heath Ledger is a tricky one for me. He is certainly scary in many of the scenes, and it is an amazing transformation. It is certainly one that I would have never expected from him, and actor I really liked but who I thought was a bit limited. And it does make you wonder what else he could have done. But the role is so one-dimensional, and is part of the biggest problems in the film, that I can't justify voting for him here. I don't begrudge giving him the Oscar, but he is not my pick (and I still claim that Aaron Eckhart is the best performance in that film).

Which leaves me to vote for Josh Brolin in Milk. There are a lot of performances that I would have liked to vote for in that film instead, but Brolin is very good, coming off of a two-year run that was amazing, and brings a lot more nuance and care to what could have been played as a bumbling villain role. I have no problem throwing him my vote here.

My picks:

1. Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married
2. James Cromwell, W.
3. Vlad Ivanov, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
4. Emile Hirsch, Milk
5. Diego Luna, Milk

[Okri]

From the not-possible-contenders, I really liked Baki Davrak in The Edge of Heaven, as well as Almaric, Berling and Poupaud in A Christmas Tale (really, that entire cast is awesome). I also have to mention Liam Cunningham. He had one scene in Hunger, but man he made it count.

From the implausibles, Ralph Fiennes in In Bruges should've made a bigger dent. Ditto Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading (Benjamin Button's oscar reception is so utterly confusing to me)

From the plausibles, I loved Bill Irwin.

From the nominees, Ledger stands out above the rest. Brolin's nod was largely career momentum, I felt, but worthy nonetheless. The rest don't merit a mention.

[Bruce_Lavigne]

Tropic Thunder isn't a perfect comedy by any stretch of the imagination -- I think it comes from too deep in the Hollywood "family" to be a particularly biting or insightful satire -- but the character of Kirk Lazarus is perfectly conceived and executed, and Downey is my pick for the win here. I imagine his character is meant to be a take-off on Russell Crowe and Daniel Day-Lewis, and it works as such -- the Method-to-the-point-of-insanity Aussie with anger-management issues who's seemingly always winning Oscars -- but with the key joke of the role being that Lazarus is playing an African-American in blackface, I was more reminded of Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart, and the kind of Master-Thespian vanity that makes movie stars think they can play even roles for which they're spectacularly ill-suited based purely on force of talent. The movie is decidedly no towering comic achievement, but the character and the performance are.

I hate to not give it to Ledger, about whom I can't say anything that hasn't already been said. It's a haunting, terrifying performance, one that richly deserved to win. (I don't know how sure I am that he would have even been nominated had he lived, though.)

As for the rest: Shannon was by a mile the best thing in Revolutionary Road, and deserved his citation; Brolin did some nice, interesting things with an interesting role but hardly merited awards-level attention; and Hoffman, while not as bad in this role as he might have been, was nonetheless badly miscast as others have said (and lead, of course).

My ballot:
1. Robert Downey, Jr (Tropic Thunder)
2. Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
3. Bill Irwin (Rachel Getting Married)
4. Eddie Marsan (Happy-Go-Lucky)
5. Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading)

[Big Magilla]

I have no prodblem with doing a Best Picture in tandem with a Best Director poll.

Should we do a pre-1927 poll for pictures and directors (separately)? There are plenty of films and men to honor there. Everyone throws out a couple names and we'll see where it goes from there. Sound game?

Sure.

[ksrymy]

I have no prodblem with doing a Best Picture in tandem with a Best Director poll.

Should we do a pre-1927 poll for pictures and directors (separately)? There are plenty of films and men to honor there. Everyone throws out a couple names and we'll see where it goes from there. Sound game?

[Sabin]

Now, this is a pretty great lineup. Not much complaining you can do, especially considering that the disingenuous push for Dev Patel in this category failed. Yeesh, how ugly! Michael Shannon clearly snuck in but he was fantastic in Revolutionary Road and is the definition of strong support. The strong film that Sam Mendes’ histrionic and miscast venture could have been actually happens in his brief scenes where he ups everybody’s game and truly forces them to engage with each other and the ideas in the script that he embodies. He’s a great, strange actor and my runner up choice. He was also pretty much the only pleasant surprise in a truly disappointing batch of nominees.

Heath Ledger was the runaway winner and he deserved to be. This past decade was a pretty outstanding one for supporting actors and Ledger ranks among the best. The best thing I can say about his morbid, funny turn is that I’m more than reasonably sure he would have won had the actor lived. He was a previous nominee for Brokeback Mountain, an Oscar front-runner that had achieved status as being “robbed”, and one where one can scarcely separate the film from Ledger’s performance. Here he is again with a similar scenario: a movie that was “robbed” of a nomination where it becomes difficult to separate the film itself from his mad performance. Who else would win that year? Not Shannon. The role is too short. Not Downey, Jr.. The role is too slight and comedic. Not Hoffman. He just won. Brolin? Maybe?

The critic’s did in fact spread the wealth a bit. Josh Brolin won Best Supporting Actor at the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critic’s Circle, and he came in 3rd with the National Society of Film Critics behind winner Eddie Marsan for Happy-Go-Lucky and Ledger. Josh Brolin is quite good in Milk. I’m not sure I prefer him to James Franco or (especially) Emile Hirsch, but he refuses to villainize Dan White and instead shows him as a very sad, confused man. Although I will be voting for Milk in the Best Picture poll (how can you not?), I think the film hits it a bit too on the nose that Dan White is a closeted homosexual. Rather what Brolin plays and quite well is that it’s the fear of even considering the thought coupled with a restless paranoia about losing control of what he had built for himself that causes the man to spiral. Again, Brolin is quite good, as he was that year in the lousy W. and the year prior in No Country for Old Men and a slew of other fine supporting roles. He’s a very interesting actor who deserved a nomination, but not a win.

Tropic Thunder is a mystifying failure of a comedy. As a big fan of The Ben Stiller Show and Zoolander, it demonstrates that Ben Stiller’s edge in comedy is best confined to short bits. Little segues here and there. Spread out to feature-length, and even Zoolander falls a bit short in the third act. Tropic Thunder barely gets started. With that many writers attached, it’s become clear to me that his labor of love never really started with a concept but not a central idea about what he wanted to say. Instead it becomes intolerably hip and smug, save for Robert Downey Jr. for whom I have to simply cop to falling into giggle fits whenever I see on the screen in this film. I don’t really want to intellectualize or politicize the one thing in the film that succeeds in being funny. Downey Jr. was in an upswing of hyper-popularity that began with his great work in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, continued with terrific little supporting turns in A Scanner Darkly and Zodiac, and hit an omnipresent zeitgeist with Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, ironic and fey distillations of his motor-mouthed persona that can be rather inspired (as the first two installments of both franchises proved to me). Downey, The Star was rapidly happening, so simply seeing him doing something this absurd was quite something for me.

At this point, Philip Seymour Hoffman was on a roll with his third nomination in four years. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Doubt so I don’t recall if he was a clear lead or a borderline case, but my impression at the time was that there were scenes of great acting but ultimately it didn’t quite hold together for me for one reason: if Philip Seymour Hoffman is playing a character who is accused of molestation, he did it. Almost guaranteed. They speak of him as this great human presence and it’s like they’re talking about somebody else. It’s not him. In fact a lot of what goes wrong in Doubt is due to Philip Seymour Hoffman. He doesn’t have that special, beautiful quality that would challenge Sister Aloysius or indeed anybody involved in this situation, and so instead it becomes two actors trading speeches. It’s a solid piece of miscasting though, and we’ll have worse nominations soon after.

I see that I put Brendan Gleeson down for leading in In Bruges. I can see why I thought that at the time and he has more than enough time to qualify for leading in my book, but it's clearly a borderline case. Were he to be considered supporting, I'd rank him just below Brad Pitt.

Best Supporting Actor
1. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
2. Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading
3. Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road
4. Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky
5. Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder

[Big Magilla]

I have no prodblem with doing a Best Picture in tandem with a Best Director poll.

[Mister Tee]

To address matters in reverse order:

I also like the idea of doing best picture/director in tandem if it's a viable possibility; there's so much overlap that separating them is redundant, and doing them together allows us to explore the different standards the branches apply.

And I, too, don't really consider those earlier best picture polls to be part of this vast project. I look at some of the threads and presume I must have voted, since I'm shown vote totals, but I haven't commented many places (nor have many others), which completely distinguishes it from these other polls. Yes, technically the board has already voted on best picture, but, as some old guy once wrote, That was another country, and the wench is dead.

As to the '08 race:

I, too, would have put James Franco here (over Brolin, in fact), and Eddie Marsan would have been a definite pick despite my not much caring for Happy Go Lucky or Sally Hawkins.

Of the actual nominees: I can't say how the Downey performance in Tropic Thunder would have looked if I'd seen it when it was fresh in theatres and caught folks by surprise. I can only report that, by the time I saw it, every decent gag had been shown on TV about 100 times, and what I was left with was a dreary, heavy-handed, crap-Hollywood-like satire of crap-Hollywood. Even if Downey was the best thing about it...so what?

I think Philip Seymour Hoffman is good in Doubt -- which surprised me, because I thought his Happiness creepiness might hover over he project -- but he was clearly a lead gerrymandered to get a nomination, and not so good that he merits win consideration.

I really wanted to love Josh Brolin in Milk -- I'd so admired the recent trajectory of his career. And It's not as if he's not OK. I just didn't see anything especially insightful. As I said, Franco would have scored first with me.

I'll agree that Michael Shannon's second scene in Revolutionary Road was a bit too much (though I'd blame the writing for that more than the actor). But his initial scene was, I thought, the high point of the film -- a classic "watch this guy walk in and take command of the screen" scene. Though I, too, would have liked to have seen Winslet and DiCaprio nominated along with him, his citation by itself was the happiest surprise of that Oscar morning for me.

To deal with your two questions, Magilla: it's of course hard to guess if voters would have gone for Ledger had he won the best actor prize only three years earlier. But on the second issue, I say most definitely his performance would have been viewed as a standout even had he not shockingly left this earth prior to release. His Joker is a terrifically dominant role, with all sorts of commanding monologues...but he makes it even more memorable by never grandstanding. Through the whole film, I had the sense he was letting the audience come to him -- an approach few would have tried, but one that made his characterization exponentially more effective. For me, he's the very easy choice for 1998.

[Cinemanolis]

My top5

1. Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
2. Eddie Marsan - Happy Go Lucky
3. Bill Irwin - Rachel Getting Married
4. Ralph Fiennes - In Bruges
5. Mathieu Amalric - A Christmas Tale

[nightwingnova]

Hoffmann was ok but nothing good.

Brolin was good enough. But I don't think he's memorable.

Downey was quite good. Very good.

But, it's hands down for Heath Ledger, who brought himself to the edge of a nervous breakdown and plunged into the depths of psychosis for this iconic performance. For a character that's always been caricature, Ledger grounded the Joker and gave him life.

[ksrymy]

Finish Best Picture? I don't even feel like we've really done Best Picture. Those are OLD polls, and didn't inspire all that much discussion -- and isn't that what's most interesting, not the actual poll results?

I know at some point someone pitched the idea of doing Picture & Director TOGETHER in some way, since they cover a lot of the same ground. I liked that idea.

But, regardless of whether we do that or not, I don't think we should skip a bi-weekly discussion of Best Picture history under the presumption that we've already covered it. (And part of this is, admittedly, self-motivated -- Best Picture is a category where I can participate from the beginning, but the thought of going back to comment on eighty-plus old polls at once seems entirely daunting.) Plus, there are people who have joined the board since then, some of whom have made significant contributions to these polls (like ksrymy). And I always like reading about the older races from well-versed folk like Magilla, Mister Tee and Italiano. To me, starting fresh would be a lot more interesting than encouraging everyone to just post their thoughts willy-nilly on over eighty old races.

I entirely agree and I really like the idea of two-birds-one-stoning Picture and Director especially since the poll system allows for any number of votes to be cast. I look at the older polls and see maybe four opinions one of which is consistently Magilla's. The other three are usually "Gone with the Wind," "I chose The Philadelphia Story," or anything along the lines of that. Starting fresh would be nice. And also, thank you for the kind words, BJ.

[The Original BJ]

Finish Best Picture? I don't even feel like we've really done Best Picture. Those are OLD polls, and didn't inspire all that much discussion -- and isn't that what's most interesting, not the actual poll results?

I know at some point someone pitched the idea of doing Picture & Director TOGETHER in some way, since they cover a lot of the same ground. I liked that idea.

But, regardless of whether we do that or not, I don't think we should skip a bi-weekly discussion of Best Picture history under the presumption that we've already covered it. (And part of this is, admittedly, self-motivated -- Best Picture is a category where I can participate from the beginning, but the thought of going back to comment on eighty-plus old polls at once seems entirely daunting.) Plus, there are people who have joined the board since then, some of whom have made significant contributions to these polls (like ksrymy). And I always like reading about the older races from well-versed folk like Magilla, Mister Tee and Italiano. To me, starting fresh would be a lot more interesting than encouraging everyone to just post their thoughts willy-nilly on over eighty old races.

[Big Magilla]

We could finish up Best Picture before starting Best Director.

[MovieFan]

By the way, I suggest we follow the 2010 voting next week with Best Actress, Supporting Actress and Actor before we get to Best Supporting Actor of 2011 as that's the order in which did the acting categories.

Also, it's time we voted on our next category. I think it should be Best Director. Anyone have any other ideas?

Good idea, I would love to see the Director categories next, though I don't think we completed the Best Picture polls? I don't remember seeing 2007, I remember it ending at 2006