Slimmed-down Pete Hammond during yesterday’s (3.12) Gold Derby discussion about Sunday’s Oscar ceremony: “The most surprising thing [of the about-to-end award season] is that Timothee Chalamet has turned into a massive underdog in a Best Actor race that was his to lose.”
And the trio of cautious, consensus-reflecting pundits sitting next to Pete (Variety‘s Clayton Davis, THR‘s Scott Feinberg, IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson) explain why — Chalamet’s Marty Supreme character is unlikable, Josh Safdie’s film is unlikable, he sounded too cocky at the Golden Globes, he’s too young.
This same combination of complaints “is why Paul Newman lost [the 1961 Best Actor Oscar] for The Hustler,” Hammond says. No — the also-young Maximillian Schell won for Judgment at Nuremberg because he was effing brilliant in that film. His German prosecutor was a hard-cut diamond
I despise the mediocre minds who’ve been scolding Chalamet or giving him the back of their hand. They’re the human equivalent of mashed potatoes or, worse, Hostess Twinkies. The fact is that Chalamet is Maximillian Schell this year, and a lot of Academy voters out there (i.e., mostly women) are too feather-ruffled or agenda-driven to honor that fact.
None of these mushballs is able to summon the character to admit two plain truths about possible Best Actor winner Michael B. Jordan. One, Jordan gives a good performance but he’s far from phenomenal or super-dynamic in Sinners. (He’s the lead in a musical vampire film…c’mon,) And two, he almost certainly won SAG’s Best Actor award because of a last-minute reaction to the John Davidson N-word thing at the BAFTA awards.