Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Other nominees: Matt Damon, Invictus; Woody Harrelson, The Messenger; Christopher Plummer, The Last Station; Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones.
The Academy has announced that this year's nameless Academy Award statuettes will have engraved nameplates affixed to them at the post-Oscar ceremony Governors Ball. When it comes to the Best Supporting Actor race, they may as well have Christoph Waltz's nameplate affixed on some anonymous statuette before the show even begins.
For his portrayal of a cool, vicious Nazi in Quentin Tarantino's World War II revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, Waltz has won just about every best supporting actor award there is in the United States, in addition to a best actor Cannes prize last spring. True, his award acceptance speeches have been a little on the what-the-heck-is-he-thinking side (ridiculous as it may sound, those things do count for some) while veteran Christopher Plummer has The Sound of Music's Von Trappists backing him up, but there's no way to avoid the fact that Waltz's is the Supporting Actor Performance of the Year.
Get ready for one more Waltzy acceptance speech on Oscar night.
Photo: Inglourious Basterds (François Duhamel / The Weinstein Co.)
If he doesn't win, it'll be a travesty and I'll never watch this rubbish again.
He's my bet in this category too.
If you would take a moment to listen to what he is saying, it is more logical and more interesting than anything anyone will put up there this year. Waltz knows what he is talking about, he is just to smart for the likes of most of us, evidently this author to.