Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Russell Crowe, American Gangster
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War
Armen Mueller-Stahl, Eastern Promises
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
Paul Dano, There Will Be Blood
The Locks: Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
This field is just as over-crowded as lead actor so I’d be nuts to call out too many locks here. Bardem is a primo-lock. I initially had Casey Affleck in there too but in the end, there’s just too many contenders and the (not really) fact that probably .01% of the Academy voters even bothered to see Jesse James bothers me.
Any voter that watches Charlie Wilson’s War has to see that Hoffman steals the entire movie. I don’t see them screwing that one up. I’m not sure why Mueller-Stahl or Crowe didn’t get enough support but thems the cookie crumbs. Unfortunately for the old man, Bardem takes away too many votes from Tommy Lee Jones. And Paul Dano, despite appearing in one of the great movies of 2007 that is sure to get a ton of nominations, has been relatively quiet in the award circles. And Hal Holbrook is really, really old.
So what does all that mean?
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson’s War
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Spoilers that give me the most pause: Paul Dano
And that about wraps up the actors. The nominees will be announced Tuesday morning at which point everything we’ve written about here will be completely worthless!
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