Our Oscar choices: Best supporters
February 9, 2010
You’ve had more than a week now to figure out who you’d vote for if you were a Motion Picture Academy member. Now it’s our turn. For the next few days we will slowly dole out our picks in the key Oscar races, hoping you’ll come back for more and/or voice your (dis)pleasure with our selections in the comments section below.
We start off with the best supporting actor categories, and since the vote among our critics was virtually unanimous, it leaves time and space to discuss some interesting facets about this year’s choices.
Academy voters have been criticized in the past for ignoring deserving commercial films. But they also ignore deserving smaller films that don’t get wide-spread distribution. It’s a shame, because some of the best films we saw this year didn’t get much play outside New York and Los Angeles. (More on all this when we get to the Best Film category.
Because they were once very briefly married, much has been made of the competition between James Cameron, (“Avatar”) and Kathryn Bigelow (“Hurt Locker) in the directing category. A former couple duking it out is considered a big deal -- and normally it would be. But not with Cameron. The man has been married five times; this was bound to happen.
Okay, the nominees are:
Best Supporting Actor
Matt Damon in “Invictus”
Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger”
Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station”
Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones.”
Christoph Waltz in “Inglorious Basterds”
The consensus among our critics is that everyone of these contenders deserves to win, but, ultimately, the award should go to Waltz. Cha-cha-cha.
Best Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz in “Nine”
Vera Farmiga in “Up in the Air”
Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Crazy Heart”
Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air
Mo’Nique in “Precious”
In any other year, Maggie Gyllenhaal would have won. She was marvelous in a small underdog film that almost didn’t get distributed. But this is Mo’Nique’s year.
Tomorrow: Best Actor.
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