Can this year’s Best Actor competition top the unpredictable and unforgettable race of last Awards Season? Qualifying begins September 18 (unless we’re counting Jake Gyllenhaal in “Southpaw”) and continues practically every week until the end of the year. Out of this list they’ll be great performances, solid contenders, longshot hopefuls and, in the end, plenty of snubs:
9/18 – Johnny Depp (“Black Mass”)
10/2 – Matt Damon (“The Martian”), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“The Walk”), Tom Hardy (“Legend”)
10/9 – Michael Fassbender (“Steve Jobs”)
10/16 – Tom Hanks (“Bridge of Spies”), Robert Redford (“Truth”)
10/23 – Bradley Cooper (“Burnt”), Bill Murray (“Rock the Kasbah”)
11/6 – Bryan Cranston (“Trumbo”), Mark Ruffalo (“Spotlight”)
11/13 – Brad Pitt (“By the Sea”)
11/20 – Chiwetel Ejiofor (“Secret in Their Eyes”)
11/25 – Michael B. Jordan (“Creed”)
11/27 – Tom Hiddleston (“I See the Light”), Eddie Redmayne (“The Danish Girl”)
12/4 – Michael Caine (“Youth”)
12/11 – Chris Hemsworth (“In the Heart of the Sea”)
12/25 – Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Revenant”), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Snowden”), Will Smith (“Concussion”)
Odds are half of these men won’t even be in the discussion by mid-November/early December. And there could be new contenders who pop-up along the way. The much-buzzed-about Miles Davis biopic “Miles Ahead” starring Don Cheadle doesn’t yet have a release date. When I wrote a similar blog at nearly the same time last year, Redmayne (who ended-up winning the Oscar for “The Theory of Everything”) and fellow nominees Benedict Cumberbatch and Bradley Cooper weren’t on my list.
Lights Camera Jackson (a.k.a. Jackson Murphy) began his career as a film critic in 2006 at the age of 7. To date, Jackson has written nearly 1,000 reviews of new releases and, in total, has seen more than 1,500 films. In 2010, Jackson became the youngest person to win a NY Emmy Award, for his on-air movie reviews on Time Warner TV station, Capital News 9. And in 2011, Jackson was inducted into the Broadcast Film Critics Association as their youngest member. The BFCA’s annual Critics Choice Awards is one of the industry’s most recognized and prestigious awards shows. Jackson is also a member of SAG-AFTRA and votes annually for the Screen Actors Guild Awards.