For all practical purposes, this race is over, and Cate Blanchett will win her second Oscar. While "predetermined" Oscars such as this make the competition between Oscar night gambling pools a bit boring, and generally speaking I am not in favor of such automatic victories, in this case, it's just extremely clear who deserves the Best Actress Oscar. Cate Blanchett's enthralling performance as Jasmine, the emotionally distraught ex-wife of a Bernie Madoff-esque Wall Street con artist, is not only the best lead performance by a female thespian, but may be the single best performance from any actor this year, regardless of gender or status. In fact, her performance is one that is so mesmerizing and hypnotically good, that paradoxically, it could hurt the film's chances in other categories. Despite Woody Allen's deft structural crafting and psychological insight into his characters, Blanchett's performance is such a whirlwind turn, and dominates the film so completely, that it becomes difficult to separate Blue Jasmine from Blanchett's performance. While this is unfortunate for the film, a critically well reviewed movie that has nevertheless been mostly absent from the glut of year end "top ten" lists (although it did manage to land a Best Picture nomination from the Producers Guild of America), it is an understandable error. Inevitably, there will be many an Academy member who will feel that by voting for Cate Blanchett as Best Actress, they are in effect voting for the film in aggregate. I usually despise this sort of non-principled rationale, but in this case I think it can be somewhat forgiven, and anything that gets Cate Blanchett into the league of multiple-Oscar winning actors is okay in my book. Nomination Chances: 98% Who do you think will win the Best Actress Oscar? Share your thoughts below in the comments.
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.
