I’m repeating myself but the Best Actor race is going to come down to Will Smith‘s end-of-the-movie crying card and struggling-single-dad uplift card in The Pursuit of Happyness (the film being a true story about a guy who was homeless and on the streets with his son but who turned things around when he became a financial trader) vs. Peter O’Toole‘s career-capping performance in Venus fortified with a three-point pitch: (a) he’s never won an Oscar, (b) he wuz robbed 41 years ago when his Becket performance lost out to Rex Harrison‘s in My Fair Lady, and (c) it’s now or never. That’s the shorthand.
