One Category at a Time: Supporting Actor

I've already opined on how boring the Best Supporting Actor Oscar race is this year. The exact same five names have been almost unanimously nominated across the board, and fringe contenders didn't even bother to campaign. Perhaps they figured that it wasn't even worth gunning for a nomination when the eventual winner has been cut and dry for months.

Review - Birdman

Ids, egos and superegos collide and combust (in a single take!) on stages as concrete as the Broadway theatre and as fantastical as the imaginings of a self-obsessed actor in Alejandro González Iňárritu's Birdman. As in the myth of Icarus, to which his wily script often alludes both visually and verbally, Iňárritu has high-flying ambitions for what is possibly his most personal film to date. But rather than crash and burn, his satiric slant on the artist's odyssey soars magnificently on its dark feathery wings.

Michael Keaton stars – in a performance that vies to redefine his career – as Riggan Thompson, a washed-up former movie star seeking respect and validation by directing and starring in his own adaptation of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love on Broadway. He had once played a popular superhero (the eponymous Birdman) in a series of lucrative but disposable comic book blockbusters that brought him fame and fortune, but not artistic fulfillment.

Now, some twenty years after hanging up his dopey bird suit, he's risking so much more than just his money and reputation by mounting this prestigious production. The tenuous relationship with his recovering drug addict daughter (Emma Stone), his fragile sense of self, and even his grasp on reality hang in the balance while the pressure mounts.