In Martin Scorsese‘s The Aviator (’04), Cate Blanchett‘s impersonation of Kate Hepburn (that fluttery Bringing Up Baby laugh on the golf course) earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Seven years later Blanchett delivered another based-on performance, a financially fallen woman who was half Ruth Madoff and half Blanche DuBois, in Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine, this time snagging a Best Actress Oscar.

In Todd Field‘s TAR Blanchett plays an obsessive and emotionally ruthless orchestra conductor who gets eaten by cancel culture. It’s almost certainly her grandest and far-reachingest effort, and the first Oscar-heat performance that is entirely Blanchett’s creation — no echoes of perviously celebrated actress or notorious characters. And there’s really no way she doesn’t win her third Oscar for this on 3.12.23.

Partly because Blanchett’s competition is so comparatively underwhelming — nobody else is quite in her class.

Michelle Yeoh will be Best Actress-nominated for Everything Everywhere All at Once, but the film is a groaner, many 40-plus Academy members hate it, and Yeoh’s nomination will essentially be about her ethnicity…be honest. The EEAAO campaign is based on a DEI approval consensus. Ask yourself what the Academy reaction would be if EEAAO wasn’t about an Asian-American family (white folks don’t verse-jump as a rule but imagine it anyway) and if Yeoh’s character was a stressed-out 50something white woman played by, say, Laura Linney. Or by Jamie Lee Curtis with the IRS investigator played by Yeoh. Be honest.

There’s no question that Michelle Williams as the peculiar, emotionally eccentric mother in The Fablemans is a very broad and actressy performance. While Williams may be be nominated, the buzz has fallen away. I really don’t see her winning.

The most that Till‘s Danielle Deadwyler can hope for is a Best Actress nomination, because that’s as far as things will go.

I’ve heard people say that Margot Robbie‘s feisty, outsized performance in Babylon made them recoil, and given the negative reactions to Damien Chazelle‘s 1920s Hollywood epic I wouldn’t be surprised if Robbie is passed over.

Ana de Armas expertly did what she told to do in dramatizing the ache and trauma of Marilyn Monroe‘s sad life, but Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde is too deeply despised.

Viola Davis in The Woman King? No room at the inn.