Chart Updates - All Acting Categories

Is it us or are the four of the acting races murkier than they usually would be during the week of Oscar voting? We chalk this up to a bit less precursor uniformity between Critics Choice, Globes, SAG nods, and the regional critical consensus. On the other hand that regional critical consensus has been very pronounced with a clear lineup of winners that go like so: Parasite/Bong Joon Ho / Nyongo / Driver / Dern / Pitt. But what we're dealing with right now is the nomination game which is far more complex than "who wins".

BEST ACTRESS - Six women are still very much in the mix and it's quite difficult to guess who will be left out. Passion suggests that Cynthia Erivo or Charlize Theron would be in danger of the "snub" but on the other hand you're not often the snubbee if you're the one doing the biographical role... especially if there's mimicry. For now we've opted to have Saoirse Ronan be the odd woman out but that doesn't feel right either given the very current groundswell of love for that picture. At any rate we think it's between the six listed on the chart with Alfre Woodard (Clemency) and Awkwafina (The Farewell) staring to look like impossible dreams in this final decision week...

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The precursors don't always matter

by Cláudio Alves

In these merry times of winter holidays and gift-giving, there's no better present than the gift of hope. For Oscar obsessives, this can come in many forms. One of them can be the reminder that the precursors aren't everything when it comes to the race for Hollywood's most coveted little golden man.

Even if your favorite performance of the year hasn't been getting any sort of awards love, that doesn't mean its Oscar chances are dead and buried. Remember the case of Marcia Gay Harden, a surprise nominee that became a surprise victor when she conquered the Academy Award for Pollock. What a thrill.

She's the patron saint of Oscar surprises. In honor of her, here's a list of those lucky actors who scored an Oscar nomination despite having no nod whatsoever from the Globes, the SAGs, the Critics Choice Awards, or the BAFTAs...

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FYC: Robert Pattinson for Best Actor & Supporting Actor

by Cláudio Alves

Margot Robbie isn't the only actor with more than one performance in buzzy productions. 2019 has been a year full of actors with sterling bodies of work. There's also Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Adam Driver, among many others. I'd like to shed light on the excellence of a star whose work is quite far from Oscar's presumed radar. I'm talking about a former heart-throb turned character actor who spent the year getting drunk with Willem Dafoe, facing the challenges of single-parenthood in outer space and casting aspersions at Timothée Chalamet's disproportionate genitalia.

That's right, we're here to sing the praises of the one and only Robert Pattinson. First, we have his adventures with a fuckbox, a mad scientist and a baby…

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Questions we're asking ourselves about Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor

All Oscar charts are being updated over the next four days but we started with Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor because there are so many questions haunting us. So go ahead and answer the following quandaries if you can...?

1. Can Tom Hanks finally break his strange Oscar curse?
Before anyone had seen A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood he was a lock "on paper" in Best Actor. But the movie turned out to not be a biopic at all but something far more creative and we'd argue more successful than a biopic would have been, in which Mr. Rogers is more of a symbol and catalyst for another man's journey. It's a gorgeous movie but the switcheroo from expectations to reality will likely throw some Oscar voters as well as general moviegoers. Hanks has been delivering better performances of late than the kind he used to win Oscars for but AMPAS hasn't nominated him in 19 years. Should we expect that they'll continue that "you already got yours" cold shoulder rather than be predicting him? 

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Martin Balsam Centennial, and that "Psycho" death scene

by Nathaniel R

Yes, that guy! It seemed fitting to begin with a photo from one of Martin Balsam’s most famous pictures 12 Angry Men (1957) in which you can barely see him;  Great character actors never get their due in Hollywood. So we wanted to make sure we gave a shout out to one of the key supporting actors of the 50s, 60s, and 70s today on what would have been his 100th birthday. 

Unlike many headlining movie stars of the 20th century, his stage name was also his actual birth name…

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