Editor’s note: Welcome to the sixth of a 24-part series dissecting the 81st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!
By Jason of Invasion of the B Movies.
This year for the LAMB Oscar Thingy, I got asked to write about the Best Supporting Actor category. I’m pretty happy about this cause last time I got an award where I only saw one of the movies nominated. This time I’ve seen at least TWO of the movies nominated! Maybe next year, we can further break through that glass ceiling and I’ll be asked to write about a category where I’ve seen all five. Of course how awesome would it be if I haven’t seen ANY of films?
Anyway, while refreshing my memory on who exactly was nominated in this category, I came across this interesting bit of trivia:
DIDJA KNOW?
– Throughout Academy history, most of the winners in this category usually have no previous Oscar wins. *Source.
So if that’s true, let’s see who will and won’t win:
Phillip Seymour Hoffman famously won his first Oscar in 2005 for playing Truman Capote. So he probably won’t win for playing a priest who may or may not be perverted.
Robert Downey, Jr. was nominated in 1992 for Chaplin, which makes me think these Oscar people only like it when famous people play other famous people. 
So I’ll be a shoe in if I get casted for “young John Wayne” in the upcoming film John Wayne: The Duke Is Here, Yo! But he technically didn’t win, so he has a 1 in 4 chance.
Heath Ledger, some guy you may or may not have heard of, is nominated for playing some guy in some movie that you may or may not have heard about, but he was previously nominated for playing a dude in another movie that none of us have ever heard of before, so I’m gonna go with a no on this.
The two that are left are Josh Brolin and some other guy I really never heard of named Michael Shannon. Scanning Mr. Shannon’s resume on IMDb, I see he was the dude banging Eminem’s mom in 8 Mile, had a part in Let’s Go To Prison and Kangaroo Jack, and since then appeared in artsy films that I’m sure would put me to sleep within 10 minutes.
Do you really think a cast member of Kangaroo Jack is gonna win an Oscar? (The answer: Unless it’s the Kangaroo itself, probably not.)
As for Josh Brolin, he’s a pretty cool guy. He was awesome in No Country For Old Men and did a pretty convincing Dubya impersonation. But I haven’t seen Milk, which I’m guessing is a unflinching look at the life of a dairy farmer and his daily struggles with keeping up with modern technology, but only when he finds out what the USDA is putting in his cows does he do something about it.
So with all that said and done, who do I think is gonna win? Well, like I said, I’ve only seen two of movies nominated, Tropic Thunder and The Dark Knight. The rest I can only go by the trailers, which I’m gonna watch now and try to give a best guess.
Milk: Apparently I was close on what I thought this was about. Casting Sean Penn as a farmer is an interesting decision though.
Doubt: Amy Adams is a hot nun. That’s about all I got out of that trailer.
Revolutionary Road: Zzzz…huh? Damn it I keep falling asleep. F**k it.
In closing, I think Robert Downey, Jr. SHOULD get the award because during Tropic Thunder, I kept forgetting he was a white dude playing a white dude playing a black dude playing ANOTHER dude DISGUISED as ANOTHER dude.
But it’ll go to Heath Ledger, which means the casting for The Riddler in the next Batman film will probably go to Tom Hanks.