Halfway: Oscar Chart Updates ~ Acting, Animation, Screenplay

½way mark - part 1 of ?
With the year half over (if not really the film year which is so backloaded) and the trailer to Grandma out -- good news, it doesn't remotely spoil the best jokes or character beats -- we are reminded that it's time to update the Oscar Prediction Charts. Consider this the start of a weeklong "½way mark year in review" 

BEST ACTRESS & SUPPORTING ACTRESS
More and more Carey Mulligan in Suffragette seems the one to watch. It was interesting to read at Deadline how well Far From the Madding Crowd has been performing in international markets, too. That's good news for her momentum for the future relaese. Build your case as a worthy star and not just for one movie since Oscars are almost never decided on performance alone; Career timing and momentum is nearly always at least as important. That's the chief reason I'm still waffling on whether or not Lily Tomlin traction can happen. If she gets an Emmy nod this month, we'll know that "Let's Celebrate Lily's career!" is in the air. She's so good in Grandma so if that's the industry mood, a nomination could well happen.

Meanwhile Carol's Cannes success affects both Actress charts and also dings my faith in Freeheld which will be competing directly with it, however unfair that is and however different the films are, given that they're both lesbian romances with co-leads in which big stars headline and the younger will probably pursue category fraud.

UPDATE 07/02 Serious shake-ups in both of these charts - Supporting Actress chart fix (lost tier)

BEST ACTOR & BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
After Cannes, Paolo Sorrentino's Youth is seemingly like a real possibility in multiple categories. Even its detractors are inadvertently making a case for it. The reasons they hate it seem like "Oscar-will-love-this!" potshots. Plus: there are far worse filmmakers to crib from then Federico Fellini if your aim is Oscar gold. So, this is a long way of saying that I've boosted Michael Caine into the top five. I am weirdly resistant to his particular star charisma (yes, even from his heyday) and take issue with the past Oscar wins but I realize that this isn't true of the vast majority of movie lovers and if the film gets a big Oscar push, he'll be an easy sell.

In the supporting category mea culpa. Readers suggested that I was crazy to leave out stage giant Mark Rylance (an actor I love who rarely makes movies)  for Bridge of Spies. Once the trailer hit, I started losing faith in the movie and gaining faith in him. Funny that. In my defense, these things are anyone's blind pin the tail on the donkey gamesmanship before any footage has been seen (and even to a lesser degree after since so many other factors come into play). But why does the movie look so bland? It's Spielberg/Hanks/Kaminsky and they have 7 Oscars between them. Where were the memorable shots or instant-resonating storytelling beats? And yes you can squeeze those into a trailer.

ANIMATED FEATURE & SCREENPLAY CATEGORIES
The big news in both of these categories is the stellar debut of Inside Out. While total Best Picture nominee confidence may be a a case of wishful thinking situation with fans (it's possible but the Academy goes through phases and they might have moved since the animated feature category is so firmly established now and Pixar might be deemed well-enough rewarded over the past decade plus). That said, at this halfway mark it seems insane to imagine it losing the Animated Feature Oscar it's already so successful and acclaimed. Which means we could well see it in its screenplay category too where animated films can sometimes compete if they're beloved and clever enough (see: The Incredibles, Toy Story, Up) and this one is on both counts.

I've also added in The Program, Stephen Frears helmed story of Lance Armstrong's scandal now that it has a title and a trailer. We never shared the trailer (oops) but it looks pretty intense and the cast, especially Ben Foster, looks strong.

PREDICTION INDEX
Picture, Director, Sound, Visuals, Foreign are not yet updated but they will be within next couple of days

Podcast: Two Transatlantic Conversations

This new unconventional episode of the podcast features two guests and two conversations. First Nathaniel calls Australia to check in with Glenn Dunks to see what he's been up to cinematically since leaving NYC. And then a conversation with Guy Lodge in London about his experience at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Contents

• 00:01 - 02:30 Intro: Nathaniel (feat. Annie Lennox)
• 02:26 - 19:15  Glenn From Australia: Mad Max Fury Road, The English Patient, Nicole Kidman in Strangerland, 54 The Director's Cut, Film Preservation
• 19:16 - Guy from London: Loving Arabian Nights, The Lobster and Todd Haynes' Carol, Cannes Jury Prizes, The Assassin, Son of Saul and the Foreign Film race, Maryland, and hating Paolo Sorrentino's Youth

Please to enjoy and continue the conversation in the comments. You can listen at the bottom of this post or download from iTunes tomorrow.  

Cannes, London, and Australia

They a-link, damnit! It's a miracle.

The Wrap Maggie Gyllenhaal is "too old" at 37 to play onscreen love of a 55 year old actor? Gross!
Empire Juno's mom and daughter Janney & Page reuniting for the comedy Tallulah
Antagony & Ecstasy shares a killer review of one of my fav Best Picture winners Grand Hotel - loved every sentence of this
Nick's Flick Picks revisits Georgia (1995) as part of its Cannes retrospective. Have you ever seen it?  It's a goodie. Mare Winningham, guys
Nick's Flick Picks and the terribly underseen Angels & Insects - amazing costumes
Awards Daily handicaps Oscar chances of Cannes players with Carol and Youth getting top marks for AMPAS likelihood 
The Film Stage looks at Lucretia Martel's next one, Zama, as it begins filming
Salon compares the first seasons of Daredevil & The Flash. Which show wins?

Towleroad plans are afoot to make a stage musical of the Elton John biopic starring Tom Hardy called Rocket Man. Um... shouldn't they actually make the movie first before worrying about adapting it? 
Variety in case you hadn't heard: Roger Deakins will shoot the Bladerunner sequel (so at least it will look pretty and get one Oscar nomination)
CHUD has an index of photo glimpses of Suicide Squad from Harley getting wet to the Joker at gunpoint 

Mad Mania
Gothamist the last scene of every Mad Men season. Matthew Weiner approached each season with its last visual in mind 
Slate 10 great images from Mad Men over the years - the show that always looked more like a great movie than "television" 
Film School Rejects where to see the Mad Men cast members next - new projects! 
AV Club an illustrated guide to Mad Max warlords from the Toecutter to Immortan Joe 
Jezebel offers up hilarious mocking of vulnerable masculinity in the face of Mad Max Fury Road

Charlize Theron menstruated all over my masculinity! 

....and finally the Imperator Furiosa tribute fans of both Mad Max Fury Road and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt didn't know they wanted but now can't live with out. 

They alive, damnit! 

Cannes Actress: Zhao Tao and Jane Fonda

The latest buzz from Cannes is that the Best Actress race is heating up. Or at least speculation is. Marion Cotillard's Lady MacBeth has yet to screen but those that have seen it early are typically wowed. But we know at this point not to expect Cannes juries to point and go "Her! Her!". If there is a Blanchett-Vanquisher out there it may well be Zhao Tao who stars in the "giddily ambitious" Mountains May Depart.

That's the latest from the reknowned Jia Zhangke, a regular at the fest for whom Zhao Tao is a recurring player (Still Life, Platform, A Touch of Sin). Mountains is Zhangke's fourth try at the Palme and though he usually comes away empty-handed, his last attempt A Touch of Sin (2013) took Best Screenplay. Despite the jury completely changing each year Cannes somehow has an Oscar-like sense of momentum wherein you generally move up the ranks as to which prizes you take; longevity wins the Palme. (It's not as simple as that of course but there can be a weird cumulative coronation effect.)

So that makes the Palme race: Hungary's Son of Saul vs. USA's Carol vs China's Mountains May Depart? (Or am I forgetting something that's been similarly ecstatically received?) Typing them out that way it makes Cannes sound like the Olympics of the movies, only annual instead of bi-annual. And maybe it is?

In other Canne actressy news, our friend Kyle Buchanan says that Jane Fonda walks away with Paolo Sorrentino's Youth which stars Michael Caine as a retired film composer.  I'm hearing that Fonda's role is very showy (an old combative muse to Harvey Keitel's director character), but quite small. Nevertheless I couldn't help but immediately picture both Grace (Jane) and Frankie (Lily) as Oscar nominees this year in Supporting (for Youth) and Lead (for Grandma) and how much media fun would that be? Sorrentino had a major Cannes sensation and eventual Oscar winner with his last film The Great Beauty. This one is in English which naturally will give it a leg up with Oscar voters if it opens this year but it's already more divisive which can be a problem. Still love/hate divides are tough to predict with awards. All you sometimes need is the right people on the love side to turn the critical tide around. And anyway when this mixed review called it 'elegant fun' I just thought... doesn't that describe a lot of well received prestige films?

But just to remind us that she's already one of the immortals (with 2 Oscars, multiple classic films, and celebrity outside of acting as well, the legend is assured) here is Jane Fonda looking amazing on the cover of W --  their oldest cover girl ever.

Here's an interesting bit on self-awareness from the W interview: 

One day on the set of On Golden Pond, a film that she coproduced so that she could costar with her father, the legendary actor Henry Fonda, she was fixing her hair when Katharine Hepburn (who played her mother in the film) pinched her cheek and demanded, “What do you want this to mean?” “It was 1981, and I didn’t know what she was talking about,” Fonda recalled. “Back then, I didn’t give my looks a fare-thee-well, and that bothered Katharine. She said to me, ‘This is what you present to the world. What do you want it to say about you?’ Her question has been lodged in my psyche ever since. I now think what Katharine meant was awareness of a persona. She wanted me to consider how I wanted to be seen. Now I pay attention to how I present myself to the world. I realize that it matters.”