2020 Oscar pick-a-palooza: Best Supporting Actress

This is another edition of my annual Oscar predictions discussion with Too Fat 4 Skinny Jeans' Brian Wezowicz

Brian: Alright, let's get started.  It's welcome back for the 8th annual Oscar Pick-A-Palooza.  2020 was an all-time downer of a year.  Theaters have been, for the most part, closed for over a year.  It was the first year without a Marvel movie release in what seems like forever.  Will Smith's Bad Boys For Life was the last major release before the world closed and it lead the American box office for a truncated year.  

And yet, 2020 (and the first quarter of 2021) was a quietly decent year for quality movies.  It looks like this year's crop of nominees has, with some exceptions, done a decent course correction out of Oscars So White territory.  While there were some notable snubs (cough cough Da 5 Bloods), it was nice to see a slate of nominees that represented more than just the criminally underrepresented straight white male demographic (sarcasm alert!).  

With almost everything getting a straight to streaming release, I was actually able to see a decent amount of the nominated films/performances (I still need to see Minari, but I've seen 6 out of 8 Best Picture nominees), so I should actually be able to carry my own weight in this back-and-forth this year.  Can we even call this the Oscars if almost none of these films got a theatrical release?  

With that being said, our first category, Best Supporting Actress, is the one where I saw the least amount of performances.  It looks like it has one of the biggest WTF nominees in a long time.  Of course, I'm speaking of Glenn Close's Razzie nominated performance in critically derided Hillbilly Elegy.  On to the nominations.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Maria Bakalova (‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”) 

Glenn Close (“Hillbilly Elegy”) 

Olivia Colman (“The Father”) 

Amanda Seyfried (“Mank”) 

Yuh-jung Youn (“Minari”)

Will Win: Yuh-Jung Youn - I know I said I'd be carrying my weight this year, but I have no idea with this category.  Minari seems like a late critical favorite, so I'm going with Youn here.  I think Amanda Seyfried was just fine playing an old-timey Hollywood character, but it wasn't that great.  I haven't seen The Father either, so I'll go with Youn in this category.

Should Win: Maria Bakalova - In a year like no other, I'd love to see the Oscars take a chance on something different.  Bakalova was the heart of the Borat sequel and I'd love to see comedy recognized for once.

Snubs:  This was a hard one, but it's bonkers to me that Glenn Close is on this list for her performance in a Razzie worthy movie.  She pushed out Jodie Foster in her Golden Globe winning performance in The Mauritanian. 

Who takes home your statue?

Adam: Hey man -- as you know I have been basically boycotting the Oscars, but I can't resist following these races just a bit and of course I always have fun playing the prediction game with you. Definitely, the strangest year yet -- I for one found this year's crop of films a bit of a letdown after a very strong 2019 and the fact that I couldn't see most of the films I loved in theaters at all is a bummer too. But I do agree that this year's nominees are MOSTLY on point. The Spike Lee, Delroy Lindo and Regina King snubs do hurt, and I was really pulling for Bill Murray to get in there for On the Rocks, but I'm generally pleased with what's here. Definitely check out Minari when you get a chance, you won't be disappointed.

This supporting actress race is really hard to predict. There's the Glenn Close thing. I can't think of an actress who has made more efforts to win an Oscar with more mediocre movies -- Albert Nobbs, The Wife and now, Hillbilly Elegy, a movie I didn't see but heard universally horrible things about it. That's never stopped the academy before -- plenty of actors have won trophies for bad performances in bad movies (even Meryl Streep did it with The Iron Lady!) but something tells me that giving it to Glenn Close for such a polarizing movie would spark this biggest backlash since Crash. 

Will Win: This is really tough, but I'm gonna go out on a limb as say Amanda Seyfried. She was my favorite part of a movie that really left me cold and she's been an underrated actress for some time now. Olivia Coleman just won Best Actress, I love Maria Bakalova but the Academy probably sees her nomination as a win and while Yuh-Jung Youn is fantastic in Minari the fact that she is pretty unknown to American voters may hurt her.

Should Win: I think I'll go with Bakalova here. She was a real comedic revelation in Borat Subsequent Film, and her performance was one of the most memorable I've seen all year. But I'd be happy really if anyone won here but Glenn Close, who I love, but who shouldn't win for bad work.

Snubs: Nothing comes to mind in what feels like a very lean year. I know it's not eligible because it's technically a television film -- but Letitia Wright is fantastic in Steve McQueen's Mangrove, so I'll just give her a shout out here.