Best Supporting Actor

The Best Supporting Actor race this year features Christian Bale (The Fighter), John Hawkes (Winter's Bone), Jeremy Renner (The Town), Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right), and Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech). 

Hawkes is the surprise nominee this year and he was really really good in Winter's Bone.  But I think that this race will be between the two hotheaded working-class Boston Irish characters – Renner and Bale.  I was all set to pick Renner, who was great in The Town, but now I'm leaning toward Bale.  Both really internalized their roles with a strong intensity.  Both were convincing as dangerous loose cannons in the protagonist's life. But Bale did it with a convincing accent, which puts him over the top.  Just don't expect him to get a lot of votes from the Academy's Cinematography wing.

Best Supporting Actor

Here's a tough category to pick.  The nominees are Mad Damon (Invictus), Woody Harrelson (The Messenger), Christopher Plummer (The Last Station), Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones), and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds).

Over the years, there have been several different scenarios that lead to a win in this category, and we have all of them represented here.  Sometimes Supporting Actor is used as a defacto "lifetime achievement" award for well-regarded seniors and Christopher Plummer fits the bill.  Sometimes it goes to a leading man, like Mat Damon, who takes a lower-profile role (not unlike a racehorse dropping in class and running away with the race).  Many times, the Academy rallies support for an actors like Stanley Tucci, who has been doing solid work for years but haven't had the opportunity for a nomination.  Comebacks are always popular and Woody Harrelson had an outstanding year after a fallow period.  Finally, voters like to jump at the chance to recognize a relative newcomer, like Christoph Waltz.

With all that in mind, I'm going to pick Christoph Waltz.  Virtually unknown on our shores until he was "discovered" by Quentin Tarantino, Waltz has had a successful career in his native Austria for years.  It's a classic case of the actor fitting the role perfectly. Waltz has already taken the SAG, the Golden Globe, and several other top prizes, and it's a role where he has to speak four different languages fluently.  Also, he plays an over-the-top bad guy and, while that would be a detriment in the Lead Actor category, it's a plus in the Supporting Actor race.  His next biggest competitor is Stanley Tucci, but I'm going to pick Waltz for the win.

Best Supporting Actor

Let's not kid ourselves - this race was over six months ago when The Dark Knight was released.

Heath Ledger will become the second-ever posthumous winner of an acting Oscar (Peter Finch was the first - he won for Network in 1976). And he won't win just because he's dead. He will win because he accomplished one of the most jaw-droppingly fearless performances of the last ten years (at least). He'll win because every brief moment he has on screen is audacious and mesmerizing. The applause during the ceremony's "In Memoriam" montage will honor his life, but the Oscar will honor his performance.

There is a chance, though, that the Academy will decide to hand the award to someone who can actually be there to accept it. If that's the case, it will probably go to Philip Seymour Hoffman, making him the 13th person to receive Oscars in both acting categories. His role in Doubt has been deemed a leading role by everyone except the Academy, so placing him in the Supporting category gives him a boost. Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) and Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder) gave standout performances, but they're still classically supporting roles and Josh Brolin (Milk) simply gets lost in a sea of great performances.

Best Supporting Actor

As with many categories this year, the Best Supporting Actor race features a diverse array of nominees, from fresh faces to veterans. Casey Affleck's youth may be his biggest impediment to winning for The Assasination of Jesse James..., but he does have a secret weapon - a well-reviewed lead performance in his brother Ben's directorial effort Gone Baby Gone. Voters will likely see him in that movie while they're reviewing their screeners for Amy Adams' nomination. Philip Seymour Hoffman is going for his second Oscar, for Charlie Wilson's War, but his is only one of two for that movie. Even though Hoffman is a well-respected actor's actor, only two nominations could mean a lack of support for his movie. Tom Wilkinson is no stranger to Oscar movies and his broad, operatic role in Michael Clayton is an actor's dream come true. On top of that he earns points for doing an accent. Wilkinson's biggest impediment might be his competition - Javier Bardem is the odds-on favorite, having won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actor's Guild Award. His performance may be short, but he steals the whole movie and his stoic killer character has been compared to Hannibal Lechter. On top of that, Spaniard Bardem performs his role entirely in a foreign language. But hold on! Hal Holbrook is also in the running and may cause a huge upset. He is a well-respected actor who has been in the business for decades and is currently enjoying his first nomination. Holbrook looks poised to take the award not for his performance in Into The Wild, but as a defacto lifetime achievement award. My pick goes to Bardem but I'm watching out for Holbrook to upset. All it will take is one profile on