In Contention

Tag: Nicole Kidman

  • Kidman takes on Dusty: could Oscar beckon?

    Unwritten rule of Oscar strategy #476: playing a troubled popular music icon will probably net you at least a nomination. Just ask Marion Cotillard, Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix, Jamie Foxx, Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Gary Busey, Diana Ross, Susan Hayward… the list goes on.

    It’s not hard to figure out why. Academy voters have long had a bias towards biopics, somehow believing that interpreting a real-life figure, whose physicality, voice and mannerisms are already established, is more of a challenge than creating a fictitious character from scratch. Playing a real-life entertainer only ups the ante, allowing the actor to build multiple performance personae within the character, as well to show off any singing/dancing/playing skills we didn’t know they possessed. (Singing being optional, of course, as Cotillard and Foxx can attest.) Throw in the mental breakdowns and substance abuse problems that generally go with the territory, and you have Academy Award bait of the highest order.

    So the news that Nicole Kidman, arguably the foremost leading lady of her generation, is set to produce and play in a biopic of the late Dusty Springfield, inarguably the greatest white soul singer of all time, can’t fail to prompt early Oscar speculation.

    Even laying aside Springfield’s astonishing musical legacy for a moment, the woman is a fascinating character: born and raised in London, she overcame crippling self-confidence issues to top the U.S. charts in the 1960s, confusing the barriers between what was perceived as “white” and “black” music. As her hold on the charts loosened, however, she descended into a reclusive lifestyle of alcoholism, drug abuse and self-harm, all the while conflicted between her emerging bisexuality and her Catholic faith. Finally clean, she made something of a comeback in the late 80s, before being diagnosed with breast cancer, finally losing the battle in 1999. All this, and with a British accent to boot. Like I said, baity stuff.

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  • The LA Times points and laughs at poor bastards

    It looks like LA Times is still beating that Oscar drum for the old media sect. This week, Susan King writes up the lackluster career choices that followed a number of Academy wins throughout the years.

    Here’s a look:

    Just because you win an Oscar doesn’t mean that every subsequent film you make will be Academy Award-caliber stuff. In fact, Oscar winners inevitably make incongruous missteps in their career after they pick up an Academy Award.

    Just look at Kevin Costner. After being on top of the world when he won the best director Oscar for the 1990 best film, “Dances With Wolves,” he made the gargantuan turkey “Waterworld” and then directed a three-hour celluloid nightmare called “The Postman,” which was DOA with critics and audiences alike. No sooner did Julia Roberts earn an Oscar for “Erin Brockovich” than critics soured on her talents in the ill-fated comedy “America’s Sweethearts.” And what was Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones thinking when he signed up for the yawn-inducing comedy “Man of the House,” a film so tepid that it wasn’t even screened for critics?

    She goes on to pour salt on the wounds of Al Pacino, Halle Berry, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams and Nicole Kidman, among others. But I’m left wondering what good a piece like this serves.

    Now I’m no elitist. I understand we all have to stretch for awards content and perspective from time to time. And typically, the LA Times and its awards site, The Envelope, nail down interesting subject matter in that regard. But this piece is like one of those throwaway photo galleries that land on a weekly basis over there on a weekly basis.

    Obviously this was a buttress piece for Patrick Goldstein’s latest think piece (regarding the downward spiral of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino), but I don’t know. It seems a little cheap and unnecessary to me.

    Check out the rest of King’s piece here.

  • OFF THE CARPET: 2008, a year in advance

    Another year, another set of wins…and another look ahead at what’s in store NEXT year.

    It’s never too late to take a long gander at what we might see dominating the film awards landscape in 365 days, and with that in mind, I’ve been doing my usual mulling over the possibilities for a few weeks to put together the sadly thorough examination of the 2008-09 award season that follows. Let’s get into it. There are some major considerations to take into account. right off the top.

    Like Leonardo DiCaprio, for instance, who is set to be the entertainer of the year. With performances in “Body of Lies” (Ridley Scott) and “Revolutionary Road” (Sam Mendes), DiCaprio is working with a duo of awards-proven talent this year. Perhaps that will work against him, much like it did in 2006, and no major Oscar success will come knocking. But we’ll wait until we see the performances. Each of them could be enticing.

    This year’s Best Picture Oscar victor Scott Rudin is back again, by the way, with “Revolutionary Road,” recently inherited by Paramount Vantage and probably one of the true “frontrunners” this far out that we could put our finger on. The only other film in Vantage’s arsenal is Edward Zwick’s “Defiance,” which could simply be a commercial success, but might find its way to multiple nods like “The Last Samurai” and “Blood Diamond” in recent years.

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