AND THE WINNER IS…

There has been much discussion about the obstacles in the way of a Best Actress win for Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose). To name just a few: she is the least familiar name and face among the nominees in her category; she is being considered for a movie from France that features subtitles; and her movie is not nearly as great as her performance within it. Additionally, it is extremely rare for a foreign actor in a foreign language film to win an acting Oscar—only two, Sophia Loren (Two Women) and Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful), have previously managed the feat. Naturally, this begs the question: Is there any reason to believe Cotillard could make three? I think there might be…

Amidst the flurry of discussion about presumptive front-runners Julie Christie (Away from Her) and Ellen Page (Juno), I think we are forgetting there are also a number of key points in her favor…

1. She is a stunningly beautiful young woman (see this sexy clip sent in by a reader) portraying a jarringly unattractive character—keep in mind that the Academy seems to love nothing more than attractive women de-glamourizing themselves for serious roles (consider the recent Oscar wins of Roberts, Kidman, Berry, Theron, Mirren, etc.).
2. She is the star of a bio-pic about a well known, complex, real person, and we know how much the Academy loves to reward those sorts of performances (consider the recent Oscar wins of Swank, Roberts, Kidman, Theron, Witherspoon, Mirren, etc.), especially when it comes to musicians (Spacek, Lange, Witherspoon)
   
3. At thirty-two, she is precisely at the average age of Best Actress winners, unlike her two main rivals—Christie would be much older than usual at 66 (and also already won an Oscar back when she was 24), and Page would be much younger at 21 (she’ll turn that age on the 21st)
4. Even though Christie won the SAG Award, she and Cotillard both won Golden Globes, and by my count Cotillard is very competitive with Christie and Page for the lead of most honors from key critics and awards groups
5. She has the admiration of her peers. Consider the following praise…
   • Cate Blanchett: “Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose was absolutely astonishing, and the synthesis of the performance with the whole film is superb. As much as inhabiting Piaf, she was also creating a creature, and I thought that was astonishing and inspiring… one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen.”
   • Ryan Gosling: “Not only did she craft a flawless impersonation of a famous personality, but Marion’s humanity elevated her performance to a devastatingly honest and yet seemingly effortless personifcation of integrity and grace. To me,this is more than just a great performance; it’s a document of this actress’ overwhelming ability to love.”
     
   • Keira Knightley: “I think that’s one of the most extraordinary performances I’ve ever seen.”
   • Oprah Winfrey: A “transcendent performance.”
   • Forest Whitaker [asked who he expects to hand the Oscar to]: “Marion Cotillard! Did you not see her in La Vie En Rose? She’s transforming! That’s it!”
     

So, can Cotillard follow in the footsteps of Simone Signoret (A Room at the Top) and Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) and become just the third native of France to win an acting Oscar? To quote Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men, “I’m not saying yes. I’m just saying it’s possible!”

(See: ATWI… INTERVIEW with Cotillard.)

They spoke with us! Roughly a dozen of the people who participated in the ATWI… Interview Series over this awards season went on to earn Academy Award nominations, and so I thought it might be fun to go to the vault and re-post those links again so you can again check out what they had to say. (There are several other installments coming up that I cannot discuss yet, but are certainly something to look forward to.) Things will probably be rather quiet on the site until Saturday evening, when we gear up for the big PGA announcement. In the meantime, however, these should provide ample reading material!

BEST DIRECTOR
Jason Reitman (Juno)

BEST ACTOR
Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)

BEST ACTRESS
Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose)
Laura Linney (The Savages) SOON
Ellen Page (Juno)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) SOON
Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)
Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Diablo Cody (Juno)
Tamara Jenkins (The Savages) SOON

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
Glen Hansard (Once) SOON

Don’t miss this brief but moving Newsweek tribute to Heath Ledger by Christopher Nolan, the director of his last completed film, The Dark Knight (7/18, Warner Brothers).

NOTE: We are only covering the film categories.

Best Stunts
presented BEFORE THE BROADCAST
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (Universal)
THOUGHTS Word.

Best Supporting Actor
presented by Marion Cotillard
JAVIER BARDEM (No Country for Old Men)
THOUGHTS You’ve gotta think he’s got this in the bag… remember, though, that we said the same thing after Murphy (Dreamgirls) won this category last year, only to be upset at the Academy by the sentimental favorite, Arkin; Holbrook could be that guy this year.

Best Supporting Actress
presented by Viggo Mortensen
RUBY DEE (American Gangster)
THOUGHTS I hate to say it… but I told ya so! (Kudos to Sasha Stone for calling this major upset, as well.) Nobody will argue that Dee gave a better supporting performance than Blanchett or Ryan in American Gangster, but she has given a career of great performances, most at a time when people who looked like her could not get awards like this, so it’s still a wonderful thing to see. (Genuine, but also tactically smart, invocation of her husband, the late, great Ossie Davis.)

Best Actor
presented by Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS (There Will Be Blood)
THOUGHTS And… Oscar. Well deserved. (Classy dedication to Heath Ledger can’t hurt, either.)

Best Actress
presented by Forest Whitaker
JULIE CHRISTIE (Away from Her)
THOUGHTS She has been nearly invisible thus far, refusing to campaign for herself, but screeners were sent to all the members, and more watched it than I would have guessed—or did they? Classiness and familiarity might have been enough. Either way, she’s going to be very hard to beat. (Funny closing line: “If I have forgotten anybody, it’s just because I am in character.” Less funny: She then actually forgot her statuette at the podium.)

Best Performance by a Cast
presented by Tom Cruise
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Miramax)
THOUGHTS To be or not to be? (“We did a freakly little movie, whether you like the ending or not…”) That is the question! (I’m interested to see how it does when it gets a chance to pick on someone its own ‘size,’ like There Will Be Blood, at the PGA Awards on Saturday.)

Tonight, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) will host the 14th annual SAG Awards. This is “the awards show where only actors vote,” as the program’s promoters like to say, and that is true—4,200 members of the actors union were randomly selected to choose the nominees, but now the entire dues-paying membership of 120,000 actors will have the final say on the winners. For this reason, a win of “the Actor,” as the SAG Award is called, tends to be the most meaningful honor for an actor short of an Oscar.

It is also a particularly meaningful award for prognosticators because the choices of SAG—excluding their Best Ensemble category—tend to be the strongest indicator of who the Academy will choose to recognize down the road. Indeed, 1,243 of the Academy’s 5,829 members (just over 23%) belong to the Actors branch, indicating a substantial overlap and commonality of preferences. In reality, SAG does not always match up perfectly with the eventual Oscar winners, they tend to go at least two or three for four.

Here is who I’m projecting to win tonight, along with a short explanation…

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A CAST
Nominees
(1) Into the Wild (Paramount Vantage)
(2) No Country for Old Men (Miramax)
(3) Hairspray (New Line)
(4) American Gangster (Universal)
(5) 3:10 to Yuma (Lionsgate)
RATIONALE Into the Wild is an actors showcase, featuring an ensemble of well-known and well-liked talents, which is the driving force behind this call. SAG clearly responded to the film better (a leading four nominations) than the Academy (only one acting nod and no Best Pic nod), which is somewhat troubling since the winner of this category has gone on to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture every year except 1996 (The Birdcage), but as I’ve said all along this seems like an unusual year in which some rules are going to be broken, so that might happen again. No Country for Old Men is the most Academy-embraced of the five options and could very well pull it off, especially considering that SAG nominated both Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones whereas the Academy opted only for Bardem, but that may not indicate anything—after all, Michael Clayton scored three acting nods but did not show up in this category. My guess is that No Country is not enough of an ensemble piece for some voters. Hairspray might be, but is also rather grating for a lot of people, and the absence of nominations for any of its actors is not a promising sign. Gangster, meanwhile, snagged a spot with only one acting nod, and Yuma with none, so those have to be regarded as long shots.

BEST ACTOR
Nominees
(1) Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
(2) Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild)
(3) Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)
(4) George Clooney (Michael Clayton)
(5) Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Real Girl)
RATIONALE Day-Lewis is almost certainly the active actor most revered by his other actors, and deservedly so. He only works every few years, but when he does he always crafts a remarkably complex and nuanced performance. The last time he made a major awards contender was Gangs of New York (2002), and he won the SAG Award even though the Academy took a pass; this time he will probably snag both. There is nobody in this year’s field whose performance or stature is on the same plain, so it is nearly impossible to see anyone else mustering enough support to take him down. Hirsch and Gosling did fine work and will probably be forces for a long time to come. Mortensen is probably too quiet and understated, both on screen and off, to have called the necessary attention to himself. Clooney is not, and is probably the biggest threat, but it’s all relative—at the recent Newsweek roundtable, even he effectively bowed before Day-Lewis.

BEST ACTRESS
Nominees
(1) Ellen Page (Juno)
(2) Julie Christie (Away from Her)
(3) Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose)
(4) Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
(5) Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart)
RATIONALE What are the movies that every voters has made it a priority to see? I don’t know the full list, but I do know that Juno is on it, and that Away from Her, La Vie En Rose, Elizabeth, and A Mighty Heart are not. This is probably going to matter when you’re asking 120,000 people to vote for Best Actress—more will have seen and, in all likelihood, liked Page than any of the other nominees, and certainly more than the finite groups that have already voted, like the Hollywood Foreign Press (who embraced fellow foreigner Cotillard) and Broadcast Film Critics (who opted for the critics’ ‘darling,’ pardon the pun, Christie). That said, it seems somewhat odd that Juno did not receive any other acting nominations or a Best Ensemble nomination even though its blood-brothers Sideways and Little Miss Sunshine did (and won). But I come back to visibility… Christie will probably do best among the demographic of older SAG members, but I’m not sure that’s sizable enough to make the difference. Cotillard is young, beautiful, talented, and oh so good in a bio-pic of a famous person, all of which sounds like the stuff wins are made of… but she also performs in a movie that is not half as good as she is and that features subtitles, something to which many are totally averse. Besides, nobody except Robert Benigni (Life Is Beautiful) has ever won a SAG Award for a performance in a foreign language. The general feeling is that Blanchett and Jolie were nominated by default, not as a result of any large measure of passion, so it is incredibly hard to fathom either of them showing up.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Nominees
(1) Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
(2) Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)
(3) Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton)
(4) Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James)
(5) Tommy Lee Jones (No Country for Old Men)
RATIONALE This one is tougher than it looks. The same people who liked Into the Wild enough to nominate it for a leading four awards, and particularly the old birds among that group, are going to feel very tempted to go with Holbrook to effectively encourage the Academy to do the same… and he is a sympathetic character (83 years old, never before nominated, unlikely to be again) who gave a fine performance (certainly more of a ‘supporting’ performance than Bardem’s, which is really a lead performance and is in the wrong category). Bardem and Jones could conceivably split the vote, but at the end of the day I think the younger members of the guild, who are perhaps less familiar with Holbrook’s resume than Bardem’s, will be unable to resist hopping onto the Bardem Express, which seems to be picking up more and more steam every day. Voters clearly liked Michael Clayton enough to give it three noms, so Wilkinson cannot be regarded as a very long shot. The same cannot be said for The Assassination of Jesse James, for which Affleck is the lone nominee—but the very fact that they remembered to nominate him means there is a base of support out there somewhere. Jones can only play the spoiler.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Nominees
(1) Ruby Dee (American Gangster)
(2) Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)
(3) Cate Blanchett (I’m Not There)
(4) Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)
(5) Catherine Keener (Into the Wild)
RATIONALE No, I haven’t lost my mind—I just think the stars might align for Dee tonight, if not on Oscar night, as well. The guild appreciated her and her late husband Ossie Davis enough six years ago to honor them with the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, and appreciated her enough this year to make her the only acting nominee from her film—and for a performance that totals less than ten minutes of screen time! Granted, her work in this film is not in the same hemisphere as Ryan’s or Blanchett’s, but I suspect Dee is the one feel-good, guilty pleasure many members will allow themselves—she is not only a screen legend but also a pioneer who helped pave the way for all of the minority members of SAG, and I think they may be the difference in a close race. Of course, Ryan has going for her the narrative of being picked out of nowhere for a major role and knocking it out of the park, something that many voters in similar shoes may want to reward and encourage. Blanchett was the highlight of her film, but for many it was a painful film to endure before (and after) her time on screen, and so one wonders if people didn’t lose patience and give up on it. Besides, many feel Blanchett’s role is a great ‘imitation,’ as opposed to a ‘performance,’ and that may hurt. Swinton and Keener are definite sleepers with realistic but outside shots—they are two of the most respected and admired working actors in the business and were highlights of their respective films.

BEST STUNTS
Nominees
(1) The Bourne Ultimatum
(2) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
(3) 300
(4) I Am Legend
(5) The Kingdom
RATIONALE Who knows? You figure the most commercially successful, cool, run-jump-kick ass movie of the year will take this category, which leads me to go with Bourne. Perhaps this is because I regard Pirates, 300, and Legend as more feats of CGI than stuntwork, and because The Kingdom came and went too quietly to catch most people’s attention. We’ll see.

Yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama won the South Carolina Democratic primary by a 2:1 margin over Sen. Hillary Clinton, alone generating more votes than the total number that were cast in the entire 2004 primary. He also gave the single greatest political speech of my lifetime, and I urge you to check it out in its entirety (see below)—it literally sent shivers up backs.

• Also of note: Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times in which she endorses Obama because she feels he offers her the first chance to vote for “A President Like My Father.”
• And: Jon Favreau, the 26-year-old white guy who is Obama’s head speechwriter, was the subject of a great profile in last week’s New York Times called “What Would Obama Say?”

Earlier tonight, and as predicted by this web site and the majority of others, the Directors Guild of America honored Ethan Coen and Joel Coen with their 2007 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for their film No Country for Old Men. (Tom O’Neil was in attendance and has posted the audio of their

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.) This win positions the brothers as the irrefutable front-runners to win the Academy Award for Best Director next month, which would make them just the second duo (and first siblings) to win the honor. Less certain are the Best Picture prospects for their film, which is in a tough race with four other viable contenders, but is also regarded by most pundits as the odds-on favorite. The upcoming Producer Guild of America Award should help confirm or rebut that impression.

Over the past month, hundreds of readers of Johnny Alba‘s fast-growing awards web site The Oscar Igloo voted for the second “Online Community Awards.” I have just learned that the results were announced today and that the site’s readers paid me a great compliment, so I just want to take a moment to thank them and Johnny very much—I’m surprised and honored.

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) will announce the winner of the 2007 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement tomorrow night at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza (a beautiful hotel I enjoyed staying at this past summer). Presenters will include Josh Brolin, Marion Cotillard, Daniel Day-Lewis, Emile Hirsch, Ellen Page, Tilda Swinton, and Tom Wilkinson.

Anyway, since this award was first dished out back in 1948, its winner has corresponded with the winner of the Academy Award for Best Director all but seven times, and its winner’s film has won the Academy Award for Best Picture all but twelve times, making it one of the more accurate precursors around.

As Tom O’Neil noted during our December

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, the DGA consists of 13,000 directors, most of whom work in television. On his own site, he added, “About 8,000 live in the Los Angeles area—the rest are scattered across the U.S. They are not permitted to receive DVDs, so they must view films at industry screenings or their local Cineplex.” This would obviously seem to benefit early and/or commercially-successful releases over those that came out late in the season and/or primarily in art-house theaters, but who knows in a year like this?

Key fact to keep in mind: final ballots were due back to the DGA by January 7, meaning that the announcement of the Academy’s nominations on January 22 had no bearing on DGA voters’ choices…

Let’s take a look at each of the five contenders before I share my projection…

• Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) Anderson snagged a first-career DGA nod for this ambitious film, which has the size and scope of past winners, but may not have reached enough eyeballs. The film was released very late, prompting Paramount Vantage to mail voters vouchers to see the film for free in theaters rather than screeners, according to Tom. The studio reports that a high percentage were redeemed, but it is hard to imagine that as many voters saw this film, for which they might have had to go to a distant art house theater, as others that were sent directly to their home. Clearly, enough voters saw the film to get it a nomination, but one has ample cause to wonder if it may have just barely snuck in.
• Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men) The clear favorite: two well-known and respected auteurs who made a commercially and critically successful film that has been out long enough to be widely seen but not long enough to lose its luster. The last time a duo were nominated was last year, when Little Miss Sunshine‘s directors came up short against Martin Scorsese, effectively putting an end to their and their film’s dreams of Oscar gold. The other time a duo was in the race, however, turned out better for the nominees—West Side Story‘s Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise went on to win the Oscar. The helmer’s of this front-runner have every reason to expect the same outcome.
• Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) It seems to me that Gilroy’s victory was getting nominated and that he won’t have a prayer with this group. He is a screenwriter, first and foremost, and non-big-name-actors-turned-directors generally have to pay their dues before they get this sort of peer recognition.
• Sean Penn (Into the Wild) Contrarily, big-name-actors-turned directors tend to do very well with DGA—past winners include Allen, Beatty, Redford, Costner, Howard twice, and Eastwood twice. Indeed, Penn elicited an unusually lengthy standing ovation after the DGA screening of Into the Wild, and seems to have earned a lot of respect for taking on an epic film and pulling it off respectably. Obviously, the major snubs delivered to him and his film by the Academy have changed the popular perception of his prospects here, but I again emphasize that the DGA’s vote took place prior to the Academy’s disclosure and was therefore not directly impacted by it. That said, I suspect the feelings of both groups will be relatively similar, since they do overlap in many cases.
• Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) The most colorful character in the race has campaigned aggressively, so most voters will have formulated an opinion of the man, as much as his extraordinary film, one way or the other, and it will all boil down to one simple question: has his snobbish eccentricity endeared himself to more people than he has turned off? To me, he is the wild card in the race who could legitimately pull off an upset here just as he did at the Golden Globes. My guess is that he will come up a little short, if only because his movie has not been in nearly as many theaters as No Country, and also because there is no sense of debt to him that there may be for the Coens.
  

Projected Winner
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men)
Alt: Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)