2013 Calvin Awards: Best Actor
By Reagen Sulewski
February 21, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The runaway winner for Best Actor this year, even getting votes from Bradley Cooper's mom, is Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln as, let me check my notes here... Abraham Lincoln. While it's utterly unsurprising that Day-Lewis would turn in a great performance – it's much easier to count his poor performances than his good to great ones – his ability to amaze has not diminished in the slightest. Recall that this is the same person who played Bill the Butcher and Daniel Plainview, and in this film inhabited the role of Lincoln, whose soft-spoken (albeit fiercely determined) demeanor couldn't be further away from those characters.
Famous for going to extraordinary lengths to find authenticity in his characters, I would not be shocked to learn that he actually invented time travel in order to better inform himself about how to play this. Of course, mere mimicry would hardly be worth this kind of praise, and Day-Lewis also found the humanity in a deeply conflicted and principled man who was tested at perhaps the most crucial point in his life. In short, Day-Lewis remains perhaps the most versatile actor of our generation, and continues to prove it at every step.
If, during the course of the series Alias, you had asked when that guy who played Will Tappin was going to be nominated for an Oscar, you might have gotten a response ranging somewhere from “never” to “Hahahahahaha... wait, you're serious?” And yet here we are, with Bradley Cooper reaching what might be the pinnacle of his career with his role in Silver Linings Playbook, our second place finisher this year. As a divorced teacher struggling with bipolar disorder, Cooper found a way to bury his smirking fratboy persona in layers of depth and pain and that illuminates the obsessions and darkness that underlie those characters. It's an amazing performance from an unlikely source.
Third place goes to Denzel Washington for Flight. While Washington could make reading the phone book compelling, when handed a character as complex as the tortured alcoholic pilot who happens to save the day while drunk, he takes the ball and runs with it. While the idea of a man struggling with the bottle is a bit of a cliche at this point, Washington invests these particular demons with a tremendous sense of gravitas and urgency. Through just looks and gestures, he's able to bring us into his world, one that has a particular kind of twisted logic to it. Washington's character may live his life on the edge, but it's what makes him the person that he is. And how many people can give that idea up?
After our leading trio, it's a bit of a drop to fourth with Joaquin Phoenix for The Master. The thinly disguised Scientology drama has Phoenix as a WWII vet struggling for meaning in life after witnessing the horrors of the Pacific theater. Yet another tortured soul, Phoenix is all anxiety and tics and raw emotion. Perhaps Phoenix's fake breakdown in I'm Still Here was just practice for this one.
In fifth place, we have Ben Affleck, directing himself in Argo. Voters were impressed by Affleck's stern, determined performance of a man searching for redemption in his personal life through his actions outside it. There's a great sadness in his performance, of a man doing the only thing he knows how to do, because it's the only thing he can do. It's been said many times before, but this is a remarkable career resurgence for someone who was a punchline just a few short years ago.
Sixth spot goes to John Hawkes for The Sessions. Playing a man crippled by polio and confined to an iron lung, he's sparked into seeking out a sex therapist after a chance encounter. Far more than the tawdry story this could be, it's actually a touching story about rediscovering life and love and connecting with other people. It's also a surprisingly humorous performance and all the more impressive for the fact that Hawkes was completely restricted from using his body to tell his story.
Sadness permeates our seventh place finisher's performance, Steve Carell in Seeking a Friend For the End of the World. And how could it not, of course, but Carell finds the great heart in a man who is simply looking for a connection before it's too late for everyone. It's one of the finest examples of Carell blending his comedic and dramatic personas I can imagine.
Ever since his first entry into movies, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been our radar. In fact, for several years in a row, he made our Best Breakthrough Performance list, which really makes me wonder if our voters are familiar with the definition of Breakthrough. He lands on our Best Actor list in eighth spot for his showing in Looper, where he played a young Bruce Willis, which is not a thing that should have worked. And yet he moved beyond just impersonation, portraying a desperate man trying to survive for reasons he's not entirely sure of.
The idea of "great Jack Black performance" doesn't sound like a plausible phrase within the last few years, considering how facile some of his role choices have been. In Richard Linklater's Bernie, he showed what he can really do when tested and he actually cares about the role. Playing an agressively avuncular man with a dark secret, Black threaded the line between comedy and drama expertly. More of this, please.
Lastly, we have Hugh Jackman for Les Miserables. By now, you've heard all the stories about how difficult the proces of singing on set was, and how tortured Jackman (among others) was for the shooting. But as a pure performance, Jackman brought one of the more intense roles in theater to life in an amazing fashion.
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Calvins Intro
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Album
Best Cast
Best Character
Best Director
Best Overlooked Film
Best Picture
Best Scene
Best Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best TV Show
Best Use of Music
Best Videogame
Breakthrough Performance
Worst Performance
Worst Picture