Alternate Best Actor 2003: Results

5. Alex Frost in Elephant - Frost does a lot of important walking while looking bored, then becomes an overt psychopath in the last few seconds of the film.

Best Scene: The special act of walking. 

4. Rémy Girard in The Barbarian Invasions - Girard's performance is often fairly one note as this stubborn and dying intellectual. He plays the role most often in an excessively broad way, as a caricature of a fussy intellectual. When he tones it down a bit he's fairly effective but such moments are rare.

Best Scene: Leaving his classroom.

3. Ivan Dobronravov in The Return - Dobronravov gives an appropriately raw portrayal of the mess of emotions of a boy when his absentee father suddenly appears.

Best Scene: Ivan "conquers" the tower.

2. Daniel Brühl in Goodbye, Lenin! - Brühl gives a charming and delightful portrayal that manages to make his character's most unusual actions not only believable but also deeply affecting. 

Best Scene: Meeting his father.

1. Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa - Good predictions Michael McCarthy, Tahmeed, Luke, RatedRStar, Jackiboyz, and Omar. Thornton gives a great performance as he manages to be absolutely hilarious by in no way softening the edges of his very crude criminal yet his approach also manages to earn the character's transition to a better man by the end of the film.

 Best Scene: "For God's sake it's Christmas"

Updated Overall

Next Year: 2003 Supporting

Alternate Best Actor 2003: Alex Frost in Elephant

Alex Frost did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Alex in Elephant.

Not since Gerry have I seen such attention to the detail of walking slowly, here though the film ups the ante by including jogging and eventually even some driving.

One of the random individuals the film focuses on doing nothing for awhile, is Alex Frost as Alex, proving Gus Van Sant's impressive imagination when it comes to naming characters similair to when he referred to both leads of Gerry as Gerry. Oh wait though this film rides on the trivialization of a horrific event through the use of artistic pretension though it is as meaningless as Gerry. Now before one mentions, oh don't you see Van Sant's saying that there is no logic or message to be taken from violent acts, that's not really true evidenced by his scenes that focus on the killers where they engage in playing violent video games, plan their crimes, and kiss one another since it is a film by Gus Van Sant. There is an indicator of a violent reaction to their hollow lives, though naturally in a rather hollow fashion. Now the leader of the two is Alex played by Alex. We get to spend some time with him as he plays piano, but more importantly as he walks slowly around from one place to another. You see that is the most essential element of every life, slow walking, could you imagine life without walking, I'm quite sure life is defined solely by the walks we take. Oh, wait I'm writing about this performance right now, eh I don't know after watching the film I think I'll take a walk, I'll be back in ten minutes.....

What a walk. Hey wait a minute is this an ensemble film, or is Frost lead, I don't care. Anyways back to Mr. Frost again. Well see his performance is very dull and detached. Well this may seem the style of a killer but I could describe most of the performances as also dull and detached. I mean when we see the shooting start the photographer student casually takes a picture, is he too a psycho killer??? No probably not but there is nothing distinctive about what Frost does since almost everyone else is more or less in the same malaise. This even includes when the killing starts and Frost walks from scene to scene as though he is walking to class, I mean show some respect to walking man! Frost's work is indifferent as everyone else is making it so his work in no way stands out, he's also just sort of there. Hey hold on though what about that kissing scene, oh wait he's pretty blasé about that too, never mind. Okay maybe I'm being a bit unfair here, what about his line deliveries, well they're pretty amateurish, though obviously that was Van Sant's intention right, because I really hate those performances that come off like real people or at least engaging in some way. Well eventually through all that pivotal walking we reach a conclusion where Alex corners two students and plays a game to decide which one to shoot first. Frost wakes up to become a psycho killer in this scene, he'd be chilling I suppose if there was any consistency here.  In the scene though Frost becomes a far more active and excited sort ill-fitting to all that he did previously in his performance, but hey if you're not going to care most of the time stay not caring. All I ask for is a little consistency. Eh I'm tired, I think I'll take a walk.

Alternate Best Actor 2003

And the Nominees Were Not:

Alex Frost in Elephant

Rémy Girard in The Barbarian Invasions

Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa

Daniel Brühl in Good Bye Lenin!

Ivan Dobronravov in The Return

And a review of:

Russell Crowe in Master and Commander