Oscar's Best Actor 2017

Casey>Viggo>Gosling so far. Still have to see the other two.

Good for them?

They had Affleck favored to win until the SAG Award victory for Denzel. Casey Affleck won the Golden Globe, the National Board of Review, the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, and many of the critics prizes (New York, Boston, Chicago, London, Washington D.C., Dallas, Atlanta, Austin, Detroit, St. Louis, Phoenix, Seattle, Vancouver), plus the Gotham Independent Film Award and Village Voice Film Poll, among others. Denzel won the SAG, and that's about it. Adam Driver, who didn't get an Oscar nom for Paterson, won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award.

Could Denzel win the Oscar with essentially only having won the Screen Actors Guild Award while Affleck won virtually everything else? Of course. But winning the SAG doesn't make him a lock. It just makes it more interesting than if Affleck had swept all of them.


The Best Actor Oscar has been a foregone conclusion for most of the last couple decades. The only huge surprise in this century, and it was one of the biggest surprises in that category ever, was when Adrien Brody won for The Pianist. THAT was an upset. He was nominated with Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York), Nicolas Cage (Adaptation), Michael Caine (The Quiet American), and Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt). All four of them had previously won at least one acting Oscar. Brody shockingly won and became the youngest winner ever in the category. He hadn't won the Golden Globe or the SAG. He had won the César Award and National Society of Film Critics, but in most every other major award that season he was an also-ran while Day-Lewis and Nicholson won most of them leading up to Oscar night.

If Denzel does win, it won't be THAT kind of an upset. Now if Andrew Garfield wins, that would certainly qualify as gigantic upset. But it's not going to be Garfield, Mortensen, or Gosling. It'll be Washington or Affleck.

There have not been many perceived two-horse races for Best Actor of late. When you look at the winners this century Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant), Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club), Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln and There Will Be Blood), Colin Firth (The King's Speech), Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), Sean Penn (Milk), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), Jamie Foxx (Ray), and Kevin Spacey (American Beauty) were all heavy favorites who unsurprisingly won. There were a few where the perceived front runner between the two most likely winners won, as with Eddie Redmayne (Theory of Everything) over Michael Keaton (Birdman), Jean Dujardin (The Artist) over George Clooney (The Descendants), and Sean Penn (Mystic River) over Bill Murray (Lost in Translation). Which other than Adrien Body's historic level upset left only two years that were in doubt or there wasn't a clear favorite. They both happened at the beginning of the 2000s.

The 2001 ceremony saw Russell Crowe win for Gladiator over Tom Hanks (Cast Away), Ed Harris (Pollock), Geoffrey Rush (Quills), and Javier Bardem in Before Night Falls. Hanks had won the Golden Globe and frustratingly for comparison purposes Benicio Del Toro won the SAG Drama for Traffic, which was nominated and won as Supporting Actor at the Oscars. Crowe had won the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, London Film Critics, and a couple others, but Hanks was the favorite in that grouping, only to lose to Maximus Decimus Meridius in the Best Picture winner.

The next year at the 2002 ceremony it was Russell Crowe who was the favorite for A Beautiful Mind. He had won the Golden Globe, the SAG, the BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, and many others. Crowe seemed poised to cruise through the Oscars and join Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks as back-to-back Best Actor winners. But that night it was Denzel's performance for Training Day that was printed inside the envelope, even though A Beautiful Mind would win Best Director and Best Picture minutes later.

Will Denzel pull off this coming-from-behind win twice? His win for Training Day was pretty shocking, and would seem even more shocking in retrospect had the Adrien Brody stunner not come the very next year. I think most people, including the Academy voters, would agree Fences is a better performance than Training Day. Though actors and directors winning Oscars for performances and films that are not considered their best or most iconic work is fairly common. Scorsese winning for The Departed, Paul Newman winning for The Color of Money, Al Pacino winning for The Scent of a Woman, and on and on. So Washington would be in that company if Training Day continues to stand as the performance he won for. I suppose the Oscar voters could have in their minds to correct that here and now, even if Affleck was wonderful in Manchester?

There are about 6,000 voters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). There are currently seventeen branches that make up those members: Actors, Casting Directors, Cinematographers, Costume Designers, Designers (formerly called Art Directors), Directors, Documentarians, Editors, Executives, Make-up Artists and Hairstylists, Musicians, Producers, Public Relations, Short Filmmakers and Feature Animators, Sound, Visual Effects, and Writers. By FAR the biggest voting block is the actors, making up about a third of the total voters. Which makes sense when you think about how many editors or costume designers or directors are there on any given film versus how many actors there are. Which is why when it comes to the four acting Oscars, the SAG Awards would seem to point which way the wind is blowing. But all those other kinds of voters get to fill in their ballots, too, and what an actor may see as the best work might be very different than what a hairstylist or P.R. person or screenwriter may think. And that's even assuming people are voting based on merit at all and not for friends or against enemies or any of the myriad reasons an Oscar voter may have for marking their ballot.


This will all be settled on February 26th, and then we can retroactively speculate and assign motive. But as it stands right now, it certainly seems as though either Casey Affleck or Denzel Washington will win. Unless we have another seismic level upset brewing, which is always possible but a very low percentage bet. Whether this is neck-and-neck as we approach the finish line or one has the advantage, make your own calls.

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Directorial debut?????

__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Yup. Brain fart. Danke.

Have only seen three of the performances to date...I actually started Captain Fantastic and turned it off after about ten minutes. But from what I've seen, I have to go with Affleck, a devastating performance and his second nomination, I think its his turn.

Now Entertainment Weekly says that Ryan Gosling might win it according to Google.

__________________
A man's got to know his limitations.

Yeah, that's not going to happen.....

More like Entertainment Weakly.

But seriously, I haven't read the report and have no opinion on its likelihood.

In other news it might rain on July 21st of 2019

I don't know, I really liked La La Land, but really don't see Ryan Gosling winning over Casey Affleck.

No he was miscast

People were saying he was making some feminist stand but I think he was just pissed he lost

It can be two things.

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0