Jeff Daniels and The Academy Awards !!?

The Indie Spirit noms were announced yesterday and the big player is The Squid & the Whale. I've been touting Jeff Daniels (who has come a long way since the hideously ridiculous Dumb & Dumber) as the best actor of the year - at least since I saw the film at the New York Film Festival in October. With six nods, including Daniels for Best Actor and the film for Best Picture, Daniels chances grow - even if that growth is probably not enough to get hiom an Oscar nod. But a few more precurser awards just might.

The five Best Picture nominees are:

Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Good Night, and Good Luck
The Squid and the Whale
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Three (or at least two) of which have good shots at Oscar's Best Pic category.

Speaking of all this Oscar talk - the first shot in the year-end awards season will be fired on December 7th, with the National Board of Review announcing their awards. The NY and LA critics will chime in the following week. (my predictions for those awards will be posted on my site soon). You can see all my Oscar predictions (constantly being updated - I'm kind of OCD and all) right here. Most likely Oscar candidates are (picking my proposed current leader in each of the four acting categories) Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line, Matt Dillon in Crash and Scarlett Johansson in Match Point. For Best Director, George Clooney could play off of Oscar's love of actors-turned-directors (why else would both Kevin Costner and Mell Gibson own Oscars!??). For Best Picture, Brokeback Mountain could overpower the right-wing nuts and take home the gold. These choices - of course - will most likely shuffle around a bit over the next two months, but here they are right now. But damn I would love to see Jeff Daniels take home the Oscar this year - so, for your consideration AMPAS, may I present Mr. Jeff Daniels in The Squid & the Whale. I would also like to tout Mr. Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain (who actually has a very good chance of an Oscar nod). Not only does he give one of the most powerful performances of the year, but he does it as rather a surprise, considering his past projects (read: fluff actor makes good). And, as I stated earlier (or at least alluded to), my NBR predictions will be posted on my site this week-end.