Is it November already? - 1 more month of predictions ;-)

[Okri]

I think the classification for No Country for Old Men is right. Affleck's is obviously wrong, but expected.

[Akash]

Hopefully the Academy will have that rare moment of collective sanity and place him in lead where he belongs -- like they did with Keisha Castle-Hughes in 2003, a nice surprise I still can't believe happened.

[Penelope]

My only hope now is that either a) Academy voters know this is wrong and/or b) Affleck wins every Best Actor prize from New York to L.A. to Omaha, thus flipping Warners the bird and nudging the Academy to do the right thing.

[Bog]

I think we sadly all saw this coming a little bit, and it's disgusting and sad but it's all been mishandled with the film so far...

It's hard to see the bright side of this placement, apparently we are the only ones who realize Affleck was clearly the lead and deserved to be awarded accordingly, the only result of this would have to be confusion amongst voters who actually view the film, and walk away from seeing a movie about the Ford character and nothing but the Ford character for the final 20 minutes or so, then look on the ballot at a push for a supporting actor spot...feels like the Scarlett Johannson decision a few years back and look how that worked out, she even had some precursors in the bag

[dylanfan23]

I really had faith that affleck would go to lead on this one...i should have been more realistic i guess. I normally am very open minded on the catorgory placement, but this is about as bad as it gets.

[Penelope]

A few lead/support acting placements:
Cassey Affleck is being pushed in Support for The Assassination of Jesse James..., with Brad Pitt in Lead.
Josh Brolin is being pushed in Lead for No Country For Old Men. Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones are both in Support.

Utterly ridiculous and deeply offensive.

[The Original BJ]

A few lead/support acting placements:
Cassey Affleck is being pushed in Support for The Assassination of Jesse James..., with Brad Pitt in Lead.

Oh Jesus Christ . . .

[dws1982]

A few lead/support acting placements:
Cassey Affleck is being pushed in Support for The Assassination of Jesse James..., with Brad Pitt in Lead.
Josh Brolin is being pushed in Lead for No Country For Old Men. Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones are both in Support.

[Uri]

Yes, there is the question of ensemble pieces and episode films. Maggie Smith was the lead in a featurette that was part of California Suite. The Big Chill had eight roles of equal importance and about the same screen time. So either, as rolotomasi insists, we abolish any distinction, or, in a perfect, mathematical world we’d have a third, intermediate category devoted for this kind of roles, those mentioned and those which can be described as second lead or large pivotal supporting turns – so Witherspoon in Walk the Line, McDormand and Macy in Fargo, Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, Davis in The Accidental Tourist would have all been placed in it. In the current situation, which reasonably balance the need to recognize performances of varied size and the sense that too many categories might deflate the stature of the awards, the placement of these borderline cases is eventually a matter of a personal gut feeling. Personally, I tend to be more “purist” when it comes to defining leads so, with the exception of the Fargo folks, I would place all other mentioned in supporting*. The problem which seems to make us all cringe is all those undoubtedly lead performances which end up in supporting categories.


* There is always the issue of filling lead actress category, so it seems we must, at times, be more flexible there. Congratulations Reese – you’ve just been promoted.

[matthew]

...and the whole concept of ghetto-ising performances just falls to pieces when discussing films like Nashville or Short Cuts...

[Penelope]

Could you address the Best Years of Our Lives analogy? Because I think if you're arguing all the Coen actors are leads, you have to make the same argument for Harold Russell.

No, I think I can comfortably place Harold Russell in the Supporting category because he disappears for such long stretches of the film; I've seen it 3 times, now, and it's always seemed to me that Fredric March and Dana Andrews are the primary leads, with everyone else Supporting; but, having said that, I CAN see your argument there...but not in the case of No Country For Old Men, where it seems pretty obvious that Jones, Bardem and Brolin are all Leads.

[Eric]

I'm sort of inclined to agree with Tee. Even with something like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, where all four characters are basically in the entire running time excepting a few scenes where they all enact various diads, I think Nick and Honey are clearly to be defined as supporting players.

Leading roles is a sort of restricted category, and there are certainly films without them. I'm all for as open a definition of supporting roles as possible.



Edited By Eric on 1195529339

[Mister Tee]

The idea that a film can have three leads is, I think, bizarre

Tee, this statement has bothered me all day; it's just, well, ridiculously wrong! With all due respect, I'd argue that a film can have not only 3 leads, but 4, 5, 6 or more leads.

Grand Hotel has 5; Dinner at Eight, arguably, has at least 7 leads; Ship of Fools has 6. And No Country For Old Men has 3: Jones, Bardem and Brolin.

Well then the word lead would have to be rather redefined, as it generally is taken to mean running first, which it's hard for more than one or two to do.

Two things about Grand Hotel: in both that and Dinner at Eight, we consider all the characters leads mainly because they were all played by big stars. Had Kringelein and Flaemmchen been played by unknowns (as they were in the Broadway musical, by pre-fame Michael Jeter and Jane Krakowski), they'd have been nominated supporting, as the Tonys decreed. Overall, though, you're correct that I wasn't thinking of films like that -- more-or-less anthology films (The Poseidon Adventure or The V.I.P.'s other examples) -- when I made my sweeping statement. My excuse: 1) these films, with such split focus, don't usually give enough to any one lead actor that nominations are in the realm of consideration to begin with; moreover 2) they're generally such crap they (thankfully) don't come up in Oscar conversation anymore.

I don't even know which six you'd be talking about in Ship of Fools -- beyond Werner, Signoret and Leigh, I'd say everyone else there is supporting.

We'll simply have to agree to disagree about No Country. I think the closest the film has to a lead is Brolin, and even he has less screen-time than most films' leads. Could you address the Best Years of Our Lives analogy? Because I think if you're arguing all the Coen actors are leads, you have to make the same argument for Harold Russell.

[Penelope]

The idea that a film can have three leads is, I think, bizarre

Tee, this statement has bothered me all day; it's just, well, ridiculously wrong! With all due respect, I'd argue that a film can have not only 3 leads, but 4, 5, 6 or more leads.

Grand Hotel has 5; Dinner at Eight, arguably, has at least 7 leads; Ship of Fools has 6. And No Country For Old Men has 3: Jones, Bardem and Brolin.

[dws1982]

Not that either will probably have much chance at the Oscars (Globes maybe), but Warner is pushing both Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List for Best Actor. I wonder if they would push one (Freeman?) in Support though, if they thought each had legitimate shots at a nomination.



Edited By dws1982 on 1195525836