best picture best director best actor best actress best supporting actor best supporting actress
best actress or best supporting actress guaranteed winner
by Omar P.L. Moore/The Popcorn Reel
December 5, 2008
Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz in "The
Reader", one of the year's best films. Ms. Winslet will
finally win an Oscar in 2009, whether for this performance or the
very layered one she gives in "Reservation Road". (Photo: The
Weinstein Company)
KATE WINSLET as Hanna Schmitz in "The
Reader", or as April Wheeler in "Reservation Road"
Kate Will Win-slet All!
Take note: this is Kate
Winslet's year. Not just because she happens to be in two
films at the end of a film year (films that will be released within
two days or two weeks of each other), but because she excels
mightily in both. The only question will be whether Ms.
Winslet receives an Oscar in February 2009 as a supporting actress
or as a lead actress. In both "Revolutionary Road" and "The
Reader" she could be categorized as either, but both roles, which
happen to be as characters living in the 1950's, are very well
acted. In "The Reader" (above), set in Germany over a 40-year
period beginning in the late 1950's, she displays a stoicism,
introversion and sensuality that are all powerful as a woman in a
smoldering affair with an under-aged teenage boy who reads to her.
In "Revolutionary Road", set in 1950's America, she embodies a mix
of joy, idealism, repression and overall complexity as a housewife
suffering in a marriage. Also keep in mind that Ms. Winslet is
loved by the Academy. She has been nominated six times prior,
has never won, and is the youngest actress ever to be nominated at
least six times for an Oscar, most recently in 2007 for "Little
Children".
Conventional wisdom may be that the two performances could work
against her especially if she is competing against herself in the
same category (the Academy or the respective film studios will find
a way to have her in different categories) but Kate Winslet will
probably win as a lead actress, most likely in "Reservation Road".
There is so much turmoil going on inside the character she plays in
her husband Mr. Mendes' film. It is an amazing performance.
Awards Season 2009 Headquarters
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