Categories One-by-One: Leading Actor

[criddic3]

I'm on the Paul Giamatti bandwagon this year! Not only for his past work but because I think he creates a really great character in The Holdovers.

Murphy is deserving but for some reason I didn't get the "he's winning an Oscar for this" vibe when I saw the film last summer.

Colman Domingo should have a better shot at this, though. He was electrifying in that part! But the film doesn't have the kind of support that lends itself to winning Oscars.

Like a lot of people, I wasn't thrilled by Maestro. It was an interesting movie, and the acting was very good, but I was not really rooting for it to make the lineup. Cooper will have to wait for another passion project to get his statuette.

Though I liked Jeffrey Wright's performance a lot, he didn't make my final personal list.

The Cooper and Wright slots could easily have gone to Zac Efron in The Iron Claw and Jamie Foxx in The Burial. There were some great performances that just got lost in the shuffle, which happens every year. Sometimes I think awards season just becomes a march towards a group consensus that seems inevitable despite all the choices available to them. And that gets a little frustrating, considering how many movies get released in any given year.

[Big Magilla]

That link doesn't work, this one does:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... wards.html

Who's Too "Sweaty" for an Oscar?
by Brooks Barnes

In Hollywood, an Oscar on your résumé means almost assured career security in a very unstable profession. But you can’t be seen to want it too badly. You must avoid looking “sweaty.”

Here’s what that means:

An Oscar nomination for acting acknowledges an exceptional performance in front of a movie camera. But the actor often must also give a second, even harder performance — campaigning aggressively for months while managing to seem a bit bewildered by the attention. Me? Gosh, thank you. Looking “sweaty” is not a great look.

The term, used lately by Hollywood’s cattier contingent, comes from gaming culture, where it describes players who compete with such intensity that their controller becomes slick with sweat.

“It’s the opposite of cool,” said Linda Ong, chief executive of Cultique, a cultural analysis firm. “Sweaty is a cousin of thirsty, but thirsty is less pejorative,” she continued. “Sweaty is associated with anxiousness — you seem more desperate.”

It’s the kind of thing Oscar voters say only in private conversations. The whispers ultimately harden into a narrative. Bradley Cooper? Way too sweaty for an Oscar, according to some.

“Fairly or not, Cooper has been pegged as this year’s Try-Hard Who Wants an Oscar So Badly That We Should Probably Just Give Him One to Prevent a Psychotic Break,” Michael Shulman wrote last month in The New Yorker, capturing the notion.

This month, even The Daily Beacon, the University of Tennessee student newspaper, cited “Cooper’s sweaty — occasionally insufferable — campaigning.”

Cooper pushed hard in 2018 with “A Star Is Born,” receiving three nominations and winning nothing. He has received another three for “Maestro.” But Cillian Murphy, from “Oppenheimer,” is the favorite to win the Academy Award for best actor.

Cillian “hasn’t veered into the kind of sweaty earnestness that turns voters off,” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s film school. The term sweaty, he noted, has also entered the broader entertainment industry lexicon, with some media companies looking “sweaty” as they try to solve their streaming problems.

So apparently did Jason Bateman on the Feb. 26 episode of “SmartLess,” the podcast he hosts with Sean Hayes and Will Arnett. Trying to find a colorful way to sign off, Bateman broke awkwardly into song.

“That was so sweaty,” Arnett said, using an expletive before the term.

[danfrank]

Apropos to the discussion about Bradley Cooper’s campaign, I came across this feature in the NYT. I hadn’t heard the word “sweaty” used in this context before:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... awards.htm

[Big Magilla]

From 2011-2022, I agreed with just two of the winners - Affleck and Phoenix, the latter due to weak competition. Although I agree that Hopkins was a worthy winner, Riz Ahmed was my choice that year. He, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Colin Farrell were the ones who losses hurt the most. This year, whether the winner is Giamatti, Murphy, Wright, or Domingo, I'll be happy.

[danfrank]

but given the all-time low this category has been in over the past decade (except for Hopkins and I guess Affleck), he wouldn't be a bad winner at all.

You know, I hadn't really looked at the past decade as a unit, and, yeesh!, you're right. The only one besides Hopkins/Affleck I might exempt is Phoenix -- not to rave about his performance, but to say i can easily see why many thought of it as great work (and his resume certainly put him in Oscar-rating territory). But for the rest, wow: truly a crew of undistinguished performances, often by equally undistinguished actors. Almost any of this year's five would rank above the entire list.

I think you can go back several decades and see that a majority of Best Actor winners gave relatively undistinguished performances and were far from the best performances of the year. My theory is that most of us (me certainly included) keep following the Oscars because the Academy only intermittently rewards us with great choices. Any casino operator can tell you that intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful kind.

[Mister Tee]

but given the all-time low this category has been in over the past decade (except for Hopkins and I guess Affleck), he wouldn't be a bad winner at all.

You know, I hadn't really looked at the past decade as a unit, and, yeesh!, you're right. The only one besides Hopkins/Affleck I might exempt is Phoenix -- not to rave about his performance, but to say i can easily see why many thought of it as great work (and his resume certainly put him in Oscar-rating territory). But for the rest, wow: truly a crew of undistinguished performances, often by equally undistinguished actors. Almost any of this year's five would rank above the entire list.

[Big Magilla]

I've never been a fan of Bradley Cooper so for anyone who thinks I'm jumping on the bandwagon against him, it's kind of the other way around.

The narrative has caught up with my thinking about him.

The only Oscar nomination I would have given him is ironically for one he didn't get, Best Actor for Nightmare Alley in a weak year.

Mostly though, I'm mad at myself for believing all the publicity he put out about Maestro being Carey Mulligan's picture, even going so far as to give her top billing. His performance is nothing special. As I've said before, I have been doing exercises conducting in the Bernstein manner since I was a child. That's what his performance with the baton reminded me of - me as a child imitating a classical music conductor.

The self-promotion may not be greater than a lot of other Oscar hungry actors, but the smugness is - "Cillian Murphy worked on his role for six months - I worked on mine for six years." Please!

[dws1982]

I think Murphy will get this, and I am very happy about that. Giamatti is not bad, but the "best of the year!" acclaim he has gotten is a complete mystery to me. I really don't get it at all.

Other than being, as some might say, a bit "cringe" in interviews, I don't get why Cooper has become the villain of the Oscar season. I don't think Maestro quite works, but given the all-time low this category has been in over the past decade (except for Hopkins and I guess Affleck), he wouldn't be a bad winner at all.

[Mister Tee]

This category this year proves once and for all most Oscar predictors aren't seers, they're aggregators. Prior to the SAGs, a good many on O'Neil's site were heavily touting Paul Giamatti -- a few, in fact, had been loudly predicting him from before Christmas. Then Murphy goes and wins SAG and, whoosh -- they're all now in the Murphy camp (including some who started the Giamatti groundswell).

And I can't really argue with them. I've felt for a long while that Giamatti would be the guy. Had he won SAG (as I'd anticipated), I'd likely lean his way. But some statistics can't be shrugged off. The last time a performer won both SAG and BAFTA and didn't take the Oscar was 2002 -- actually, a double negation that year, as both Daniel Day-Lewis and Christopher Walken won both spheres, but lost to, respectively, Adrien Brody and Chris Cooper. If there's such a thing as smart money, it has to go on Murphy. I still feel like Giamatti has a sliver of a chance -- it very much feels like an Oscar performance, where Murphy's will always feel like a nominated/don't-win sort to me. But stats proved out in supporting actress nominations this year, and I can't bet against them prevailing here, as well.

As for Bradley Cooper: the role/film just wasn't exciting enough for him to win, whatever the pundit class thought. But i don't see why we have to single him out as some uniquely horrible self-promoter. From what I can tell, he does roughly what most everyone else does...he just for some reason gets chastised for it where others skate.

[Big Magilla]

Nobody does self-promotion more than Bradley Cooper. Maybe if he learns to let the work speak for itself, he'll have a real chance at winning an Oscar someday, but that day won't be this Sunday.

Colman Domingo gave an impassioned performance in Rustin, but he's lucky just to have been nominated for a film that many saw as a glorified TV movie.

Jeffrey Wright is this year's Art Carney, a well-respected character actor in a rare lead who could actually win but he's up against Paul Giamatti in a similar position in a film that is generally more popular.

Cillian Murphy is always good. Like Domingo, Wright, and Giamatti, he is probably better known to filmgoers for his supporting roles, but he is a Christopher Nolan regular and has lots of fans from TV's Peaky Blinders and other projects, so he is probably better known to the general public than any of the other nominees except for Bradley Cooper which helped him win the SAG. He also had the home advantage with BAFTA which makes those wins understandable but not a sure road to Oscar. It's still a horse race between him and Giamatti.

Either can win, but I'm still expecting to see Giamatti prevail. I don't think Oppenheimer is going to win everything it is nominated for.

[anonymous1980]

The nominees:
Bradley Coooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Is this race over? Bradley Cooper came into this season looking like the front-runner: He has a very baity role of a very famous person with showy makeup. He's also been nominated for a total of 12 Oscars in various categories without a single win. Seems like a no-brainer. But then he started losing the televised awards to Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti and pretty much evaporated any hopes of gaining win momentum. Colman Domingo and Jeffrey Wright are the ones who are in the "good job, welcome to the club" nominations. Nominations that will not bring them the win but will give them a lot of good will in the future.

It all comes down to Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti. They both won the Globe in separate categories. Giamatti won the Critics Choice. Murphy won the BAFTA. It was thought that if Giamatti would have a chance, he HAD to win SAG and had to good chance at that too since he's beloved there but Murphy won that as well. Is it going to be Murphy or Giamatti? My head says Murphy but my heart and my vote goes to Giamatti.