Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

I actually think Finch was nominated in the right category; my general preference is for "borderline" performances to go lead. Regardless of Finch's placement, however, this year belongs to De Niro. One of the all-time great screen performances in, for my money, one of the Great American M...

Haven't seen Give 'Em Hell Harry ; don't think it affects my vote one way or the other. Schell is very good in a movie it's hard to work up much enthusiasm for; The Sunshine Boys -- and Matthau's performance therein -- has almost completely vacated my memory. Pacino's Dog Day Afternoon performance i...

This year's Nicholson/Hoffman/Pacino troika is rightly cited as making this one of the strongest Best Actor fields, but for me, Gene Hackman would have been an easy winner had he been nominated for The Conversation . It's not that the others aren't as deserving as most of my winners; it's just that ...

No matter the circumstances, I can't give Spencer Tracy any kind of endorsement, or even a pass as an acceptable nominee, this year. I simply can't take any element of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner on any terms other than those of the movie's overall ridiculousness. (I remember once seeing a fine doc...

Richard Burton was at his best bickering with Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virignia Woolf? , though I've always wondered what Henry Fonda and Bette Davis would have done with the material had they been given the chance. I haven't seen The Sand Pebbles or The Russians Are Coming , so I won't ...

I'm abstaining, as I haven't seen either Sitting Pretty or When My Baby Smiles at Me , and I almost certainly never will. I will, however, put forth that this is one of the weakest fields I've ever seen in this category. Two of the nominees are in movies I'm happy to go without seeing; one is proba...

It's funny: I have less tolerance than just about anybody for clear leads receiving supporting nominations, and yet the inverse -- possibly because it's so rare, possibly because I feel (rightly or wrongly) that leading actors have an easier time getting attention than the ones who support them -- ...

Best Motion Picture • The Fighter (David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, Mark Wahlberg) • The Social Network (Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, Ceán Chaffin) • Toy Story 3 (Darla K. Anderson) • True Grit (Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen) • Winter's Bone (Anne Rosellini, Alix Madigan-Yorkin)...

Am I just imagining things in the moment, or is this year's host/presenter banter even more excruciating than in previous years? I laughed at Justin Timberlake's "I'm Banksy" moment, and have cringed my way through pretty much everything else so far (other than the acceptance speeches), a...

I'll go with Sabin's rating system: Best Picture Toy Story 3 (****) The Social Network (****) Winter's Bone (****) The Fighter (****) True Grit (****) Black Swan (***) The King's Speech (**) Inception (**) The Kids Are All Right (**) 127 Hours (**) Best Director David Fincher, The Social Network (*...

Cagney. Easily. I share many of Damien's reservations about Yankee Doodle Dandy as a movie, but watching Cagney's master class in the joy of performance, I find it impossible to care about any of them. Yet another of those performances I'd likely vote for no matter who else was nominated up against...

I'm absolutely stunned that all the praise here for Welles' Citizen Kane performance is so lukewarm (at best). While it's true that the film is rightly viewed as a triumph of filmmaking rather than an acting showcase, I've always seen Welles' portrayal of Kane as one of the great, towering achievem...

The Great Dictator has never done anything for me, including Chaplin's performance. Stewart is as good in The Philadelphia Story as he's ever been, but as others have said, it's hard to justify that he won for this and not Mr. Smith or one of his later iconic roles, or was nominated for this instea...