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SIMON SAYS: The Weird World of Unseen Marvel Comics Movies

When Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was released this past Friday, I couldn’t help but think this of Nicolas Cage: “Wasn’t this guy supposed to play Superman?”

Follow my train of logic, please: as a fan of the Ghost Rider comic book character, the poor reviews for Spirit of Vengeance, a title that seemed like a shoe-in for Crank boys Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, were truly, er, dispiriting. I mean, if the guys that made Jason Statham a living cartoon character can’t do much with a film where Nicolas Cage plays an antihero with a flaming skull head, who can? I haven’t seen Spirit of Vengeance but I still want to enjoy it, and I hope that I’ll take away something from it other than abject despondence, which was what I got from the 2007 Ghost Rider.

And yet, the kind of died-on-the-vine disappointment that both professionally critical friends and lay-nerds alike have experienced after watching Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance led me to wonder about the comic book films that never were – dream projects like Tim Burton’s aborted version of Superman, whose prospective costumes look psychedelically campy in the best way imaginable.

Hold on, before you call me a troll or a contrarian, let me back up a moment: the reason I fantasize about a Tim Burton-directed, Nicolas Cage-starring Superman movie isn’t because I think it’d be a huge success. In fact, I think it’d be crazy and dysfunctional but possibly exciting and frequently dazzling. It’d be different, is what I’m trying to say, and different is what I want from comic book movies. I am, after all, writing in an age of drab Marvel comic book adaptations like Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger and Christopher Nolan’s frequently exciting but pointedly anti-flamboyant Batman movies.

Ahem. I dream of superhero movies where guys that wear four-colored outfits are allowed to be simultaneously human and ridiculous. This is admittedly a reactive stance after having only really been impressed by Iron Man 2, a character-driven mess that is mostly pretty entertaining but is also very much a film made by fans that felt like they could cut loose and just tell a story that they really wanted to tell after doing their due diligence in the first Iron Man. I want a comic book film that doesn’t pander to first-time audiences and also doesn’t deny the fact that these characters live in worlds where death rays and super-powers are commonplace. Is that so much to ask?

I guess so. In my recent search for comic book movies that are out there and exciting and yes, maybe consistently engaging enough to be worth seeking out, I focused primarily on the Marvel Comics movies that time forgot, by which I mean that I sought out made-for-TV projects that have been buried by Marvel and have yet to surface on DVD or Blu-ray. This didn’t require much skullduggery: many of these titles are available via YouTube and will likely continue to circulate on another medium after a Marvel rep reads this article and tries to pull down the titles listed below. I wish I had more time to watch more of these weird objects of cult worship, because you can say what you want about how “good” these made-for-TV films and episodes are, but hot damn, they look downright outré when compared to fairly recent Marvel movies. These older adaptations suck, but they’re a different kind of suck.

With that in mind, if you’re willing and interested, take a little trip with me down memory lane and remember comic book films that never were – released, that is. These are all Marvel properties, folks, so you won’t see me tackling equally tempting stuff like the 1997 Justice League pilot (though it is, uh, available). And you won’t see me talking about The Man-Thing or Dolph Lundgren’s Punisher. You can either Netflix those last two titles or buy them off of Amazon. Think more along the lines of the Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four and bam, we’re on the same page.

Bear in mind: these are movies that aren’t necessarily superior to contemporary Marvel movies. In fact, if you’re still with me, you’ll soon find that these films are actually often worse. But they’re different and they at least attempt things that today’s Marvel titles don’t, and I find that’s almost always worth getting excited about. So face front, True Believers, we’re heading into the wonderful world of made-for-TV live-action comic book adaptations! Excelsior!

The Amazing Spider-Man (1977): This 90-minute pilot for the short-lived live-action TV show by the same name is pretty strange. It’s almost as if its creators thought that because Peter Parker (Nicholas Hammond) is a hard-luck hero with a cloud permanently affixed over his head, he must also be a sub-intelligent creep and a pest, too. As his human alter ego, Parker spends a lot of time bothering poor Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson (David White) for work (Jameson just can’t use any of the photos Parker gives him, suggesting that this universe’s Parker is actually just a talentless hack that got lucky). Hammond’s Parker is Christopher-Reeve-as-Clark-Kent-levels of nebbish and annoying, but minus all the well-meaning aw-shucks stuff. He’s bashful but has a million questions to ask everyone and a weird inability to take a hint and leave well enough alone.

Worse still, once he’s suited up, Spider-Man spends a lot of time climbing up green-screened walls, skulking atop rooftops and backing away slowly from boring-looking villains. (Spidey fights a bunch of brainwashed thugs with wooden swords in this movie; meh.) He doesn’t talk much, mostly because he looks like he’s going to poop in his tights after backing up onto a banana peel.

But hey, at least this isn’t a boilerplate “Who is Spider-Man?” story like Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man. The impulse to reintroduce new audiences to one of the most famous superheroes has always struck me as an odd impulse. So it’s nice to see a film where Spidey gets bit by a spider, then fights some brainwashed dudes, and saves the day without said day-saving meaning much in the grand scheme of things. This is not an event film, in other words; it’s a big installment in a serial and it doesn’t even look like a definitive first installment! Which isn’t great for a TV pilot, but hey, it’s certainly different.

Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979): The second of two starring vehicles for the charisma-less Reb Brown is much more interesting than its previous installment. In it, Brown fights Christopher Lee, who blackmails world leaders with a chemical agent that makes people age faster. See, already cool, right?

Eh, not so much. Brown’s a walking black hole and this made-for-TV film’s plot meanders like a mother. The scenes where Brown is painting in a park and is interrupted by local toughs is especially laughable. Then again, so is much of everything else in this film, right down to the cheap production values on the motorcycle that Brown drives as Captain America. Cap’s signature stars-and-stripes shield, which looks like it was bought from a nearby 99-cent store, serves as his bike’s windscreen, too (!?!?!), and is so small that when the motorbike launches out of Cap’s battle van (?!?!?!?!) accompanied by several fire extinguishers’ worth of smoke, it looks like Cap’s riding a colorful, rocking horse-sized missile of doom. Unless you really want to see a rapidly aging Lee fight Brown, you can probably skip this one.

Dr. Strange (1978): For a movie about a surgeon that becomes the world’s greatest sorcerer, this made-for-TV film’s pretty damn sleepy. Peter Hooten (where do they find these guys?) plays Stephen Strange, a kind-hearted medico that gets wrapped up in the schemes of evil Morgan Le Fay (Jessica Walter), a sorceress trying to take over the world so that she can stay young forever. Strange is called up to help Thomas Lindmer (John Mills), who is secretly Merlin the ancient magician, to fight Morgan. Presumably because Dr. Strange is a relatively obscure superhero, this one’s a fairly straightforward and vanilla origin story. You spend most of the film’s 93-minute runtime watching a cookie cutter hero get the courage to dress up in a garish costume (complete with an ill-fitting cape) and duke it out on the Astral Plane with an evil woman in an equally garish costume. It has its moments, I suppose, and some cute psychedelic imagery. My favorite moment has to be when Le Fay tries to seduce Strange and trick him into removing the talisman-like ring that protects him from her. That moment was almost good! The rest is mostly indistinct and uninteresting.

Nicky Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998): This is the one made-for-TV film I chose that wasn’t made in the ‘70s, that wild period where Marvel was most committed to bad ideas. In it, David Hasselhoff plays Col. Nick Fury, a grizzled old war vet that never met a rule he couldn’t break. I’m paraphrasing from David S. Goyer’s cheese-stuffed screenplay. (Goyer, incidentally, wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, along with many other comic book properties.) Basically, this is a fairly rote alternative to the origin story: Fury comes back from retirement and helps S.H.I.E.L.D. fight Baroness von Strucker (Sandra Hess), the daughter of his arch-nemesis…Baron von Strucker. While it’s always a delight to see the Hoff chomp on a cigar and wildly overact, there probably should have been more to this film than just a lot of juiceless Oorah-ing and weird creative decisions (why do HYDRA’s minions look like the Spy vs. Spy guys except without the pointy noses?).

First two episodes of Supaidaman (1978): This is easily my favorite of the collection of, well, stuff that I watched for this article. This live-action tokusatsu show is a weird mash-up of Spider-Man and Power Rangers. I didn’t know until now that select episodes were officially available for streaming via Marvel’s website. So you can actually watch this with real subtitles and everything, and see for yourself such sights as Spider-Man with a giant robot or Spider-Man fighting henchmen in bird costumes or Spider-Man fighting evil men in rubber monster outfits. That last item is what I’m into, apparently, because the intentionally poorly-subtitled versions I watched here and here are just as entertaining. In fact, I’d say that if you like what you see in those latter two links then you should definitely check out the official Marvel page. This stuff is nutty as all get-out and it’s certainly visually disturbing enough to make up for its plot’s many lapses in logic. A must-watch!

Simon Abrams is a New York-based freelance arts critic. His film reviews and features have been featured in the Village Voice, Time Out New York, Slant Magazine, The L Magazine, New York Press and Time Out Chicago. He currently writes TV criticism for The Onion AV Club and is a contributing writer at the Comics Journal. His writings on film are collected at the blog, The Extended Cut.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Animated Short

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Fearless Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is making it her mission to watch every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Dimanche/Sunday. It seemed promising despite the crude animation; the sound design is witty, and it started out as a sort of fantasia on how children perceive things. But it keeps killing animals off horribly for no reason, and the surrealism comes and goes when it's convenient. A clearer visual style might have helped, but I don't think it knows what it's trying to say.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. The ending is mournful and beautiful, but the emotion is unearned, and the more I thought about this one, the less it held up. The books themselves, bird/butterfly hybrids, are endearing, but between the scattershot hat-tips to The Wizard of Oz, the internal logic that isn't, and the over-long and show-offy tornado intro, the story doesn't jell.

La Luna. The Pixar entry. Short and sweet, but didn't get much reaction from me or the theater at large. Usually a Pixar short is either really cute or hee-larious, or has one or two memorable images or new ways of thinking about a visual; this has a lovely rendering of oar marks on water at the beginning, but I had to check my notes to recall it. The competent pacing alone could snag it the statue…sometimes "professional" and "not an utter muddle" is enough in this category.

A Morning Stroll. It's far from perfect, but chickens are so funny to me, and the animated chicken who ties this triptych together is SO fluffy and has SUCH teeny legs that I immediately loved the short. In the first segment, it's basically animated as a couple of swoops, a beak line, and little stick legs, but it grooms itself so evocatively regardless…it's probably just me, the chicken thing, but it's cute. AMS also uses clever fonts and does a couple of new things with zombie humor (although it gets a little too in love with that subject in the final third), and it's the most fun and least self-serious of the lot. Definitely my favorite.

Wild Life. Gorgeous to look at, and almost there: good character beats (a dog busts out a wicked side-eye, for instance), switches up styles. But there's too much going on, too many interstitial cards and explainy letters, and not enough development of the central character except via the dismissive opinions of others. It's like it doesn't trust itself.

Should win: A Morning Stroll. La Luna is a bit dull, and Wild Life isn't quite cooked.

Will win: La Luna.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded Television Without Pity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: IN DARKNESS

Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz) is a sewer inspector in Nazi-occupied Lvov; he's also a thief, robbing abandoned houses to provide for his family, and he and his partner Szczepek (Krzysztof Skonieczny) hide the spoils in the watery catacombs beneath the city. One day in 1942, the burglars run into another group in the sewers: Jewish families who have dug down through the floor of an apartment in the ghetto, knowing that going literally underground is their only chance to survive. Socha agrees to help them, but only a dozen of them, and only for $500 a week.

Directed by Agnieska Holland (Europa Europa) and based on a true story, In Darkness gets right into the action — Socha and Szczepek busted in the act by a pair of Nazi Youth — and though Holland skillfully alternates quiet moments and anxiety, the claustrophobic mucky sewer and the clean cold daylight above, the tension stays constant throughout. (I had to pee when I arrived at the theater; the movie is two and a half hours; I didn't move until the credits, except to squirm at plot twists.) It isn't just the dozen Jews in an impossibly precarious situation, but Socha's marriage and the lives of himself, his partner, and his family; whenever you start to relax, the band of refugees has to relocate, or Socha is compelled to stop buying them food, or Mundek (Benno Furmann) breaks into a work camp to try to find the stubborn sister of the woman he semi-secretly loves.

The tension derives from the larger situation, of course, but also from the way it's filmed. When you're in the sewers, it's dark, and you can't see much; the violent deportation of the ghetto's other occupants is merely heard from below, which makes it harder to bear. (Also heard, and seen, continuously: sewer rats. The children in the group eventually make pets out of them, but if this is something you're sensitive to, be warned.) And the final rainstorm sequence is filmed and edited flawlessly. The submerged screams, the belongings floating by, the deafening water are an impressive build to the ending, but also nearly intolerable.

In Darkness is also expert at letting all the characters be who they are — sometimes they're horndogs. Sometimes they're brats. Sometimes they're unexpectedly, or tragically, generous. Some of them are all these things; the script isn't afraid to make some of the refugees straight-up jerks, to let Socha ruin good moments, to let his wife (the excellent Kinga Preis) leave him and then come back to him and yell and laugh and be complicated in her love for him. A child almost blows the set-up, then catches her snap immediately and turns things around. It's not easy to avoid reverting to two dimensions of good and evil in a life-during-wartime drama, especially not one about that particular war; In Darkness is as much about the life as the wartime, putting the people ahead of the situation, and that lets the situation come through more clearly and with more texture (harder to watch, too, but that's baseball).

It's a truly well built story, frustrating and thrilling, controlled but not rigid. I don't think it wins its category, but it's very fine work.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: MONSIEUR LAZHAR

A teacher dies tragically, leaving her eleven- and twelve-year-old students variously bereft, disoriented, and determined not to react. Days later, Bachir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag) — an émigré from Algeria with years of teaching experience who's trying to put a calamity of his own behind him — presents himself as a replacement. His classroom style is different from what the kids have gotten used to; he prefers orderly rows of desks to the "team-building" semi-circle, and the school's administrator (Danielle Proulx) has to tell him that he can't just casually whap a misbehaving boy upside the head.

Monsieur Lazhar points out gaps and failures like this throughout: the casually classist comments of parents who both expect the school to act in loco parentis and resent its attempts to do so; the compulsory English lessons when the kids can't conjugate in French yet (the film is from Quebec); the emphasis on fun, color, and camaraderie in the classroom when rules prohibit teachers from physically touching students in any way. The script doesn't lecture us on the topics, though, or get all Dead Poets Society about good vs. evil, or end in the victory (or ingenious compromise) you might expect from the subject matter. Whether it's observing the educational system, Lazhar's friendship with a fellow teacher, or the bond he forms with one of his students, the precocious and direct Alice (Sophie Nelisse), the story acknowledges that solutions don't always exist. We all just bumble forward as best we can manage, finding a way to live without information we think we need. (Speaking of which, if this is all seeming rather vague, I apologize. The plot isn't exactly spoilable, but the details will function better if you discover them for yourself.)

I liked that about the film, that it understood this and that it let the audience figure it out. It stuck with me, the ending that leaves things unsaid, the courtly reserve of Lazhar that wavers but doesn't break, the connections made or sought. The acting is uniformly good and natural; Emilien Neron as Simon is overmatched in a couple of scenes, but he's asked to play a reveal that may not fit in the first place, and on the whole, the kids (and Proulx) seem like they could be in a documentary.

I don't think Monsieur Lazhar wins its category, but it's a good movie. It trusts you.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2

I haven't had much to do with the Harry Potter series; maybe one of these days I'll get around to reading the books, but to date, I've seen the films nominated for Oscars during the Death Races, and that's about it. …Wait, I saw the first film on a plane and liked it fine.

So, I don't have the same relationship to the story — or to bidding it farewell — that you might if you've read all the books and seen all the filmed installments, but the last chapter functions pretty well as both story and goodbye. The last hour lags a little, but I could live with that, because of how much it had to wrap up and put away (but the ultimate fight scene between Harry and Voldemort, played with the usual gusto by Ralph Fiennes, seemed like stalling after a while; in the end, it's two guys pointing very emphatically at each other).

But the pacing overall picked up a good deal from Deathly Hallows Part 1, and the effects looked great too — they seem to have matured along with the hero. The ride on the dragon and subsequent crash into the water, and the paintings on the walls of Hogwards scrambling to get the hell out of Dodge, looked like legends, one scary, one funny.

I make jokes about Harry Potter and the Compleat Roster of British Actors, but 1) it's not really a joke, and 2) Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Ciaran Hinds, and the rest make the HP tales seem important, but not self-important. A well-turned final chapter in a cultural moment.

No real idea about the movie's chances in the effects categories, although it could win Makeup.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

I had to watch the second Transformers for a previous Death Race iteration, so I thought I knew what to expect — i.e., not much, but perhaps a faint hope that the formidable Julie White would return as Sam Witwicky's mom.

She did, and she's accompanied by a host of other heavy-hitting actors, as well as fight-sequence upgrades; this may be one of the few franchises that's improving with each outing. John Turturro is back, along with his character's manservant Dutch (Alan Tudyk), and they're both having a ball; ditto John Malkovich as Witwicky's intense, Teddy-KGB-ish boss and Frances McDormand as the head of the NSA. My notes have something about how the casting kinda puts the "Oscars Death" in the Oscars Death Race, but while the script isn't Faulkner, it isn't terrible — or at least the actors keep the pacing on track.

The plot isn't much, of course — the Autobots and the Decepticons race to re-activate a technology that spent years buried on the moon, a good guy is actually a bad guy, can Earth be saved, etc. Leonard Nimoy plays the compromised Prime, Sentinel, and the man came dressed to play…if by "play," you mean "yell."

But the point of Transformers: Dark of the Moon isn't an acting master class, obvs, although it's courteous of Bay to include one. It's the crunchy beatings, and these work significantly better than those in Revenge of the Fallen — apparently, the production worked out a clearer color scheme for the 'bots in both car and 'bot form so it's easier to keep track of who's who in a punch-fest. It can still get a bit muddled, but it's better. And while the movie is much too long, it alternates kablam sequences with humor that usually succeeds: characters spluttering lines like "I don't care about your exotic milk, I care about respect!" while "You Light Up My Life" plays in an elevator; making Patrick Dempsey's skeezy character even more hateful by having him use the word "liaise." And I didn't mind the old Megan Fox, but Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, whose previous experience is as a model, is likable and a real pro at dashing through rubble in high heels. (Also, speaking of 'bots, does "Rosie Huntington-Whiteley" sound like it came out of the British Name Gener-A-Tron 5000 or what?)

I had fun watching it, despite several pieces of questionable taste (the skull that rolls into the foreground after a Decepticon crashes onto a civilian car; Dutch's…whole thing) and significant denial vis-à-vis Shia LaBeouf's crying ability. Even the flashback to the Kennedy White House is so over the top, it's kind of awesome — not least because the actor looks like Peter Noone strapped a loaf of sourdough to his head. …As you do.

It's nominated in tech categories, and could win Visual Effects — Bay's team knows how to give CGI physical heft in a way some of the other nominees don't — but I suspect Hugo takes that. The film itself was a solid 150 minutes of AC when it came out but needn't be bothered with now.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: RANGO

The trailer for Rango made the movie look unappealing, and I didn't have high hopes when I threw it in the DVD player. Oops: it's awesome.

Rango himself (voiced by Johnny Depp) is a pet chameleon with writer/director aspirations who finds himself marooned in the Mojave. Thirsty, hot, lectured by other fauna and preyed on by a hawk, Rango gets a ride from a petit-mal-prone lizard named Beans, into a town called Dirt; after a chase/misunderstanding involving vending-machine licorice (…I know!), he's made Dirt's sheriff by the Mayor (Ned Beatty), a turtle who has secret plans to annex all the local natural resources, by whatever means necessary.

In addition to that commentary on the haves and have-nots of the global fresh-water supply, Rango also furnishes a nod to Depp's role as Hunter S. Thompson; a send-up of acting workshops in the opening sequence; several stunning animated chases, beautiful nighttime scenes, and a gift for capturing textures, liquids, and light on glass; and verbal and visual gags for kids of all ages. The bird with the prosthetic limb made of a wiffleball is one of my favorites, as well as the fly backstroking in the cactus juice, but I rewound the cemetery sequence three times just to catch all the headstones. (Sheriffs in Dirt, you see, don't tend to live very long. "Sheriff Jurgen / 'OOPS.'" "Sheriff Tucker / Hold My Beer And Watch This." "Sheriff Amos / Thurs – Sat RIP." And towards the back of the graveyard, one reading, "He's Dead Jim." Love it.)

The voice acting is great across the board — Depp's plaintive "T.O., T.O., just a sec" prior to a duel is a highlight — and the hat-tips to other works cracked me up too. The Greek-chorus mariachi birds reminded me of the orchestra bus in Mel Brooks's High Anxiety, and the soundtrack repeatedly refers to Carter Burwell's yodeling runs on Raising Arizona's.

Characters announce, "We're experiencing a paradigm shift!"; minutes later, hundreds of beetles gather to carry an exhausted Rango, Godspell-style. It's funny and pretty and there's something going on in every frame. The last half hour is perhaps too contemplative and atmospheric, but it's nice to look at and I didn't mind.

I liked A Cat in Paris a lot and I wouldn't mind it winning, but Rango is firing on all six cylinders, and should win Best Animated Feature.

ADWEEK INTERVIEW: New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz takes a tough stand on reality TV shows

Have you been surprised at any of the comments you’ve gotten about what you’ve written so far?
I don’t feel like Indiana Jones in front of the boulder at New York magazine. Everything that happened at [ex-employer] Salon is like what happened on the island of Lost. There were people who would comment on everything. On one level it was terrifying, but it was kind of nice. There were people who cared about every little thing.

You’re not a fan of Jersey Shore. Are you prepared to take heat from its big fan base among the magazine’s readers?
I have very particular tastes when it comes to reality TV. Just because people are stupid enough to be exploited doesn’t mean you should take advantage of them. My idea of a good reality show is like Survivor, where it’s goal-directed and they have to use their minds to solve problems.

You have a soft spot for doomed shows like Pan Am and Community. Do you hope that by writing about them you can save them?
I want people who make these shows to know someone appreciates what they’re doing, even though they’re not quite pulling it off. I’m 43 years old. I want to see things I haven’t seen before. I think Pan Am is trying to be extremely rich and extremely light at the same time. They haven’t quite mastered the art of making a soufflé every week.

You can read the rest of Adweek's interview with Matt Zoller Seitz here.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Supporting Actor

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is watching every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. She has completed the category for Best Supporting Actor and now surveys the competition. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Not much of a race here, I'd say; one guy's had it sewn up for months now. Doesn't mean we can't discuss it, though.

The nominees

Kenneth Branagh (My Week With Marilyn): At first, I didn't really get this nomination, but Branagh is forced to play some on-the-nose and lechy character beats and he does it like a pro. While wearing lipstick. He won't win anyway, so, fine.

Jonah Hill (Moneyball): I still don't get this nomination. Understand: it's perfectly fine. It's a good performance. …And? Again, I like Jonah Hill, but this is not the best anything. Jonah Hill does what he does, the same way he does, and he's taking the spot from someone else. More on that later.

Nick Nolte (Warrior): The only guy who has any shot at taking the statue from Plummer at this point, Nolte gives a nice, steady performance in Warrior, and he has to fight the script to do it in a few spots. That said, I think it might be a hair overrated, but I have no issue with the nom, and wouldn't be mad at a win either.

Christopher Plummer (Beginners): The presumptive heir, and I'm fine with it. I wish it had come in a better story, but the performance did a lot to redeem a movie that was mostly tiresome.

Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close): Ditto, and the degree of difficulty here is probably higher than Plummer's given the cutesy crap von Sydow has to work with. But that can bring out some highlights sometimes; a few of the looks The Renter gives Oskar have whole novels in them.

Who shouldn't be here: Jonah Hill. Could also live without Branagh.

Who should be here, but isn't: The role maybe isn't big enough, but I think Dench picked up hardware for being onscreen eight minutes or something like that, right? So: John Goodman. He has one scene in The Artist that is gorgeous. I'd like to see him get more credit for playing serious (he had a few scenes with Darlene on Roseanne just nailed "baffled dad of thundercloud adolescent girl").

And where's Kevin Spacey? Part of what drove me so nuts about Margin Call is that, when Spacey was onscreen, I bought it…and then something inconsistent or poorly researched would happen and I'd be disappointed all over again. (Ditto Tucci, just as good in a smaller role.) I think we're finally out of the dark tunnel of "Spacey = Leading Man," and it's nice to see him doing his thing again.

Who should win: You know what, the hell with it: von Sydow. Again, no issue with Plummer, but when I think about it, I'm more impressed with this one.

Who will win: Plummer's BAFTA is the end of that, pretty much. You could bet Nolte if you're feeling frisky.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the Race for Best Actress

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is watching every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. She has completed the category for Best Actress and now surveys the competition. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

The BAFTAs complicated this assessment somewhat, but at least we can predict with a reasonable degree of confidence who isn't going to win. And now, the firm of Streep Davis & Others, LLC…

The nominees

Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs): Well, we know Close has looking apprehensive down pat; it's what she spends the bulk of the movie doing. It's a pity, in a way, because she's obviously close (…sorry) to the material and she spent years and years trying to make the project happen, but she didn't have enough distance on it, I don't think; the film is overworked, and so is this performance.

Viola Davis (The Help): The early leader until Streep snagged the BAFTA, Davis makes the movie around her performance seem better than it is by association — more thoughtful, more credible. She's really good. Could still win if voters decide it's the only one The Help should be getting (and I would agree there).

Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo): I enjoyed her, but I might have enjoyed almost anyone; I'm not sure how much of the performance was the character. Good work; no shot.

Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady): Streep is extremely good, and she's playing some wet toilet paper in that role. Until the BAFTA, I considered the nomination her award, a thanks for yeoman service, but she's probably going to win. Hated the movie, liked the work, fine with me.

Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn): Technically accurate but not terribly interesting portrayal of a figure I already found not terribly interesting.

Who shouldn't be here: I would have preferred to see Williams nominated for Meek's Cutoff instead. It's not surprising that movie threw a shutout nominations-wise, though I loved it, but that would likely have been its shot. Close's character is grating, but the performance itself is fine. I don't really take issue with these.

Who should be here, but isn't: Elizabeth Olsen for Martha Marcy May Marlene, maybe, but I don't feel super-strongly about it.

Who should win: Slight edge to Davis.

Who will win: Slight edge to Streep.