7. Cate Blanchett - Monuments Men
Monuments Men is the upcoming awards behemoth directed, co-written, and co-produced by Hollywood's Golden Boy himself, Mr. George Clooney. The movie is based on the book about the true story of art historians and museum curators who were tasked with retrieving and saving priceless pieces of art from Nazi destruction. It sounds like the right mix of action, suspense, and historical gravitas that proved to be such a potent mix with the Academy last year in their crowning of Argo as the best that 2012 had to offer in cinema. The ensemble cast is predominately male, with appearances from the aforementioned Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, and Bill Murray, but there is one crucial female role that befalls on the venerable Cate Blanchett to portray. Ms. Blanchett's role is that of Rose Valland. Valland was a French art historian who over saw the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris during Nazi occupation in WWII. This was important because the Nazi's used this museum as a way station to hold priceless art works before they would ship them off to some other area of Nazi-occupied lands. Valland tracked all the whereabouts of these paintings and informed the French Resistance of their locations. It has all the makings of a great role and one that sounds particularly well suited to Ms. Blanchett's unique abilities. As we've seen in such films as The Aviator and I'm Not There, she is definitely equipped to take on historically grounded figures, but she has also been adept at acting in more genre-oriented fare, such as The Lord of the Rings series and Hanna. Monuments Men promises to be a mixture of both of these elements, so she should be right at home. Plus, being one of the few female characters in the film, she will definitely stand out, which is a positive in this case. She's been nominated five times previously by the Academy, so if this film is anywhere near the Oscar player most prognosticators are predicting it to be, then her nomination is likely a pretty safe bet.
Christopher Lominac
Contributor
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
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Christopher