One Category at a Time: Supporting Actress

What is it with this category? For four consecutive years now it's housed two nominees from the same film. Is the actors branch really so stretched for options? This year it's two from The Help (accounting for 50% of the film's nomination tally), and they still couldn't include the best supporting female from the movie, Bryce Dallas Howard. At any rate, having costar nominees is always an interesting question mark as to how that will affect the overall outcome.

Review - The Artist

Silence is golden in Michel Hazanavicius' quaint silent cinema homage The Artist. The story is a somewhat slight but archetypal one about the screen stars of Hollywood's silent era falling into obsolescence and obscurity at the hands of the talkies. The novelty of a (mostly) silent film in 2011 may seem a gimmick, but it's hard not to let yourself be charmed by it.

We first meet George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) at the premiere of another one of his melodramatic hits, where the showman reveling in the noiseless applause of his adoring fans. He's blissfully unaware of the impending cacophony that will threaten not only his livelihood but the way of the world as he knows it, but not before he sends bright-eyed ingenue Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) on her own trajectory to fame and acclaim in the brave new world of talking pictures.