I'm going to go through each of the Oscar
categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees
from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't
mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.
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Previously:
Glossary:
BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television
Arts Awards
Golden Globe - Award presented by the Hollywood
Foreign Press Association
SAG - Screen Actors Guild Award
All the precursors are pretty good for this award. The Golden Globes last failed to nominated the Oscar winner back in 1998, when Roberto Benigni won for Life is Beautiful*. That makes it 19 in a row, for those of you counting. The Oscar winner also won a Golden Globe 14 of the last 20 years. In fact, those time 14 were all in the last 15 years. It’s a very reliable indicator these days. The BAFTAs have nominated 18 of the last 20 Oscar winners. The only exceptions were when they didn’t like Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club and 2000, when Denzel Washington in Training Day had one of the great late stage surges in modern Oscar history. SAG is a perfect 20/20 nominating the Oscar winner. They’ve matched winners with the Oscars 15 times, including a perfect stretch from 2004-2015. It’s possible but not likely to win the Oscar without winning one of these three precursor awards. Russel Crowe won for Gladiator (2000) despite losing the SAG, BAFTA, and Globe, but that year was thrown off by Benecio Del Toro getting called a Lead by some groups and a Supporting actor in others for Traffic. Denzel Washington won the Oscar the next year (2001) without any precursor victories. That’s because Russel Crowe won all of them for A Beautiful Mind and, in Oscar voters’ minds, they didn’t need to give him the Oscar a second year in a row. Then, the year after that (2002), Adrien Brody won out of nowhere for The Pianist. Except for that weird three-year stretch, you can normally see a Lead Actor Oscar win coming.
*People sneer at
that win now. I get the issues people have with the movie, but I’m cool with Benigni’s
win. It’s a different kind of performance than you normally see winning.
Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)
BAFTA - Lead Actor -
Winner
Golden Globes - Lead
Actor Drama - Winner
SAG - Lead Actor –
Winner
I think this is actually going to happen.
Somehow, Malek is the favorite to win the Lead Actor Oscar. And I’m not sure
people appreciate how weird this is. How often is someone even nominated for
playing a musician when the actor doesn’t actually do the singing*. Malek isn’t
some actor who has a ton of clout in the industry. This is the first time he’s
even sniffed being on the A-list, so I’m not sure where all this goodwill is
coming from. Incredibly, the Bohemian Rhapsody
PR team turned the scandal with director Bryan Singer into a strength for the
movie, positioning Malek as the guy who got Singer fired. I’m admittedly cynical
about Bohemian Rhapsody, but the way
that the studio has played the movie throughout the award season has been
nothing short of masterful.
*I know they claim
that it’s a mix of Freddy Mercury and Malek, but does anyone actually believe
that? If it’s not enough for them to release a Rami Malek Official Movie Soundtrack
of covers, then it doesn’t count.
Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born)
BAFTA - Lead Actor -
Nominee
Golden Globes - Lead
Actor Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actor –
Nominee
I haven’t totally given up on the idea of Bradley
Cooper winning the Lead Actor award. For one, I don’t trust the idea of Rami
Malek as a frontrunner. It’s too improbable. Then there’s the Best Director
snub of Cooper. Between this and not nominating Ben Affleck for Argo, it feels like the directors’
branch is trying to put these actors-turned-directors “in their place”*. That
could help swing sentiment to vote for Cooper for Lead Actor as sort of a
make-up call.
*Yet, Greta Gerwig
and Jordan Peele had no trouble last year. Is it because they are also well-established
writers?
That said, Cooper and his team have had numerous
missteps on the campaign trail. Early on, he focused more on getting the
Director win than the Lead Actor win, only to get left out of the Director
field. Overall, he hasn’t been glad-handing with the verve of Rami Malek.
Lately, his attempts to be more transparent and honest have backfired. He’s
been admitting in interviews how disappointed he was to not get the Director
nomination. Instead of that making him seem more sympathetic and human, people
read it as him being entitled.
I don’t know. I just don’t think the award is
locked up the way the precursors would suggest.
Christian Bale (Vice)
BAFTA - Lead Actor -
Nominee
Golden Globes - Lead
Actor Comedy - Winner
SAG - Lead Actor –
Nominee
Bale was the early frontrunner for his
transformative performance as Dick Cheney. He’s by far the best thing about the
movie. The season just turned on him though. Since he won over an anemic Golden
Globe field, every other time a voting body has been given the choice, they’ve
gone with someone else. A win for Bale wouldn’t be shocking, but it doesn’t
look at all likely.
Viggo Mortensen (Green Book)
BAFTA - Lead Actor -
Nominee
Golden Globes - Lead
Actor Comedy - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actor –
Nominee
Somehow, Viggo Mortensen has become the fall guy
for the bad press surrounding Green Book.
Despite the cries of tone-deaf treatment of race relations, Mahershala Ali is the
consensus favorite to win the Supporting Actor award, Green Book is still in the thick of the Best Picture race, and even
the very contested screenplay has a real shot to win. It’s only Mortensen who isn’t
even being considered to win his award.
Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate)
Golden Globes - Lead
Actor Drama - Nominee
It was a weak Lead Actor field. Someone had to be
the fifth nominee.
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