Oscar 2010 Predictions: Supporting Actress

Not nearly the most difficult race to predict, but also not a walk in the park. This was really a banner year for supporting female performances, and in fact more so than lead female performances. You can tell by the sheer amount of talent that wasn't nominated here, and yet should have been. Mila Kunis was did a fantastic job with what she was given in Black Swan, but the supporting gal that really stole the show for me was Barbara Hershey as Nina's overbearing mother. It's really one of the most tragic performances of the year, embodying somebody who reluctantly gave up her own career to become a mother, and as such is now realizing how she hasn't prepared her daughter properly for the real world. When she's looking up at Nina at the close of the film, you can see it in her eyes.

I could go on about Rooney Mara's stellar-but-short performance in The Social Network, Marion Cotillard's fascinating, multifaceted, and underrated work in Inception, or Mia Wasikowska's sweet and fragile overlooked performance in The Kids Are All Right, but I pretty much just summed them up in a run-on sentence. If there's any actress nominated here who is undeserving of any recognition, it is Helena Bonham Carter for The King's Speech. Don't get me wrong, because I've loved plenty of her past work, but she's the plainest and most uninteresting of the big three characters in the film. You can tell that from the clothing she wears, and you can tell that from her performance. I much preferred her latest turn as Bellatrix Lestrange in Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

I still haven't seen Animal Kingdom, for which Jacki Weaver is nominated, and I've been putting it off because the only ads for the film have been showing off this creepy and demented image of her. Maybe that's one of the big appeals of it, but I'll have to check it out sometime before this Sunday. Amy Adams is up for her work in The Fighter, which almost immediately appealed to me after I saw it. I gather that that's the way it was for most people, because she had such a trashy-yet-sexy attitude about her that seemed pretty authentic, and most people could imagine a girl like that in their neighborhood.

The big fight is between Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit and Melissa Leo for The Fighter, and I've been pretty one-sided for most of this race. At the end of last year, I absolutely loved Steinfeld's brave and beautiful performance, and I still believe that she's the best actress in contention here. However, as for the person who I believe will win and absolutely deserves to win, I have to go with Melissa Leo for The Fighter. After going back to the film, she's really got that ferocity and expression that almost matches her up with Bale's work. That's not even to mention the work she's done in the past. She's been unrewarded for so long, and that should end on Sunday night. If not, then she'll turn in another bravura performance and we'll be right back here again.

1. Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
2. Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
3. Amy Adams (The Fighter)
4. Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)
5. Helena Bonham Carter (The King's Speech)

Will & Should Win: Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
Potential Upset: Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
Should Have Been Nominated: Barbara Hershey (Black Swan) OR Rooney Mara (The Social Network) OR Marion Cotillard (Inception) OR Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are All Right)

Film Review: Black Swan

Without a doubt, I have anticipated no other film these past three months more than Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. I approached this film as a complete stranger would, having a very vague idea of what I was in for. Aronofsky has done spectacular portraits of tragically fractured characters, such as his work with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. It seemed like a stretch to suddenly head into the world of ballet, and even more of a stretch to frame it as a psychological thriller. Then the next 100 minutes of my life had spun my head three ways round, constricting my lungs in the process, before finally letting me breathe.

Black Swan is about Nina Sayers, a dedicated dancer in a famous ballet company. Her life is practically dominated by her overbearing mother, who clearly hasn't given her any room to have a life of her own. When she is given the challenging role of the Swan Queen in the company's latest performance of Swan Lake, her mind starts playing terrifying tricks on her in order to cope with the stressful situation. The harsh and seductive ballet instructor Thomas, her previously mentioned chaotic mother, and a free-spirited new dancer in the company who threatens Nina's status in the company make her situation all the more frustrating.

Aronofsky has done some fantastic directorial work in the past, but never as detailed as he has achieved here. In terms of production, there's absolutely no flaw to be had here. Each shot, set, and sound is brimming with intense detail. The result is a film that takes what would be ordinary actions in our daily lives, and makes them feel crude and overly sensual to the fragile and sensitive Nina. The real world that we deal with every day feels so assaulting to her because of how she has been brought up. Her mental deterioration is more to blame on her mother than herself.

I could go on about the several disturbing qualities that Aronofsky and his team has worked to infuse into this film, but the main attraction is Natalie Portman's performance. I've been more than a little hesitant to put her as the frontrunner in the Best Actress race, but only because I loved Annette Bening so much in The Kids Are All Right. That being, Portman has much more screen time to work her magic on the audience. There's not a single scene in this film without Natalie in it, and she embodies all the different kinds of human emotion. Nina's feelings are very close to the surface, and everything that she's feeling is right there on her face.

Portman embodies the spirit of Nina Sayers, immaculate and beautiful outwardly, but with a dark edge being repressed below the surface. As usual, the worst consequences come out of the best intentions. Portman fully deserves to win the Oscar for her work here, because nobody must've trained as extensively as she did. She's obviously not the only performance at work here, with Vincent Cassel being one of the understated charms of this film. His representation of Thomas is not as a prick, but as a skilled director who uses sexual stimuli to get to the core of each character. Mila Kunis continues to leave behind her days on That 70s Show, with this being her most challenging role to date. It's still a rather light and fun role, because that's the perfect contrast to what Nina is.

If my thoughts on the film aren't quite as settled as they should be, it's because a lot of what could be said about the film has already been said. It will literally take your breathe away and withhold it from you for what feels like ages. As Nina takes the plunge into insanity, you will be gasping for control. The highest praise I can give Black Swan is that it registers a response from the audience that no other film has achieved this year.

A