My Award Nominations: Supporting Actress

Another busy Saturday in awards land. The Annie awards will name their top achievements in animation (are we expecting anything other than Inside Out?), while the DGA may provide us with our strongest clue as to who's really leading this year's opaque Best Director race. If anyone other than Adam McKay wins, will we see a split on Oscar night? If it's George Miller, do we really think he can turn the same trick with AMPAS? Not to jinx it or anything, but that would be the single coolest Oscar win I've ever seen... Too cool to actually happen, I'm sure.

As for me, I'll be taking care of my acting categories this weekend. Let's get the ball rolling with Best Supporting Actress, which hasn't been this competitive in years (and that's without fraudulent leading ladies posing as supporting players).

Last minute FYCs, and thoughts on H8teful, Saul

Oscar nomination balloting closes this Friday, and even in a season as scattered as this, it feels like some highly deserving contenders are still getting the short end of the stick. Dig deep, Academy! Lack of consensus is only exciting if you get imaginative instead of voting in default mode. You could do a lot worse than giving this handful of long shots a good hard look:

Creed for Best Picture

I was actually saving this FYC for Sicario, but after a strong guild showing thus far, I figure I should send my wishes to a more needy but equally deserving contender. This is one of the most satisfying mainstream entertainments of the year, and for it to have been overlooked by the Globes, BFCA, and PGA (where I had harboured hope for it) is disappointing to say the least. But it's not too late for the Academy to do right!

Critics Choice Max out nominations (as usual), plus thoughts on Carol

Mad Max: Fury Road led with 11 nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics Movie Awards. We know that the BFCA is prone to merely following the buzz and trying to predict the Oscars based on the most current developments of the season, so I'm still unsure of the chances George Miller's nutso action opus really has with the Academy.

The Revenant, The Martian, and Carol (which I finally saw) were close behind with nine apiece.

Todd Haynes' romantic drama -- elegantly adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt by Phyllis Nagy -- is an exquisite work of art. Haynes is a master sensualist, using image, music and sound to stimulate all our senses (not just the aural/visual ones). Edward Lachman's compositions are gorgeous and narratively astute, while Carter Burwell's score speaks volumes for characters whose true thoughts and feelings are rarely spoken.

Indeed, the emotion of the piece is powerful but never overstated, thanks largely to a quartet of superb performances. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara forge a special chemistry as the two romantic leads, while Sarah Paulson and Kyle Chandler bring thoughtful, empathetic perspectives to two very different types of jilted lovers.

Much Academy attention is deserved (particularly for director and screenplay, the latter of which it inexplicably missed both with the Critics Choice and the Globes), but unless more people get to set eyes on it, it may lose much needed buzz. Harvey, I know you think you're clever trying to keep this concealed until Oscar nominations before whisking the curtain away (et voila!), but you need to get it on more screens, pronto.

But back to the Critics Choice. Check out the long, unsurprising list of nominees, with some additional comments.

BEST PICTURE
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Carol
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Sicario
Spotlight
Happy for Sicario, which is slowly growing into the year's most underrated film with every critics group that passes it over. Sad for Inside Out, which seems to be falling by the wayside.

My Award nominations: Supporting Actress

Like it was with the men, work from Supporting Actresses this year was not quite as conspicuously strong as the leading roles, but there were a couple of real standouts in my opinion (and others' opinions too, going by the way awards bodies have been falling in line). Here are my top five:

Review - 12 Years a Slave

Two men labor on sweltering a Louisiana afternoon, planing wood and hammering nails into an small unfinished building. To their own eyes, they are equal; sharing conversation and stories of their lives. But equal they are not; one a free white man working for wage, the other a black man in bondage, working simply because it is what he was sold to do. “Your story is amazing,” the free man says to the slave. “And in no good way.” That really is the most essential way to describe the incredible true story of Solomon Northrup, who was kidnapped from his home and family to be sold into slavery. Based on Northrup's 1853 memoir, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave stares unblinking into arguably the darkest chapter of the United States' history, making a case for itself as the definitive American horror story.

In 1814, still 59 years before the Emancipation Proclamation, Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) lives as an upstanding citizen in Saratoga, NY – an atypically progressive community for its time. A gifted violinist by trade and a decent man by nature, he is free and proud to walk the streets with his family, wearing his finest clothes, frequenting the finest shops, sheltered from common bigotry by his respected status. But this dream existence proves to be just that: a dream – one from which he awakens in shackles, alone and confused in a cold, dark cell. Daring to insist to his captors that he is free man and justice shall be done, he is flogged, menaced, and stripped of his identity along with his bloodied shirt. He is Solomon Northrup no more. He is a “Georgia runaway” by the name of Platt, or so he must pretend if he wishes to survive his waking nightmare.