BEST ACTOR: Jeff Goldblum and the Rest of Them

Dora has added a few more to our FYC gallery, Jeff Goldblum in Adam Resurrected among them. I went digging around for ink on Goldblum, an actor I greatly admire ever since he had his one line in Annie Hall, “I forgot my mantra.”

Austin 360 wrote, Jeff Goldblum gives one of the best performances of his career in “Adam Resurrected.”

And added, “The story of the concentration camp horrors is primarily told in flashback as Goldblum‚Äôs Adam tries to cope with a long stint in a mental institution. And as the details emerge, the movie fails to balance the horror with nobility, hope or redemption.”

Best Actor already has a couple of strong contenders in Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke, Frank Langella and Richard Jenkins. We are still waiting on Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road, Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button, Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

Timing is going to be everything. One thing the Oscar race can be like is eating sushi. I know, this is a weird analogy but trust me, it’s apt. When you eat sushi you must eat pickled ginger to clear the taste buds in order to appreciate the flavor of the next round, or so I learned back in the ’80s when eating sushi was really the best way to get a gal into bed. Maybe all of those men, ALL of those men, were giving me false information but I’m going to take it and run with it. A great piece of sushi is only great until the next one comes along. Such will be the case with the Best Actor race. If you start with the premise that all of the roles will be great you have to assume, then, that the last seen will be the most remembered.

This is tricky, though, because voters don’t always see movies at exactly the same time. Nowadays, voters are deluged with a stack of screeners between Christmas and New Year’s and who knows which DVD will get seen first or last. The big guns will be seen probably at the Academy itself and won’t even be watched on DVD but there are some that will have to be.

It’s a mystery how it will all play out. Goldblum’s status in Hollywood, how many friendships he has maintained and whether his performance is extraordinary will all come into play. What we do know going in is that the Holocaust still resonates within AMPAS, as well it should. One can believe this is because “they’re all Jews” or because there are few things as immediately moving, and still horrifying, as that moment in our history.

Still, Goldblum’s buzz is real. Let’s see how far it goes. Adam Resurected doesn’t come out until December.

As a sidenote: RIP Michael Cricthon, who wrote Jurassic Park, among other novels.