It became obvious to me today that Christoph Waltz will win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar at next year's Academy Awards ceremony, for his charming, sardonic, utterly evil, highly original and compulsively entertaining performance as Col. Hands Landa in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.
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Waltz, in his breakthrough role on the worldwide acting stage at the age of 52, won the Best Actor Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Anyone who has followed my coverage of Tarantino's glourious movie closely will probably think that's a little strange of me to say because as far back as the day he cast in the part, I mentioned that Landa was "easily the most realised character in the film, one of the smoothest and intriguing villains Ive read in a long time. He reminded me of a cross between Alan Rickman in Die Hard and Sergi Lopezs Captain Vidal from Pans Labyrinth" and that the statue was waiting for someone to take a stab at it, if they were willing to throw out the conventional acting rigour andthe old stabilisers. Ever since I saw the movie in July, I've certainly been banging the Waltz Oscar drum. So you're right, of course. Before today I would have predicted the statue was Waltz's - but having watched the film for the third time (out on Blu-ray and DVD in the U.K tomorrow - early or what?) this weekend I noticed the deafening, bet your bottom dollar reason why it will be him that walks away with the gold, the same way we knew Heath Ledger would 12 months ago. The answer is simple: The award for Waltz, will be the award for Quentin, really. The Academy liked Inglourious Basterds, of that I have no doubt. It will probably get nominated. The love for the movie in Europe should see the movie get no less. However it's too arrogant, too mainstream, too pop culture infused, too Tarantino, to win the high award. The exact same (swap Tarantino for superhero costumes) could be said of The Dark Knightlast year. That's not to say that Ledger didn't deserve the award last year (because he did) and neither should it undermine Waltz's performance (because it shouldn't). Waltz deserved the award regardless. I'm just saying, the Academy often likes to congratulate the best thing about a movie (Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood is another example) when they don't think the movie itself will suit what they think should be the winner of that particular year.