Oscar 2010: Best Actor

Continuing my predictions for this year's Oscars, I turn to the easiest category of the night: Best Actor. There's just no wrapping my head around an outcome that doesn't have Colin Firth winning.

Firth, in his second consecutive nomination (last year it was for A Single Man), stars as stammering George VI in The King's Speech, the putative threat to win a passel of Oscars. His role is the kind that is almost always catnip to Academy voters: a person with some sort of disability that is ultimately overcome. Throw in the fact that he plays a real person, and a member of British royalty, well, it's just too much to contemplate.

And Firth deserves it. All five of these nominees are worthy, but I think Firth transcended the Oscar-bait qualities. He let George's prickly qualities come through, and what I remember most is not the stammering, but the embarrassment the man felt at having to enlist aid to overcome it. It's hard to guess if any actor in the part would have won an Oscar (Paul Bettany was first choice and turned it down), but that diminish Firth's greatness in it.

So, if the unthinkable happened and Firth didn't win, who would? I really can't come up with an alternative, and would love to see the actual vote. I would say Jeff Bridges for his re-imagining of Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, which won John Wayne an Oscar forty-one years ago. I saw the two versions on back to back days, and it's stunning how more fully realized a character Bridges made his Cogburn, versus the typically bloated Wayne performance. By then Wayne seemed more and more like the impressionist's version of him, and his win was perhaps, in the long history of Oscar giving out awards based on sentiment more than ability, the most sentimental of all.

But Bridges won last year, and it would be difficult to imagine him inspiring any kind of support to knock off Firth. What about James Franco, as the unfortunate hiker Aron Rolston in 127 Hours? This is also the type of role that Oscar goes for, and Franco seems to get nothing but good press, both for his polymath qualities and his seemingly inexhaustable good cheer (he mirthfully chided Meredith Viera on Oscar-nomination morning for saying she would polish Firth's Oscar, reminding her "I can hear you")

Franco would seem an actor who will win one day, but not now, as the film has lagged below 20 million in box office (it is assumed that not enough people willingly want to see someone cut off their own arm) and voters will no doubt think that Franco has plenty of good performances ahead of him.

Jesse Eisenberg scored a nod for his eerily good performance as Facebook found Mark Zuckerberg. Eisenberg had heretofore been known for playing motor-mouthed, anguished teens, and though he plays a young man in this film--college-age through most of it--it marks a turn for him as a more adult role than he has played before. What's also different is that the role doesn't really call for an "Oscar moment"--what clip will they show? His Zuckerberg is all thinking, eyes darting back and forth when threatened, withering under the hatred of others. I applaud the Academy for recognizing this kind of acting, but I wouldn't suggest that he should win, and he won't.

Finally, Javier Bardem was nominated for playing Uxbal, a cancer-stricken businessman of a shady nature in Biutiful. It's tough sledding for performers in non-English-speaking films: only three have won in 82 years (although a few more, such as Robert DeNiro, Benicio Del Toro, and Marlee Matlin, won for communicating in languages other than English in otherwise English-speaking films). Bardem dominates Biutiful like no other performance in this category, but he has won before and recently, and there will be stopping Firth.

Will Win: Colin Firth
Could Win: Only Colin Firth
Should Win: Colin Firth