My Award Nominations: Best Supporting Actress

Unlike their male counterparts over in Best Supporting Actor, the five actresses chosen for my own personal ballot had a lot of competition to rise above in order to secure this nomination, and even as I write this they're not that secure. Ask me again tomorrow and I may have three or four new names surfacing as my favourites. That's because there's been a deep well from which to draw this year. So much so, that overlap between me and the Academy has been limited to a single performance (which is obviously going to win that Oscar, so you won't hear me complaining).

Check out my Best Supporting Actress contenders for 2014:

NBR pipes up for 'A Most Violent Year'

The significance of the National Board of Review is always debated when they chime in each December. Since it isn't really a critic group or an industry organization, they can sometimes make choices that will certainly not be reflected by the Academy two months down the road. Then again, sometimes those odd choices can serve as a nifty exposure boost for a low-profile contender (remember Jacky Weaver back in 2010?)

This year, it's J.C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year that could benefit the most from their singular taste, picking up mentions for stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in addition to the Best Film honour. As a small film just on the outside of the Best Picture bubble (kinda like Chandor's All Is Lost, ultimately an under-seen awards disappointment last year), this could do a real service to the film.

Review - Interstellar

Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you'll land among the stars. That ancient adage serves to remind us that dreaming big and daring to achieve the impossible is often its own reward, even if it does turn out to be, y'know, impossible. Christopher Nolan sets his sights well beyond our puny moon in Interstellar. He's not even aiming for the same galaxy! So if he launches a misfire, it sure as hell is an intriguing misfire, and probably the most essential science-fiction of the year.

His space opera begins on Earth sometime in the future (Nathan Crowley's weathered production design suggests a future that's distant in technological advancement but aesthetically not unlike our present), when violent dust storms are a routine bother and most of the planet's crops have gone extinct due to blight. There's plenty of corn though, both in the fields and on the page in Nolan's typically creaky expository dialogue.

One of the cultivators of this vital food source, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), bemoans that his education and training as a pilot/engineer are going to waste in a vain attempt to sustain a global population that won't last past his kids' generation. He doesn't merely want his children to survive. He wants them to grow up with the same awe and wonder of the universe that he has.

One Category at a Time: Actress

After the SAG Awards, the Best Actress race appears to have a frontrunner, but there's more nuance to it than that. A couple of the nominees weren't even in competition for the SAG or the Golden Globes, and even though I find myself predicting the obvious choice, it's a category that feels ripe for an upset.

Review - Zero Dark Thirty

At 12:30 a.m. on May 2^nd 2011, Black Ops raided a compound in Pakistan and shot dead the world's most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden. It was the culmination of a long, tiring search by the CIA which inspired Kathryn Bigelow's clinical new thriller Zero Dark Thirty.

As fictionalized by writer Mark Boal, the CIA men and women who worked for years to track down the reviled terrorist are amalgamated and personified by the character of Maya (Jessica Chastain), but that's about as fictional as his screenplay gets. The vast majority of it is a straight-laced, doggedly researched piece of cine-journalism, which condenses several firsthand accounts into a tightly-wound docudrama.

Golden Globes live blog

So yeah, like everyone else on the net, I'll be live-blogging the Golden Globes when they begin in about three and a half hours time. Check back for updates throughout the evening.

7:33 - Usual banter on the red carpet. The women look cold. Apparently it's chilly out on the West coast tonight.

7:53 - Got my laptop. Got my port. Let's get this party started.

7:55 - Shameless Quartet plug by Dustin Hoffman. Supose I shouldn't prejudge (but I heard it's awful).

8:04 - "When it comes to torture, I trust the women who spent three years married to James Cameron" ZING! Fey and Poeller were great. Laughed at almost every joke.

8:09 - Supporting Actor: Goes to... Christoph Waltz in  Django Unchained. Weinstein at work, as always.

My Award nominations: Actress

My picks for Best Actress of the year:

NBR crowns Zero Dark Thirty

Mirroring the NYFCC's decision, the National Board of Review named Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty the best of the year, including honours for Bigelow herself and star Jessica Chastain. The film, which we mortals won't get to see almost until Oscar nominations are upon us, is shaping up to be the critics' favourite throughout the month of December, much to the chagrin of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master I'm sure, which was perceived to have filled that slot up until just last week when Bigelow's film finally screened for press. Anderson's beguiling opus was shut out here as it was by the New York critics, failing to even make the top ten films list. It had better hope the L.A. critics stump for it in a big way, or it could vanish from the conversation entirely.

Another big winner is David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, for which Russell won Best Adapted Screenplay and star Bradley Cooper won Best Actor against a wealth of Oscar-luring competition. This is a big boost for him. Costar Jennifer Lawrence is already a likely nominee for Best Actress, but Cooper is on the bubble in a crowded field. His win here is good springboard for his campaign.

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.

My Awards nominations: Supporting Actress

Not the strongest year, in my opinion. These Supporting Actress performances are good, but none of them truly stands out to me as an obvious winner. I'm actually interested to find out which one I'll decide upon!

JESSICA CHASTAIN in The Help:

I could just as easily slotted her down for her graceful work on The Tree of Life, but she had more to chew on here; her character bubbles with infectious eccentricity to suppress her messy and complicated feelings of grief and shame.

ELLE FANNING in Super 8:

For being in a second-rate monster movie, she is surprisingly memorable. Her puppy love affair with Joe ratchets up the cute factor, and her rehearsal scene for the movie-within-a-movie seems to be the unanimous highlight of the film.

BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD in The Help:

She takes up the thankless task of playing the waspish queen bee of Jackson's privileged elite, an easy-to-hate but tricky-to-perform character in whom can be detected a frighteningly human element. Her final scene = perfection.

MELANIE LAURENT in Beginners:

Laurent is softly radiant as the love interest in this melancholy romance. You can't help but smile at her light comic touch, nor can you help but sigh at the fragility of her tender heart. Exquisitely supports the tone of the film.

CAREY MULLIGAN in Shame:

Mulligan shows us her range with a spikier, worldlier character than the naïve nymph that first brought her to our attention in An Education. She exceptionally plays the clingy, complex relationship with her sex-addicted brother.

Just missed:
Jessica Chastain in The Tree of Life, Evan Rachel Wood The Ides of March,
Shailene Woodley in The Descendants, Cate Blanchett in Hanna,
Vanessa Redgrave in Coriolanus

LA Film Critics annoint The Descendants

It's been a busy day for critics awards, starting off with the Boston Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Online handing out their year-end accolades, and capping off with the renowned LA Film Critics Association. But while the BSFC and NYFCO were trend-following, handing top honours to current Oscar frontrunner The Artist, the LAFCA was going their own way, shutting out the crowd-pleasing silent film entirely in favour of some more offbeat choices.

Ultimately, however, it was Alexander Payne's overrated The Descendants coming out on top, but I absolutely dig the support shown for The Tree of Life, with Terrence Malick winning his first directing prize of the season, while Emmanuel Lubezki remains undefeated on the year for cinematography awards. In addition, I love that they gave Best Screenplay to Asghar Farhadi's brilliant Iranian drama A Separation, for which I will post a brief review sometime this week.

By the way, someone should tell these critics groups that they aren't doing Jessica Chastain any favours by giving her these blanket awards that encompass her entire 2011 filmography. They need to get behind ONE performance in order to help her to a nomination

Best Picture
The Descendants

Runner-up: The Tree of Life

Best Director
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

(Runner-up: Martin Scorsese, Hugo)

New York Film Critics crown 'The Artist'

In a rather attention-grabbing move, the New York Film Critics Circle had decided some time back to preempt the National Board of Review this year and be the first major critics group out of the gate with their year-end awards. Although you can hardly call them "year-end", seeings as they're coming to us a full month before the year ends, and well before most audiences have even had a chance to see their pick for Best Picture and Director; Michael Hazanavicius' silent film homage The Artist. I have no comment. How could I? I haven't even seen it yet!

I'll only briefly comment on how silly I think it is for them to do this so soon. What's the rush? Seriously.

I do dig the support for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, which won awards for Brad Pitt's & Jessica Chastain's performances (coupled with their performances in Moneyball & The Help/Take Shelter respectively) and for Emmanual Lubezki's cinematography.

All winners after the cut.

Review - The Help

Capitalizing on a loll in enticing summer theater fare, The Help offers a swell counter-programming alternative to filmgoers tired of the deluge of loud blockbusters. It's clearly struck a chord with audiences, hurtling Rise of the Planet of the Apes in its second week of release. In the interest of seeing what all the fuss is about, I took it in today and rifled off a brief review.

Fresh-faced college graduate and aspiring writer Skeeter (Emma Stone) returns to her Mississippi hometown of Jackson and is spurred by the old-fashioned racist attitudes of her peers to compose an exposing series of interviews with the community's black housemaids. Of course, finding willing interviewees among the apprehensive help proves a challenge, but she eventually makes an ally in the at-first reluctant Aibileen (Viola Davis), and their boat-rocking project discreetly lifts off.

Review - The Tree of Life

Note: I found it unavoidable to properly compose my thoughts on the film without divulging mild SPOILERS. Not that a non-narrative-driven movie like this one lends itself so easily to spoiling, but I would still encourage you to see it and mold your own interpretation before indulging mine.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth... when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Such is the Old Testament query that prefaces Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, arguably the elusive master's most thought-provoking – and certainly his most artistically ambitious – effort to date; a flawed, painterly masterpiece that explores in broad, bold strokes mankind's search for God and the fluid relation between Nature and Grace.

The aforementioned question, posed by God to the long-suffering Job, seems to make the point that one man's tribulations are trivial, petty even, in the grand scheme of things; a mere thread in the pattern of the grand design (to paraphrase Stephen Schwartz). Initially, this line of thought appears to be Malick's driving principle. He introduces us to his story's everyman incarnations of Job, the O'Brien family. The sweet mother (Jessica Chastain) and strict father (Brad Pitt) mourn the passing of their 19-year-old son. We also meet their eldest son Jack some decades later (played here by Sean Penn) reflecting on the anniversary of his brother's death. It is here that Malick proposes, perhaps facetiously, that one's life takes either the path of Grace – loving, gentle, and clearly represented in the form of the O'Brien matriarch – or Nature – raw, pure, and clearly represented in the form of the O'Brien patriarch. Where does Jack fit in? Grace? Nature? Oddly enough, the reactions of the O'Brien parents to the news of their son's death are contradictory to Malick's designations, whereby it's Mrs. O'Brien who collapses with natural, heart-wrenching agony, while Mr. O'Brien adopts a more silent, filtered sorrow. Are Grace and Nature so cut and dry?

One Category at a Time: Best Supporting Actress

I'll admit to feeling kinda proud (and/or lucky) of nailing three of last year's five Best Supporting Actress nominees from a year out, especially going out on a limb for a young actress no one had ever heard of before named Hailee Steinfeld. Let's see if I can repeat the feat.

One contender who's already had her name bandied about as a nominee at next year's Oscars is the legendary Vanessa Redgrave for her turn as Volumnia in Ralph Feinnes modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's little-seen Coriolanus. Redgrave has six career nominations going all the way back to 1967 and one win for Julia in 1977, but has not been nominated since Howards End (1992). As a respected veteran and master of her craft, a juicy supporting role might be just what she needs to reenter Oscar's graces.

George Clooney's political drama The Ides of March features a stacked ensemble with potential for multiple acting nominations. The most notable female presence is Marisa Tomei, who, after receiving years of flack following her surprise Oscar win for My Cousin Vinny, has done a great job of keeping her career fresh and interesting by taking on challenging and varied roles that have subsequently earned her another two nominations. Might she stand out in a strongly male-dominated cast?

How about representation from a strongly female-dominated cast? The Help features an eclectic and promising one, not to mention potential as lite Best Picture appeal. I'm taking my chances on Viola Davis, who broke out onto the big screen with a nomination two years ago for Doubt. She plays a black servant in 1960s Mississippi who makes an unlikely friendship with young white college grad.

An ingenue who you might argue is due for a nomination is Scarlet Johansson. She costars alongside Matt Damon in We Bought a Zoo, Cameron Crowe's first narrative feature in six years, as the wife of a man who uproots his family so that they can revive an old zoo. Crowe has always written good supporting parts for actresses, so here's hoping Johansson will do well by him.

One actress who's poised to explode in a big way this year is Jessica Chastain, starring in no less than six films, including the aforementioned Coriolanus and The Help. But the one most people are excited about is Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Will she be nominated for this, or for something else? Maybe for Take Shelter or The Fields? Or maybe not at all? Her name should be pretty ubiquitous this year, and that's always an advantage to staying in the awards discussion.

Predicted five:
Viola Davis, The Help
Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus or The Whistleblower
Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life or Take Shelter or The Help
Marisa Tomei, The Ides of March
Scarlet Johansson, We Bought a Zoo