Critics in College: November 2014

Monday, November 24, 2014

FEATURE: Why people need to be watching THE COMEBACK

/Buzzfeed

Anyone that saw Sunday night’s episode of HBO’s The Comeback is likely a little shaken up.

In it, very-contemporary male showrunner Paulie G. (Lance Barber) managed to mentally and emotionally abuse his star Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) – operating within the bounds of “artistic license” – by writing her into a scene in which her character Mallory (closely based on Valerie herself) is to give a Paulie G. stand-in (played by Seth Rogen; more on that in a minute) a blowjob. It’s not the act itself that is so awful; it’s that Paulie himself tells Valerie that the scene’s purpose is to humiliate the “character,” that Valerie’s role essentially amounts to “shut up and take it,” and that no matter how clearly she demonstrates that she is incredibly troubled and uncomfortable, Valerie is expected to do her occupational duty and humiliate herself in the process.

And just prior to this, she is instructed to – in a “fantasy sequence” scene – stand between two completely-nude, curvaceous women. Director Michael Patrick King holds the camera on Valerie and the two others for a full minute, without a cut, without a shift of the camera – there is no reprieve here, nor when Valerie is asked to further denigrate herself.

It’s an unflinching, unwavering and frankly brave exposé of the relationship between male showrunners and female talent – which is common for HBO. More impressively, The Comeback makes its point – a point many would like to shrug off, or ignore, or dub hyperbolic – with startling clarity. It’s flat-out impossible not to see the abusiveness here, to see how Valerie is being absolutely violated as both an artist and a person; and yet, it works perfectly within the show. Valerie remains absolutely clueless. She won’t admit to herself even that this is completely over-the-line (“It’s HBO,” she keeps telling herself), so she filters her discomfort and anger through a repeated reminder that “This didn’t really happen” – because, after all, Paulie G's series “Seeing Red” is semi-autobiographical – and a jarring rape joke. She can’t acknowledge her own feelings, but her strange behavior makes it clear to everyone from Mr. Rogen to the audience that what’s going on is just wrong. For that, The Comeback deserves all the credit in the world: the situation here is disturbingly truthful and intentionally overt. Again, anyone watching must have been shaken by this elongated episode-ending sequence, regardless of their feelings toward Valerie as a person. It was too horrifying, too obvious, too real.

Unfortunately, “anyone watching” sadly includes an unfortunately small group of people. As far as gender politics in television go – and this year, from Transparent to Orange Is the New Black to Masters of Sex, has been somewhat groundbreaking – I sincerely cannot recall a more effective subversion of the new forms of misogyny and inequalities so prevalent here and now. It’s confrontational even as it’s fully within The Comeback’s brand of ruthless cringe comedy. But, again, almost no one is watching.

There is great irony in the fact that the two series that immediately come to mind after watching this Comeback episode are not just male-led HBO dramas, but also their highest-rated original programs. This year, both True Detective and Game of Thrones have been chastised for their gender politics – for very different reasons, with Thrones’ issues certainly more relevant to the issue at hand here – even as they broke ratings records and earned substantial acclaim in the aggregate. The season premiere of The Comeback nabbed 300,000 viewers in its initial airing; the most recently-aired episode of Game of Thrones nabbed 7.1 million – that 300,000 makes up for less than 5% of that GoT audience. Granted, Game of Thrones is among television’s biggest shows, but I don’t see The Comeback breaking HBOGo anytime soon, either.

Sonia Saraiya’s highly-cited “Rape of Thrones” article from earlier this year zeroed in on what became a hugely-controversial element of Game of Thrones’ most recent season: a rape that wasn’t treated as a rape, and that the creators did not view as a rape. I won’t waste time here repeating that piece’s arguments, but the parallel is clear. I’ve written in the past about the fact that Thrones’ fourth season is an anomaly among prestige dramas, in the sense that its writers’ room consisted exclusively of men (they are all white, and it should be noted, Thrones’ handling of race has also come under attack recently). The scene’s director Alex Graves essentially described the rape as a half-rape – which doesn’t exist – and creators David Benioff & D.B. Weiss similarly said it “becomes consensual by the end.” Watch the scene: it was rape, and few in the television-watching community would dispute that. Subsequent episodes, specifically their handling of victim Cersei and attacker (and, well, brother) Jaime, were disastrous in this regard: Cersei’s treatment from writers alternated between nasty and pitiful, as she was generally stripped of agency and respect. For a show with a deep cast of strong female characters, it was simply unacceptable – and it’s the type of problem fans of the show have encountered on multiple occasions. According to Salon’s Lili Loofbourow, “Game of Thrones, with rare exceptions, all but ignores the gaze of viewers who appreciate the male form … I’m used to seeing breast after breast after buttock after breast while understanding that they're not there for me.”

To watch Valerie stand lifelessly between the two young, nude women – injected into the “fantasy” because Paulie G. can’t get off on old, clothed Valerie alone – is to reflect on Game of Thrones and others like it. It’s an image so normalized in premium cable television that The Comeback, by completely stripping its eroticism and supposed “artistry,” puts a monstrous face on a trope too-easily accepted. It’s an HBO head writer, King and Kudrow so pointedly explain, that is putting this image on camera (on HBO no less). And that Paulie G. casts Rogen, who eventually comes to Valerie’s defense, is just a perfect demonstration of the combined idolization and degradation that a person like Paulie G. performs. That the show is so eerily recognizable has made some critics uncomfortable, but here rests its power and essentiality. To watch this and say “Eh, I don’t buy it” is, at best, straining.

The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum notably took down True Detective late in its run after the series had attained universal acclaim, aforementioned record-breaking ratings and a firm place in the zeitgeist. A driving reason: “To state the obvious: while the male detectives of True Detective are avenging women and children, and bro-bonding over “crazy pussy,” every live woman they meet is paper-thin. Wives and sluts and daughters—none with any interior life.” It’s a harsh criticism – outside of the series’ two leads, I’d argue that every peripheral character is thinly-drawn which, depending on your opinion, is either intended or a weakness – but not an unwarranted one. That critique is embedded in this Comeback season’s construct; Valerie is not permitted to improvise (unlike Rogen), and her character is thinly-villainous whereas the casting of Rogen indicates that the Paulie G. character boasts the actor’s charming dimensionality. I’m a big fan of True Detective for the many things it did so right, but at the same time, it’s hard to argue that Nussbaum is wrong. Moreover, the “intentionality” claimed by creator Nic Pizzolatto and the series’ strident defenders loses legitimacy when its only female-centric episode was, quite drastically, its weakest effort.

HBO half-hours consistently earn lower ratings than their 60-minute counterparts, and the mega-success of both GoT and True Detective is additionally explained by an epic, big-budget fantasy setting (in the former’s case) and old-fashioned movie-star appeal (Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in the latter’s). The disappointment here is that what’s at work, in terms of gender and sexual politics, is problematic and yet brushed aside. Critics can write thinkpieces on both of these series, but realistically, their impact on these audiences is minimal. For a majority of viewers, there’s not a clear-enough understanding that one, this problem really does exist; two, that this problem can be fixed; and three, that to hold writers accountable for underwriting or undermining female characters is necessary and vital. The Comeback provoked that conversation. It underlined those three points with great precision, rendering any defense of the issue at hand completely moot.

If only more people were paying attention.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

2013 Throwback: Women are front and center in ENOUGH SAID and IN A WORLD...

/THR

It’s no secret that Enough Said, the fifth feature written and directed by Nicole Holofcener (Please Give, Friends with Money), posthumously stars James Gandolfini (The Sopranos) in one of his final roles. His performance here is a tender one, and a notable departure from his known on-screen persona; he is just a highlight, however, in Enough Said, which easily ranks among Holofcener’s finest works and among the year’s very best.

Particularly impressive about Enough Said is its welcoming of reflection; thinking over this film allows for its thoughtfulness and complexities to shine through. Yet taken at face value – a love story between two divorced parents struggling to send their children off to college – the film is perfectly lovely and enjoyable, a fresh, laid-back take on the romantic comedy. Enough Said suits a diversity of viewing styles, and rewards those seeking escapism as much as those wanting something more.

Gandolfini plays second-fiddle to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ (Recently an Emmy-winner for Veep) protagonist Eva, a freelancing masseuse surrounded by bitter people-of-a-certain-age, including her best friend Sarah (a charming Toni Collette) and ex-husband Peter (Toby Huss). She turns to her daughter, Ellen (Tracey Fairaway), for brighter company, but is on the verge of losing her to college. When she meets Gandolfini’s Albert at a party, the two immediately connect: they are both divorced, both struggling to let go of their daughters, both greatly hostile to the idea of “romance” – but they are, principally, in need of a little companionship. Eva also happens to meet Marianne (Catherine Keener, a regular of Holofcener’s), and the two strike up a friendship (though she only adds to the circle of bitter, unfulfilled people in Eva’s orbit). Marianne’s connection to Albert, however – unknown to us and to Eva – makes her presence more narratively integral than originally expected.

The conflicts here – the sullenness of middle-age, the pending empty nest of the parent, the reluctance to try for love yet again – are nothing new, and have been done to death in American fiction. But there is something very special about Enough Said. Holofcener’s script is quite terrific, from her crackling dialogue to the dense ideas filtered through her broadly-comedic premise. She writes the interactions between Albert and Eva effortlessly, perfectly capturing the awkwardness, excitement and hope of new love, and her knack for humor is again on display.

Enough Said is a great film not because this is a love story rooted in authenticity, nor because it’s bitingly funny – though it is refreshingly genuine, and comedically on-point. No, this is a great film because of how dead-on, how aggressively, and how intimately Holofcener confronts the realities and intricacies of middle-age life and human behavior. When Eva realizes Marianne’s connection to Albert, her subsequent decisions might make you pull your hair out. She behaves irrationally, dooming both her new friendship and her promising romance in the process. You want to ask: Why the hell is she doing this? But it’s remarkably familiar. Enough Said makes fools out of all of us, of our tendency to turn what looks like heaven into hell.

Holofcener writes what she knows, a strength many of her critics refer to as a weakness. She depicts the day-to-day life of the middle- to upper-class, yes, but the claim that she is merely making movies about “white people problems” is, simply, off. When Sarah and her husband (Ben Falcone) go over the issue of whether to fire their maid with sad repetitiveness, the message is not “see, look, we all have to deal with incompetent maids!” Rather, Holofcener presents an insignificant yet familiar disagreement, examining with piercing accuracy the damaging patterns that develop as relationships grow stale.

Of course, nothing gets sold here unless it is backed by the performance, and Louis-Dreyfus – a mostly-exclusive sitcom actress – is more than up to the task. For much of the beginning of the film, she treads acquainted territory. Zany, quick-witted and charming, Eva can sometimes feel like the movie-version of Elaine from Seinfeld or Christine from The New Adventures of Old Christine. But as Enough Said darkens its tone, Louis-Dreyfus sparkles, conveying a shaky vulnerability and emotional insecurity that, upon reflection, had been on-display throughout. You can get lost in what she’s doing here, in the sheer fact that this feels less like a performance than a person; when Eva breaks down, however, it’s clear just how good Louis-Dreyfus’ work is here.

She is matched by Gandolfini’s warm, sensitive performance as Albert, and a collection of admirably shaded supporting characters. Keener, in particular, continues to reveal new abilities in Holofcener’s films, this time playing a grating New Age-type that’s all too familiar yet never runs into cliché.

Enough Said illustrates harsh realities, and the patterns that evolve as life goes on – a resistance to love, a dependence on our children, a nitpicking of trivial details. Holofcener delicately implicates her audience, but she does so whilst on Eva’s journey: it’s one where real change is possible, where life can be lived, and where happiness is, however foggy and in the distance, within reach. In a year filled with tension-ridden stories of horror and survival – from 12 Years a Slave to Gravity to Captain Phillips – Enough Said, mercifully and gracefully, stands apart from the pack. A

/NYTimes

With In a World..., writer-director-star Lake Bell (Over Her Dead Body) critiques the rampant sexism prevalent in a very specific business – the voiceover industry – as a way of making larger claims about similar attitudes in Hollywood and beyond.

Aspiring voiceover superstar Carol (Bell) contends with an industry just not in the market for a female voice – literally. Her father, Sam (Fred Melamed of A Serious Man), is a legend in the industry, up for a lifetime achievement award and fresh off the publication of his memoir (Think Frances Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola, pre-Lost in Translation). By honing in on such a specific business, Bell effectively throws a set of problems at the screen, and aptly applies them in a larger context. It is no coincidence that Bell is one of only two female-writer directors – the other being Holofcener, oddly enough – to have their films reach a remotely substantial market this year. There is a personal truth to every moment in this movie.

Carol is marginalized throughout, and Bell carefully tracks this from all sides. Her father patronizes her, telling her to instead focus on the funny voices she has created (most humorously, her Russian Star Wars character). As her career begins taking off, her chief competition, Gustav (Ken Marino, Party Down), does not care to know who “this woman," i.e. his competition, actually is – to the point where he mistakenly sleeps with her. She is always the woman, rarely the person, and never Carol. It is a credit to Bell for clearly laying this out without hitting you over the head with it.

In a World... is pleasurable, and Bell’s smart approach to sexism lifts it above cookie-cutter fare. There is not much beyond this, however – the picture as a whole does not come together. There are subplots that do not really connect: her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins, who also made a brief appearance in Enough Said) makes a stupid mistake and struggles to put back together her marriage – while Watkins is wonderful and works great with Bell, her moments on the screen never translate into anything beyond mere filler. Ditto a romantic subplot between Carol and voiceover producer Louis (Demetri Martin): it just doesn’t add much to Carol as a character besides “damn it, why won’t you pick someone that’s good for you?” It can be sweet, even affecting – but it is inessential and peripheral.

In a World... is pretty light fare, even if it remains a strong debut from Bell. Her presence as an actress is extremely appealing, and as a writer she proves to have a confident, unique voice. While I am not so sure about her directorial capabilities – in general, the style here is flat and disallows the proper integration of the film’s many disparate parts – In a World... is highly-enjoyable and gently-provocative cinema. B

FEATURE: How IVORY TOWER is starting an essential conversation

Ivory Tower – directed by Andrew Rossi – is the most important documentary film of the year. It’s dealing with an often-brushed aside issue: the soaring costs of higher education and the decline of education's value. Peter Thiel – the cofounder of Paypal and the creator of a $100,000 scholarship which encourages students to drop out and start a business – presents to us the problem in a nutshell: “Twenty years ago we would have said all the kids who weren’t going to college were the victims. Now we’re saying that it’s the kids who are going to college who are the victims. It’s like a sub-prime mortgage broker who ripped you off and talked you into buying a house you couldn’t afford. Education is in some ways more insidious than housing.” Costs are out of control. The cost of educating our kids, proportioned to healthcare and food, has quadrupled in the last decade. The costs are not borne by tax-payers – they are borne by students and their parents. Debt leaves young people immobile. It prevents them from achieving their dreams. The ivory-tower institutions are not blameless in this - they are hiding something, contributing to the problem in unforgivable ways.

The majority of students don’t study more than five hours a week. Liberal-leaning professors – people who students look up to as examples – are immersed in credential-culture, writing books nobody reads to get promoted and teach our kids things society find meaningless. They decry capitalism yet profit from it immensely. They are the ‘Ivory Tower’ – immersed in an abstract world of their own, asserting their knowledge as important when, in reality, regular working-class individuals could care less about what they know.

Yet college is supposed to be the way we climb the social ladder. But the Ivory Tower also tells us a liberal-arts education is priceless: but is it worth going $100,000 into debt? Is it worth the $1 trillion deficit our country is running on student loans? Colleges have embraced a business-model while clouding their intentions in the rhetoric of the liberal-arts. Romantic high-school students – ready to leave high-school (a broken institution as well) – are eager to find a place where they can grow up, feel independent, take charge of what they want to learn. Personally, I’ve romanticized college probably from the time I was 12 years old. And what the Ivory Tower is laying out for you is that the higher education bubble is bursting, that the goals of the liberal arts – to foster citizenship and civic responsibility – are being sold out in favor a profit-maximizing model.

Many parents don’t want to deny their kids what they were given – that opportunity to have the “college experience,” – but what is the college experience really? It differs amongst individuals and institutions. Race and class divides our attitudes towards higher learning: wealthier people are more likely value it as a right of passage into their comfortable lives while poorer people treat education as a necessity to survive in the job-market and achieve some sort of financial stability. Harvard is seen as the gold-standard – they are one of the 1.25% of universities in the country to offer full need-based aid. Ivory Tower does a great job - not only of criticizing this system - but exemplifying its values as well: a black student goes from being homeless, from barely surviving in the worst neighborhood in Cincinnati, to getting a full scholarship to attend Harvard. He’s having trouble – but he’s succeeding where he once thought he couldn’t.

That’s the beauty of college – it has a way of telling our most marginalized citizens that they matter. Rossi navigates between Harvard – the pinnacle, the gold-standard - and Arizona State, a school which is infamously known as one of the top party schools in the country. These institutions make their fortune off of attracting out-of-state students – who will pay full tuition, go to the football games (sports correlates with higher tuition) and party hard. They bring down the quality of the education, standards become lower and kids leave college knowing nothing. These schools cost more to attend than an institution like Harvard yet they are overcrowded, de-value professors and students and allow many to cruise by. Degrees are becoming inflated – they don’t mean anything anymore because everyone who can afford one can buy it.

But the social function colleges provide are important and the documentary doesn't fail to acknowledge this. Spelman College – a historically black, all-female school – historically has helped empower and embolden black women. Spelman serves an academic and a social function – but, while costs continue to rise throughout the country, can we justify this social gain with this grave fiscal cost?

And now bastions of socialist education are falling prey to the capitalist vision. Cooper Union – a New York school which prided itself on historically not charging tuition – has started as of Fall 2014. It prompted a 65-day protest in president Jamshed Bharucha’s office. During the commencement ceremony, as he delivers the address, the students turned their backs on on the man who invested the school’s financial resources into hedge-funds and drove the school into bankruptcy. He is not held accountable. This teaches us one thing: that the men and women who are running these institutions – who are all making over $500,000 a year – contribute to this damaging privatization, which allows the tuitions costs of universities to keep increasing.

San Jose State University is bankrupt as well, and – in the documentary – partners with Udacity, a low-cost, online remedial course system. But the students fail. The system fails them. Replacing professors with computers are also not the answer to cut costs. Rossi has one message: no simple answer to solving the higher education dilemma exists.

And then we have Silicon Valley techies trying to hack the system of higher learning, creating apps to replace this lurching ‘Ivory Tower’. They’re just another example of the many alternatives higher education is forcing us to entertain.

In actuality, Rossi treats his subject with very little depth. The point-of-view feels scattered because there is no simple solution. Schools - in this marketplace - are struggling to survive so they increase costs. Students - believing that an "liberal-arts education" - are going to take out the loans to get it.

The truth is that our parents have no idea how to criticize the system – they’ll blame us for demanding an education in the liberal arts before they’ll look at how the government has failed us. We privatized education in the same way we privatized healthcare – and now we’re left with a system that is fundamentally failing our kids. It’s become about schools surviving whilst making money – it’s no longer an experience tailored to the student. And those that are - is it worth the cost? The rising debt? The crashing of this bubble? It’s up to us – with our parents and our children – to have a real conversation about this and do what the Ivory Tower doesn’t want us to: think critically about what we’re paying for and what the costs of higher education are. The idea of college holds a certain allure – but we need to examine the system with a critical eye. Ronald Reagan, in 1985, said the following quote:

"Education is not the means of showing people how to get what they want. Education is an exercise by means of which enough men, it is hoped, will learn to want what is worth having."

He contributed to this privatization; as governor of California, he cut funding for California-state schools. As president, he cut federal funding for public universities. He asks us in this quote to learn what is worth having. How can our kids even know what they want? Who knew what they wanted to 21? The only thing a young kid deserves is the remote freedom to not be burdened by astronomical debt, to receive a degree which matters less and less as the bubble of debt increase. Our kids incur the cost; our government profits off of their ignorance. It's time to think critically about higher education - they sure don't want us to.

2014 Oscar Predictions

Updated: 01/09/2014

/IFC

DGA AWARDS: Nominations announced Jan. 13

1. Richard Linklater for Boyhood
2. Alejandro G. Inarritu for Birdman
3. Clint Eastwood for American Sniper
4. Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game
5. Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel
6. David Fincher for Gone Girl
7. Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher
8. Ava DuVernay for Selma
9. Dan Gilroy for Nighrcrawler

ACADEMY AWARDS: Nominations announced Jan. 15

BEST PICTURE

1. Boyhood – It's dominated the critics' circuit and has popped up on every necessary precursor list. Assuming the guilds show it sufficient love next month, it's the absolute frontrunner.

2. The Imitation Game – Here's the thing: The Imitation Game is not going to win Best Director. It's unfathomable to imagine a scenario in which there's a Picture/Director split three years in a row... considering it's never happened.

3. Birdman – If it wins SAG ensemble, it'll be in the conversation for the win.

4. The Theory of Everything – It's been recognized everywhere necessary so far; it appears safe.

5. Whiplash – PGA recognition for a small indie like this indicates it's all but sure to go all the way

6.   The Grand Budapest Hotel – One of the very few to earn substantial love from SAG, PGA, the Globes and Critics' Choice alike. Time to stop underestimating.
7.   Selma – The PGA snub was a shocker. Screeners were late, as they have been, but we still have no indication this one has industry support. At the very least, not even making the top 10 on a preferential ballot indicates a win is probably out of reach.
8.   American Sniper – Red hot right now, breaking box office records and hitting the guilds surprisingly well.

9. Nightcrawler – Support has been popping up for Nightcrawler left and right, and it might be a stronger player than anyone's expecting.
10.   Foxcatcher – Broad support across diverse groups indicates that this one has legs. But is it too dark?
11.   Gone Girl – The primary challenge for Gone Girl is that guild love similarly went to Fincher's last modestly-reviewed box office hit, Dragon Tattoo. But it's faring well right now.
12.   Mr. Turner – Expect a big lift from BAFTA; could it fill the year's Philomena slot? Reviews are through the roof for this one.
13.   Unbroken – Ouch. PGA snub is likely too significant for this blockbuster to overcome.
14.   Into the Woods – With surprising and telling snubs from both SAG and PGA, it looks out of it at this point.

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Richard Linklater for Boyhood – Globe nod + Critics' Choice nod + Best Picture frontrunner, pt. 1.
2. Alejandro González-Inarritu for Birdman – Globe nod + Critics' Choice nod + Best Picture frontrunner, pt. 2.

3. Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game – The Globes and the Critics' Choice passed him over, even though they liked his film. Can Tyldum stand out in a crowd of big names?
4. Clint Eastwood for American Sniper – I'm expecting the DGA to nod him, which is normally a good omen.

5.   Damien Chazelle for Whiplash – Remember when Benh Zeitlan got in over Kathryn Bigelow, Ben Affleck and Tom Hooper for Beasts of the Southern Wild? Chazelle has a similar appeal, only his competition is a lot thinner.
6.   Ava DuVernay for Selma – Her film needs to rally, stat.
7.   Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel – His movie is faring so well right now, and his hitherto absence in this category so well-known, that I could easily imagine him surprising.

8. Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher – It’s the type of cool, atmospheric film that could get Miller back in here for a second time. Given its auteur sensibilities, DGA recognition will be critical.

9. David Fincher for Gone Girl – He'll need to hit DGA, which is very likely; the movie needs to maintain its momentum.

BEST ACTOR

1. Michael Keaton for Birdman – He's working the circuit very effectively, and has been the clear early winner of the critics' circuit. He's sure to get cited everywhere he needs to, and for the foreseeable future is the category's leader.

2.   Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything – Redmayne is the frontrunner for the Golden Globe, in which case he'll establish himself as Keaton's biggest competition.
3.   Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game – Nominations across the board, but he needs a big win.
4.   Jake Gyllenhaal for Nightcrawler – He's hit every single precursor nomination, and at this point, underestimating him would be foolish.

5. David Oyelowo for Selma – He's on very shaky ground, seeing as he's without industry recognition. We're assuming the film will fare better with Oscar, but that's a risky bet.

6. Ralph Fiennes for The Grand Budapest Hotel – After getting in with BAFTA and the Critics' Choice, and with the movie skyrocketing in terms of Oscar chances, might Fiennes be the obvious alternate?
7. Steve Carell for Foxcatcher – All over the map in terms of where he's getting recognized... and in what category. A question mark until nomination day, that's for sure.

8. Bradley Cooper for American Sniper – The film needs to pick up heat for him to have a shot.
9. Timothy Spall for Mr. Turner – Without a BAFTA nod, his hopes appear dashed.

BEST ACTRESS

1. Julianne Moore for Still Alice – Nothing is stopping her at this point.

2. Reese Witherspoon for Wild – Strong in a thin, thinning category.

3. Felicity Jones for The Theory of Everything – Strong in a thin, thinning category.

4. Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl – Strong-ish in a thin, thinning category (she's not on the circuit, unlike many others).

5. Jennifer Aniston for Cake – Her TV cred got her into SAG. Her starpower got her through at the Globes. And suddenly, she's the clear choice here.

6. Amy Adams for Big Eyes – BAFTA nod affirms she's the alternate. But that might not matter much.
7. Marion Cotillard for Two Days, One Night – This is a BAFTA-friendly role. She wasn't nominated.
8. Hilary Swank for The Homesman – SAG cited her for Conviction, but not for this...? She's too far on the outside right now, for such a small film.

9. Emily Blunt for Into the Woods – She needed to build on her HFPA recognition with more substantial nominations.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

1. J.K. Simmons for Whiplash – This powerhouse turn remains, at this late stage, uncontested.

2. Edward Norton for Birdman – Norton’s performance is big enough where, if Birdman flies this awards season, the actor could be in contention for the win.

3. Mark Ruffalo for Foxcatcher – He's been cited everywhere, withstanding varying reaction to the film. Looks like he's in.

4. Ethan Hawke for Boyhood – The tertiary Boyhood player has hit every necessary precursor.

5. Robert Duvall for The Judge – SAG, Globe and Critics' Choice recognition implies he's the fifth choice. But a BAFTA snub indicates he's on the rocks.
6.   Steve Carell for Foxcatcher – Unsure how this would work; BAFTA dropped him down and it makes sense for his chances.
7.   Josh Brolin for Inherent Vice – Remains that broadly-beloved performance in a film not likely to earn much attention elsewhere. Does he stand out in a thin category?
8.   Miyavi for Unbroken – At once a buzzed-about performance, he's shown up exactly nowhere.

9. Tim Roth for Selma – Wilkinson earned mixed reviews for a substantial part, while Roth earned raves for his brief turn as George Wallace; short on screen time, but big on impact.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

1. Patricia Arquette for Boyhood – There’s no stopping her at this point.

2.   Emma Stone for Birdman – With critics' awards, the Birdman tied and nominations everywhere she needed, I'm liking Stone's chances here.
3.   Keira Knightley for The Imitation Game – Knightley’s work in the film has earned uniformly solid reviews, but not much beyond that. She doesn't have all that much to do, which might not rouse the passion needed to crack the race.
4.   Meryl Streep for Into the Woods – The BAFTA snub is worth considering, but only to a point: last year, the organization similarly snubbed her for August: Osage County.
5. Rene Russo for Nightcrawler – Her BAFTA nomination indicates Nightcrawler's rapid ascension, and she very well might be the missing piece to this puzzling category.

6. Jessica Chastain for A Most Violent Year – Without BAFTA or SAG recognition, she's without any indication of industry support. Is the movie too small?
7. Laura Dern for Wild – Nothing so far for Dern, but never say never. The fifth slot is open, and the Academy's tastes are ever-differing from SAG.
8. Tilda Swinton for Snowpiercer – Swinton has been a hot name on the critics' circuit, and was notably recognized by the BFCA. She's a highly-respected actress that could rouse enough passion.

9. Naomi Watts for St. Vincent – I'm not sure how, exactly, this broad performance in the underperforming comedy snuck into SAG. At the very least, that kind of nomination puts her into the conversation.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
1. Boyhood (Richard Linklater) – It's where Linklater will unquestionably win an Oscar.
2. Birdman (Alejandro G. Inarritu et al.) – Stuffed with blistering satire and profundity, Birdman's screenplay is type A Oscar bait.
3. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness) – If Moonrise Kingdom could get in, then Grand Budapest is reasonably safe for a writing nod.
4.   Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy) – With Whiplash out of the way, here's the category's resident debut screenplay. And it's been honored a fair amount so far.
5.   Foxcatcher (E. Max Frye & Dan Futterman) – This is a director's film hanging on the edge, in terms of Academy appeal. It's chances here depend entirely on how the film as a whole fares. WGA recognition was a good start.
6. Selma (Paul Webb) – Tough. The film was ineligible at WGA, and is embroiled in a credit controversy that doesn't help matters. It's rare for a Best Picture frontrunner to miss out on screenplay, though (even The Artist got in).
7.   Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh) – He needed a BAFTA nomination.
8. Top Five (Chris Rock) – Consider recent screenplay nominees Borat or Bridesmaids. The Oscars don't love out-and-out comedies, but when they do, this is where they get recognized.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
1. The Imitation Game (Graham Moore) – It's the only Best Picture frontrunner competing on the adapted side. At the very least, a nomination is assured.
2. The Theory of Everything (Anthony McCarten) – Again, the category is thin on actual Oscar contenders, and Theory has been playing well across diverse groups.
3.   Whiplash (Damien Chazelle) – The film was campaigned in original and even the studio was shocked when news broke that it was competing here. As long as confusion doesn't mar its chances at a nomination (and the category is very weak; that's next-to-impossible), it'll be in it for the win.
4. Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn) – Regardless of how heavy Gone Girl winds up as an Oscar player, this category is weak enough, and Flynn well-known and respected enough, for the film to get recognized here without much trouble.
5.   American Sniper (Jason Hall) – An Oscar player that could easily get swept in here. WGA recognition proves it's got legs, even in a category one wouldn't expect it to be as strong in.
6. Wild (Nick Hornby) – Hornby has an Oscar nomination and is well-regarded novelist. Wild hasn't been a big player beyond its leading lady, but Hornby's got a good shot.
7. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson) – You'd think he has a solid shot given the competition, but he wasn't even nominated for The Master. Inherent Vice might just be too weird.
8. Into the Woods (James Lapine) – The source material is heavily-respected; it's not hard to imagine this squeaking in if voters go for the film.