2010 Best Actress Oscar

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Who gets your vote as Best Actress?
43.75%
7 votes
Sandra Bullock, THE BLIND SIDE
0%
0 votes
Helen Mirren, THE LAST STATION
18.75%
3 votes
Carey Mulligan, AN EDUCATION
6.25%
1 votes
Gabourey Sidibe, PRECIOUS
31.25%
5 votes
Meryl Streep, JULIE & JULIA
16 votes. You may not vote on this poll






Here are the Oscar nominated performances. Who do you think will be named the next Best Actress?
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28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Sandra Bullock, she's picking up the other awards. Another weak year for this category.
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Suspect's Reviews





This is Helen Mirren's fourth Oscar nomination, and seeing how she won just a few years ago for The Queen I find it unlikely she'll be honored this time around for playing Tolstoy's wife in a costume biopic few of the Academy voters will actually get around to watching. Mirren, who turns sixty-five this year, will have other chances to add to her Oscar hardware down the line.



This makes sixteen Oscar nominations now for Meryl Streep, thirteenth as Best Actress, increasing her total for the most ever received by anybody in the acting categories. But for all those nominations she has only won twice, and they were at the beginning of her career for Kramer vs. Kramer and Sophie's Choice. Her portrayal of the iconic Julia Child was the highlight of that movie, and it could be that The Academy will decide it's time for her to actually win another one of these after twenty-seven years.



Her co-star Mo'Nique has taken home plenty of awards so far this year for her scary portrayal as maybe the worst mother ever seen on screen, but it is newcomer Gabourey Sidibe's empathetic work in the title role that makes the intense trip worth taking. It would be a surprise to hear her name called come Oscar night, but it would also likely make for one of the most genuine on-stage breakdowns of emotion the Oscars have ever seen.



Carey Mulligan's 2009 has put her on the fast-track to stardom, culminating in the Best Actress Oscar nomination, and she'll have a number of high-profile projects hitting the screens in the next couple of years. I thought she was fantastic in An Education, playing the character's coming-of-age with grace and believability. As much as I loved the performance and was happy to see her get the nomination, I don't think she has any realistic chance this year. But she's on her way to a promising career.



Sandra Bullock had a great year, too. Despite the embarrassment of All About Steve, nobody but The Razzie Awards are going to hold it against her since the Romantic Comedy The Proposal was a humongous box office smash and the sports-based drama The Blind Side was an even BIGGER smash with a shocking $240-million and rising! Plus now she's wound up with the first Oscar nomination of her career, and other nominations and awards on top of it. At forty-five in a Hollywood landscape where ingénues come and go she's managed to survive and at this stage in her career have a lucky break of a year. Since she became a star in the early 1990s with the action blockbuster Speed and the Romantic Comedy While You Were Sleeping, she's hung around through a number of mostly uninspired formulaic comedies and dramadies some of which did OK numbers wise and kept her working but not many blockbusters or critical darlings in the lot. I don't think The Proposal or The Blind Side are really any better than some of the other things she's done and been more or less ignored for, but for whatever reason she hit the jackpot this time. Good for her, I guess. But is it enough for her to be named Best Actress over two veterans with Oscars and two newcomers looking for their first?


I hope it goes to Mulligan but don't expect it, suspect it'll go to Streep which I'm fine with, think it would be fun if Sidibe had her name called from the envelope, and really will only be disappointed if Bullock wins it. So, as these things go, it'll probably be Bullock. Ho-hum.






As for some things I consider snubs here, Robin Wright Penn did probably the best work of her career in Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee but the film was forgotten this awards season (too bad), Penélope Cruz was wonderful with Almodóvar again in Broken Embraces (though not the very best of their collaborations), especially considering Maya Rudolph had mostly worked small parts and almost exclusively in broad comedy on "SNL" and such I thought she was very good in Sam Mendes' Away We Go, since the Dardenne Brothers' Lorna's Silence wasn't officially released in the U.S. until 2009 I would have put Arta Dobroshi near the top of the list, not many Academy members have seen the Israeli film The Lemon Tree but Hiam Abbass was excellent, Natalie Portman did some of her best work yet in Brothers, even though Sunshine Cleaning was nothing especially new two-time-nominee Amy Adams gave another good performance there, and even in her fifties Michelle Pfieffer was at her sexiest in Chéri even if the movie was pedestrian.





Boy oh boy! This is a tough one. I guess I understand all the Bullock sentiment and I wouldn't even be surprised if she wins for all of the reasons that Holden already mentioned. The thing is. I do like her. I've liked her for quite some time. She's a sweety and easy on the eyes to be sure, plus she always plays parts that are obviously comfortable to her. She may very well be the queen of A- to B type rom/coms/action thrillers. Some of them, like, Practical Magic, 28 Days, Demolition Man, Speed, Gun Shy, The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, Miss Congeniality 1&2, The Proposal, are actually all quite good, charming, fun, lighthearted and whimsical in their own ways and a lot of that is due in large part to Sandra and her style onscreen. The Blind Side is also one of those films. Based on a true story, Sandra plays a Mother this time around and not surprisingly, she brings much of the same charm to this role that she did to so many other roles. Does she deserve an Oscar? Maybe. She certainly has paid some dues, but I don't know if that is going to equate to her name being called come March.



Meryl Streep on the other hand has most certainly paid her dues and it's high time she gets another Oscar. Her portrayal of perhaps the most iconic woman chef of all time, was, in a word. Wonderful. Julia Child was a joy to watch on television. So was Streep in this film. Maybe this isn't her best work, maybe this isn't "worthy" to some folks who don't appreciate just how terrific an actress Streep is. All my writing won't change that I expect. More's the pity... To put it simply, I don't buy into the idea that this is a weak year for female leads because Streep got nominated. I honestly think that's crazy talk. Look in to who Julia Child was and then watch Streep play this icon onscreen. Can you honestly say that Streep doesn't do a terrific job?



Gabby Sidibe will most likely not win this March and I guess that's just the way it is. I will however be rooting hard for her anyway. I think Precious was an absolutely stellar flick that should get a ton of awards, so, therefore it will most like get only the one for Mo'Nique. But this young lady did a fantastic job and without her there wouldn't have been the same film. Her narrative all throughout this movie was so sweet and so naďve it made me want to break down and cry and scream all at once. It was truly amazing to watch.



Carey Mulligan also promises to become another one of those young starlets that seems to have "big things" ahead of her. An Education is quite good and that's due in large part to her and Alfred Molina who plays her Father that in the end just wants the best for his daughter but must also support her for better or worse. It must be hard to be a Father of a daughter. That being said I can't really see her name being called this March.



And then there's one of my all time favorites. Helen Mirren is still just drop dead gorgeous at 65 and I'll bet my bottom dollar she'll show up to Oscar night looking like the knockout she is (sans underpants of course) looking to take home another trophy. I still have yet to see The Last Station so I can't really say whether or not I feel like she deserves it or not. Hopefully I'll get to before the night but if I don't I'll still be quietly (or not so quietly) rooting for her to flash the crowd before she goes in. But I digress...

So, yeah, I'm picking Streep, so that almost guarantees it that Bullock will win, but so be it. I'll actually be pretty happy for whichever one of these wonderful ladies wins.
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Carey Mulligan would be my choice



While I don't think Sandra Bullock should win, I think she will win.
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Streep is my choice although I haven't seen all of these





Yet another favorite. I think she gave BY FAR the least of the five nominated performances, but hey, she seems like a nice gal, and she did have the best of the major acceptance speeches.



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I was going for Streep. I thought it was a very delicate balancing act to catch the deep spirit and visceral parts of Julia Child without pulling a Dan Aykroyd.
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I have to ask: how does she "act like she's the queen of the U.S."? Everyone else praises her, to be sure, but I don't think she actively encourages it. Except by being a really incredible actress; that kinda encourages it.



No I don't think she encourages praise either Yoda. I'm surprised you think that Rauld. I've heard her a few times on the radio being interviewed over here in the UK, and she always seems to me to come across as very warm and natural. Quite funny too and giggly.



I am burdened with glorious purpose
I went with Streep -- I think this was a hard call, actually -- but Sandra's acceptance speech was worth it. She's so funny.

And Streep doesn't act like a "queen" at all. She actually seems rather humble about it all.



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Maybe I just don't know too much about her. I haven't seen a lot of her movies, but that's kind of how she initally rubs off on me





Yeah, I have no idea what about Meryl Streep rubs you the wrong way, but you can rest assured that it's just you. For someone who has the most acting Oscar nominations in the entire history of the award (SIXTEEN!), I think she projects an amazing amount of humility. The entire industry and overwhelming majority of the critics pretty universally consider her one of the if not the best actress of her generation, as does much of the film-going public. She's gone from doing almost exclusively dramas in the first part of her career to largely comedic and more crowd-pleasing fare in the past decade or so, and she's respected for both equally. Despite this nearly universal praise and acclaim, she is honestly self-deprecating and doesn't seem to have a stick up her butt about trying any number of genres or types of roles.

I suspect if you're getting any kind of "queen" vibe it's from how others (peers, media, fans) react to her and her long list of accomplishments, and not how she wears them herself.


But, you know, to each their own. If you want to endow Meryl Streep with Sharon Stone's personality, more power to you, I guess.