The five most exciting fights in the Oscar race

The success of Wagner Moura, Hamnett and Stellan Skarsgård at the Golden Globes has narrowed the Oscars race and set up a number of interesting battles worth watching.

Get ready for Jesse Buckley vs. Rose Byrne, and Timothée Chalamet vs. Wagner Moura, just two of five major Oscar races that should be particularly fun to watch and that the Golden Globes have just helped make clear. Only a few hundred people vote for the Globes and more than 10,000 for the Oscars It shouldn’t It stands to reason that they are important factors in the Oscar race. But this is a show business, where hype and image-making are the norm, where being seen as a winner is almost as good as being one. The Globes may be confusing in the way they jockey for categories, and they may be meager in their voting numbers, but they provide visibility, momentum and a sense of who is truly considered “the best of the best,” creating a huge influence on the Oscars.

Splitting the major awards into separate categories for dramas and motion pictures, musicals or comedies makes the Globes far from predictable as the Oscars, but that separation itself tends to narrow the race and make for the most exciting head-to-head battles. Two years ago, Lily Gladstone’s Globes win in drama for “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Emma Stone’s win in comedy for “Poor Things” created a tight race that netted Stone her second Oscar. This year gave us similar Mano-a-manos in the lead acting categories.

1. Best Actress: A real competition?

Buckley has long been considered an Oscar favorite for “Hamnet,” the high-profile film about Shakespeare’s wife as she grieves for her young son, and her Globe win in drama cemented her lead. But Byrne emerged as her only real contender after winning the musical/comedy category for the small indie film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. You really have to stretch the definition of comedy to understand how Legs ended up in this category. There are moments of frenetic scrambling in the film, but Byrne’s performance as the troubled mother of a sick child is fraught with tension and anxiety. However, slippery categories aside, add a Berne Globe win to its victories at the Berlin Film Festival and with critics’ groups in New York and Los Angeles, and it can’t be discounted. The strange split in the Globes category created a real race.

2. Best Actor: New Contender

One narrative circulated as soon as Marty Supreme premiered in the fall: that the Oscar had gone to Timothée Chalamet, who had lost it for his role as the annoying ping-pong champion. he He is Fascinating and fascinating as a character who could have only been annoying. His Globe win in comedy strengthens that narrative, but only somewhat, because he now faces competition from Wagner Moura, who won in drama, beating out Michael B. Jordan in Sinners. Moura, who gave a brilliant, varied and engaging performance in the Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent, had accolades galore.

He won Best Actor at Cannes, and was widely considered a certainty for an Oscar nomination until the Actor Awards (formerly SAG Awards) nominations were announced last week, and Moura was disqualified, along with every other cast in a non-English language film. Since actors represent the largest voting bloc among Oscar voters, this wasn’t a great sign. It’s true that the Globes members (who are international journalists) are likely to accept a performance not in English, but still: this win puts Moura firmly back in the running.

3 and 4. Supporting Actor and Actress: Disturbing the Races

Some years, an actor easily snags every major expected award on his way to the Oscars, as Kieran Culkin did last year as supporting actor in A Real Pain – Golden Globe, Bafta, SAG and Oscar, he’s got them all. This is not one of those years. In fact, the supporting categories for The Globes are similar to the Oscars in that they are not divided into drama and comedy. This year’s Globe Awards blew both supporting races wide open.