Rachel Evan Wood

Talk abut unlikely Oscar candidates. First Anne Hathaway—once dismissed as just another pretty woman in Brokeback Mountain,The Devil Wears Prada and Get Smart—dazzles everyone with her hard-edged performance in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, which is the clear hit of the festival. And now, just a few hours ago I saw one of the most unlikely Oscar-worthy performances you can imagine: Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. This film won the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, beating out Rachel Getting Married.