Can You Ever Forgive Me - 3 nominations

Actress in a Leading Role - Melissa McCarthy
Actor in a Supporting Role - Richard E. Grant
Adapted Screenplay - Screenplay by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty

Based on a true story, Can You Ever Forgive Me? tells the story of Lee Israel, a former biographer who had successfully published life stories of the greats - Katherine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder, you name it.  As time has progressed, her publisher informs her that the public has moved on from Israel's kind of writing, and that she should move into novels, and find her own voice.  

A raging alcoholic and severely down on her luck, Israel decides to sell some of her prized possessions so she'll have something to live on, and more importantly, money for drinking.  What she discovers is that there is a market for personal letters written by famous writers, particularly if they are juicy, revealing, or share a moment in their histories not previous known.  Israel's natural talent is finding a way to embody the voices of the people for whom she has written biographies.  Combined with her talent for forgery, this opens a whole new world as she begins to write forged letters from writers like Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker and then sells them for cash.  In capturing their voices, book sellers buy up her product with glee.  

She befriends fellow down on his luck alcoholic, Jack Hock, who helps add a very British legitimacy to her "sales department."  Hock helps get her life slightly more in order, while his trials and tribulations as a gay, homeless man in New York also add to her burden.  Both McCarthy and Grant are brilliant in this film, and I think he has a shot at winning.  Her character never really becomes likable but is totally compelling, and he is just so charming and sad.  Both nominations are examples of performances in a film that never really got the attention it deserved but gives the actors in it the adulation they both so richly earned.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? was a truly wonderful film.  I loved it.  I loved that it stayed dark but human.  The story is outrageous and does manage to eke out a tiny bit of light onto the question of what is collectable - if it is wonderful, does it matter if it is true?  Authenticity itself is up for discussion with this film, and it is wildly successful in that right.  The movie is funny, sad, sweet, cranky, and just plain old fun.  See it.  If you don't like it, I'll have to ask, "Can you ever for..." never mind.  Just see it.