Tag: Mank

Early 2020 Oscar Predictions: Best Supporting Actress

Today brings us my second post in my very early and quite speculative predictions on Oscar contenders for this thing we call 2020. I have already generated my initial picks for Supporting Actor and you can peruse it here:

https://toddmthatcher.com/2020/08/09/early-2020-oscar-predictions-best-supporting-actor/

So we arrive at Supporting Actress. In my previous writeup for the gentlemen vying for recognition this year, I went into great detail regarding the challenges of Academy forecasting in 2020. I will not rehash them in detail here, but they obviously involve the COVID-19 pandemic that has created tremendous uncertainty when it comes to release dates. There’s the typical every year questions as well such as whether certain performers will end up in lead or supporting (Olivia Colman in The Father is just one example). Netflix’s The Prom, with Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, is another one to watch as far as campaigns (I’ve got them both here for the moment). And I’m currently guessing that Saoirse Ronan will be in this race for Ammonite with her costar Kate Winslet going for Best Actress.

We already have some storylines that could prove fascinating if they pan out. In 2018, Olivia Colman scored a surprise win for The Favourite in lead actress over the more favored Glenn Close in The Wife. In 2020, we could certainly see them go head to head once again in supporting.

When I made my inaugural predictions post in this race in 2019, I correctly identified two of the eventual nominees in my top 5. This included winner Laura Dern in Marriage Story as well as Florence Pugh for Little Women. In my 10 other possibilities, I named Scarlett Johansson for Jojo Rabbit. I did not, however, list the other two contenders: Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell) and Margot Robbie (Bombshell).

Let’s get at it!

EARLY OSCAR PREDICTIONS: BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy

Toni Collette, I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Olivia Colman, The Father

Ariana DeBose, West Side Story

Saoirse Ronan, Ammonite

Other Possibilities:

Mary J. Blige, Respect

Abigail Breslin, Stillwater

Gaby Hoffman, C’Mon C’Mon

Felicity Jones, The Midnight Sky

Nicole Kidman, The Prom

Amanda Seyfried, Mank

Meryl Streep, The Prom 

Kristin Scott Thomas, Rebecca 

Debra Winger, Kajillionaire 

Helena Zengel, News of the World 

Best Actor is next! Stay tuned…

Early 2020 Oscar Predictions: Best Supporting Actor

And a new day has dawned on this blog of mine as the 2020 Oscar Predictions begin!

To put it mildly, this is a challenge in 2020. The obvious hindrance is the COVID-19 pandemic that has shut theaters down for the past nearly five months and prevented scores of titles from their release.

It doesn’t stop there. I always do my early prediction posts in the later part of August when significant film festivals are about to get underway. The coronavirus has altered that dynamic as well. The Toronto and Venice festivals will operate in a much different fashion with some releases getting remote screenings and you should expect quite a few Oscar Watch posts in the coming weeks. However, it’s not nearly the volume of previous years. I have chosen to push up these early prediction posts because… well, I don’t have much else to write about!

To add to the mayhem – we have understandably seen a year in which release dates are constantly changing. Some of the pictures mentioned here may not see the light of day by February 2021. That, by the way, is the month the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have extended eligibility to for the upcoming ceremony. A good example: Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (which has seen its date pushed back more than once) is now a TBD release. We’ve grown accustomed to that lately. For this reason, I am not including it in my inaugural round of predictions.

One potential beneficiary to all of this is Netflix. The streaming giant has loaded up on awards contenders for the season. Three of them in particular – David Fincher’s Mank, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, and Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 – boasts multiple performers who could see their work recognized in this particular category. In fact, four of the five early predicted nominees here are for Netflix properties.

As with any other year, these first projections are done with another degree of uncertainty and that’s category placement. It is inevitable that some performances in the supporting field could move to lead and vice versa. These decisions will become clearer as time goes along and will certainly shift my predictions in the future. For instance, Delroy Lindo seems bound for a nod in Da 5 Bloods. The smart money is that he’ll be campaigned for in Best Actor, but it’s in the realm of possibility that he could be a Supporting Actor contender.

Looking back at my early 2019 predictions in this category nearly a year ago, only one of my five projected nominees got through the process. It was, however, the winner with Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. For context, I predict my top 5 and then list ten other possibilities. All four other eventual nominees (Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci for The Irishman), were all listed as possibilities.

So… let’s get to it with my very speculative first look at which gentlemen could contend in the supporting field!

EARLY OSCAR PREDICTIONS: BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Tom Burke, Mank

Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7

David Strathairn, Nomadland

Other Possibilities:

David Alvarez, West Side Story

Charles Dance, Mank

Lucas Hedges, French Exit

Jonathan Majors, Da 5 Bloods

Clarke Peters, Da 5 Bloods

Jesse Plemons, I’m Thinking of Ending Things 

Eddie Redmayne, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Mark Rylance, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Lakeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah

Forest Whitaker, Respect 

I’ll have Supporting Actress up next! Until then…