Best Supporting Actor

This has been a bittersweet race to follow, with the late Heath Ledger at the forefront. The introverted actor deserved to win for Brokeback Mountain but would have been too shy to give much of a speech; this year he could win but won’t be able to give any speech at all. By contrast, Robert Downey Jr. brings one of the most absurdly comedic candidacies to the race, portraying an uber-Method actor who undergoes pigment surgery to play an African-American movie role. (It’s truly an odd year when the front-runners both hail from summer blockbusters, in genres the Academy most snobbishly ignores.) Josh Brolin should safely land his first nomination, as the star of last year’s Best Picture winner with career-best notices and a respectable tally of precursor awards. Finally, Philip Seymour Hoffman is on solid footing for his second-consecutive Supporting Actor nod as the priest who squares off against Sister Streep in Doubt. The fifth lucky fella won’t be NSFC winner Eddie Marsan or Globe nominee Ralph Fiennes, both choices that reflect the endlessly offbeat/square choices of those respective organizations. Tom Cruise scored major comeback points with his cameo in Tropic Thunder, but the role is probably too small and the man himself is probably still too polarizing to make the cut. Dev Patel could be the only actor from the beloved Slumdog Millionaire to capture a nod, unless he’s too much of an unknown for voters’ tastes. So I’m going to take a chance and guess James Franco, one of the hottest breakthrough performers of 2008, gets the wild-card slot, one that would literally recognize his dramatic turn in Milk and figuratively honor his comedic turn in The Pineapple Express. (First Oscar nomination for a Freaks and Geeks alum, pretty please?)