It's that time again. And as The New York Times magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/12/12/magazine/20101212-oscars.html) has already stylishly announced its own predictions for the best actor and actress gongs, albeit grandiosely veiled as "the actors who defined cinema in 2010", I think I too will put in my two cents and present who I think *deserves* to be nominated for a (leading actress) Academy Award Oscar.
The women which the Times assured were Lesley Manville for Another Year, Chloë Moretz for Let Me In, Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone, Natalie Portman for Black Swan, Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right and Mother and Child, Noomi Rapace for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo franchise, and Tilda Swinton for I Am Love. They have indeed selected well, and it is likely that three or four out of the group will come to be nominated, and one will eventually win the Oscar. In the group, interestingly, only one (Tilda Swinton) is a previous Oscar winner.
My (educated) guess pretty much echoes what the Times critics thinks, and this is a very good thing! This year, the actress (and actor and director and picture) categories are jam-packed with strong, artistic creations - wherein a performance like Sandra Bullock's cliched The Blind Side and Meryl Streep's silly Julie and Julia would not even be up for consideration.
The 2010 line up will be:
1. Annette Bening - The Kids Are All Right, as my earlier post suggested, the odds are all for her. She delivers two strong performances this year (the other in Mother and Child) and has a back-story/track-record to die for: thrice Oscar nominated and twice frontrunner to win. The voters will be inclined to reward this 'Hollywood-royalty' (married to Oscar playboy Warren Beatty, sister-in-law of Shirley MacLaine and on the board of the Academy). She also doesn't have a too showy histrionic performance, which always has the chance of alienating some viewers.
2. Natalie Portman - Black Swan, a very buzzed-about performance in an exciting Aronofsky film. She is the only real contender to threaten Bening's 'time' back-story. Though the film has received mixed reviews, her performance has been positively / immaterially (and damagingly) compared to the likes of Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, Robert De Niro in Raging Bull and Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice - all previous Oscar winners winning for their tour-de-force/extreme Method-kind of performance. Indeed, this seems like great praise, but I, however, do find these comparisons to be damaging because they offensively suggest that a 'good/great' performance is one that has to be wholly entrenched in the Method approach (or seeming to be wholly entrenched in the Method approach); that there is no real difference between Cotillard, De Niro, Streep and, now, Portman's performances. After completing a course on theories of acting, I no longer see this extreme-Method approach as the holy-grail of acting. I mean, going over the top with histrionics (in fact, Meryl's performance in Sophie's Choice is hardly paroxysmal histrionics, so I really don't get the comparison) can often be an amazing spectacle and efficiently convincing, but it's not the only way to act. Nevertheless, this ideal of acting is still very much pervasive within the Hollywood milieu, and it could be for this reason that Portman wins, and she'd be winning for the wrong reason. Despite all the hype surrounding Portman, she surpisingly did not win the acting Volpi Cup at the this year's Venice Film Festival, which most had expected her to win.
3. Lesley Manville - Another Year, like Portman, has received a lot of praise around the festival circuit, having debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May. And also like Portman, she surprisingly lost the Cannes Best Actress prize to Juliette Binoche for Certified Copy (who sadly isn't in contention for the Oscar). But Manville has been critically praised, and even won the National Board of Review's best actress prize (the other critics bodies' prizes are yet to be released, and so it's too early to say if she will win). I do have a slight feeling that she will go where no other Mike Leigh woman has gone, but logically know that the result will still be the same as Brenda Blethyn's (Secrets and Lies) and Imelda Staunton's (Vera Drake) failed nominations. Let's just hope she doesn't suffer the same fate as Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) - left out in the rain with no nomination. Note: Blethyn won Cannes best actress prize, Staunton won Venice's Volpi Cup and Hawkins won Berlin's Silver Bear - thus, we know that Leigh's women always deliver, so is it ultimately discrimination on behalf of Hollywood's elite?
4. Nicole Kidman - Rabbit Hole, since the film previewed at the Toronto Film Festival, Nicole has been garnering raved reviews. I was at first disappointed upon learning that Nicole even attained the role, having myself been such a fan of Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon's Tony award-winning original Broadway interpretation of the role. But upon seeing the trailer, I was happily surprised and am very excited to see what Nicole will do differently. Even with the influx of all these non-Oscar-winning actress delivering the best of their career's work, I have a feeling that the Academy will want to include a previous winner in its final list. And Nicole is a huge box-office queen, and the Academy may also feel bad for snubbing her for her extraordinary post-win performances, namely in Lars von Trier's Dogville and Jonathan Glazer's Birth. Still, she has no chance in hell of winning (due to her already possessing an Oscar) and I would rather see a non-winner grace the red-carpet come Oscar night. Someone like Naomi Watts or Julianne Moore.
5. Jennifer Lawrence - Winter's Bone, she has already won a breakthrough prize from the National Board of Review, and her film has been universally praised since its debut at Sundance. Lawrence does provide the goods in her "non-performance", as some have described it. The critics also like her film better than Precious and Frozen River (other Sundance-winning films earmarked with a "non-performance"). But the question is, will they want her, or will they want Michelle Williams (who is on the verge of entering the top 5). The answer will be determined by critics prizes, but more so by the publicity circuit.
6. Michelle Williams - Blue Valentine, a strong back-story to this performance. It has been said that both she and co-star Ryan Gosling spent much effort in researching and authenticating their difficult roles. Moreover, the NC-17 scandal also placed the film in an artistically-positive light. But now that the scandal's passed (the film's been rated R in America) and *more people* will get to see it, will Michelle's performance (both in the film and in the publicity circuit) be able to overthrow Lawrence's ingenue and Kidman's superstar statuses? I'm hoping so.
7. Naomi Watts - Fair Game, a solid performance as real-life exposed spy Valerie Plame, but irritatingly, the film's unbalanced tone leaves Naomi in the dark. Still, she deserves recognition for her hard work.
8. Sally Hawkins - Made in Dagenham, people have been dying for her to get a nomination (and even a win) since her brutal snub in 2008 for her critics award-winning and Silver Bear-earning performance in Happy-Go-Lucky. Unfortunately, they (and I) will have to wait. Made in Dagenham is TV-movie-of-the-week at best, and even then it's giving the film too much credit. Sally comes, reads her lines and emotes all for the intentions of the film, but because the film is so disastrous, her efforts are, sadly, in vain.
Not likely to be nominated nor in contention to be nominated, but worthy of it:
- Julianne Moore - The Kids Are All Right, if there was any justice in this world, then Moore should also be nominated alongside Annette (who pretty much is more than guaranteed a nomination, if not win). Moore is the co-lead and does as much as Annette does. The only reason she is being overseen is due to the threat of 'splitting votes' with Annette. I understand that reason, and so feel that she should instead be nominated in the supporting category. There she may have a strong chance to win - some may see it as category fraud - but I don't really give a damn. I just want Julianne Moore to have the moniker of "Academy Award Winner" - yes, even at the expense of the magnificent Helena Bonham Carter (in The King's Speech)! (The supporting actress category is jam-packed too - with the likes of Melissa Leo and Amy Adams for The Fighter, Barbara Hershey and Mila Kunis for Black Swan, Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom, Dianne Wiest for Rabbit Hole; and the periphery likes of Miranda Richardson for Made in Magenham, Minnie Driver for Conviction, Sissy Spacek for Get Low and Marion Cotillard for Inception).
- Tilda Swinton - I Am Love, this Oscar-winner graciously glides through this picturesque film, presenting us with a docile character (something which we rarely see her play) and in a foreign language. She is so subtly good that you forget how good she really is in the film.
- Juliette Binoche - Certified Copy, again, another Oscar-winner doing what she does best! With this Cannes Best Actress award-winning performance, she became the first and only actress to have won the European International Film Festivals Best Actress Tripple-Crown; previously having won the Venice Volpi Cup in 1993 for Three Colours: Blue and Berlin's Silver Bear in 1997 for The English Patient.
It is still, of course, early days. I will be able to predict a more correct list once all the critics prizes and some industry awards (Golden Globes) are given out. So wait for that list before you start betting!
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