The Golden Globes, trade unions, film critics and just about everyone else in Hollywood have weighed in on 2006's best film achievements, helping to solidify the Academy Awards picture.
January 18, 2007 (Press Release) --
With Oscar nominations due out Tuesday, a few clear front-runners and some intriguing wild cards have emerged, along with an unusually open race for the top prize.
Still to come are honors by the Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild, whose nominations came out earlier this month. Those awards should help sort out the much of the Oscar outlook, but unlike most years, when a solid favorite often emerges, the best-picture category could remain up for grabs right up to awards night Feb. 25.
A look at how Oscar season is shaping up:
THE SURE THINGS:
Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker seemingly sewed up the best-actress and actor categories from the minute their films debuted last fall.
A grand dame of British drama, Mirren looks unbeatable for her turn as prim Elizabeth II in "The Queen." Mirren brings marvelous haughtiness and humanity to the maligned monarch as she blindly ignores then awkwardly acknowledges her subjects' pleas for royal reassurance and comfort over the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
If there's a best-actress dark horse, it's Penelope Cruz, who delivers a career performance full of heart and humor in "Volver," playing a woman coping with bizarre and possibly supernatural crises in her domestic life.
But with Mirren in the mix, Cruz almost certainly has to settle for runner-up status.
The quiet, even-keeled Whitaker, known more for hushed menace or gentle humor, explodes on screen as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland," presenting a figure of towering passion and depraved cruelty.
The fictionalized story casts the bombastic, big-hearted and brutal Amin first as mentor later as tormentor of a young Scottish doctor seeking adventure in Africa.
The only actor with an outside chance at usurping Whitaker's Oscar crown is:
THE LION IN WINTER:
All the hard, hedonistic mileage of Peter O'Toole's life and that of his character, a frail but still lecherous old actor shows clearly on his face in "Venus," a portrait of a man whose libido still functions, even if his body doesn't.
O'Toole is tied with Richard Burton his co-star in 1964's "Becket," which earned them both best-actor nominations for the Oscar-futility record among actors, each nominated seven times but never winning.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
Still to come are honors by the Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild, whose nominations came out earlier this month. Those awards should help sort out the much of the Oscar outlook, but unlike most years, when a solid favorite often emerges, the best-picture category could remain up for grabs right up to awards night Feb. 25.
A look at how Oscar season is shaping up:
THE SURE THINGS:
Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker seemingly sewed up the best-actress and actor categories from the minute their films debuted last fall.
A grand dame of British drama, Mirren looks unbeatable for her turn as prim Elizabeth II in "The Queen." Mirren brings marvelous haughtiness and humanity to the maligned monarch as she blindly ignores then awkwardly acknowledges her subjects' pleas for royal reassurance and comfort over the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
If there's a best-actress dark horse, it's Penelope Cruz, who delivers a career performance full of heart and humor in "Volver," playing a woman coping with bizarre and possibly supernatural crises in her domestic life.
But with Mirren in the mix, Cruz almost certainly has to settle for runner-up status.
The quiet, even-keeled Whitaker, known more for hushed menace or gentle humor, explodes on screen as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland," presenting a figure of towering passion and depraved cruelty.
The fictionalized story casts the bombastic, big-hearted and brutal Amin first as mentor later as tormentor of a young Scottish doctor seeking adventure in Africa.
The only actor with an outside chance at usurping Whitaker's Oscar crown is:
THE LION IN WINTER:
All the hard, hedonistic mileage of Peter O'Toole's life and that of his character, a frail but still lecherous old actor shows clearly on his face in "Venus," a portrait of a man whose libido still functions, even if his body doesn't.
O'Toole is tied with Richard Burton his co-star in 1964's "Becket," which earned them both best-actor nominations for the Oscar-futility record among actors, each nominated seven times but never winning.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
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