Best Actress

This year has served as one of the strongest displays of talented women in recent memory. We have come a long way from last year when only five women were deserving of the nomination. Competition is great for the advancement of quality, so I am very happy to say that there are about nine women fighting for this year's top spots. HOORAY! TALENT!



THE PLAYERS
1. JULIE CHRISTIE - Away From Her
2. MARION COTILLARD - La Vie en Rose
3. ELLEN PAGE - Juno
4. CATE BLANCHETT - Elizabeth: The Golden Age
5. AMY ADAMS - Enchanted

THE CHASERS
1. Angelina Jolie - A Mighty Heart
2. Keira Knightley - Atonement
3. Helena Bonham Carter - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
4. Jodie Foster - The Brave One

Julie Christie is blowin' it up right now and she is paving a very dominant path to Oscar gold. She is the NBR winner and a Globe, SAG, and BFCA nominee to boot. She is a comeback actress, a previous winner, and she has a role that screams Oscar. Christie will be there come Oscar night, but she is not a shoe-in for the win.


Ellen Page and Marion Cotillard have been gaining major ground on Christie when it looked like she was going to win everything she set her eyes on. Cotillard has a huge fan/critical support base and also has the biopic thing going for her. But La Vie en Rose is a foreign film and she could get Penelope Cruz-ed: all love, but no Oscar. She looks good for a nomination though. Page, however, fills the role as "Oscar new-comer." Last year, she broke out with her graphic and startling performance in Hard Candy, and this year she follows that acclaim up with a likable and quirky performance that has the stuff to be remembered for a long time. She could upset with a win, but her youth could hurt her against the other experienced veterans in the race. Page and Cotillard are both BFCA, GG, and SAG nominees.


Blanchett is in a strange place. The Academy loves her like with the unconditional love a parent gives a child, but the movie she could be nominated for, in this category at least, was pretty much critically panned. She could lose the nomination for that reason, but I doubt it.

Amy Adams was simply a revelation in Enchanted, and without her, the film would have induced theater-wide migraines of annoyance. Instead, she made Enchanted feel like an hour and a half of smiles. She could get snubbed, since she is the only actress who got shut out at the SAGs that I have in the top five. Perhaps voters won't support two comedic performances in the same year, and Page will beat Adams out of the short list.

If this happens, Jolie or Knightley will snag the spot. Jolie has been nominated for all of the majors (BFCA, GG, and SAG) and I would put her in the top five, but her film came out too early, and I think AMPAS might want to avoid being accused of embracing stars rather than performances. Her performance is good, but others are better. Knightley will get in if AMPAS goes crazy for Atonement, but if the SAG snub shows us anything it's that Atonement is not nearly as strong as we thought.

Carter and Foster both give stunning performances but just don't have the drive or support that other women have. They both need a Globe win to survive, but that does not seem likely in any way, shape, or form.

P.S. If you didn't get that the HOORAY! TALENT! was an allusion to HOORAY! BEER! Red Stripe ads, then I don't know what to do. Your loss? I guess...

Later Players.