Things already are looking good for Sunday's Academy Awards.
The entire night is set to lead up to one of the most exhilaratingly unpredictable big prizes of the night, and there's not a bad movie in the bunch. The Queen and Letters from Iwo Jima are beautifully nuanced takes on turbulent world history, and category bests The Departed and Babel make symphonies out of ensemble casting. Even Little Miss Sunshine, the weak link of the bunch, is more insightful than it looks.
But that powder keg will go off after the most humdrum set of acting prize races since, well, last year. So in honor of all the actors and actresses who don't even get the honor to be nominated
here are some shoulda-been contenders to complement the sure shots.
Best Actor Shoo-In: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
If only G? enough people saw a star being born in the spring when Joseph Gordon-Levitt came shuffling onto Brick with rolled-up jeans and spit-shined shoes. Like nominee Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson, Gordon-Levitt is an actor who can play mournful and conflicted without slipping into Oscar-bait theatrics.
That same subtlety probably hurt Ken Watanabe, who played a nobly doomed Japanese commander in Letters from Iwo Jima, and Matt Damon, the ice-cold core of Robert De Niro's masterpiece The Good Shepherd.
Best Actress Shoo-In: Helen Mirren, The Queen
If only G? brilliant Chinese actress Maggie Cheung got a fighting chance for her work in Clean as a recovering junkie mother struggling to connect with her young son. Ironically, Maggie Gyllenhaal ' not even nominated this year ' probably overshadowed Cheung's astonishing performance in Sherrybaby, a lesser movie with a similar plot.
Best Supporting Actor Shoo-In: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
If only ... Oscar voters saw solid supporting work behind Oscar-nominated female roles in The Queen and Notes on a Scandal. Bill Nighy has a stunning breakdown in Scandal, and Michael Sheen balances hubris and humanity as Tony Blair in The Queen. And yes, he's playing himself like all the critics said, but is that a bad thing when you're Jack Nicholson in The Departed?
Best Supporting Actress Shoo-In: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
If only G? Meryl Streep got nominated for the right performance. She's steely and fierce in The Devil Wears Prada, but she's positively effervescent as a lovelorn folk singer in the best movie of 2006, A Prairie Home Companion.
Oscar's biggest oversight in this category, however, goes to Catherine O'Hara in For Your Consideration. Sure, starring in a vicious diatribe on Oscar season probably means death to a nomination, but her has-been actress destroyed by idle Internet buzz marks the best work the character actress has ever done.
You know, the kind of work these nominations should honor in the first place. 17
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Matt Burns
