This one is just about as much of a lock as Mo'Nique in the Supporting Actress category. From the magnificent opening scene of Tarantino's pulpy revisionist blast
Inglourious Basterds this award belonged to Mr. Waltz and his indelible, instantly iconic Colonel Hans Landa, the diminutive and deceptively gregarious but efficiently brutal "Jew Hunter". He's won most every major and minor award leading up to the Oscars, starting way back at the Cannes Film Festival. If he doesn't win the Oscar it will be a huge upset. Too bad for the rest of the field.
Woody Harrelson was terrific as the senior member of a two-man military team assigned to alert families of fallen soldiers in
The Messenger. Woody had a great year also scoring in the mega-fun
Zombieland and popping up in the dumb world-ending spectacular of
2012. But it is his work in
The Messenger, reminding everybody of his previous Oscar nomination over a decade ago for
The People vs. Larry Flynt. Doesn't have any real chance of winning, but it should remind the industry of how much generally untapped potential he still has.
Stanley Tucci got the showcase role of the serial killer next door in
The Lovely Bones, but he might just as easily have been nominated for his work with Meryl Streep as Mr. Julia Child in
Julie & Julia. This is Tucci's first nomination, though he's been an excellent character actor and even director for years now. It's a bittersweet year for Stanley, with two great roles on screen but having lost his wife and mother of his three children to breast cancer back in April. That kind of natural sympathy coupled with his pair of good performances and body of respected work might have been enough to push him over the top in other years, but Christoph Waltz is an unstoppable juggernaut. And that Peter Jackson's
The Lovely Bones was largely a critical and box office disappointment doesn't help either.
Matt Damon of course already has an Oscar, but it's shared with pal Ben Affleck for writing
Good Will Hunting. He was also nominated as Best Actor for that film, though he lost to Jack Nicholson in
As Good As It Gets. This is his first nomination of any kind since 1998. He's had his career ups and downs and even become an object of ridicule at times, but he's built a solid resume and with the popular successes of the
Ocean's 13 series and the
Bourne franchise plus co-starring in ensembles like
Syriana and
The Departed, he's no lightweight. I thought he was much better as the pudgy loser in Soderbergh's
The Informant! this year, but he was pretty good as the fit rugby captain Francois Pienaar who decides to ally himself and his team with the new President Mandela in Eastwood's
Invictus. I think unfortunately for him perhaps his weakest moment of acting in the film comes during the finale of the big game when he gives his Gipper/Rudy/lets's-win-this-one-boys motivational speech on the field. He won't win this year, but if he keeps making smart choices in scripts and filmmakers he'll be back.
At the age of eighty, longtime veteran actor Christopher Plummer must truly be "honored just to be nominated". After over a hundred and fifty credits on film, television and stage he has finally made it to the Hollywood promised land. But the chances of his portrayal of Leo Tolstoy's latter days in
The Last Station has just about zero chance of actually winning the Academy Award. But after a career that includes
The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King, Murder by Decree, Malcolm X, 12 Monkeys, The Insider, A Beautiful Mind and the voice of the famous explorer Chalres Muntz in PIXAR's
Up, the Supporting Actor nomination is a nice capper to his long career.
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