1. Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained
Choosing between Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Christoph Waltz was one agonizingly tough decision to make. Both actors are among my favorite thespians currently working in the movie business and both gave stellar performances that will go down in the annals of cinematic history as two of the finest performances of their times. If I were an actual member of the Academy and had to pick between the two for real, I would have probably stared at this part of my ballot for hours, continually switching my vote back and forth between to the two, until I would finally give up and just flip coin and let Lady Luck decide my vote. For the sake of this article though I ended up going with Christoph Waltz, and the reason why you ask? In the end it came down to Waltz's performance being the more entertaining of the two. Watching Christoph Waltz breath life into the character of Dr. King Schultz was probably the single most enjoyable element of my year at the movies in 2012. Even just thinking about it gives me goosebumps. While some have complained that the performance is too similar to Waltz's first Oscar-winning performance as the Nazi villain Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's previous effort, Inglourious Basterds (and there is some undeniable similarity between the two roles), I actually marveled at fine differences between the two roles. While Landa was an amoral pragmatist who had no real ideological leanings but was more interested in the game of the hunt, Schultz is only a no-nonsense assassin on the outside, secretly covering up his compassionate soft underbelly. In the scene where Schultz is forced to watch a pack of enraged dogs rip a poor slave to pieces, we see the anguish eating him up inside, and it is this genuine inversion of the character Schultz previously played that I found so impressive. Plus, when you add in the perfect inflection of which Waltz delivers the dialogue (Tarantino compares it to a talented singer), and this is one choice by the Academy I can get behind without the slightest reservation.