Academy Awards 2012 Best Leading Actress nominees predictions (4th round)

1.

Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady

There's a therory that says that the AMPAS needs Meryl Streep more than Meryl Streep needs the AMPAS and I couldn't agree more! With an impressive score of 16 nominations and 2 wins, we can say that the Academy is "Streepaholic" and seeing her portraying the iconic and legendary/historic Margaret Thatcher in the biopic named The Iron Lady is almost a guarantee of Oscar nomination, specially when Thatcher had a unique speaking style and mannerisms and Streep shows it in the teaser trailer of movie. I don't use to predict an Oscar win when nominees lists aren't even out, but Streep is in dangerous contention for her third Academy Award win once Glenn Close performance in Albert Nobbs isn't the tour de force people were expecting and since Oscar voters love British real-life figures (Helen Mirren won an Oscar for The Queen and Colin Firth won for The King's Speech)... While the movie The Iron Lady may not be a very strong Oscar contender (there's a some Best Picture buzz around this one, but I disagree), I believe Streep will be raved as she always is, so I can see her 17th Oscar nomination happening. Even if she isn't meant to win, I believe the AMPAS will want to recognize (one of) the best actress(es) working today! She's Meryl Streep... Enough said!

2.

Viola Davis for The Help

Point nº1: Everybody love Viola, that's a fact! Point nº2: The Help seems to be a good acting showcase for all the ensemble cast, that's relative! Point nº3: Viola's character is the juiciest of the book, that's what the novel's readers say! Point nº4: Viola Davis is very talented and she can get an Oscar nomination for her performance in The Help, that's possible! In fact, Davis as the advantage of being a kind of "sweet" on screen, in the way that's hard not falling in love for her portray of a (black) maid in The Help. A good part between an ensemble cast isn't an Oscar guarantee since the other cast members are extremely talented... The Help seems a kind of a lighter The Color Purple and the Academy loves a good comedy once in a while, so I can see things happening for Viola even if she is campaigned for the Best Leading Actress category (where she belongs): critics and audiences agreeded that she was able to carry the whole movie by being the heart of the motion picture. No black actress was nominated in the Best Leading Actress category since Halle Berry for her Oscar-winning performance in Monster's Ball, so I think it's time to give the Best Leading Actress nominees list a darker color... She's a great actress with a great role in a Oscar buzzy movie which is contending in the Best Picture category, so I think Viola Davis will get a Best Leading Actress nod and she will be seen as a strong contender for a win, that's sure!

3.

Elizabeth Olsen for Martha Marcy May Marlene

Since Sundance Film Festival, Elizabeth Olsen have been receiving a lot of Oscar buzz for her portray of a damaged girl who's haunted by memories and an increasing paranoia after being part of a cult in Martha Marcy May Marlene. At first, I thought it was just a nice post-Sundance fase for Olsen, but the buzz around her kept strong during and after Cannes Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival and she may take the breakthrough performance spot of the Best Leading Actress Oscar nominees list. lsen will need a strong independent awards season in order to keep the buzz strong, but I'm confident that she will have the same treatment Jennifer Lawrence had last year for Winter's Bone and be ahead of some young beauties who are also contending for Best Leading Actress this year. She is considered one of the biggest revelations of this year and she seems to be taking serious acting career, unlike her mediatic sisters - the Olsen twins. Elizabeth Olsen is the unexpected Best Leading Actress contender that emmerged early this year at Sundance and the "so raved breakthrough performance" factor seems to almost guarantee a nomination for Martha Marcy May Marlene in the Best Leading Actress category.

4. 

Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs

Close got very good reviews from Telluride and Toronto film festivals, but it wasn't the performance people were expecting... Reviews praise her performance in Rodrigo Garcia's Albert Nobbs a lot, but it is just no "dynamite" thing, but a very believable performance as a serene and restrained cross-dresser woman who lives as a man in order to reach her dream: opening her own store! It is the kind of role the AMPAS loves and Glenn Close will likely get a Best Leading Actress nomination at the end of this season after all these years of absence from the Oscar nominees lists, but it isn't a guarantee: she will need a good awards season and the studio will have to campaign her "comeback" in order to Close get the nod she deserves. The movie itself is a personal project to Close (who also wrote the screenplay) since she played the title role in the Off-Broadway production that gave her an Obie Award and the AMPAS loves when personal projects come true, but will her outstanding subtle performance get noticied enough?  She's the actress who received five Academy Award nominations in the 80's for some of her iconic performances movies like in Fatal Attraction or Dangerous Liaisons and since there stills a bit of the early buzz that was around Albert Nobbs before the film festivals, I believe it can happen easier than what we may think!

5.

Charlize Theron for Young Adult

Jason Reitman already directed four Oscar nominated performances (Ellen Page for Juno and George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick for Up In the Air) and I have a feeling that Charlize Theron can deliver the next one in the upcoming Young Adult. Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Reitman, Young Adult tells the story of a writer who's back to her home town and tries to seduce her ex-boyfriend who started a new life without her. Theron's character seems a kind of childish and selfish woman and having such a character delivering Diablo Cody's written lines, I can see a kind of Juno in her 30's... Theron is extremely talented, but she has been away from awards recognition too long due to uninteresting career choices, but I can see her shinning a lot in Young Adult. Reitman never directed a "bad" movie and he always casts the right actor or actress for a certain role, so I've some high hopes on Charlize Theron's performance. She's beautiful, she can act, she's an Oscar winner and she's looking for puting her career back on track and since everybody seem to love her, I can see the AMPAS nominating her for Young Adult. Give her critical acclaim and the producers and the awards season will do the rest! Wouldn't you love to see Theron portraying a woman who refuses to grow up as she goes older? It would be delicious, in my opinion!

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6.

Rooney Mara for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

After a mediatic and competitive casting process, Rooney Mara emerged as the chosen actress to portray Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which created great expectations around Mara's acting abilities and around her performance. Last year, Noomi Rapace was a contender for portraying the same role in the Swedish adaptation of the book, but in spite of being terrific and more than playing Lisbeth Salander (she embodied Lisbeth Salander), Rapace didn't score an Oscar nomination, which make some folks aprehensive about Rooney Mara's Oscar chances... I mean, in order to be in the Oscar race for a Best Leading Actress nomination, Mara must be as good or even better than Rapace's interpretation and hope the movie will be even more sucessful and got enough awards attention (which it's not difficult since The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is seen as a serious Best Picture Oscar contender). Mara was incredible in her two scenes in The Social Network, so can you imagine how fantastic can be watching her during more than one hour? She looks the part better than Rapace and she is so photogenic, beautiful and sexually appelaing in such a weird way and such a kind of unreadable/mysterious eyes... Have you ever seen the lastest The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie trailer? She is magnetic! Her voice says something like "I don't care" but her eyes are so expressive, the mirror of a damaged sould! I think she will impress most people, but she will always have to fight Noomi Rapace's Lisbeth's ghosts...

7. 

Keira Knightley for A Dangerous Method

Keira Knightley's raved performance as Sabina in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method is something really raw, physical and hysterical, according to reviews, but some say that the incredible range she showed in her performance is more quantity and less quality. Everything in her performance description seems "Oscary": historical figure, accent, deglamorization, hysteria... but for some reason, the fact of having the critics divided about her performance (some called it "astonishing" and others "laughable") make me believe she will divide Oscar voters too and maybe not get enough votes. She's incredibly talented, extremely good in dramatic roles and she had a couple of strong post-Oscar-nomination performances in movies like Atonement (really good one!), The Duchess or Never Let Me Go, which plays in her benefit, but A Dangerous Method lost a lot of Best Picture buzz and it makes things harder for her to get a Best Leading Actress nomination. Plus, AMPAS may just not be into Cronenberg's work, so they may not be into Knightley's performance as they weren't for Viggo Mortensen's and Maria Bello's in A History of Violence... I can see her being nominated and being snubed, it's a kind of ambiguous I know, but I think it will be all about awards season in her case. She's loved by the media, so I can see her getting her second nod...

8. 

Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia

In spite of being the winner of the Cannes Film Festival Award of Best Actress for her performance in Melancholia, Kirsten Dunst was already in a more comfortable position for the awards season, once she seems to be loosing her Oscar buzz... She has no nomination guaranteed for her work in Melancholia, no actress who works with Lars von Trier has, but the raves are sensational and describe her performance has a depressed bride who fears the end of the world with words like "convincing" or "exceptional" and "the best work of her career", but it seems that prediction folks forgot them... In fact, Dunst has some shinning performances in her career like her works in Interview with the Vampire, Little Women, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette or All Good Things and she never got the major awards' recognition, so, maybe it's her destiny being underrated. Noontroversial one, exploring unconventional themes in his film and saying unconventional things... Emily Watson was nominated for Breaking Waves, Björk was almost nominated for Dancer In the Dark and Charlotte Grainsbourg got some buzz for Antichrist, so maybe Dunst is closer than we think, since she's a well-known face in Hollywood and Melancholia was a great acting showcase for her. It's all about the awards season: if she gets enough support from critics' associations, I can see an Oscar nod happening for Dunst.

9.

Felicity Jones for Like Crazy

One of this year's Sundance's babe, a beautiful beautiful woman and a charming actress, Felicity Jones must be taken under serious consideration due to her awarded performance in the indie romantic drama Like Crazy. She plays a British girl who falls in love for an American student, but they must live far from each other, suffering the consequences of being far away from the loved one. At the first sight, Jone's part seems as heavy as Michelle Williams' Academy Award nominated one in Blue Valentine (maybe not so heavy) and once Jones received the Special Jury Prize for Acting - Dramatic, the same Mo'Nique received for her Oscar winning performance in Precious, Felicity seems to have good reason to smile for a possible Oscar nod. According to reviews, she's very intense in Like Crazy and there's the famous and raved "emotionally naked" shower scene, that, according to some, was one of the acting higher points of the movie. But Jones has another Sundance girl on her way, Elizabeth Olsen, and Rooney Mara, who are far more popular and mediatic than her and who also compete for the "breakthrough performance of the year" title, turning an Oscar nomination harder than what a Sundance win promised. She will need to do a great indie awards season in order to get recognized by major awards institutions and by the AMPAS.

10.

Jodie Foster for Carnage

Reviews from Venice praise her performance as a mother who agrees to meet the parents of her a boy who was involved in a fight with her child. Foster's part (Penelope in the movie, Veronica on stage productions) is a kind of a delicious one for any actor (Marcia Gay Harden received the Tony of Best Leading Actress in a Play in 2009 for her portray of this character), having a balanced mix of comedy and drama that requires good acting chops and it seems that she brings the character alive successfuly! But the major reason for Oscar buzz around Jodie Foster performance in Roman Polanski's Carnage isn't only its quality but also the fact that it has been a long time since Academy Award winner Jodie Foster received her last Oscar nomination (1994's Nell) and since her most impressive performance since then was in 2007's The Brave One, so it is all about a kind of the comeback of the favorite daughter to her parent's house (the Kodack Theatre). To be completely honest, I can't see Foster being nominated instead of any of the top five actresses of my Best Leading Actress predictions, but the fact is that she is loved by the Academy and there are some surprises during the nominees announcement, sometimes. 

P.S.: Stephanie Sigman may emmerge as a possible Best Leading Actress contender for her breakthrough performance in the film festivals hit and Mexico Best Foreign Picture submission - Miss Bala


MOST RECENT ACADEMY AWARDS 2012 BEST LEADING ACTRESS NOMINEES PREDICTIONS: 
http://cinemaandpopcorn.blogspot.com/2011/11/academy-awards-2012-best-leading.html