Steven Yeun‘s performance in Lee Isaac Chung‘s “Minari” Is solid, but squeezing him as one of the five Best Actor nominees? Nah. It’s a stretch, but a 10.23 Clayton Davis Variety piece about how Yeun “could become the first Asian American Best Actor nominee” is setting down a narrative for the upcoming awards season. However, there’s fundamentally nothing stunning about Yeun’s performance in the film. in which he plays a struggling South Korean man-of-the-house who moves his entire family to the American heartland.
Read moreFinal Oscar Predictions: “Green Book” Will Win Best Picture.
Cue in the outrage police. Peter Farrelly’s “Green Book” might set back the Oscars by a few years when and if it wins Best Picture at the 91st Academy Awards tonight. All the “progress” that happened with “Moonlight",” “12 Years A Slave,” and “Shape of Water” winning might be destroyed, according to wokers, of course. No diss intended to Farrelly’s lovely film, but the amount of hate it has garnered throughout awards season is enough to send Twitter into outrage-overdrive when Peter “I flashed Cameron Diaz" Farrelly and Nick “Muslims celebrated on 9/11” Vallelonga get on-stage to accept their award at around midnight EST (Yes, that’s when the Oscars will likely finish broadcast).
Read moreClint Eastwood’s ‘The Mule’ Surprises With $17M opening; 88-Year-Old Actor Now a Best Actor Contender
Clint Eastwood's "The Mule" had a 3-day box-office debut of $17.2M. This would rank as the writer-director-actor's third best opening ever (right behind 2000’s "Space Cowboys" ($18M) and 2008's "Gran Torino" ($29.4M). The film seems to also be loved by audiences who gave it an A- on CinemaScore and 4 stars on PostTrak. Audience reaction is much more impressive than its 62% RT fresh score, which no doubt has been bolstered by Eastwood's staunch Conservative stance these last few years.
Read moreBest Actor: Bale, Cooper, Mortensen, Hawke and Malek
It's safe to say that the Best Actor category is probably the easiest acting category to predict when it comes to this year's Oscar nominations. Unless Willem Dafoe's outstanding performance as Vincent Van Gogh in "At Eternity's Gate" does any damage, then we are left with five sure-thing nominees (Bale, Cooper, Mortensen, Hawke and Malek). Who will win is another story. I believe any of the five can nab that Oscar. A case can be made for all of them.
Christian Bale's transformation in "Vice" is stunning; Bradley Cooper can be toasted as the "it-boy" of the industry for writing-directing-producing and starring in a the high-grossing movie "A Star is Born"; Viggo Mortensen is the heart and soul of "Green Book," a crowd-pleasing film that is already being touted as a serious Best Picture contender; Ethan Hawke, well-loved by everyone, has never won an Oscar and his career-best work performance in "First Reformed" could very-well be too irresistible for the Academy to ignore; Finally, Rami Malek's passionate performance as Freddie Mercury in "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the kind of work that launches a career to the stratosphere.
Oscar: Best Actor is Three-Way-Race Between Cooper, Bale and Mortensen
Sasha Stone's Best Actor analysis over at Awards Daily— “On Heroes, Failed Heroes, Anti-Heroes,“ summarizes where we are at right now in terms of the pretenders and contenders:
“This year, at least right now, it looks like we’re putting a failed hero (A Star Is Born‘s Bradley Cooper) up against a straight-up hero (Green Book‘s Viggo Mortensen) and an anti-hero (Vice‘s Dick Cheney).