Best Actress. An Oscar Thrill & Personal Ballot
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 3:30PM It's just four days until Oscar and I remain stunned and overjoyed that god* will be taking home her first Oscar. I can scarcely believe it. I thought it would be a nail biter given that this never happens. It's true we're about to get our first fiftysomething Best Actress winner in 62 years and I couldn't be happier about it! Given Oscar's very limited idea of what constitutes great acting (let's face it they were never going to "get" how well Scarlett Johansson was embodying a inhuman alien psyche distracted by curiousity) they didn't have much to choose from this year. But we cinephiles did. Best Actress is always a tough category for the actressexual, so I truly wish I had 8 nominees each year. I truly do. Of course then I'd weep for the 9th. You're always going to have to leave people out.
I force myself to narrow it down to 12 semi-finalists each year for a happy dozen before I make the final calls so here's a last shout out to a dozenish favorite leading ladies of 2014 (in alpha order) though this time it's a baker's dozen because I had to include the baker's wife albeit in her other incarnation this year.
Let's hear it for this incredible work. (Weak year my ass)
- Emily Blunt, Edge of Tomorrow
- Marion Cotillard, Two Days One Night
- Essie Davis, The Babadook
- Anne Dorval, Mommy
- Luminita Gheorghiu, Child's Pose
- Scarlett Johansson, Under the Skin
- Keira Knightley, Begin Again
- Agata Kulesza, Ida
- Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Beyond the Lights
- Julianne Moore, Still Alice / Maps to the Stars **
- Elisabeth Moss, Listen Up Phillip
- Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
- Reese Witherspoon, Wild
See the Film Bitch Awards Best Actress nominees here!
* Julianne Moore is God.
** I could never understand what the f*** was happening with Maps to the Stars (Globe eligible but not Oscar eligible - what the hell?) so it is not included in my 2014 awards though I would surely have nominated Juli for it. I haven't yet decided if I will consider it for 2015 -- it supposedly opens February 27th -- but it seems to have been lost in the gap between film years. I will never understand this predilection of distributors to confuse potential audiences and critics in year end prizes. Never ever. It fills me with such bile every annum.
Reader Comments (61)
Rich -- i'm not sure who you are addressing here since nobody said anything about anybody being "right" but yes, i am more right than others on category placement ;)
all you have to do in most instances to clear up confusion is imagine a shift in the genders in your head and immediately you see that most films with two leads still have two leads even if they're of the same gender ;) like GONE GIRL clearly has two leads. but i bet you anything if it were a film about a lesbian marriage people would pretend that only Pike was the lead and suddently Bernadette Affleck would be a supporting player in her own movie.
two lead films are two lead films are two lead films are two lead films. see also:
The Kids Are All Right
Foxcatcher
Love is Strange,
Brokeback Mountain,
Thelma & Louise,
Amadeus,
Collateral,
The Turning Point
Mutiny on the Bounty
and thousands of others throughout history.
Yes, but if Gone Girl were about two lesbians, Bernadette would have packed Amy's U-Haul and moved the hot detective in to share her shower (keeping the cat). Amy would have run to the idiot neighbor who would have realized that she was gay all along, left her husband (but kept the kids) and the four of them would have brunch (with Mo) on the weekends. Watchful Wally would have had a heart attack trying to keep up with it all and the male detective would be offering his services as sperm donor, not realizing that didn't include a roll in the hay.
The only murder would be several bottles of Chardonnay on the weekends.
I love your ballot, but I'm a bit surprised that Jessica Chastain didn't factor in for Eleanor Rigby.
My ballot:
01. Jessica Chastain, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby
02. Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night
03. Julianne Moore, Still Alice
04. Scarlett Johansson, Under the Skin
05. Essie Davis, The Babadook
I love all the mentions of Lindsay Duncan. I agree with flatbeat-- if you haven't seen it, catch it on Netflix Instant and see one of the most emotionally complex performances in years.
If you think Duncan is good on film,. you should see her on stage.
Nika - No, we actually don't all agree. Pike wouldn't even make my top 5. Once she gets to the "Cool Girl" monologue she's great, but everything before that doesn't make sense. She complains about having to be pretend to be the Cool Girl to snag a guy like Affleck, yet her performance in the flashbacks when they met was stiff and cold, the complete opposite of what she should've been doing (loose and fun). Instead of making it clear what Affleck would be attracted to, she basically all but said out loud "I'm a creepy weirdo! I'm fucked up and can't relate to people in a normal way!"
I normally think Pike is very good, so I don't know if she was mis-directed or just simply did not get it, but a 2/3 great performance + 1/3 completely wrong choices should not earn top 5 placement, much less the win.
I'm still waiting to draw up my top 5 after I see Still Alice this weekend, but I already have at least 6-7 performances I'd put ahead of Pike.
Regarding your ballot, and this may be a slight nitpicky so I apologize, but I think Essie Davis' character was named "Amelia" not "Alice"
It was a great year for actress. I'm just sad I'm too deep into school to go see either Two Days One Night or Still Alice at the moment, ugh.
My nominations:
Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Beyond the Lights
Essie Davis, The Babadook
Reese Witherspoon, Wild
Tilda Swinton, Only Lovers Left Alive
Kristen Wiig, The Skeleton Twins
Kulesza's still supporting.
not Cotillard for Immigrant???
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