1994 Q&A: Frankenstein, Weaver, Past Glories, Future Nominations.

Okay, our last dive into 1994! I recently asked readers to send in their '94 related questions (other questions will still be answered but that's for the next Q&A). So here's our final pontifying for that year. You asked, I answer. 

JAMES: 1994 was the year of Frankenstein, the movie that led to Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh splitting up, due to his affair with HBC. Thoughts on Thompson & Branagh’s (professional) partnership? What projects would they have excelled at if they stayed together?

"IT'S ALIVE!" Or, rather. "IT'S DEAD!" Emma and Kenneth. Kenneth and Emma. Sigh. Insert broken heart emoji. Young Nathaniel was so sad when they split. They were the Definitive Early 90s 'It Couple: UK Edition. That was such an awesome cinematic partnership. I adored their over-the-top genre mashup and reincarnation chutzpah in Dead Again and their luminous Shakespearean comedy in Much Ado About Nothing.

If you think about it Frankenstein, with its pulp grotesqueries, and bodice-ripped lustiness is absolutely the work of the same guy who made Dead Again. I miss that Branagh, still...

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1943 is coming...

by Nathaniel R

Thanks to all the wonderful readers who've commented on or shared or expressed enthusiasm for the Supporting Actress Smackdowns this summer. So far we've looked at 1970 and 1994. Our 'year of the month' for July will be 1943.

On Sunday July 29th "The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1943"

• Gladys Cooper, The Song of Bernadette [Amazon | iTunes]
• Paulette Goddard, So Proudly We Hail [Amazon]
• Katina Paxinou, For Whom the Bell Tolls [Amazon | iTunes] 
• Anne Revere, The Song of Bernadette [Amazon |  iTunes] 
• Lucille Watson, Watch on the Rhine [Amazon | iTunes | Filmstruck]

Balloting opens July 1st and closes July 26th. Please do not vote before balloting is open as your ballot will likely be lost in the shuffle. HOW TO VOTE: E-mail with "1943" in the subject line and each performance that you've seen rated on a scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (stupendous) hearts. You don't have to include the reasons behind your votes but if you do we might quote you at the smackdown. (If you wish include a secondary list of your preferred shortlist in this category feel free.)

Cabin in the Sky (1943)

Also because we want to do better about helping ourselves and you contextualize these events after the jump a list of 1943 films that are available without too much expense on various streaming services...

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Months of Meryl: One True Thing (1998)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

#26 — Kate Gulden, a suburban wife and mother dying of cancer.

JOHN: Here’s one true thing: Carl Franklin’s One True Thing is neither a Lifetime movie, an extended soap opera, nor a “chick-flick.” One True Thing is, in fact, a melodrama centered around a middle-aged woman dying of cancer, embellished with music and openly soliciting your tears. The maternal melodrama, a genre which Streep has revisited frequently, remains near the bottom of the genre totem pole, regularly maligned and dismissed by critics for all their attributes: it is proudly emotional, scored and scripted to produce waterworks, and an undisguised movie, unconcerned with presenting realism through its formal elements. One True Thing, like most contemporary maternal melodramas, is familiar and stylistically plain, and the film is admittedly hampered by a hackneyed framing device, but it also takes seriously issues central to women’s lives, exploring a mother-daughter relationship and issues of long-term marriage, especially the concessions made and female labor expended in keeping a household running smoothly. One True Thing deserves to be taken as seriously as Saving Private Ryan or any other masculine meditation on violence released in 1998. To immediately write off the film, and the genre to which it belongs, is to devalue and belittle the feminine concerns it explores...

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1994's Unsatisfying Best Actress Race

1994 was our year of the month for June so before the month closes, a couple of more forays into that year. Here's Nathaniel R responding to a reader request during the Supporting Actress Smackdown to discuss the actual leading nominees.

It's an age old question and the answer is (nearly) always the same. 

Q: What happens when all the best stuff in a film year is within genres Oscar doesn't care for?
A: The Academy sticks to their traditional loves even if it means providing history with a weak shortlist that they'll judge harshly!  

Some recent years have suggested that Oscar is loosening up in this regard. The swell of new members might be helping along with the increased visibility of critical passion (the plethora of precursor awards constantly saying "but this is great! won't you please look at it?" seems to have shifted Oscar voters a bit more towards critical passion and away from "Oscar Bait"). But overall they stick to what they love (dramas, message movies, epics, biopics, etcetera). This is especially true of the Acting branch which rarely met a teary face it didn't fall for and continually sticks up its nose at laughing or screaming or unusual faces given their aversion to comic genius, horror films, and auteur experimental or sci-fi/fantasy work. Which brings us to 1994's BEST ACTRESS LIST...

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Yes No Maybe So: Beautiful Boy

by Ben Miller

After a seemingly endless tease, we finally got the trailer for one of the most anticipated films of the year: Amazon Studio's Beautiful Boy.  Based on the memoirs of journalist David Sheff and his son Nic, the film follows David struggling through years of his son's addiction. Oscar-nominated Steve Carell steps into the role of David, while freshly Oscar-nominated Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) plays his son Nic. Let’s dive right in with another addition of Yes, No, Maybe So...

YES

• Love trailers that start out of nowhere!  My guess is that this diner scene is at least two-thirds of the way through the film

• Carell looks to be in a quieter grief-stricken dramatic role, like he had in Last Flag Flying last year.  If that performance is any indication of what to expect, I am in.

• Chalamet has really turned into a Hollywood wunderkind...

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