Who Takes The Lead?
I change my vote. Best Supporting Actor goes to Casey Affleck. Not only is he WAY hot (careful ladies and Chris - he's taken), his performance as the coward, Robert Ford, was flawlessly creepy as hell. Surprisingly, this weekend I had a lot of lounging time, and somehow between stellar indie-rock concerts
and bad teen-scare flicks, I managed to squeeze in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was not even on my radar until the Oscar noms came out.
Had I actually paid attention to this movie and bothered to see it before the Os-scares, I would have been a lot more disappointed that Javier Bardem won best supporting actor for doing basically the same thing as Affleck - acting disturbingly strange - only with a pageboy mullet. Now that I'm more informed, I believe the award should have definitely been a toss-up between Affleck and Wilkinson - though I still would have chosen Wilkinson because his character in Michael Clayton was more of a "supporting" role than Affleck's.
Which brings me to the question of the day: in a film with two seemly equal characters of the same gender, what criteria decides who is the lead and who is the supporting actor? It seems that in The Assassination of Jesse James..., the "bigger name, bigger role" theory was applied and Brad Pitt was credited as the lead over Casey Affleck. In Brokeback Mountain, they enacted the "person who didn't die at the end" rule and thus, Heath Ledger was our leading man. But what about The Other Boleyn Girl? What are they going to do there? (Though there may not be an issue with award nominations in that case). I may never know what the rules are exactly, but maybe we should broaden our horizons a bit and leave room for the possibility that two characters could be equally as significant and prevalent in a movie.
Since we're obviously not going to solve this dilemma in one day, here's a pretty straightforward piece to keep you occupied. It's pretty obvious who our hero is in this one. He's sick of the rising crime rate, and he's hell-bound to fix the problems with humanity. The only catch is, he's not very good at his job. Watch...
and bad teen-scare flicks, I managed to squeeze in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was not even on my radar until the Oscar noms came out.Had I actually paid attention to this movie and bothered to see it before the Os-scares, I would have been a lot more disappointed that Javier Bardem won best supporting actor for doing basically the same thing as Affleck - acting disturbingly strange - only with a pageboy mullet. Now that I'm more informed, I believe the award should have definitely been a toss-up between Affleck and Wilkinson - though I still would have chosen Wilkinson because his character in Michael Clayton was more of a "supporting" role than Affleck's.
Which brings me to the question of the day: in a film with two seemly equal characters of the same gender, what criteria decides who is the lead and who is the supporting actor? It seems that in The Assassination of Jesse James..., the "bigger name, bigger role" theory was applied and Brad Pitt was credited as the lead over Casey Affleck. In Brokeback Mountain, they enacted the "person who didn't die at the end" rule and thus, Heath Ledger was our leading man. But what about The Other Boleyn Girl? What are they going to do there? (Though there may not be an issue with award nominations in that case). I may never know what the rules are exactly, but maybe we should broaden our horizons a bit and leave room for the possibility that two characters could be equally as significant and prevalent in a movie.
Since we're obviously not going to solve this dilemma in one day, here's a pretty straightforward piece to keep you occupied. It's pretty obvious who our hero is in this one. He's sick of the rising crime rate, and he's hell-bound to fix the problems with humanity. The only catch is, he's not very good at his job. Watch...
This entry was posted by Lady Amy, on
Monday, March 10, 2008.
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i always thought it had to do with screen time. like there's some trivia out there about a lady winning best supporting actress for six minutes of screen time.
the 50's were weird.
That's what you'd think, but even though we didn't use a stopwatch while watching The Assassination of... (which, for the record, would have been my #3 movie of the year if I had seen it in 2007 - oh so highly recommended), I think Casey Affleck certainly had more screen time than Brad Pitt.
yeah, i would definitely say that the affleck was the leading man, not pitt (haha, pitt). the movie also seemed to be more about his character...at least, his character was much more developed than the jesse james character...jesse james was just the object of affleck's "desire"
also, that snl short gets funnier each time i watch it.
HAL HOLBROOOOOOK!!!
I would agree with Chris's assessment - this movie would have been #3 for me as well, but as I said, my choice for best supporting actor would have been a lot harder to decide.
Also, it was really disappointing to learn that none of us can marry Casey Affleck. He's got a knocked-up fiancee.
oh please...like a knocked-up fiancee means anything these days!
True. Just an obstacle.
Man you guys are so late to the game, because I recently sent Casey a postcard that said "Hey old friend...fishing trip?" and I'm going to go pick him up Friday afternoon. SO MUCH EASIER TO HIDE FROM THE FIANCEE/WIFE THAN ANOTHER LADY.
I sure hope you watched the end of that movie, Chris.
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