But we’re not here to talk
about them, exactly, no. As you may or may not know, the nominees for the 85th
annual Academy Awards will be announced at 8:30 AM EST on Thursday, January 10th.
With that in mind, Sarah and I are going to be taking part in a Predict the
Oscars Nominations Contest that our fellow blogger Squasher88 is hosting over
at his blog, Film Actually. Squasher88 is asking all his contest participants
to predict the nominees for every category except for the Short Film
categories.
So this week, Sarah and I
will be posting our Oscar nominations predictions, starting today with our
predictions for who will be nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best
Supporting Actress, and building all the way up to our Best Picture nom
predictions and full revelation of the more technical predictions most people
have no clue about on Wednesday.
Alright, let’s get down to
it Sarah! Today we’re just focusing on the two supporting acting categories.
Which one would you like to start with first?
Sarah:
Let’s start with the easiest, Best Supporting Actress. Now this one is going to
be a sweep. There were a lot of great women in the movies this year but one
stood out among the rest. Anne Hathaway. It was said that she would take the
Best Supporting Actress award home even before Les Miserables came out.
After we have seen it, I think we can safely say that of course she will win
it!
But of course that doesn’t
mean that she is the only one going to be nominated. And she does have some
great actresses to go up against.
A:
Yeah, while I completely agree with you that Hathaway will eventually walk away
with the little golden man, there are some other worthy actresses to think
about. I’d imagine the actress who will also be a shoo-in is Helen Hunt for her portrayal of a sex
surrogate in The Sessions. Now, this is a movie that we haven’t had a chance
to see yet, but Hunt’s already been nominated for 18 awards including a SAG
nomination and a Golden Globe nomination. So Hunt’s definitely in.
S: The
next actress to get a spot in the finals will be Sally Field. Her role as the manic-depressive Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln
was impressive. It is commonly known that Field is a talented actress
but it was interesting to see her in a role like this. We know the story of the
man but not so much about his wife. Field brought Mary Todd Lincoln to life.
She gave a voice to a woman who had to deal with unimaginable loss in her life
and suffered greatly for it. But she also had the love of a man that was a
voice for a nation in its darkest hour. If Hathaway doesn’t take home the
golden man, I think Field will.
A:
Well we’ll get to our actual predictions on who will win the awards in due time, but Field does have two Oscars on her
mantle already, so as she so famously put it, the Academy really does love her.
The last two nomination
spots get a little bit tougher, but if we look at some of the other awards and
whom they’ve nominated, I think we can nail it down. Let’s give one of those
nominations to Nicole Kidman for her
performance in Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy. This is another film
we haven’t had the chance to see, and while we’ve read and heard it get widely
panned, somehow Kidman has still garnered the attention of awards voters
because she’s already nabbed noms from the Golden Globes and the SAG. So she
gets our fourth spot. Who gets our fifth and final spot, Sarah?
S: I
think we will give the last spot to a classic actress, Maggie Smith, for her role as a grouchy, prejudiced retiree in The
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I was the only one in this house to see
this one and I have to say it really was a cute one. Out of everyone in the
film, Smith did stand out from the rest. The audience gets to watch a change in
a woman that most people would think impossible. It’s nice to think that even
in the twilight years of life, people can still change. Smith does such an
amazing job of making the audience hate her and yet feel sorry for her at the
same time. I’m a big fan of Smith in general and she has already garnered the
nomination in the Golden Globe and SAG awards, so we are happy to give her the
fifth spot.
A:
Sounds good to me! So to recap then, our predictions of the five Best
Supporting Actress nominees are:
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Sally Field, Lincoln
Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy
Maggie Smith, The Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel
Okay, let’s move on to the
Best Supporting Actor category then. In my opinion, this is the toughest of all
the acting categories to predict because there are so many guys who deserve
recognition, and more importantly, have earned the recognition. So who is our
first prediction in the Best Supporting Actor category?
S: This
really is a toss-up but I have to give the first slot to Alan Arkin. His performance as the fake but real movie producer in Argo was
brilliant. He was hilarious in the film. From his “Argo f**k yourself” line to
his comedic timing with co-star John Goodman, he was a great relief to this
otherwise tense movie. Arkin has been nominated for his role already in the
Golden Globe nominees as well as the SAG Awards, so I think it is safe to say
that he will get a spot with the Academy as well.
A:
Completely agreed. I’m going to give our second Supporting Actor nomination
prediction to Robert De Niro for his
role as Pat, Sr. in Silver Linings Playbook. De Niro plays the father to Bradley
Cooper’s bipolar Pat. It’s the best role De Niro has had in years and he does a
phenomenal job portraying a man who struggles with OCD, his passion for the
Philadelphia Eagles, his new book-keeping enterprise, and his relationship with
a son he feels he didn’t show enough love to years prior. He’s hilarious and
scary, and his big scene with Jennifer Lawrence is one for the books. De Niro
already has 8 award nominations for the role, including a SAG nom, and I’m
betting he gets an Oscar nom this year, too.
S: The third spot goes to another Lincoln
actor, Tommy Lee Jones. He
plays Thaddeus Stevens, the crotchety anti-slavery congressman that has the ear
of the President. Jones was, in my opinion, one of the only actors in this
A-list actor laden film that made any kind of impact. He plays a cold,
calculating man that most other characters seemed to thoroughly dislike and he
clearly did not care. Besides Daniel Day-Lewis, Jones is making some of the
biggest waves from Lincoln. While I don’t think that he will win for the role, he
definitely deserves a spot in the running.
A: Now
this is where it starts to get tough. There are still plenty of actors who had
great performances in supporting roles this year, and we can only choose two
more. I have no idea how the Academy is going to do it for real. But for us,
our fourth spot in the Supporting Actor category goes to Phillip Seymour Hoffman for The Master.
Hoffman was magnetic as
Lancaster Dodd, a writer and leader of a burgeoning religious cult who takes
Joaquin Phoenix’s Freddie Quell under his wing. Hoffman is particularly great
in the scene where Dodd “processes” Freddie, and the scenes when you see the
cracks in Dodd’s shiny veneer. He’s already won or been nominated for 21
awards. That makes him a shoo-in in my book.
Okay, so we’re down to one
spot and this is where it gets the toughest for us, as there are two guys from
Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz, whom we think totally
deserve an Oscar nod. And by our predictions, we’ve only left room for one of
them. Which one are we officially predicting, Sarah?
S:
Last but certainly not least the last spot should go to a little bit of a wild
card, Leonardo DiCaprio for his role
as Calvin Candie in Django Unchained. His ruthless portrayal as a Southern
plantation owner proved once again that DiCaprio is a force to be reckoned with
when it comes to acting. Candie comes across as a tolerant man who loves his
slaves, but the audience quickly realizes that this is just a very thin veil
covering a much darker character. I am really hoping that we are correct and DiCaprio
gets the nomination. In my humble opinion, I think he should actually win the
whole category.
A:
DiCaprio is absolutely worthy of the fifth and final nomination for Supporting
Actor, but don’t you think Christoph Waltz has just as good a shot at the
nomination? Waltz has garned 15 award nominations/wins so far already to
DiCaprio’s five. They’ve both been nominated for a Golden Globe and neither one
got recognized by the SAG, so it’s a bit of a toss-up there. But you know what?
We both loved Waltz, but I’m with you on DiCaprio primarily because Waltz won
this category a few years ago for Inglourious Basterds, and Leo is a Hollywood
darling who’s never won. I think the Academy gives him another shot here.
S:
Waltz was great and I really loved his character but I think as far as
impactful on the screen I think this one has to go to DiCaprio. That means we have our five predictions for the Academy Award
for Best Supporting Actor:
Alan Arkin, Argo
Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained
A: Okay, that wraps up our predictions for the two supporting acting categories for this year's Oscars! We'll be back tomorrow with more discussion and more predictions on the nominees for the 85th Academy Awards. For reference, this will be our posting schedule for these the rest of the week:
- Monday, January 7th: Best Actor and Best Actress
- Tuesday, January 8th: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Screenplay
- Wednesday: Best Picture and a full run-down of our complete nomination predictions
S: We hope you come back to check out the rest of the predictions. And if you agree or disagree with our guesses, let us know down in the comments section and tell us who you think will get nominated! Thanks for reading!
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