Best Supporting Actor 2008

[Big Magilla]

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?

[Big Magilla]

I wonder how many awards Heath Ledger would have gotten for The Dark Knight if a) he had won as he should have for Brokeback Mountain and b) he hadn't died so unexpectedly before the film's release.

It's a good performance, but narrowly makes my list. The same is true for Robert Downey Jr.'s performance in Tropic Thunder, which aside from his performance, is not a very likeable film.

I find Philip Seymour Hoffman the most over-rated actor of his generation, but his smiling two-faced child-molesting priest in Doubt is quite possibly the best thing he's done on screen. If he's half as good as the character modeled on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in The Master he could well give Daniel Day-Lewis and John Hawkes a run for this yer's Best Actor awards.

I like Michael Shannon a lot, particularly in Bug, Take Shletoer TV's Boardwalk Empire, but not in Revolutionary Road in which I thought he was really bad. He's the only nominee I would actually throw out, replacing him with James Franco who is quite good in Milk, more so than in his subsequent Oscar nominated role in 127 Hours. The best performance, however, belongs to Josh Brolin by far. It's not easy playing one of the most hated human beings of his time with sympathy and restraint, but Brolin does just that as Dan White. He gets my vote.

[bizarre]

I haven't seen Downey. Bad lineup.

Ledger's a showboat but in this slog of a film he provides the verve - and what verve! I have no problem with him winning the Oscar, sentimental or not.

Brolin is next I guess. Strong in some of his more reflective moments, but then he bursts out with a scene as poorly judged and executed as the 'drunken conversation' one. Not exactly a worthy nomination.

Michael Shannon I was predicting all year (the only one, it seemed) simply for the nature of the role, which in the book is a showstopper. He did get nominated, but I remember being surprised when actually seeing the film how the role seemed both foregrounded and truncated. He's fine, but after about 30 seconds his demented-savant shtick seems like old hat. Should have saved this nomination for Take Shelter.

Finally Hoffman, who doesn't even try. Doubt is to the Oscars as Transformers is to the box office - just a hack job designed to reel in the rewards.

Sadly, this year had a lot of possibilities. Waiting in the wings would have been Dev Patel, very fraud-y and bland in Slumdog Millionaire, Ralph Fiennes for one of his three films (The Duchess, In Bruges and The Reader), James Franco in Milk, Eddie Marsan in Happy-Go-Lucky and perhaps arguable leads Brendan Gleeson in In Bruges, David Kross in The Reader and Michael Sheen in Frost/Nixon (who was shuttled into an unsuccessful lead campaign). Earlier in the year there were whispers of support for Brandon Walters (Australia), Bill Irwin (Rachel Getting Married), Jason Butler Harner (Changeling), Liev Schreiber (Defiance), Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading), Haaz Sleiman (The Visitor), Alan Alda (Nothing But the Truth) and Freddy Rodriguez (Nothing Like the Holidays), but none of them panned out.

My nominees:
1. Jason Butler Harner ... Changeling
2. Bill Irwin ... Rachel Getting Married
3. Heath Ledger ... The Dark Knight
4. Yoshio Harada ... Still Walking
5. Charlie McDermott ... Frozen River

[MovieFan]

I'll take Josh Brolin's complex, haunting and multi-layered work in Milk over Ledger's good but one note and slightly overpraised performance in The Dark Knight. I was thrilled the New York Film Critics awarded Brolin

[Reza]

Voted for Heath.

My picks for 2008:

1. John Malkovich, Burn After Reading
2. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
3. Christopher Plummer, Emotional Arithmetic
4. Josh Brolin, Milk
5. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

The 6th Spot: James Franco, Milk

[The Original BJ]

I didn't think there were all that many options this year, nominated or otherwise. Of the excluded, I'd cite Emile Hirsch in Milk, who I thought was the standout supporting player in that film, and Eddie Marsan in Happy-Go-Lucky, who I predicted for a nomination under the assumption that Sally Hawkins would carry him along. (Silly me.) I also liked Mathieu Amalric in A Christmas Tale.

I think Robert Downey, Jr.'s nomination is one of the worst acting noms this entire decade. I found Tropic Thunder abominable -- not even funny in an enjoyably silly way -- and so far removed from anything that should even remotely be considered for awards. By the time I got around to seeing it -- after the SAG noms, I think, when it became clear Downey would be an Oscar nominee -- I was shocked this crap was garnering such attention. I guess when you get down to it, Downey was the most amusing thing about the movie, but...YIKES.

When I found out Philip Seymour Hoffman had been cast in Brian F. O'Byrne's role in Doubt, I thought, that's all wrong -- Hoffman tends to have such a skeevy presence on-screen, I feared his casting would completely tip the balance of the entire story. When I saw the film, I can't say I suddenly found him a perfect choice for the part, but I did think he managed to tone down that side of his persona enough to make the character work. Still, this represented in some ways a new low for category fraud -- Hoffman wasn't demoted to avoid competition with another lead of the same gender. He was shoehorned into support just because the nomination was an easier get. Lunacy.

Michael Shannon definitely makes an impression as the mentally unstable neighbor in Revolutionary Road, though I think, especially in that second scene, he goes a bit over the top. And I found it really odd that Shannon, in a small role, would be the major element to survive the Revolutionary Road Oscar collapse, when DiCaprio, Winslet, and the cinematography -- all first-rate, by me -- were ignored.

I've argued on more than one occasion that sometimes the supporting actor who's most easily separated from the rest of his or her cast can be the one recognized for a nomination, even if the rest of the cast was just as good (or better). And that factor probably helped Josh Brolin here. But I definitely thought he merited the mention, particularly for the way he plays Dan White as such a likable human being, resisting the urge to paint him as an obviously evil bigot. The fact that his character's hate comes from such a seemingly good-natured person puts forth the important theme that prejudice can often come from otherwise kind people, and I think Brolin's handling of this character in such a realistic way is one of Milk's great assets.

But I think Heath Ledger just towers over the competition. I remember, almost instantly after the actor's untimely death, a groundswell of talk that Ledger might win an Oscar for his role as the Joker surfaced online. And I thought, NO WAY! The villain in a superhero movie is not going to win any actor an Oscar, even if he just died. (Looking back, this was the beginning of the bizarre Internet fixation on Batman-as-Oscar-bait, which continues to this day.) But then I saw The Dark Knight. And we all saw how Ledger created such a complicated, frightening antagonist whose demons emanated from some place very deep within him. This wasn't a showboating, scene-stealing, "fun" villain -- it was a walking nightmare, and unlike anything we had seen Ledger do before. Watching the recent Batman film, I grew even more appreciative of Ledger's work, because I think The Dark Knight Rises suffers by lacking a major performance as fresh, unsettling, and iconic as Ledger's work in his film, something that elevated the movie above the glut of sameness that plagues so many superhero blockbusters. Even if Ledger had lived, he'd have won the Oscar easily, and I wholeheartedly endorse his prize.

[ksrymy]

This is a pretty exceptional lineup save for one nominee.

As funny as he was, Robert Downey, Jr.'s nomination rested on two things. The reboot of a successful, post-drug career and the fact that he was an American playing and Australian playing a black man in blackface. Double or triple meta-acting if you will.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is great in Doubt and uses an unusual charisma we don't usually get to see from him to try and convince us that he is innocent. His repartée with Meryl Streep is very well done and his poker facing and shit-eating grins throughout the film are a master class in smarminess and confidence. A well-deserved nominee.

I think Michael Shannon is one of the most underrated actors out there today. He should have been nominated last year for Take Shelter and I think he'll be nominated in two years for The Iceman. No exception to his acting here. John Givings is an exceptional literary character and Shannon brings justice to the way Richard Yates wrote him. Even as brief as the role is, he nails his scenes and steals them from Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and Kathy Bates. Alas, the other two men are better.

When I saw the nomination before I saw the film, I thought Josh Brolin's nomination came from congratulations for being in No Country for Old Men and W. (since anything anti-Bush Hollywood loves even though the critics did not love it as much), but I saw the film and agreed with his nomination 100%. As Joel Grey said at the ceremony, "Actors have been known to look for roles that show them as strong and morally tough, but as Dan White, Josh, you took on the role of someone who acts out of fear and weakness." You can see through his subtle body language and the nervous inflections in his voice that Brolin is scared shitless. "You cannot humiliate me. You will not demean me," is a line that always comes to mind when I think of this performance. And Brolin was the correct nominee from this film. Emile Hirsch would have been deserving too, but Brolin is far better; however, please don't get me started on James Franco. In short, I think he's tremendously overrated in just about everything (I still have to check out his James Dean though).

But Goddamnit if I'm not voting for Heath Ledger. It was his performance that echoed throughout the film and I think we all knew he was going to win the Oscar after we walked out of the theater. Was it awarded to him because he died?: absolutely not. Ledger goes from subtle to over-the-top so easily. During his police interrogation room scene notice the small details. He licks his lips constantly in a reptilian fashion. He left behind the cartoonish Joker was all knew from Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson and presented us with something terrifying. I remember all the moaning and groaning about his casting. I remember everyone thinking he couldn't do it and that Johnny Depp would have been better casting. Ledger was cast perfectly and shocked us that he could be this dynamic. It's a powerhouse performance and the first of three years in a row where I predicted the Best Supporting Actor winner after walking out of the theater opening night.

My picks
_____________________
1. Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
2. Josh Brolin - Milk
3. Eddie Marsan - Happy-Go-Lucky
4. Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road
5. Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt

6. Brad Pitt - Burn After Reading