He's 13 1/2 inches tall. He wears only a sword. He's shiny. Everybody wants him. He's the Naked Gold Man and this is a new weekly Sunday series --my attempt to keep Oscar discussion corralled in the weekends ...at least until we're truly in the season.

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A truth as I see it: There is never a shortage of quality “for your consideration” candidates for any acting category at the Oscars. The truth as other people see it: There is often a shortage of viable contenders in one acting category or another at the Oscars and that shortage usually occurs in the actress categories (This year, the age old “empty!” gripe is aimed at the Supporting Actress category).

These “truths” may seem contradictory but they’re not. The variable that causes this disconnect is this: Though there is never a shortage of quality work there is sometimes a shortage of stock roles that are typically deemed worthy of attention. When this disconnecting factor occurs people say a category is empty. The category is never empty. You just have to look beyond the usual suspects; Actors do award worthy work in non-traditional roles and less “baity” genres frequently. To cite three quick examples: Daryl Hannah slam dunked her boo!hiss! Elle Driver role in the Kill Bill movies, many film buffs think that Drew Barrymore was astonishing in Scream (any less of a performance and would people really still be talking about that scene 11 years later?) and everyone in the known universe loves the depths and weird wonder of Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in Batman Returns. But the cold hard truth is that actors don’t win awards (and are rarely nominated) for nontraditional triumphs.

I recently chatted with Supporting Actress expert and archivist Stinky Lulu (who hosts monthly “smackdown” retrospectives of his favorite Oscar category –this month: 1940) and asked him to help me identify the five most commonly Oscarable “types” within this particular Oscar category. We came up with the following “perfect” (i.e. most traditional) Supporting Actress Shortlist. It would consist of these five character blueprints in descending order of nominated frequency:

1. The Long Suffering Wife / Girlfriend (he couldn’t get through it without her)
2. Monstrous Mom / Martyr Mom (flip sides of a coin…either will do)
3. The Mouth on Her (wisecracking dames, comic relief, often a best friend)
4. Little Miss Sunshine (embodiments of precocity)
5. More Than Just a Pretty Face (“The Girl” with hidden depth and soul)

The 2007 Supporting Actress race is currently the foggiest of the four acting categories. That’s undoubtedly because the Best Picture race is unclear (where favorite films go, actors and actresses follow) but it’s also because there’s a shortage of the stock roles listed above. Quick glances at the top 25 contenders (in rough wildly presumptious "rank") reveal that there’s very little of any of these “types”

Depending on your interpretation you might say that longsuffering wife/girlfriend roles are well covered this year by the Jennifers (Connelly, Leigh, and Garner) but apart from arguably Leigh there’s no traction for them… yet. The monstrous mom role has only Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) as vessel --unless you count Nicole Kidman (The Golden Compass but again there's that genre problem) --and Ryan, though experiencing a breakthrough year, has campaign hurdles: She’s too unknown to get any Oscary points for ditching glam for blue collar (there’s no previous glam to compare it to) and the movie, though well reviewed, is struggling to find an audience.

Beyond that it’s all over the place. Leslie Mann (Knocked Up) is an interesting case. She might be considered a longsuffering wife but she pulls a big no-no for that type of Bait: she bitches about it constantly rather than crying beatifically. Still, it could happen… she does have the wisecracking dame field all to herself. A lot of moviegoers would be thrilled to see her in the running for that popular comedy but unless the Globes –less averse to comedy -- go there, she’s probably toast. Marisa Tomei (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) and Kelly Macdonald (No Country For Old Men) both occupy “The Girl” slots in heavily phallocentric films but Tomei is working against the hidden depth thing angle in interesting but not necessarily pleasing to Oscar fashion ways (you’ll have to see the film to understand) and Macdonald has very little screen time to work with (though she is grade A in her one and only Oscar clip scene…which might be enough. We’ll see)

There’s still only one sure thing: Cate Blanchett’s stunt casting as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. There’s no way that’s not irresistible to Oscar voters who gave statues to the last two women who shoved socks down their trousers (Linda Hunt, The Year of Living Dangerously and Hilary Swank, Boys Don’t Cry) and who regularly give statues to superb mimics (a group to which Ms. Blanchett unarguably belongs)

And so we come to the most interesting film mucking with Supporting Actress Predictions and traction issues, Atonement. The meaty role of Briony is central to the entire plot of the movie (adapted from Ian McEwan's bestseller) but the role is inhabited by three actresses: the soon to be ubiquitous Dakota Fanning replacement Saorsie Ronan is Briony in her pre-teen years as she witnesses something she doesn’t understand. Her interpretation, faulty though it may be, wreaks havoc in the lives of the lead lovers (played by Keira Knightley and James Mcavoy). When Briony gets old enough to understand she’s guilt-ridden Romola Garai. Then, at film’s end, Briony is an old woman and Vanessa Redgrave puts the exclamation point on the characters penitence. It's said to be a remarkable cameo.

Oscar nominations have been handed out to multiple actors playing the same role as recently as Iris (Kate Winslet and Judi Dench in 2001) but it’s not common. People will continue to argue about which of the Brionys will get traction until the film debuts in America and the awards race begins in full. But for now I’m finding it fun to imagine the possibility that all three could make the shortlist. The film would have to be a major player for that to happen but it’s not unprecedented. Four films in the past have hogged 60% of a supporting category. Those films were: The Godfather Part II (1974), The Godfather (1972), Tom Jones (1963) and On the Waterfront (1954). Only Tom Jones did it in the supporting actress category. Could history finally repeat itself 24 years later?

What say you, Oscar watchers and supporting actress enthusiasts?

Discuss on the blog

Last week's Naked Gold Man: The Michael Clayton Fix

Oscar Predictions
last updated on October 14th
Supporting Actress Predictions
will be updated on November 4th

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