Wednesday as Morticia

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List Mania! Frances McDormand and all the "Triple Crown" Icons

Since I'm on record as being annoyed that all anyone cares about is the EGOT and since Steve asked in the comments of the Emmy post-mortem about my preferred obsession (The Triple Crown of Acting) to date only 21 actors* have accomplished this, two of them within this very calendar year (Dame Helen Mirren and Frances McDormand). Of course this has become more commonplace than it used to be given that actors no longer feel like they should be solely a movie star, or solely a tv actor, or only a thespian of the stage. With more and more people willing to do all three, sometimes consistently, these ranks will likely swell in another 20 years.

Currently the rarified list of actors who've won The Tony, The Oscar and The Emmy for their acting reads like so...

Frances McDormand is your latest Triple Crown Winner. From Fargo (1996) to Good People (2011) to Olive Kitteridge (2014)

• Jack Albertson (Tony: 65, Oscar: 69, Emmy: 75)
• Anne Bancroft (Tony: 58, Oscar: 63, Emmy: 99)
• Ingrid Bergman (Oscar: 45, Tony: 47, Emmy: 60)
  Our Ingrid Bergman Centennial was fun wasn't it? You're welcome. Ingrid is the youngest performance to complete the trinity at age 45. 
• Shirley Booth (Tony: 49, Oscar: 53, Emmy: 62)
• Ellen Burstyn (Oscar: 75, Tony: 77, Emmy: 09)
• Melvyn Douglas (Tony: 60, Oscar: 64, Emmy: 68)
  Did you know that this Hud star was Illeanna Douglas's grandfather? I certainly didn't.
• Helen Hayes (Oscar: 32, Tony 47, Emmy: 53)
  (Though IMDb does not state what her Emmy was for so who knows if she's a special case or not)
• Jeremy Irons (Tony: 84, Oscar: 91, Emmy: 97)
• Frances McDormand (Oscar: 97, Tony: 11, Emmy: 15)
  The most recent inductee to this hall of fame. 
• Helen Mirren (Emmy: 96, Oscar: 07, Tony: 15)
  And yes she won all three for playing Queens named Elizabeth! Though she has multiple Emmys so she's won for other roles, too. 
• Thomas Mitchell (Oscar: 40, Tony: 53, Emmy: 53) 
• Rita Moreno (Oscar: 62, Tony: 75, Emmy: 77)
  The second youngest to the Triple. She was 46 when she completed it with the Emmy for The Muppet Show
• Al Pacino (Tony: 69, Oscar: 93, Emmy: 04)
• Christopher Plummer (Tony: 74, Emmy: 77, Oscar: 12)
• Vanessa Redgrave (Oscar: 78, Emmy: 81, Tony: 03)
• Jason Robards (Tony: 59, Oscar: 77, Emmy: 88)
• Geoffrey Rush (Oscar: 97, Emmy: 05, Tony: 09)
• Paul Scofield (Tony: 62, Oscar: 67, Emmy: 69)
  The youngest male actor to the Triple. He was 47 when he completed it with the Emmy for Male of the Species 
• Maggie Smith (Oscar: 70, Tony: 90, Emmy: 03)
• Maureen Stapleton (Tony: 51, Emmy: 68, Oscar: 82)
• Jessica Tandy (Tony: 78, Emmy: 88, Oscar: 90)

Weird Statistic
The Emmy, which seems like the easiest to win since they have so many damn categories, is actually won last by the majority of Triple Crowners. How about that? 

Eddie Redmayne is very young to have already won two of the big threeWho do you think will join the list next?
Of currently working stars Viola Davis, Cicely Tyson, Neil Patrick Harris, Ellen Barkin, Hugh Jackman and Bryan Cranston are just missing the Oscar which is obviously the hardest to win.

Overachiever Glenn Close has three Tonys and three Emmys but (sigh) zero Oscars. Kevin Spacey, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dame Judi Dench, Denzel Washington and Marcia Gay Harden are just missing the Emmy. The youngest immediate threats are Anne Hathaway and Eddie Redmayne: she is only 32 and just needs a Tony; he is only 33 and just needs an Emmy... though he isn't currently doing any TV so the Triple Crown will probably have to wait. 

And get this: Sally Field, Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, Dianne Wiest and Jane Fonda who all have won multiple Oscars and multiple Emmys are all just missing the Tony though they've all worked the Broadway stage!

Depressing Three-Medium Stats: Sir Ian McKellen, a hugely lauded thespian has only won the Tony despite Oscar & Emmy nominations. The gifted Sarah Paulson who works all three mediums with regularity has not won any of the prizes and has only been Emmy-nominated. The Lovely Laura Linney, another regular three-medium threat has only won the Emmy despite multiple Tony and Oscar nominations. Marisa Tomei who works all three has only won the Oscar with no Tony or Emmy honors. Martha Plimptonwho does all three (though movies only occasionally) has only won the Emmy but has at least been nominated for multiple Tonys. Kathleen Turner who only occasionally does TV (unthinkably her work on Friends did not even win her a Guest Actress nomination) but used to be a huge movie star has been nominated for the Oscars and Grammys (once) and the Tonys (twice) but has yet to win any of the big showbiz awards beyond her two Golden Globes. Annette Bening has NONE of the top three prizes despite being nominated for all. The strange thing is that though she now regularly does stage work, she does not do it on Broadway. She could win a Tony if she came back!

* Special Cases: Notable superstars like Judy Garland (her Oscar was a non-competitive juvenile Oscar), Liza Minnelli (her Emmy was for a televised concert), Barbra Streisand (her Tony was a special award) and Whoopi Goldberg (her Emmy was not a Primetime Emmy which is all that people usually refer to when they talk about winning Emmys) won all three statues but they did not win them all in regular competitive categories or for performances exactly so they are special cases.

TIFF: Two More Foreign Language Oscar Submissions

2015's TIFF has concluded and we tried to catch a few of the Foreign Language Oscar submissions while we were there. We've already written about Colombia's Embrace of the Serpent so here are two more official entries from Norway and Portugal

Oscar Trivia Notes: Portugal holds the sad statistic of being the country with the most annual submissions (32 in total) to have never been nominated. This category was established as an annual competitive event back in 1956 and Portugal began submitting in 1980 - they've missed only a few years of the competition since. Norway has fared better. Though Israel, Mexico, and Belgium, lead this particular statistic, Norway is stuck in a tie for fourth place with Greece for "the most nominated country that has yet to win the foreign film Oscar." Norway has been nominated five times. More fun stats here. I'd suggest that The Wave didn't have a prayer of being nominated except that the last time Oscar went for a Norwegian film it was a similarly conventional mainstream adventure (Kon-Tiki) so who knows.

The Wave (Norway, Roar Uthaug)
The best thing one can and should say about this disaster epic from Norway is that it's just as good as your average American entry in this crowded genre and it does that with a significantly lower budget while sticking closer to plausible science in its action sequences. It keeps things more intimate, keeping a tight focus on one family and a group of coworkers, and building slowly to the money shot disaster. The tsunami doesn't happen until well into the running time but The Wave keeps you interested regardless.  It's no surprise that Norway submitted it since it is a massive blockbuster there. According to the director's intro at the public screening over half a million people at home had already bought tickets to it in less than a month. (Can you imagine 10% of the US population going to any single movie in a month's time frame? It just doesn't happen. I think American Sniper could argue it got there but not in one month's time!) Still The Wave has the same ugly problem of valuing one blond family's welfare over everyone else's entire existence that got The Impossible into trouble with critics. Although The Wave has a better excuse for its total whiteness since it's Norway (which is very white) not Thailand! But The Wave is even more ruthless about placing the sanctity of this one family's unity and love and survival above anyone else, though I shan't spoil why that is. Nevertheless the movie is exciting to watch, the three principal actors are charming (including Ane Dahl Torp who also starred in Norway's submission last year 1001 Grams) and Norwegian movies can always be counted on for sublime scenery -- even when that scenery turns malevolent -- but boy is this thing cliche-ridden and predictable! B-

Arabian Nights Volume 2: The Desolate One (Portugal, Miguel Gomes)
I attended the middle feature of this trilogy, the one that was Oscar submitted because the director claims you needn't see the three films in order, with Nick and Amir as my final film of TIFF. They both emerged from the screenings with missionary zeal about its brilliance. Nick considers the trilogy the movie event of the year. I'm not as gaga for it though I admit that part of that may well be that I a) didn't get it and b) I have a well known lack of tolerance for artists that can't self-edit and long running times and a 7 hour three part movie in which every sequence (that I've seen) has dead space pushes these buttons for me in a big way. I'll let Amir review the trilogy proper since he's a true fan but I will say despite my reservations on the length of the project as a whole and even this third of it (which is itself over 2 hours long) it is often quite funny and provocative in its pile-up of politics, storytelling idiosyncracies, and nonsensical events (as an example of the latter at one point a character turns invisible and seems to teleport with a muscle flexing grunt and this has nothing at all to do with the story or the scene or the narration or the political content as far as I can gather) 

Dixie is a born starMiguel Gomes, who previous directed the whatsit Tabu (that critics were also besotted with), is in his own way as weird and singular an auteur as Thailand's Apichatpong Weerathasakul. His movies could not be accidentally mistaken for anyone else's and that, should you be in doubt, is a huge compliment. This trilogy is NOT an adaptation of the classic Arabian Nights but just borrows its structure with this version of Scheherazade telling us fables about poverty, politics, and social justice that are drawn from / comment on the Austerity period in Portugal that impoverished many of its citizens.

To make this trilogy project even more confusing, each volume has multiple stories within it. Volume 2 has three plus separate stories: the first is about "a man without bowels" who is being hunted by the police; the second, my preference, is about a Judge trying a case in what looks like an ancient greek theater which becomes more and more absurd and abstract and continually finds new people to blame as it progresses; the last is the story of an raggedy poodle named "Dixie" and her rotating people who have to keep giving her up. Dixie is a total cutie and won "the Palme Dog" at Cannes.

To make this volume even more confusing, the story of Dixie has several nested stories within it about the residents of a particular apartment building which have nothing at all to do with Dixie though other pets come into play (Gomes movies seem fascinated by animals be they dogs, alligators, parrots, cats, or whatnot). Describing the abundant oddity is nearly impossible: people turn invisible, cows speak at trials, naked ladies bake cakes. Real Oscar Bait, people! WTF

Related: There are now 61 official submission titles so make sure to check out the updated foreign film charts.

• Current Predictions plus all time stats/trivia
• Afghanistan through Estonia  15 official 
• Ethiopia through The Netherlands 25 official
• Norway through Vietnam 21 official 

The full official submission list will be published around October 1st with probably about 10 more titles joining this current lineup. Generally speaking at least one of the previously announced titles mysteriously vanishes or is replaced when the official list is published. 

Curio: Lloyd Stratton Ilustration

Alexa here with your weekly art break. In my regular perusal of the amazing artwork showcased in Little White Lies, I immediately noticed the work of Lloyd Stratton. He crafts incredibly detailed, often pointillist illustrations with pencil or a Pigma micron pen, sometimes adding digital elements, but oftentimes not.  His images of works in progress, documented on his Instagram, are just as amazing as his final pieces.  Here is a selection of some of his illustrations of actors and filmmakers.  He inspires me to doodle more...

Work in progress of Rob Pattinson in Life

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GoodFellas at 25: why it's cinematic perfection

David here celebrating 25 years of what might be Scorsese's masterpiece...

When I signed up to write about Goodfellas, the main motivation was simply that I hadn't seen it in years - the ideal opportunity to force a rediscovery before an overwhelming onslaught of new movies. When it came to actually writing this article, though, things didn't seem so simple any more. What could I possibly say that hasn't already been said? Pieces about things you 'never knew', about where the cast are now, about the making of the movie are already widespread across the fare internet shores, because the film remains one of the all-time favourites of the straight white male demographic that dominates both film criticism and film fandom. I mean, did you miss this New York Post article a few months back? Everyone else just doesn’t get it.

The fact remains, though, that Goodfellas is a classic, and incontrovertibly so.

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