My family holds an annual Oscar nomination pool, predicting the eight major categories, and invariably we all do very well in Best Actor. For some reason, great male lead performances are few and far between in recent years. I’m sure there’s an analysis to be written on that topic but I’ll save it for another day.
For now, I’ll give my own preferred lineup in the 2022 Best Actor category, starting with just a few honorable mentions.
Continuing my rundown of personal Oscar nominations, today I’ll look at the Best Supporting Actress category.
While I had a hard time coming up with a long list of supporting male performances, it was a much different story for the women. I had to cut several names just to keep my list of honorable mentions manageable.
I could have named four different women from the cast of Women Talking alone, but I’ll be judicious and mention Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy, embodying two very different perspectives on the debate at the center of that film.
As my look back at the 2022 movie year continues, I’ll spend this week offering up my personal nominees and winners in the four acting categories as well as Best Director.
A note on this week’s song selections: I’m featuring songs that appear in one of my nominated films, but not necessarily the winning film. I’m hoping to unearth some decent tunes in the process, like today’s track by little-known soul artist Harry Krapsho. This one appeared during the end credits of Causeway.
I recently made a playlist (the modern-day equivalent of a mixtape) for my younger daughter, carefully selecting a series of songs I hoped would appeal to her particular sensibilities. I’m happy to report that she loves it.
One song on the playlist is ‘Ramona’ from Guster’s 2003 album Keep It Together, their fourth studio release. I settled on that one after listening to almost the whole album, knowing any one of its tracks would make a fine selection.
Once in awhile I spin the dial and land on a Random Weekend song that I’m (wrongly) certain has been on the blog before.
Such is the case with today’s selection, R.E.M.’s cover of The Velvet Underground’s ‘Pale Blue Eyes.’ This recording was released on the 1987 album Dead Letter Office, a collection of rare cuts and B-sides, and it has always been a favorite of mine. But while I have featured the Velvet Underground original, I’ve never gotten around to posting R.E.M.’s version.
Meet Me In Montauk 