The closes to a breakthrough with motion capture, and/or animation being added to an actor’s performance would be Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Most of the acting Pitt did was as the half-animated Button – barely recognizable and a performance that simply couldn’t have been gotten without aided technology. That shows that the membrane has been pierced, even if Pitt was also seen a good amount of the time as himself, and himself with makeup.
Good point. From Sasha Stone at Awards Daily. For more on this, listen to the most recent edition of Oscar Talk.
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15 responses to “Hope for Saldana”
That’s an interesting point, and a fair comparison. I think the chief difference is that Brad Pitt is a Movie Star (which doesn’t need to be in all caps, but arguably should be flashing), and he was the unquestioned center of a film that was largely a star vehicle, even if it was also a technical tour de force. “Benjamin Button” probably needed Pitt in it to even get made. Many different actresses could have stepped in for Saldana. Like her performance or not (and I think it’s better than Pitt’s, though I’m not exactly a fan of Cameron’s movie), the movie doesn’t belong to her the way that “Button” belonged to Pitt. Her stature isn’t the same.
And yet with this and “Star Trek,” shouldn’t she be getting some of same “What a year!” press that Bullock is currently basking in?
When I saw Button in theatres two Christmases ago I never stopped thinking “this is Brad Pitt”. But during Avatar I completely bought the concept Neytiri was real, her voice, mannerisms, etc. sold the performance.
Pitt’s best performance has always been as Jesse James.
I think she deserves to be into that bunch, her performance is really cautivating and emotional
if she gets nominated (i dont think so *sad*)
i hope she replaces Sandra Bullock, what a lame actress she is !
Uh. No. There was a significant amount of time in the movie that it was just Brad Pitt. AS far as I know, Saldana’s character is always CGI. And Brad Pitt was a star in a prestige picture. Whereas Saldana is…uh…not.
Saldana did a fine job, but in my mind no acting in Avatar deserves an award…
I agree Pitt’s best work was as Jesse James, but he was also great as Button.
Pitt’s performance did not impress me all that much. I would have much prefered Leonardo DiCaprio to be nominated for the Oscar instead.
“The closest to a breakthrough with motion capture, and/or animation being added to an actor’s performance would be Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
then shouldn’t benjamin button be lauded as the real “game changer” when it comes to motion-capture?
I believe Brad Pitt should’ve been nominated for Babel and Jesse James, as well as the two he did receive for Button and 12 Monkeys.
I’d love to see Saldana nominated… not just to show that motion capture acting is still acting, but because I believe she gave one the best female leading performances of the year. If I could only nominate one person from Avatar, though… it might actually be Stephen Lang.
Why does anyone in their right mind feel that Stephen Lang’s bench-pressing, teeth-grinding, cliched-military-man-from-hell deserves any kind of praise?
Especially when he did much better work in “Public Enemies”…
I absolutely can’t comprehend the love for Lang, first of all. A fun performance, yes, but a FAAAAAAAAAAAR cry from anything special.
But the real reason I’m posting is that I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn’t behove the Academy to have some sort of, I don’t know, “composite performance” category to acknowledge nonstandard performances. I say “composite” performance, because I think that would cover even things like voiceover work or puppetry or the like.
I understand that actors don’t really want work that they do in nonstandard media to be held to a different standard than their regular work, but they also seem inappropriately reticent about recognizing standout performances in those roles.
Just imagine an Academy where Oscars might have gone to Jim Henson as Kermit in “The Muppet Movie” or to Frank Oz as Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back”; or to Pat Carroll as Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” or to Peter O’Toole as Anton Ego in “Ratatouille”; or to Andy Serkis as Gollum or to (potentially) Zoe Saldana as Neytiri; or a joint Oscar to James Earl Jones and David Prowse as Darth Vader.
I really think that, especially considering the increasing visibility and importance of such performances in a larger slate of movies, these types of roles demand recognition in some way. But I can also see why it’s not advisable to have them compete in the regular categories.
A category recognizing three to five such performances a year wouldn’t be such a bad thing…
My gut feeling (which could well be wrong) is that if Avatar does indeed become the BP frontrunner it will grab a third major nomination, but between Lang, Weaver, Saldana, and the screenplay (which I think may be the most likely) it is hard to say exactly where the nod would come from.
Lang was great. But whatever.
No, it will get none of those. It will even miss out on Art Direction and Cinematography, because so much of it is digitally created. The problem is that the Oscar bloggers disproportionately loved it, so it seems SO OBVIOUS that Avatar is going to dominate the Oscars. But the arguments against it are so much stronger than the arguments for it.
SHAAAARK, you misunderstood my point. I meant that Pitt never disappeared into his character, he never fully reached into Button’s mindset.
Let’s be real white people, especially white women do not want to see a young, beautiful, cultured and talented black woman win an Oscar for anything respectable. Why do think white women love Oprah and Whoopi and Sherri Shepard soooo much. They hate black women that have it all. Halle Berry has looks, but she is not that talented. They loved watching Halle get an Oscar because it was not a very respectable role. Zoe used all of her facial expressions and body movements. She even did all of her own stunts and trained(horseback riding, martial arts and learning a new language) For Gods sake If she was white, she would not only have won a Golden Globe, but would have been a shoe-in for an Academy Award. Not any actress could have played this role. The mannerisms of Neyteri were other-worldly, inventive and engaging. You literally fell in love with her.