Critics and Oscar pundits complain every single year about the lack of quality film roles for females. That isn't true, but looking at the Best Actress nominations this year, it sure seems like it.
Best Actress nominees: Judi Dench (Mrs. Henderson Presents), Felicity Huffman (Transamerica), Keira Knightley (Pride & Prejudice), Charlize Theron (North Country) and Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line).
Acting categories usually get a few of the nominations right, but this year's batch of Best Actress nominees is the most disappointing in recent memory. Knightley and Huffman arguably merit placement here, but actresses like Joan Allen (Yes), Toni Collette (In Her Shoes) or Laura Linney (The Squid and the Whale) deserved a slot instead. Because I have to, I'm siding with Knightley's nuanced transformation as a Jane Austen heroine. Otherwise, Dench is here because voters love when she plays a saucy British woman (i.e. every movie she ever makes), Theron is still popular with voters - even with a bland, sullen performance in a forgettable film - and Witherspoon is coasting on the popularity of a hackneyed biopic we've all seen 100 times before. Or last year, when it was Ray
and it was better.
But that won't matter. Witherspoon is the beautiful Hollywood starlet who plays a real person, and that's a one-way ticket to the podium. Will win: Witherspoon. Should win: Knightley.
Best Supporting Actress nominees: Amy Adams (Junebug), Catherine Keener (Capote), Frances McDormand (North Country), Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain).
Unlike the Best Supporting Actor nominations, the odds are slightly more clear-cut here, only because there are a few actresses who don't have a chance. Keener gives subtle but solid support in Capote but her performance is so small it will fly under everyone's radar. Same for McDormand; she plays a mine worker who suffers from Lou Gehrig's Disease, but it is difficult to see the fragile dignity of her performance beneath her character's maudlin purpose in the plot. Voters won't see it either, and she is a past winner anyway.
This leaves Adams, Weisz and Williams, and even though Brokeback Mountain still has momentum (warning: it's losing some to Crash), Williams is probably the unlikely winner in the trio. So the final tete-a-tete of this race is the classic one: the category frontrunner (Weisz) against the wild card (Adams), and the odds are even.
Conventional wisdom goes that Weisz will take the award, and she certainly deserves it. Playing a wife, mother-to-be and determined political activist in Gardener she must constantly play with the viewer's shifting perspective of her, bringing more than one meaning to much of what she does. Really, Weisz's role is a lead. But this category is the notorious shocker of the Oscar ceremony, and a win for Weisz would be rather anticlimactic. It is a television show, after all. Will win: Weisz. Should win: Weisz.
-Matt is The Post's Campus Editor. Send him an e-mail at mb102503@ohiou.edu.
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