In Contention

Tag: Ellen Burstyn

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 Oscar nominee fields

    Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's ListIn exactly one week’s time, we’ll have a brand new list of Oscar nominations to pore over, pick apart and eventually file away in our subconscious with the other 81 editions of this annual collective. For Oscar geeks, nomination day is in many ways more exciting than the ceremony itself, celebrating a broader spectrum of work and throwing up far more surprises along the way.

    For all that, once the winners are announced, the nomination list as a whole tends to be disregarded, returned to only by trivia buffs and the geekiest of Oscar geeks. (Guilty on both counts.) And that’s shame, because a field of five nominees can often be more illuminating viewed collectively than even the worthiest of individual champions.

    Today’s list, then, is devoted to that most elusive of Oscar holy grails: the perfect nominee field.

    Yes, more often than not, the Academy will nominate several notable achievements in a single category. But rarer than hen’s teeth are the robust Oscar categories that feature a full house of five outstanding nominees, five contenders that would all be worthy of a win in any other year. No unremarkable coaster nominees sliding in on the coattails of a popular picture. No bad films with an expensively studio-bought  nominations. No filler. No fat. Just five superb achievements.

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  • The Great Performances: 2000

    Tom Hanks in Cast AwayMichael Douglas was robbed.

    The already Oscar-christened actor gave a career-best performance in 2000 in Curtis Hanson’s “Wonder Boys,” but he got no love from the Academy. Worse, his performance was easily among the five best of the year and won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Actor prize.

    That having been said, I don’t think Douglas actually deserved the Oscar in 2000.  That honor belonged to Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” for a performance that was nothing less than astounding. For two and a half hours Hanks commands the screeen, moving into silent film territory for a stretch, the actor using strictly his body and face for the performance. Anyone who has ever, and I mean ever, doubted his range needs to take a hard look at this film.

    The five nominees for Best Actor in 2000 were Hanks, Russell Crowe for “Gladiator,” Ed Harris in “Pollock,” Geoffrey Rush in “Quills” and Javier Bardem in “Before Night Falls.” For me, Douglas was the most glaring omission, followed by George Clooney’s Gable-esque work in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” which I think remains one of the actor’s very best pieces of work.

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  • Great performers at their best

    Tom Cruise in MagnoliaAfter spending some time this summer watching some excellent films on DVD, I was inspired to write this piece about the great actors’ (living, with one exception) greatest performances.

    Narrowing it down to one each (brutal, believe me), I think have come up with a list of actors, young and old, that represents some of the finest talent working in film over the last 40 years, and selected the performance I believe each will be remembered for. This is obviously a subjective endeavor, so if you feel different, tell us why.

    Let’s dive in…

    Jack Nicholson
    Jack is not often given the credit for being the brilliant actor he is because we far too often expect him to be “just Jack.” But when he puts his actor’s hat on there simply may not be a greater actor in film history. For me he was never better than he was as Randall Patrick McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which is a breathtaking piece of work. Watch him when he’s not speaking and see the emotion he packs into this astonishing piece of acting.

    Meryl Streep
    There is no question here for me. As concentration camp survivor Sophie in “Sophie’s Choice,” Streep gave not only her best performance, but the single finest performance ever given by a woman, in my view. That terrifying silent scream paralyzes the viewer with heartache and dare I say, shame. Sophie may have survived the camp, but she walks through her life more dead than alive because her soul was left behind and somehow Streep conveys that to the audience.

    Robert Duvall
    This is a tough call because Duvall was so good in “Apocalypse Now,” but I think his best work was in “The Apostle” as a preacher challenged by his own flaws and forced to atone for his sins. A volcanic performance in which Duvall never seems to stop moving or speaking.

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  • Are 70s acting legends on the verge of fading away?

    Jane Fonda in KluteGrowing up I was a huge John Wayne fan, but I remember when the Duke started to fade, and then that shocking evening he presented the Academy Award for Best Picture to “The Deer Hunter” just a few months before his death in 1979.

    Perhaps because we watch these people age in front of our eyes we feel a unique kinship with them, as though we know them, but seeing Wayne at the Oscars was shocking, a terrible reminder that the acting icons are very human, subject to everything life brings: aging and death (as we found out terribly this week).

    The great actors of the 1970s, those that kick-started a second movement in American acting — Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda — are all well past 60 these days, some over 70 with Duvall edging ever closer to 80. Their best work may indeed be behind them (one never knows) and to me it represents a point of great sadness. We may never see their like again.

    They brought to the screen an inherent realism, an extraordinary authenticity that only Brando had accomplished. The day is coming when we will never be able to look forward to another great performance from the likes of Nicholson or Duvall or Fonda again.

    I remember the moment I first became aware of Nicholson, seeing him for the first time in “Five Easy Pieces,” in which he established himself as the actor of the decade, that intelligent rebel who simply would never conform to what society felt he should. Nicholson gave us a great array of performances through the 1970s, fearless in the face of risk, even singing in “Tommy,” Ken Russell’s lavish rock opera by The Who.

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  • 10/6 Oscarweb Round-up

    Toby Jones• Choire Sicha talks to Ellen Burstyn about “W.” and her new memoir. [Los Angeles Times]

    • A year later, Jeffrey Wells still very much hearts “Things We Lost in the Fire.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Peter Knegt profiles “Rachel Getting Married” screenwriter Jenny Lumet. [indieWIRE]

    • David Gritten corners the Coen brothers across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]

    • John Anderson details the Iraq war film as risky business with Ridley Scott tackling the subject in “Body of Lies.” [New York Times]

    • Doing more press for the Brits than Stateside these days, Oliver Stone chats it up with Oliver Burkeman. [The Guardian]

    • The diversity that is character actor Toby Jones. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Steve Daly talks with a Bill Maher-less Larry Charles. [Entertainment Weekly]

    • More fuel for the “‘Gran Torino’ is Eastwood’s last performance” fire. [Reuters]

  • The evolution of the actress, part one

    Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a DreamThis is the first of a two-part study of legendary screen actresses through the years.  Stay tuned tomorrow for part two.

    We often hear about the great actors in movie history: Brando, Nicholson, Duvall, Hoffman, Hackman, Washington, Freeman and DeNiro, men who advanced the craft into an art of the highest order.

    But what of the women? They have never really been taken seriously in Hollywood as trend-setters.  Historians have even documented the genuine shock by studio heads when they realized that a woman, Vivien Leigh, had carried “Gone with the Wind” for its more than three-hour running time.

    Leigh, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn were the greatest of classic Hollywood, and certainly Elizabeth Taylor’s astonishing performance as Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” broke ground for women in terms of what they could portray on screen and get away with. A genuine movie star, Taylor gained a great deal of weight for the film and was willing to play down her stunning good looks in the name of her art.

    Brash and loud, vulgar and sexual, Martha was the greatest challenge of Taylor’s career, to which she responded with one of the cinema’s great performances. This was years before Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull,” which received substantially more attention. But all of the aforementioned actresses in one way or another broke ground for the fairer sex.

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  • TORONTO: Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn talk ‘Lovely, Still’

    Martin Landau and Ellen BurstynWhen Chris Cooper accepted his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2003, he pointed out that his co-star Meryl Streep had a great deal to do with his victory.  “We made great jazz together,” he said.

    “It’s easier when you like the person,” Martin Landau says, smiling.  “I’ve had to work with actors I could not stand, women I was not attracted to, and that is where the craft comes in.  But with Ellen, we know each other, we work the same way, we were trained in a similar manner and we both found a connection to the material. It was very easy, very enjoyable coming to work each day.”

    The chemistry between Burstyn and Landau in the Nik Fackler’s “Lovely, Still” is quite remarkable as we watch two lonely old souls looking for a connection, someone to love, to be with, to care for. The story veers off in an entirely different direction than the audience expects, however, which only adds to the stunning impact of both their performances and the picture itself.

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  • ‘Lovely, Still’ clips

    Variety’s Anne Thompson has scored a few clips from Nik Fackler’s “Lovely, Still,” already generating stellar notices at the Toronto Film Festival.  Could Martin Landau and/or Ellen Burstyn become formidable acting contenders int his year’s Oscar race?

  • TORONTO: ‘Lovely, Still,’ ‘Blindness’

    Miramax Films\' BlindnessFinally, a great little film…

    I love it when a film comes out of nowhere, from an unlikely source, a new talent, old talents re-discovering their gifts, or something that just plains shocks the hell out of the audience with its audacity and brilliance.

    That happened to me today with the wonderful, heartbreaking love story “Lovely, Still,” boasting Oscar-caliber performances from Ellen Burstyn and Martin Landau. More on that later.

    I also finally saw the new cut of “Blindness,” as well as “Good,” the second Viggo Mortensen starrer to hit the festival this year. At this writing I still have to go see “The Burning Plain” later tonight.

    Part of the day was spent chatting it up with Ellen Burstyn (a lovely lady), Martin Landau (great guy) and fresh-faced Nik Fackler.  The interview ran behind but was thoroughly enjoyable for old anti-social me.

    Atom Egoyan, Mischa Barton and Scott Speedman made appearances at this event, but I did not get a chance to chat with my fellow Canadians…simply too busy.

    (Reviews after the jump.)

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  • Is there room for the old(er) guys?

    With the acting races getting more crowded by the day, it seems new contenders will need to make quite some impact to stay afloat in awards season. Nonetheless, David Poland and Tom O’Neil are beating their respective drums for a couple of veteran actors in decidedly low-key projects that have just bowed at Toronto.

    David Poland is excited about “Lovely, Still,” a small-scale holiday pic charting the December-to-December romance between Ellen Burstyn and Martin Landau. I thought the film sounded fairly ghastly when I first heard about it, but Poland is won over, citing “home run performances” from the leads:

    All of those “Boynton Beach Club” movies that get distribution… this is going to be the king of them. Maybe it’s just $10 million in theatrical, but given the Academy composition and the very real love of these two actors, don’t be shocked to hear award buzz around this one all season.

    Cinema Blend has also come over all warm and fuzzy on the film, and describes the performances as “dazzling.” The stars are obviously Academy stalwarts — and I’m always happy to see recognition for Burstyn, one of America’s greatest living actors — but I need more convincing.

    Meanwhile, over at Gold Derby, O’Neil is hoping the Academy might finally give in to poor Peter O’Toole, the man who now holds the record for most losses (eight) without winning. Two years ago, everything seemed set for O’Toole to finally collect for “Venus” — and he might well have, had the film not been so feeble.

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