Is there anyone who’s seen Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave (i.e., not Mark Harris) who doesn’t feel that Lupita Nyong’o‘s performance is searing and breathtaking and yaddah-yaddah? Is there anyone who’s seen 12 Years A Slave and The Butler who believes that Oprah Winfrey‘s very good-but-not-quite-stupendous performance in the latter even approaches the calibre of Nyongo’s, much less competes with it? I’ve been contending all along that if Winfrey wasn’t a super-mogul billionaire she wouldn’t be in the conversation in the first place, but at least now she’s up against someone who’s hit a genuine grand slam. The other contenders in this category are, in this order, Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine, Margo Martindale in August: Osage County, June Squibb in Nebraska, Octavia Spencer in Fruitvale Station and (maybe) Carey Mulligan in Inside Llewyn Davis. What does Mark Harris think about all this other than “it’s September, for God’s sake”?