A Few Minutes With Feinberg: Voters Should Be Making a List, Checking It Twice (Video)

Thanks for checking out the tenth installment of A Few Minutes with Feinberg, THR’s weekly video series in which I spend -- you guessed it -- a few minutes dissecting the race to the Oscars. This week, I'm coming to you from the Regal E-Walk 13 in Times Square, one of New York City's busiest movie theaters, where the public has been gathering in massive numbers to check out awards hopefuls such as Flight, Lincoln, Life of Pi, Argo and others.

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With the Dec. 17 start of Oscar voting nearly upon us, and the winter holiday break shortly after that, Academy members are already getting inundated with dozens of screening invitations and screeners. It is virtually impossible for anyone to see all of the eligible films -- there just isn't enough time -- so what ends up happening is that voters tend to make it their highest priority to see the most hyped, end-of-year releases.

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That's a perfectly reasonable approach, but it is one that causes them to miss out on many lower-profile but equally-if-not-more-worthy films and performances. Consequently, I have decided to devote this episode to highlighting three of those sorts of performances from each of the four acting categories, so that they're at least on voters' radar. I'm not advocating that these performances should be nominated -- that's up to the voters -- but just that they deserve to be seen.

Among those discussed herein: best supporting actress hopefuls Ann Dowd (Compliance), Kristen Stewart (On the Road) and Kelly Reilly (Flight); best supporting actor hopefuls Dwight Henry (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Michael Pena (End of Watch) and Ewan McGregor (The Impossible); best actress hopefuls Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Smashed), Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea) and Elle Fanning (Ginger & Rosa); and best actor hopefuls Omar Sy (The Intouchables), Jack Black (Bernie) and Richard Gere (Arbitrage).

I look forward to reading your recommendations to Academy members in the comments section below.