The year of the performances.

I know I am not alone when I say that this year was not the best ever for the film industry as it was in, let’s say, 2001 when we had movies that I consider to be near perfect. We had Moulin Rogue!, Hedwig and the Angry Inch , the first of Peter Jackson's amazing trilogy , the return to form of David Lynch and Robert Altman. Phew! I can honestly say I loved all of those movies, giving them all A grades.
2006 was nowhere near as good as 2001, but what was better was the quality of the performances.
In each category (aside from leads being put in supporting like Blanchett and Hounsou) no one can really argue with the merits of MOST of the performances.
Best Actress is the strongest line up in years, where talent and performance finally out weighed looks, youth and deglamming. Best Actor is strangely weaker, but still merits attention grabbing performances from films that would have other wise gone unnoticed (out of the 5 nominees, 4 hold their films only nomination).
Even the supporting categories (especially Best Supporting Actor ) holds performances that no one would be surprised to see win had front runners not been established so early and so strongly.
So while the films were rather weak, the actors brought it in buckets. This is something to remember, especially when we take at look at the strong movies (on paper) that are coming up for this year.
Lets just hope that films get an earlier release date so the impact can be fully realised come time for voting, and that the studios are smart enough to realise a great performance, and get their bloody screeners out early.

Now lets weep for the great performances that didn’t get a mention.
Toni Collette – Little Miss Sunshine, Steve Carell – Little Miss Sunshine, Hugh Jackman – The Fountain, Sasha Baron Cohen – Borat, Sergi Lopez – Pan’s Labyrinth, Maribel Verdu – Pan’s Labyrinth, Vanessa Redgrave – Venus, Stanley Tucci – The Devil Wears Prada, Maggie Gyllenahall – Sherry Baby, Gretchen Moll – The Notorious Betty Page, Keke Palmer – Akeelah and the Bee, Shareeka Epps – Half Nelson, Ben Affleck – Hollywoodland, Brad Pitt – Babel, Catherine O’Hara – For Your Consideration, Clive Owen – Children of Men, Michael Caine – Children of Men, the cast of Shortbus, James McAvoy – The Last King of Scotland, Leslie Phillips – Venus. Anyone I am missing??