Looking sharp ... Jonny Depp as the demon barber. Photograph: Leah Gallo
It's often the case that an experienced prophet can predict a few Oscar nominations long before the pictures are actually seen. So, in 2007, it was always likely that Daniel Day-Lewis was going to be extraordinary in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (based loosely on the Upton Sinclair novel, Oil!). I met Day-Lewis at the Telluride Film Festival in September, and he was proud of his work in the picture but fairly modest in his expectations. He said it was a strange, personal film, but not for everyone. A 20-minute reel was shown at Telluride and everyone who saw it came away thunderstruck by Day-Lewis, yet a little uncertain as to whether the movie had enough story. Some people wondered if he was imitating John Huston (in Chinatown) - but Day-Lewis follows his own narrow ways with a private intensity. If we heard Huston - and he is there - I'd bet it's by chance.
Another pre-emptive Oscar candidate was Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd. The reasoning here is simple: Todd is one of the great roles of our time, and the world has been itching to give Depp an Oscar for several years now - if only he'd do something remotely respectable and deserving. Could he sing? Well, he had a rock group once, but that's not necessarily an answer. There were stories going about that Depp had visited Stephen Sondheim for an audition and actually declined to sing - but still got the part. And there were purists who said that Todd has to have the strength of voice to be both fearsome and tragic, who wondered if Depp was right for the role.
By the end of the year, several other films and contenders had come and gone. Yes, everyone likes George Clooney and his Martin Clayton was a seriously acted movie - but could you really remember what the film was about? Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe seemed to have a very good time in Ridley Scott's American Gangster - but were they really extended, and did the picture ever get into top gear? Talking of Gere, Richard was outstanding and very funny as Clifford Irving in The Hoax - a picture about an attempt to write a spurious Howard Hughes autobiography - but no one went to see the picture. And, in truth, the Academy is rarely brave over something the public has passed on.
Then there was Tommy Lee Jones, with two very serious contenders: In the Valley of Elah and No Country for Old Men. This is the new Jones, the older, sadder man who was signalled in his own magnificent The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. My own guess is that his part in No Country for Old Men is more of a supporting role, but in Paul Haggis's Elah he was surely a contender.
Once it was clear that Atonement was an "important" and "artistic" picture, then it was plain that James McAvoy would be nominated. I have to say that I found the film insufferable - in hindsight it looks like an all too calculated shot at the Oscars from one more McEwan novel that deserves to be thrown at the wall. But McAvoy does a decent job, and I'll be amazed if he is not nominated.
Other considerations? Emile Hirsch is very likeable in Sean Penn's Into the Wild, even if you have doubts about the picture. Mathieu Amalric has got to be honored for craft and ingenuity in Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - this is acting with just one eye. And no one had more authority than Viggo Mortensen as the Russian enforcer in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. When he stubbed a cigarette out on his own tongue, I said "automatic nomination" - but the Cronenberg picture did less well than I anticipated.
So, having mulled it all over, I think these are the five nominees:
Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd James McAvoy in Atonement Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild
And the winner - so long as the picture does reasonable business - is Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd. Depp deserves an Oscar, and he just about gets away with this Sweeney. The great acting of the year, however, comes from Day-Lewis - but that's partly because he's in an infinitely greater film.
