Best Supporting Actress 2011:Jessica Chastain - The Help

The incredible work of Jessica Chastain this year is a nomination worthy itself. She played in The Help, The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, Coriolanus and Texas Killing Fields. Personally, I have only seen the first two films, but she was really great in both of them, though she is playing a completely different characters in them.
In The Help she plays a young woman, that is not very experienced in marriage and so she pays a housemaid played by Octavia Spencer. The most of the time she is on the screen, she is with Octavia Spencer and she shines.
Mostly in her first scenes, Chastain is a little bit overacting, but she can wonderfully find the right way to be funny, but not annoying. Her overacting just greatly suits to the character. You know, just to watch her playing is a great experience and a great joy. She just enjoys every moment she´s on the screen.
I can very easily imagine this character played by any other actress. It would be probably very dull performance and you would not remember it a week after watching the film. But that´s not what happened in Jessica Chastain´s hands.
(SPOILER ALERT) Her best moment in my opinion is probably the scene of her interruption. It´s a scene, she has to show a real sadness and depression and she does it wonderfully.
I just really can say, that this is a deserving nomination and one of the best supporting female performances of the year...

Best Supporting Actress 2011: Octavia Spencer - The Help

The Help is a honey of the audience this Oscar season. The lots of people and the lots of money they spent in the cinemas are just incredible. I must say, that I was not so much impressed by it. It is a nice film, no doubts about that, but there is too much clishé in it. But it´s a very likable film, anyway.
And so is Octavia Spencer´s performance. Her character is very likable and it has some very comic scenes, but even some serious scenes. In the serious scenes she is perfect, but in the comic ones, she just fails to be just a little bit realistic. She is just extremely overacting. Some overacted moments are wonderful, because, if they weren´t overacted, they´d not be funny, but the other are terrible. I know, that for example Jessica Chastain is in The Help also overacting, but it is always funny and in the favor of the character.
Woody Allen once said, that the worst thing, you can do if you make a comedy, is try to be funny. But Octavia Spencer does exactly that. On the other side we see nominated Melissa McCarthy and she was incredibly funny in Bridesmaids, but she never really tries it. That´s the way, comic performance should have been played, not this way.
I think, Spencer has the biggest chances to win and I will not be very disappointed, if she wins, because some moments of her performance are really very good and enjoying, but this is not the way I imagine a really great Oscar-worthy performance...

Next Year:Best Supporting Actress 2011

The Nominees:
Berenice Béjo - The Artist
Janet McTeer - Albert Nobbs

Jessica Chastain - The Help

Melissa McCarthy - Bridesmaids

Octavia Spencer - The Help

Deserving Performances:
Mia Wasikowska - Albert Nobbs

Shailene Woodley - The Descendants

My prediction:
Octavia Spencer - The Help