Is This The Best Actor Match-up?
Looking over the Guardian’s ridiculously comprehensive list of possible Oscar-contending movies, I couldn’t decide where to place my bets for Best Picture. (We need to get through the September festivals in Toronto and Venice to know more there.) But I did come away from the article strengthened in my feeling that the Best Actress match-up will be between Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” and Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in “My Week with Marilyn.” My tentative mano-a-mano in Best Actor is between Leonardo DiCaprio (right) as J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” and Ryan Gosling (left) as a young politico in George Clooney’s “The Ides of March.” With three Oscar noms, Leo is “overdue,” but Hoover is such a hated figure in Hollywood that DiCaprio would have to give a ferocious, “Last King of Scotland” type of performance to overcome the antipathy; and Dustin Lance Black’s script isn’t pitched that way. (On the other hand, Leo may gain Oscar points by playing gayish; on the other hand, the movie has no big death scene.) As for Gosling, he’s moved past his earlier rep as an indie specialist of darker fare (“Half Nelson”) to become a full-fledged, glamorous Hollywood star. If “The Ides of March” is the usual quality autumn Clooney fare (and I’m damn sure it is), then Gosling is a contender.
