In Contention

Tag: Best Actress

  • Kate Winslet: going for broke?

    I’m getting so many mixed messages about “The Reader,” I don’t know what to make of it anymore. Some concrete reviews would help, but the embargo is obviously still in place. I admit I’m unfamiliar with the intricacies of the business, but I’m not sure how beneficial it is to withhold word on a late arrival with see-sawing buzz. (I think Nat Rogers summed it up well by giving the film a citation for “Weirdest Foreplay of 2008.”)

    As we know, Kris wasn’t entirely persuaded by the film, dropping it from a couple of key categories on his chart, and declaring Kate Winslet an “outside shot” for Best Supporting Actress. Winslet, of course, is the film’s most-discussed contender, with many anticipating dual nominations for her come January.

    Tom O’Neil was hearing opposing voices yesterday, and now Dave Karger has weighed in. Humming quite a different tune from Kris, he calls the film “a definite top-10 Best Picture contender,” and Winslet’s performance “amazing.” (Can anyone remember the last time Karger really disliked a contender? I’m just asking.)

    He does, however, smell blatant category fraud, an issue Kris didn’t really have a problem with. But with the Weinsteins dodging lead categories entirely — campaigning both Winslet and co-star Lena Olin for Best Supporting Actress, and both and David Kross and Ralph Fiennes for Best Supporting Actor — Karger smells a rat:

    Now, other movies, like Crash and Babel, have tried this tactic before with some success. But those two were indisputably ensemble films, whereas The Reader, which spans five decades, clearly has two main characters: one shared by Kross and Fiennes and the other played entirely by Winslet. Obviously, the all-supporting decision is meant to keep Winslet from competing against herself (she’s up for Best Actress for Revolutionary Road), but now that I’ve seen in print, it does seem a little disingenuous.

    If the Weinstein Co. had placed Kross in the Best Actor category (he has much more screen time than Fiennes), there would have been at least one official lead to speak of. Still, if the Academy follows the campaign directives, it’ll turn out to be a smart move, since Winslet’s amazing performance in The Reader should be a sure thing for a supporting nomination.

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  • Ebert sidles up to ‘Deep Vote’

    UPDATE: I was in a bit of a rush earlier, but reading it again in more detail, I suspect these are not the thoughts of an AMPAS member, but Ebert’s own predictions in playfully disguised form. Still an interesting read, but several pinches of salt perhaps required.

    EARLIER: Heath Ledger will win the Oscar next February. It’s a done deal. The other four nominees may as well not show up.

    That’s not my opinion there. It’s that (albeit in paraphrased form) of the so-called “Deep Vote,” an Academy insider who recently shared his perspective on the race with Roger Ebert. In an amusing post on his website, Ebert has written up the conversation he had with his mole, and runs through Deep Vote’s other picks — some of which are a little more surprising than the one divulged above.

    I always take such perspectives with a grain of salt — just because someone is a member of the Academy, after all, doesn’t mean they can read the minds of 6,000-odd other voters. But it does provide some interesting insight into which names are in play and generating heat, even if I find it hard to square with certain proclamations.

    For example, I’m sceptical that Jonathan Demme is a “lock” for a Best Director nomination, as is claimed here. It does suggest, however, that there might be more support for him than I expected. I was also interested to see that he has “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” in his “maybe” pile for a Best Picture nod, behind the likes of “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Revolutionary Road,” “Doubt” and “The Reader.” And I liked this tidbit, which suggests he’s a bit more sophisticated than the average AMPAS voter:

    ‘Synecdoche, New York’ is easily good enough, but they’re embarrassed you had to explain it to them.”

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  • “The stuff of legend”

    That’s what Jeff Wells is calling Kristin Scott Thomas’ performance in “I’ve Loved You So Long.”

    Strong words, sure, but as I’ve said before, it is a mesmerising piece of work. Not everyone might connect with this very soft, low-key film — but Wells’ response is an indication of how passionate its supporters are. It’s the kind of performance that inspires first-place votes on the ballots of a devoted band of the actors’ branch, even as it may skip the radar of others. In this year’s unusually competitive Best Actress race, Scott Thomas is the one name I feel 100% confident about placing in my projected five.

    I’ve had the pleasure this week of speaking to both Scott Thomas and her equally impressive co-star Elsa Zylberstein who, if there’s any justice, should be in the mix for Best Supporting Actress. Watch out for those interviews on these pages soon, as well as some others — I’m having an actressy week, as it turns out.

  • Does ‘Rachel’ have Oscar legs?

    One advantage of the hectic festival environment is that, while seeing more movies in a month than is medically advisable, it offers a pretty ruthless method of separating the wheat from the chaff. If a film still sticks in your mind after seeing a million others in such a compressed timeframe, it clearly has something special. (For me, those would be the films in my London Top Ten list.)

    On the other hand, there are a couple of films that, even if they seem quite impressive in the moment, ultimately get lost in the crush. And so it was with me and Jonathan Demme’s much-vaunted “Rachel Getting Married.”

    One of the first films I saw in the festival press screenings, I enjoyed it for the funky looseness of Demme’s direction and a couple of interestingly barbed performances — even if I didn’t quite get the ecstatic wave of praise that greeted it in the US. A month later, however, with numerous other films jostling for attention in my brain, I find it difficult to remember much about the film at all… and that goes for the actors too.

    Of course, that’s an entirely subjective test, one that is largely irrelevant to awards prognostication — there are still plenty of ardent devotees declaring it the best film of the year (huh?), and they will no doubt continue to do so. Still, something caught my attention yesterday which suggested I might not be alone. In their always-interesting Oscar Futures chart, those wicked guys at Vulture sense a downturn in momentum for Anne Hathaway in the Best Actress race:

    This category is getting pretty competitive — was she really as good as everybody thought two weeks ago?

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  • Ebert hearts Hawkins

    I happened upon this a week late, so apologies for that, but I still think it bears mentioning. It’s no secret that Roger Ebert is probably one of the few critics who means anything to Academy voters. Whether it’s true or not that his backing of such underdog contenders as “Crash” played into their victories, people thinking you wield that kind of influence is an influence in itself.

    What I’m saying, in a long-winded fashion, is that when Ebert gets truly excited about a film or a performer, the sun often shines a little brighter on their Oscar campaign. And someone whose publicist must be smiling is Sally Hawkins, a well-liked but comparatively low-profile contender who needs passionate support to come through in a crowded Best Actress race. And, in his glowing four-star review of “Happy-Go-Lucky,” passionate support is precisely what Ebert offers:

    Poppy is one of the most difficult roles any actress could be assigned. She must smile and be peppy and optimistic at (almost) all times, and do it naturally and convincingly, as if the sunshine comes from inside. That’s harder than playing Lady Macbeth. Sally Hawkins been in movies before, including Leigh’s “Vera Drake” and Woody Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream,” but this is her star-making role. She was named best actress at Berlin 2008. I will deliberately employ a cliche: She is a joy to behold.

    (It’s) a role very few women could play. Maybe Meryl Streep could sustain that level of merriness, but then what can’t she do? And now I must ask, what can’t Hawkins do? There are countless ways she might have stepped wrong. But she breezes in on her bicycle and engages our deepest sympathy.

    That’s heady praise there. He is also deeply impressed by Hawkins’s co-star Eddie Marsan, describing his performance as “spellbinding.” I’m not saying Ebert strikes gold every time, but should he continue to champion Hawkins and the film to such an extent, some voters might just be listening.

  • REVIEW: “Wendy and Lucy” (***1/2)

    Wendy and Lucy(BFI London Film Festival)

    Quietly, steadily and with markedly little vanity, Michelle Williams is blossoming into a truly remarkable actress. This is not exactly a revelation: even before her Oscar-nominated turn in “Brokeback Mountain” brought her to wider attention, her work in films like “Dick” and “Me Without You,” not to mention as the most interesting member of the “Dawson’s Creek” ensemble, made it clear she was going places.

    2008 looks to be something of a watershed year for Williams, in which she has made clear strides towards identifying the independently-oriented performer she wants to be (the awkward paycheck job of “Deception” notwithstanding). Not content with holding her own in the dazzling “Synecdoche, New York” ensemble, she has, for the first time, taken on front-and-center roles in two very challenging projects.

    In “Incendiary” (reviewed here), Williams impresses by remaining focused when the film falls apart around her; happily, in Kelly Reichardt’s sad, spare and altogether beguiling “Wendy and Lucy,” she has found a project with the discipline and intelligence to match her own.

    I wouldn’t normally begin a review by foregrounding the star to such an extent, but the truth is that Williams’s performance is both integral to, and responsible for, the film’s success; without the silently expressed complexities, the shadows of days past, that she brings to the character of Wendy Carroll, the film would amount to little more than a sketch, a landscape as unmoored as its protagonist.

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  • 10/15 Oscarweb Round-up

    Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married• Tom O’Neil mulls over the Hollywood Film Festival honorees. [Gold Derby]

    • Peter Bart is paralyzed in front of his absentee ballot after watching two Presdential fuck-ups in “W.” and “Frost/Nixon.”  WTF? [Peter Bart]

    • Jeffrey Wells ponders the glut of Best Actress contenders at Sony Pictures Classics. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • David Frost makes it clear that he wasn’t the underdog when he went toe-to-toe with Richard Nixon. [The Times]

    • Kim Voynar goes from Voynaristic to The Oscar Outsider in a new schtick at MCN. [Movie City News]

  • U.S. critics wild for ‘Happy’

    Wow. I was expecting a warm Stateside reception for Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” but even so, this is exceptional. For those who place stock in such things, the film’s Metacritic score is sitting at 82, but more importantly, some top critics have fallen hard for this one.

    If the film’s awards hopes seemed to be slipping oh-so-slightly following a respectable but somewhat muted festival showing last month, these reviews should give it a second wind. Sally Hawkins, in particular, should gain traction in a crowded Best Actress field with amazing notices like this one from Stephanie Zacharek:

    Poppy’s cheerfulness isn’t a shield against reality … And that’s where both the boldness and the delicacy of Sally Hawkins’ performance come in. This is the finest performance of the year — though it’s only October, I can’t believe I’ll see anything better … Here, Leigh has given her the challenge of a lifetime — the kind of role an actress can play at just one point in her life — and she more than meets it.

    Zacharek is no less ecstatic on the film itself:

    It takes more than ambition, and more than money, to make an intimate masterpiece like Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a picture so seemingly light that it might be hours (or even days) before you realize how deep and rich it really is … Leigh and his actors work mysterious magic in “Happy-Go-Lucky.” This is a movie about hitting the groove of everyday life and, nearly miraculously, getting music out of it.

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  • Memo: Uh, the Best Actress race is VERY heated

    Kate Beckinsale in Nothing But the TruthAs a few commenters have been discussing elsewhere, it seems that some supposedly attentive Oscar bloggers figure 2008 to be a weak year for the lead actress race.  We’ve been calling it the most competitive derby in years around these parts for quite a while now, so the notion that anyone would find it to be thin is perplexing to say the least.

    Well, I’m happy today to see that Pete Hammond is on our bandwagon, writing the following at his Notes on a Season blog:

    This year, however, it is already clear that the race, for all intents and purposes, is backloaded with the most imposing and competitive list of genuine best actress possibilities in many years.

    A tsunami is coming, and [Melissa] Leo and [Penélope] Cruz are getting out of the way by taking their best shot now, hoping it’s enough to stay alive when the big storm of contenders hits shore.

    He then launches into a laundry list of contenders, all of them thoroughly covered before.

    We’re currently banking on Kristin Scott Thomas, Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep around these parts.  Those are four slots that seem secure.  After that, it’s a toss-up between Anne Hathaway, Melissa Leo, Penélope Cruz, Michelle Williams and Sally Hawkins in the indie sector.  If it’s not an indie performance the AMPAS wants to recognize, they’ll have high-budget fare to choose from in Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman.

    I’m sticking with Kidman for now.  Makes as much sense as any other contender.

    Have your say. Who are you predicting for Best Actress right now?

  • Bloggers dish ‘Changeling,’ O’Neil surprised by Sheen’s lead push

    Michael Sheen in Frost/NixonGold Derby’s Tom O’Neil corralled a bunch of Oscar bloggers over the weekend to discuss his topic of choice: Angelina Jolie’s Oscar chances for “Changeling” after an AMPAS funk for the last few years. I decided to abstain, since I won’t be seeing the film until next week and would prefer not to spin my wheels with the rest, but it’s a nice back and forth. Give it a look here.

    O’Neil is also somehow surprised that Michael Sheen is being pushed as a lead for Universal’s “Frost/Nixon,” a fact we’ve been peddling around here for months.  Here’s his reasoning against the move:

    Yes, sure, they both really are leads, with Sheen actually having more face time and lines of dialogue to speak as British talk-show host David Frost compared to Langella as the disgraced U.S. president he infamously interviewed on TV in 1977: Richard Nixon.

    That means nothing at the Oscars. Denzel Washington had less screen time and dialogue than “Training Day” costar Ethan Hawke, but won in lead while Hawke had to settle for a losing nomination in supporting. Forest Whitaker won best actor over “The Last King of Scotland” costar James McAvoy, who had more screen time and dialogue too, but was placed in the supporting slot where he wasn’t even nominated.

    Welcome to four months ago.  But all kidding aside, I don’t think “Frost/Nixon” is in the same vein as these films.  Sure, Langella dominated on the stage, but I’m hearing that the film is more about Frost than Peter Morgan’s play.  Our own John Foote wrote a few weeks back that it is “one of those “Amadeus” situations where one performance cannot exist without the other,” and I agree with that assessment.

    Additionally, people close to the film have been thumping the lead drum for Sheen since the early summer, so they certainly think they have a shot.  I have refused to move Sheen from our chart of 10 lead actor contenders because I could honestly see both men finding room, despite the crowded field.

    What do you guys think?  Is it crazy for Universal to ignore the supporting field for Sheen or can you just not put these things in neat little boxes?

  • ‘Changeling’ provokes dissent in the blogosphere

    Uh-oh. Since its premiere at Cannes, “Changeling” has provoked both breathless raves and withering putdowns, but after its NYFF screening, a number of prominent bloggers are falling into the latter camp, expressing disappointment over both the film and Angelina Jolie’s much-hyped performance.

    The most articulate view expressed so far is by the ever-readable Nathaniel Rogers, who, despite high hopes for the film, thinks it is “overlong, overwrought” and suffers from an identity crisis:

    Somewhere buried in “Changeling” is an interesting story about a woman finding her strength against significant odds … Unfortunately the movie as directed and scripted works against this potentially thrilling internal drama. The plotting and direction can’t decide which kind of movie this is: melodrama, courtroom, serial killer picture, procedural, period epic?

    “Changeling“‘s title accurately reflects its early creepy child switch and its relentlessly mediocre shift from melodrama to true crime story. A better more disciplined film would have earned that title in a more ambitious way. It’s a shame that there’s so little real fluidity, few emotional surprises and no transformative character arcs within the sprawling story.

    As for Jolie, Rogers doesn’t doubt her Oscar chances, but he finds her fatally miscast:

    Angelina Jolie’s screen presence is, as everyone knowns, competent and forceful which is usually a good thing. Unfortunately her largeness somewhat robs Mrs. Collins of the journey from socially conditioned feminine weakness to lioness strength that we need to watch her stumble through. Jolie is technically proficient enough in these “womanly confusion” scenes but they don’t feel organic to the actress and there’s no surprise or reveal once she starts fighting back.

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  • Release date for ‘Nothing But the Truth’

    Yari Film Group has locked in the release date of December 19th for Rod Lurie’s “Nothing But the Truth,” hoping to cash in on the awards season on the heels of mainly positive reaction at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.  My thoughts are here.

    In my opinion, the film’s best chances at nominations are Kate Beckinsale for lead actress and Vera Farmiga for supporting.  The former will have to duke it out in a tight category while the latter has the luxury of an empty one.  But hopes are also high for Alan Alda’s prospects, who delivers the heart of the film in a quality monologue in the third act.

  • ‘Elegy’ the second film to go out to AMPAS

    Screeners of Isabel Coixet’s “Elegy” are set to go out to Academy members this week, fresh on the heels of Sony Pictures Classics’ “Frozen River,” which went out over the weekend.

    Key pushes for the film are Best Actor (Ben Kingsley),  Penélope Cruz (Best Actress), Dennis Hopper (Best Supporting Actor), Patricia Clarkson (Best Supporting Actress) and Nicholas Myer (Best Adapted Screenplay).  Let the games begin.

  • ‘Frozen River’ first out of the gate with Oscar screeners

    Sony Pictures Classics' Frozen RiverSony Pictures Classics is the first studio to send out Academy screeners this season.  “Frozen River,” which garnered considerable praise for lead actress Melissa Leo when it was released in August, landed on doorsteps over the weekend, giving the studio a head start on the race.

    With plenty of indie film performances in the mix for Best Actress in 2008, this move could go a long way to ensuring that voters consider Leo’s work.  Additionally, Leo won the Best Actress award this weekend at the San Sebastian Film Festival.  Co-stars Tsilla Chelton and Oscar Martinez also took acting honors.

    Last year Fox Searchlight was the first studio to unleash screeners, albeit during the first week of September.  The studio sent out copies of “The Namesake,” “Once” and “Waitress,” though only “Once” found its way to an Oscar nod (for Best Original Song).  Sony Classics is taking this opportunity to distinguish Leo in the minds of voters, with Kristin Scott Thomas’s work in “I’ve Loved You So Long” still to come from the studio.

    Read up on the latest “Frozen River” news here.

  • Kate Winslet: the greatest actress of her generation?

    Kate WinsletAt nearly 33 years old (eight days and counting) and with five Academy Award nominations under her belt, Kate Winslet may just be the greatest actress of her generation. Her work has not yet revealed any limitations.  Like Meryl Streep, she offers an authenticity in her work, even the lesser films.  She seems incapable of uttering a false line.  She defines authenticity at every turn.

    Her work in “Titanic” transcended the material, a shoddy screenplay that saw her running about the doomed boat making decisions about what to do next, and I’ll be damned if Winslet did not make it work. In the hands of a lesser actress, the performance, and perhaps the role, would have come across as silly, but she made a character out of Rose we dared to care about.

    There was heat between Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on the screen.  We believed the love, we believed the devotion, and she did this at a very young age. Earlier still she had gone toe-to-toe with Emma Thomson and Alan Rickman in “Sense & Sensibility,” earning an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actress. Further back, you’ll witness chilling work in Peter Jackson’s “Heavenly Creatures” and one sees a major actress developing before our very eyes.

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  • Breakthrough for Hawkins and Franco

    As regular readers may know, I’ve been yammering on about a Best Actress nomination for “Happy-Go-Lucky”‘s delightful Sally Hawkins since I reviewed the film back in April. So I’m pleased to see that Hawkins will receive the Breakthrough Actress award at next month’s Hollywood Film Awards.

    As I said when they named their crafts honorees earlier this month, I’m a bit mystified by these awards, which appear to honour as-yet-unseen films rather frequently. Still, it’s difficult to argue with this selection: in a crowded field of Best Actress contenders, Hawkins is the freshest face out there. It’s a good omen for her Oscar chances — last year’s honoree was Ellen Page.

    “Happy-Go-Lucky” didn’t emerge from the festival circuit with quite the amount of heat I hoped it might, but Hawkins remains a solid contender for awards consideration. As we know now, the performance has a major Marmite factor — people either love or hate Hawkins’ character — but it’s sure to stick in people’s minds.

    Elsewhere, the Breakthrough Actor award went to James Franco — another obvious choice, and a move that gives credence to the Best Supporting Actor buzz for his performance in “Milk,” something Kris just discussed.

    “Milk” scored twice with the awards, with newbie (not that you’d know it from the marketing) scripter Dustin Lance Black named Breakthrough Screenwriter. Meanwhile, “Doubt” helmer John Patrick Shanley picked up Breakthrough Director. The latter strikes me as something of a safe choice in a year that has given us stellar debuts from such talents as Martin McDonagh and Philippe Claudel, but we only have the trailer to go on.

    Finally, pointing to two Oscar inevitabilities, the Animation award will go to Andrew Stanton for “WALL-E” (well, duh), while “Iron Man” will be recognised for its visual effects.

  • OFF THE CARPET: Looking for quality in the festival world

    Guy Pearce in The Hurt LockerThis year’s Toronto International Film Festival just didn’t cut it for some people.  The talk of Oscar taking a break from the annual September showcase had become tired before films even began screening, and certainly before every major news outlet had chosen the angle as the only story worth telling.

    For 10 days, the excitement for what was on hand seemed terribly muted.  But for my part, I could not have been more enthralled.

    We’ve been gifted with frontrunners in the two lead acting categories (Mickey Rourke and Kristin Scott Thomas), performances that should maintain their bee-lines for nominations at the very least, despite what the next three months have in store.  A studio that looked primed for a much-deserved year off the Oscar circuit two weeks ago has emerged as a formidable contender yet again with two acquisitions that are already winning awards (Fox Searchlight).

    What’s more, true independent cinema was given a stage on which to perform without being obscured by big studio product seeking a pre-Oscar campaign boost.  As a result, at least two well-received sleepers have insinuated themselves into the film awards spotlight (“The Hurt Locker,” “Lovely, Still”).

    What’s not exciting?

    I started out this season thinking 2008 would be a weak year for cinema, perhaps on the level of 2005’s shoddy output.  The idea has been echoed in numerous corners, as well as by fellow contributors, but I feel the need to re-frame my philosophy on the situation.  2008 seems to be proving itself a much more measured year, perhaps with less “rah-rah” exhibitions of undeniable filmmaking talent than solid and penetrating works that are out there for the interested (and patient) viewer.

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  • Jeff Wells calls it for Scott Thomas

    There has been so much hype around Kristin Scott Thomas’ apparently devastating performance in Philippe Claudel’s “I’ve Loved You So Long” that a lot of the press I’ve read tends to sideline the film itself.

    Now Jeff Wells has rectified that with a piece in which he declares it the best film of the year so far:

    The film itself is a landmark-level achievement. It’s remarkably tight, absorbing and affectng every step of the way — a genuinely profound growth journey taken with quiet and gentle steps. Whatever happens on the Oscar nomination front, this film has immediately shot to the top of my list of the year’s best films.

    Not that he neglects to discuss the film’s esteemed British star. Indeed, he thinks she’s a shoo-in for an Oscar nod — and possibly more:

    She’ll definitely land a Best Actress nomination, and she just might win, considering that she achieves so much in ILYSL with very little “acting” plus the fact that she’s been around for a couple of decades.

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