Third place:
Brad Pitt (actor/producer - The Tree of Life, Moneyball; voice actor, Happy Feet) [118 points/19 points]
Second place:
Jessica Chastain (actress - The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, The Help, The Debt, Coriolanus, Texas Killing Fields) [195/29]
And your winner...
Michael Fassbender (actor - Shame, A Dangerous Method, X-Men: First Class, Jane Eyre) [210/30]
"To be perfectly honest, I had no idea who Michael Fassbender was a year ago. Of course, I had seen (and loved) Inglourious Basterds, but it wasn’t the kind of performance that had me searching the end credits wondering, “Who was that guy?” I also saw Eden Lake and Fish Tank, but I didn’t like either one very much so they kind of disappeared from my mind. And I still haven’t seen Steve McQueen’s Hunger, though it’s on at least one of my three (very long) Netflix queues.The Year of the Fassbender began with Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. What stood out for me most in that film was its excellent gothic atmosphere, spooky-old-mansion sets and Mia Wasikowska’s performance -- Fassbender was good, but I still didn’t quite see what some of my friends were raving about. Then came X-Men: First Class, which was not just the best X-Men film since X2 but a superior genre film in many ways, from its nifty ‘60s period design and solid ensemble cast to its crisp action sequences. And the heart and soul of this film is not James McAvoy’s idealistic (albeit somewhat snobby and self-righteous) young Professor X but Fassbender’s Magneto. Further developing the character’s tragic backstory as a Holocaust survivor (a story merely hinted at in Bryan Singer’s original), the film has gravity and depth that is uncommon in movies like, say, Thor. Take the excellent “pig farmers and tailors” scene, for example. It doesn’t quite have the crackle of a Tarantino film, but it’s not far off.
Arguably his greatest triumph of 2012, though, was his lead performance in Shame, Steve McQueen’s lacerating, NC-17 portrait of a sex addict. I wasn’t exactly over-the-moon about the film itself (at least not on first viewing – I plan to re-visit), but there is no denying the fact that Fassbender gives a performance for the ages. With empty eyes and a pale, haunted visage (even when copulating with any of his many nameless partners), he brings to life a man whose bottomless addiction and self-medication has rendered him a vacant shell of a person. It only takes viewing a scene toward the end of the film, where the camera holds on his face while he climaxes and nearly bursts into tears at the same time (nearly the only time he shows any real emotion) to know this man was robbed of an Oscar nomination.
I also wasn’t wild about David Cronenberg’s intriguing but cold and dry A Dangerous Method but could never argue with Fassbender’s astute take on Carl Jung. The bottom line is that the man went from being a virtual unknown to a vital part of the movie scene for me in less than a year -- in that time, he’s brought life to two established literary characters (Magneto and Bronte’s Rochester), a real-life luminary (Jung) and a sex addict. Four completely different kinds of movies, four excellent performances. That’s a highly impressive body of work for one year.
Hell, 2012 had barely started before he provided us with what is so far the greatest scene of this year (that phenomenal hotel fight scene with Gina Carano in Haywire). With that in mind and Prometheus on the horizon (could this be the first good Ridley Scott movie since Black Hawk Down?), I think it’s safe to say we’ll see much more quality work from Michael Fassbender." - Jason Alley
See the full results.
By the way, both Chastain and Fassbender received Lead and/or Supporting votes for four different movies apiece this year. Is that that unprecedented? I think it could be.
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