Group Think: Best Actress 2009 Prediction

Your votes have been tallied. 262 people entered the Actress Psychic contest this year. I play too, (I just am ineligible for the win) so that makes 263 Psychics. How well can the contestants predict the future? Does the wisdom of crowds really apply to something as unpredictable as awards season, and ten months early at that before virtually any of the movies have been seen?

In late January will the Oscar nominees for Best Actress really be... ?

• Michelle Pfeiffer, Chéri (157 votes... more than half of the ballots)
• Hilary Swank, Amelia (142 votes... more than half of the ballots)
• Carey Mulligan, An Education (127 ballots)
• Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia (120 ballots)
• Penélope Cruz, Los Abrazos Rotos / (Broken Embraces) (on 75 ballots)

Nobody else came close to these five, making your collective prediction quite decisive indeed. That's a Best Actress shortlist composed of three Oscar winners (Cruz, Streep and Swank) and a possible comeback queen (Pfeiffer). The newbie would be twenty-three year old Brit actress (Mulligan) who has already won brilliant reviews for her portrayal of a teenager in 1960s London, greatly changed (and sexed up) by the arrival of an older man (Peter Sarsgaard). Sony Pictures Classics is saving the release of An Education until October so unless you live across the ocean or you make it to festivals you'll have to wait and see if she delivers as well as early audiences claim she does.

One of the most interesting question marks to pull from the whirlwind of possible futures these ballots offer, involves sexy sexegenarion Dame Helen Mirren. You're confident that she'll be nominated (she actually won more votes than Penélope) but you totally disagree on which performance will do the trick. This year we'll see her as Leo Tolstoy's wife in The Last Station, the owner of a brothel in Love Ranch and as Prospera in Julie Taymor's gender-reversed adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The last divisive auteur to take a whack at The Tempest, was Peter Greenaway (I'm definitely on the "pro" side of that divide) with the extremely naked Prospero's Books. If Julie Taymor is interested in an equally fleshy take we're certain Helen Mirren will comply. "Fish out your teats!"

Want more?
See the Individual Ballots ~ If you entered but don't see yours here, please contact me at filmexperience (at) gmail (dot) com. Maybe it went in my junkmail? I know a few did that I fished out but if you're not there and you should be, contact me. Maybe you could reforward me the original. Etcetera...

Collective Prediction/Rank ~ all 78 performances that received votes.

"What about your predictions, Nathaniel?"
Those are coming this weekend (Hold tight. I'm only one man) but in terms of Best Actress I'll just say for now that only two of these five you picked will be on my list. Streep won't be one of them. I'm guessing that her Julia Childs is campaigned supporting since it would take both a reworking of the source material to make her a lead and a non starter campaign for that Untitled Nancy Meyers feature (in which she is definitely the lead) to not make her compete against herself. But then again: look what happened to Kate Winslet this awards season past and look what happened to Streep for Devil Wears Prada. Maybe I'm wrong.
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