Today’s LION Award goes to Best Supporting Actor. With a total of 44 votes, here are the Top 5 of 2010:

Tomorrow’s LION Award will go to Best Ensemble Cast…

 Editor’s note: Welcome to the twentieth of a 33-part series dissecting the 83rd Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

by Aiden from Cut the Crap Movie Reviews

Alright, you know what the shit this is all about, so let’s cut to the chase:

Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right

Christian Bale for The Fighter

Well, that’s it, folks. Word to your mother.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the thirty-first of a 33-part series dissecting the 82st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Steve Johnston of The Cynical Blog (aka The Film Cynics).

While the Best Actor Oscar might be regarded as the big dog of the Academy Awards, the Best Supporting Actor Oscar tends to hold the more interesting parts: Sidekicks & Bad guys. If you think about it, without the supporting actors along for the ride, our heroes and heroines wouldn’t have anything interesting to say or do. Without the Joker, Batman would have just been using his hoarse voice to train circus bears. Would Will Hunting have been able to get his shit together to head to California without Sean Miller telling him “It’s not your fault”? Would Henry Hill have been digging so many graves without Tommy DeVito flying off the handle and killing made guys?

While it may seem like an award for second fiddle, this is no silver medal and this year the competition is stacked with a robust array of talent, even if the deck seems stacked clearly in one actor’s favour. The Oscar has been ascribed a transformative effect on its recipients, either elevating their careers, or sometimes completely stalling them (sorry Cuba). I have compiled a list of the nominees including how I think the award may or may not change them.

Matt Damon (Invictus)
With an acting Oscar to go with his writing one, he can finally call off all the activism and live it up Vincent Chase style, with Ben Affleck as his hybrid Turtle/Drama. I get the impression that Damon pulling in a post-Oscar paycheque might make studios less cavalier about cranking out Bourne sequels and prequels.

Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)
Give Woody’s weird predilection for strange contract requests, like his director going off meat and cheese if he was going to appear on Zombieland, there’s no telling what an Oscar would have him asking for. Not a big deal, considering that he’s seen a the longshot of the competition.

Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
Perhaps with a bonafide Oscar to his name Christopher Plummer can finally be treated like Anthony Hopkins, like he should be. His Canadian heritage will keep him humble, but his contribution to the screen will make sure he’s pampered. After 100 films and 80 years on this Earth, he’s due, but if that argument didn’t work for Peter O’Toole, it ain’t gonna work for him.

Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)
Out of everyone nominated, he’s the least likely to change at all. Stanley has proven over the years that he’ll take on any role in any project and work his ass off to turn in a great performance. I totally respect this guy, which is why I feel like a bit of a jerk saying I don’t think he’s gonna walk away with it this year.

Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Considering I’d never even heard of this guy until seeing this movie, it’s hard to say anything about how he’ll be changing, other than assuming he’ll probably be turning up as the bad guy in a few upcoming blockbusters (he’d be perfect for Red Skull in Captain America, or maybe the new Green Goblin in the Spider-Man reboot. Having played a delightfully eccentric psychopath in 4 languages in Tarantino’s venture into war, he’s gotta be the one walking away with the Oscar. Let’s just hope he can keep his acceptance speech under 5 minutes.

If you didn’t know better, you might’ve thought that Quentin Tarantino’s family were the only voters in the LIONs. We’re on our eighth award thus far, and selections from his WWII epic have finished in first and/or second place in all six that it was eligible for (though I wouldn’t have been all that shocked to have seen it earn votes for Foreign Language Film, either, now that I mention it). Will it take home the LION for Best Film of the Year? I couldn’t tell you as I haven’t crunched those numbers just yet; let’s just say that I won’t be the least bit surprised if it does. Its domination in the Best Supporting Actor category was no surprise, but the extent of it might shock you a bit…

Placing (solely) second, with a whopping two votes out of 46 cast, Basterd Michael Fassbender. Yes, that means that there were 11 performances that got a single vote (including another Basterd, Daniel Bruhl), two for Fassbender, and the remaining for…

Christoph Waltz (duh), with 33.

Next up… Best Actress. Stay tuned to the LAMB for more of the LIONs, culminating with our Top 10 Films of 2009.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the sixth of a 24-part series dissecting the 81st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Jason of Invasion of the B Movies.

This year for the LAMB Oscar Thingy, I got asked to write about the Best Supporting Actor category. I’m pretty happy about this cause last time I got an award where I only saw one of the movies nominated. This time I’ve seen at least TWO of the movies nominated! Maybe next year, we can further break through that glass ceiling and I’ll be asked to write about a category where I’ve seen all five. Of course how awesome would it be if I haven’t seen ANY of films?

Anyway, while refreshing my memory on who exactly was nominated in this category, I came across this interesting bit of trivia:

DIDJA KNOW?

- Throughout Academy history, most of the winners in this category usually have no previous Oscar wins. *Source.

So if that’s true, let’s see who will and won’t win:

Phillip Seymour Hoffman famously won his first Oscar in 2005 for playing Truman Capote. So he probably won’t win for playing a priest who may or may not be perverted.

Robert Downey, Jr. was nominated in 1992 for Chaplin, which makes me think these Oscar people only like it when famous people play other famous people. So I’ll be a shoe in if I get casted for “young John Wayne” in the upcoming film John Wayne: The Duke Is Here, Yo! But he technically didn’t win, so he has a 1 in 4 chance.

Heath Ledger, some guy you may or may not have heard of, is nominated for playing some guy in some movie that you may or may not have heard about, but he was previously nominated for playing a dude in another movie that none of us have ever heard of before, so I’m gonna go with a no on this.

The two that are left are Josh Brolin and some other guy I really never heard of named Michael Shannon. Scanning Mr. Shannon’s resume on IMDb, I see he was the dude banging Eminem’s mom in 8 Mile, had a part in Let’s Go To Prison and Kangaroo Jack, and since then appeared in artsy films that I’m sure would put me to sleep within 10 minutes. Do you really think a cast member of Kangaroo Jack is gonna win an Oscar? (The answer: Unless it’s the Kangaroo itself, probably not.)

As for Josh Brolin, he’s a pretty cool guy. He was awesome in No Country For Old Men and did a pretty convincing Dubya impersonation. But I haven’t seen Milk, which I’m guessing is a unflinching look at the life of a dairy farmer and his daily struggles with keeping up with modern technology, but only when he finds out what the USDA is putting in his cows does he do something about it.

So with all that said and done, who do I think is gonna win? Well, like I said, I’ve only seen two of movies nominated, Tropic Thunder and The Dark Knight. The rest I can only go by the trailers, which I’m gonna watch now and try to give a best guess.

Milk: Apparently I was close on what I thought this was about. Casting Sean Penn as a farmer is an interesting decision though.

Doubt: Amy Adams is a hot nun. That’s about all I got out of that trailer.

Revolutionary Road: Zzzz…huh? Damn it I keep falling asleep. F**k it.

In closing, I think Robert Downey, Jr. SHOULD get the award because during Tropic Thunder, I kept forgetting he was a white dude playing a white dude playing a black dude playing ANOTHER dude DISGUISED as ANOTHER dude.

But it’ll go to Heath Ledger, which means the casting for The Riddler in the next Batman film will probably go to Tom Hanks.

The votes have been cast, the independent accounting firm of Fletch & Fletch has been consulted, and the time has come for the LIONs to be handed out.

Our fourth award for presentation is for Best Supporting Actor. There were a total of 54 votes, and as you might expect, it was a blowout. The runner-up, with four votes…Robert Downey, Jr. for Tropic Thunder.

And the no-doubt-about-it winner, with a LIONs-leading 32 votes, Jon Voight for Pride and Glory! Congratualtions on your big win, Jon.

Yeah, right. You know who it is…

The posthumous award goes, of course, to Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight. Though the bonus award for Best Out-there Vote does go to the person that voted for Mr. Voight: John of Flick Rater.

Next up…we’ll go on a slight detour from the acting races to count down the Worst Films of the Year. Stay tuned to the LAMB for more of the LIONs, culminating with our Top 10 Films of 2008.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the twelfth of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Wayward Jam of Reel Whore.

Best Supporting Actor. Unlike mysterious and obscure technical categories such as sound mixing, costume design and art direction, best supporting actor, at least to me, seems fairly self-explanatory. I like to think of this award as going to the person who gives a performance that is crucial in the development of the plot, provides flawless accompaniment to the major characters and contributes to the success of the film. I’d also like to think that this award is given to the actor most deserving, but as time has shown us, those who should receive the award and those who do receive it do not always coincide.

Using the Official Academy Awards Database I reflected on the contenders and winners of Best Supporting Actor from the last decade and frustration and aggravation washed over me. The list is as follows:

Each of the winners highlighted is someone I didn’t pull for that year. I am in no way saying these individuals were not deserving; in almost all cases I can see the brilliance of their portrayals. Personally, I just wished one of the other contenders would have won. Burt Reynolds’s Boogie Nights performance left all others in the dust in 1997; Robin Williams should have been a distant blur in the voters’ eyes. May he rest in peace, but how did James Coburn not lose to either Ed Harris (The Truman Show) or Geoffrey Rush (Shakespeare in Love)? And I say this as a huge fan of Coburn’s work. Conversely, I’m not a huge fan of Tom “Call me Crazy” Cruise, but his Magnolia performance ran circles around Michael Caine. The most neglected supporting performance of the past ten years is, without a doubt, Willem Dafoe for Shadow of the Vampire in 2000. Don’t get me wrong; Del Toro is an awesome actor but no one could touch Dafoe’s Max Schreck (“Oh. The script girl. I’ll eat her later.” The beauty of that moment alone should have sealed the deal for voters!). I assume Oscar voters’ snubbing of Freeman’s portrayal in Street Smart back in ‘86, along with countless others since then, helped him win the ’04 Oscar despite the stiff competition from Clive Owen in Closer. I could continue with how Clooney picked up his award for growing a beard but I think you get the idea.

Using a bit of pseudo-statistics, I have deduced that three things hold sway over this award: age, coolness and snub factor. In addition to their great performances Coburn, Caine, Broadbent, Freeman, and Arkin were old. Similarly, who wouldn’t want the cool kids like Williams, Del Toro, Freeman and Clooney to join their exclusive club? The snub factor applies to folks like Freeman who have been repeatedly passed over despite numerous nominations, but it also applies to actors like Clooney who deserved kudos more for his direction and writing in Good Night, and Good Luck. Academy awarding is a complicated business!

Applying the appropriate weighting for coolness, snubbing and age, and accounting for the fact that I repeatedly back the wrong horse (2 out of 10) and, admittedly, seeing only three of the five performances in contention, here are my predictions for this year’s Best Supporting Actor.

Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) In one of the two films I didn’t see in 2007, Casey Affleck portrays Robert Ford. Based on the clips I have seen, he’s got the award in his sights. Throw in the major coolness factor of being part of Ocean’s boys, plus the snub for his Gone Baby Gone role, and we may need to look no further for the winner.

Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) Bardem portrays hired killer Anton Chigurh in the heavily nominated No Country. The menacing growl in his voice, the coldness in his eyes, and that crazy hairdo all add up to a chilling character you won’t soon forget. But without the benefit of any coolness, age or snub factors, will his performance shine above all others?

Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson’s War) Sporting the retro vibe is Hoffman as Gust. This could be seen as a cumulative award for his spectacular work this year in The Savages and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. He is inarguably the most memorable character in Charlie Wilson’s War. But since he’s already a part of the exclusive club we have to wonder if this role will resonate enough to garner more award accolades for Hoffman.

Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild) As the only other Oscar contender I never saw, Hal Holbrook does not enjoy the benefit of my critique since I’ve only seen a quick glimpse of him in the clips. Holbrook is the perpetual “that guy;” you’ve seen him in movies and TV shows for decades but may have never known his name. Lucky for him he doesn’t need my kudos because he gets the benefit of the age factor.

Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton) I’m not sure how strong the snub factor will weigh into Tom Wilkinson’s nomination (denied the best actor award for In the Bedroom). However, I think his portrayal of Arthur is phenomenal. He swings between completely unhinged and startlingly coherent so quickly that it will make your neck snap. I would love to see him win for this.

There you have it. I’d love to see Tom Wilkinson win, but since the award doesn’t always go to the most deserving I have to admit that his chances are not so good. If you have an Oscar pool going, I would place my bets on Affleck or Holbrook to bring home the little golden buddy. Then again, it may be a time for a single film to dominate the Academy Awards. If that’s the case, way to go, Javier Bardem.

What I’m trying to say is if you want to know who’s going to win, don’t look at me!