The Key To Winning The Best Supporting Actor Oscar

2008: Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men)
2009: Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
2010: Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds)

While, Waltz hasn't "technically" won the Best Supporting Actor nomination this year, I will bet anyone ALL the ad money I've made from this site that he does. (That's right, all five dollars of it)

Anyways, notice the trend in recent years? It's this:
Play one of the best movie villains of all time

OK, easier said than done, but the three recent Oscar winners have all put up such amazing performances that they almost rival each other as the best villain of all time.

Digitialdreamdoor.com ranks Bardem's character Anton Chigurh as the 14st best villain of all time and Heath Ledger's as the 16th (and my mom has the audacity to say Nicholas' Joker was better! Also, I recommend searching around digital dream door. They mainly do music lists but this site gives the best, most objective lists I've seen anywhere else).

Off of my side tangent. When No Country first came out, I thought Bardem's character was just absolutely phenomenal and one of the most villainous, evil roles I had seen in awhile. I mean, the dude used an air pump to kill people! How bad ass was that!

And then the second greatest action movie came along, The Dark Knight, and Heath Ledger blew everybody out of the water. You absolutely did not realize that the dude that just had sex with Jake Gyllenhall and was this menacing, evil psychopath. Ledger's Joker was pure evil. As Michael Caine said in the movie, "some men just want to watch the world burn." Ledger's Joker was just the epitome of pure evil. He didn't kill people because his wife got murdered or something and he was taking revenge on the world (i.e. Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze), he didn't do what he did for money or power (see, e.g. any Bond villain, Scarface), and he was more than your run of the mill douchebag (i.e. Gordon Gekko). The Joker wanted to kill people just to kill them. He wanted to cause chaos just to play an experiment. And he was damn good at what he did (Both Ledger in his role and The Joker in Gotham). In fact, I think he is the best villain ever. Yes, over Norman Bates (Psycho), Darth Vader (Star Wars), and Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs).

So, there was nothing anyone could have done this year to top Ledger like he topped Bardem, but Christoph Waltz played an amazing villain in Inglorious Basterds this year. For those of you who still don't know who Waltz is- he played Col. Hans Landa aka The Jew Hunter. That opening scene between Waltz and Denis Menochet (the French guy who owned the farm- Monsieur LaPadite) probably won Waltz the Oscar, but his entire performance was just amazing. He never really was menacing like Chigurh or The Joker was, and in fact, Waltz was mostly jovial throughout the entire movie. But that made his character that much more villainous because his actions of hunting down and killing Jews makes him that much more evil.

Sure Hans Landa is not in the same stratosphere as The Joker or even Anton Chigurh, but damn did Waltz give just a fantastic performance (in three languages no less) and damn was that character a great villain.