Welcome to Beyond The Trailer’s coverage of the 2015 Academy Awards, giving you an
in-depth look at the top categories.
More of ode to longevity, Best Supporting Actor isn’t anywhere near as competitive
as the race for Best Actor - but it is also chock full of fan favorites!
And while JK Simmons is likely to win this thing for realz, you can still support your
personal favorite by voting in Beyond The Trailer’s annual Oscar poll!
Now let’s take a closer look at those nominees...
So, how exactly did Robert Duvall end up in here for a movie which bombed both at the
box office and with critics?
Well, while there are more repeat female nominees due to lack of competition, there ARE a few
male nominees who also Academy favorites - and Duvall is one of them.
This is Duvall’s SEVENTH nomination, and he already won with nomination number four
back in 1984 for his lead role in Tender Mercies.
Duvall’s popularity with Academy voters might also have to do with many of them being
his contemporaries - they came up with the eighty-four year old and even if they couldn’t
keep up with him, they admire how he’s still in the game.
And on that note, with this nomination he’s the oldest actor ever to be nominated in this
category.
So yeah, he’s probably not going to win this time around, but with three more films
already set for this year, 2015, alone?
That eighth nomination is surely on the horizon as well...
So this is Ethan Hawke’s FOURTH Oscar nomination - and three of those are thanks to Richard
Linklater!
Talk about a great actor-director partnership!
Two of those nominations are for screenwriting, by the way, for their “Before” indie trilogy
with Julie Delpy.
Hawke and Linklater might not have produced a lot of box office hits, but they’ve certainly
earned quite a bit of prestige - perhaps all leading up to this moment?
Yeah, Hawke’s not going to win here, but he’s still part of a movie - Boyhood - that’s
having a glorious awards season and is a frontrunner in many other Oscar categories this year.
That, and his own nomination here, are a big win for Hawke who’s fallen a bit off the
radar recently.
Sure he has a very solid career making horror movies and intelligent indie genre films that
often amas a cult following, but remember the days when he was - well - hmm, turns out
Ethan Hawke has never been a big movie star.
His biggest movie to date has been Training Day, but that was really Denzel’s movie
- and Oscar, although Hawke was nominated.
Hmm, perhaps if he’d gotten this nomination a bit earlier Marvel wouldn’t have decided
to take a pass on him for Dr Strange - yet the guy they did choose, Benedict Cumberbatch,
has his first Oscar nomination this year as well.
But when asked about losing the Dr Strange role, Hawke has said he doesn’t know if
franchise filmmaking is his bag.
Which is totally cool!
And this nomination will allow Hawke to keep on doing what he’s doing and - in about
twenty years?
He’ll be in big demand if he still is doing what he’s doing, and he probably will be.
Whoa-ho!
Remember this guy?!
Back in the day, his career was on FIRE.
Almost back to back nominations in the late 1990s for Primal Fear and American History
X put him on the short-list for practically every prestige movie at the time.
Not to mention Fight Club?!
That won Edward Norton the fanboy favor in addition to the critical favor he already
possessed - think an early version of Tom Hardy, or Jake Gyllenhaal.
And Norton DID want to take a crack at franchise filmmaking, first with smaller roles in Red
Dragon and The Italian Job - but then Marvel cast him as their second big-screen incarnation
of The Hulk!
But alas, while Bruce Banner isn’t very likable when he’s angry - apparently neither
is Norton.
Rumors began to plague Norton that he was difficult to work with, and seemed to reach
a frenzy with 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.
And what’s worse, he didn’t have the box office numbers to offset his supposed bad
attitude.
Now Norton to this day says these rumors aren’t true, but then again, he’s had a lot of
trouble getting work since his turn as the Hulk, and Marvel didn’t invite him back
for The Avengers even though he made it known he wanted to return.
Uh-oh, sounds like it’s time for a mea-culpa!
And that’s what Norton is doing in Birdman, playing a caricature of, well, pretty-much
himself - a spoiled, egotistical “artiste” who hasn’t been able to achieve mainstream
success.
And it’s no accident that his character taunts the producers in the film that they
could replace him with Ryan Gosling, who’s also rumored to be quite difficult to work
with...
So this nomination might be the industry extending an olive branch to Norton in return.
And it probably also helps that Wes Anderson has taken him in, casting him first in Moonrise
Kingdom and then again in one of this year’s other big awards contenders, The Grand Budapest
Hotel.
But the only thing that going to TRULY help Norton is, y’know, if he’s nice on set...
Oh, and he’s the new Hulk!
Awkward, but probably less awkward than if Mark Ruffalo had a real shot at winning here.
But this nomination is just another piece of evidence that Ruffalo is at the height
of his career.
He burst onto the scene in 2000 with Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count On Me where critics
compared him to a young Marlon Brando - yet he didn’t score either of the film’s two
Oscar nominations.
And he genuinely struggled after that, bouncing around from genre to genre.
But in 2010 Ruffalo had a solid box office hit with Shutter Island - he played a supporting
role in the Scorsese and DiCaprio thriller - plus a strong turn in The Kids Are All Right,
for which he received his first Oscar nomination.
That put him on Joss Whedon’s radar, who put him on Marvel’s radar, and suddenly
Ruffalo was the new Bruce Banner - who, by the way, turned out to be wildly popular with
moviegoers in the role - breathing new life into what had come to be considered a jinxed
character.
But then Ruffalo also had another big box office hit with Now You See Me the very next
year!
Yes after a long drought, it’s not just raining but pouring as Ruffalo has the career
every actor dreams of - big box office hits alongside critically acclaimed films.
Plus he’s a nice selling point for Marvel!
Surely it’s nice to be able to point out to other actors that you can join the Marvel
Cinematic Universe and STILL be respected by the industry...
So, what do J Jonah Jameson, Tenzin and the Yellow Peanut M&M have in common?
They’re all about to win an Oscar!
Yes, we’ve saved the best for last - and by that I mean the winner.
After never really being nominated for, well, anything, Simmons has won pretty much every
Best Supporting Actor award there is for his turn in Whiplash and the Oscars are expected
to be no different.
That’s a pretty awesome crowning achievement for an actor who began his career - back in
the 1980s - on the New York stage before beginning his television and movie career in 1994.
In fact, Simmons is best known for his TV work - from Law and Order to Oz to The Legend
of Korra to his Farmers Insurance commercials!
And of course there’s his role as J Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy
- a role for which he was the fan-favorite casting choice.
Interestingly, he’s being honored for a more realistic depiction of Jameson’s outbursts
and their consequences.
Simmons has been, in short, a working actor who enjoyed none of the glory - box office
or critical - of the other nominees.
That’s an impressive narrative which is surely helping to win over Academy voters,
many of them long working actors whose work STILL hasn’t been recognized.
Plus the cherry on top is that this nomination and probable win are helping Simmons reach
yet another level in his career.
Legendary Pictures recently signed him up for Kong Skull Island - but not as supporting,
as one of the freakin’ LEADS!
And those the Best Supporting Actor nominees!
Be sure to leave your thoughts down below, and also to vote in Beyond The Trailer’s
annual Oscar poll via the link in the video description!
I’m Grace Randolph, and I hope you’ll check out the rest of BTT’s Oscar coverage
- right now!