11:00AM, Feb 20, 2009
If Kate Winslet doesn’t walk away with the Best Actress Oscar for The Reader then the emotional fall-out could decimate the front three rows at the Kodak Theatre.
After her Best Actress BAFTA win for The Reader, a terrifying conviction that it’s Year Winslet after no less than six Academy Award nominations has seen her supposed inevitable triumph hit critical mass.
And British hopes are also riding high for first-time Oscar nominee director Danny Boyle and his no-budget drama Slumdog Millionaire, the runaway popular choice for Best Film.
Slumdog is our best hope of glory with ten nominations, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Remember, if you will, that this was a film that initially couldn’t find a distributor.
Reading-born Winslet’s first crack at the Oscars came in 1996 when she received a Best Supporting Actress nod for Sense and Sensibility. That year Mira Sorvino won for Mighty Aphrodite.
Her next attempt came with a Best Actress nomination for Titanic in 1998 and she followed that with a supporting role nod for Iris in 2001.
She was again in the frame for Best Actress for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Little Children and this year for director Stephen Daldry’s The Reader.
The omens are looking good. “Our Kate” cleaned up at the Golden Globes with a Best Supporting Actress award for The Reader (strangely she wasn’t nominated as Best Actress – which she won for Revolutionary Road anyway).
She subsequently triumphed at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, paving the way for the Oscars.
Similarly, Slumdog Millionaire has been blazing a trail since winnng Golden Globes for Best Director, Picture, Score and Screenplay.
At the Screen Actors Guild awards it won Best Ensemble Cast and Best Film prizes and the Producer’s Guild of America awards respectively. Typically, the film that wins the PGA’s top honour goes on to win the Best Picture Oscar.
Other Brit contenders include The Reader director Stephen Daldry, who has been nominated twice previously for Billy Elliot in 2000 and The Hours two years later.
He’s joined by The Reader’s scriptwriter David Hare, who was also nominated previously for The Hours, and fellow writer Peter Morgan, who penned Frost/Nixon and was previously nominated for The Queen in 2006.
The British team behind Man on Wire, including director James Marsh and producer Simon Chinn, are also up for best documentary.
Could the British finally be coming?
Tim Evans
