You asked some questions. I'm finally answering them. You know how this works. Please do chime in in the comments. The whole reason we do the column is for participatory flavor and that includes a pinch of you! Our Question of the Week which is Friday Night Lights themed is, annoyingly, from "Anonny" (how about a name?) so he/she gets to choose our next banner topic! (And how about our current "joy" banner. I put Jessica Lange in it for the first time and no one notices!?)
What is it, a crime? Is it a crime to look at Lange?
Pat Carroll recording UrsulaJAMES: Does the trend now that animated films only use "names" for voice work mean that we'll never see the likes of Pat Carroll again?
That would be among the greatest of cinematic tragedies. Unlike seemingly many TFE readers, though, I don't actually share an interest in voice actors getting Oscar nominations. But as with motion capture and the much discussed pioneering case of Andy Serkis, I do think this is where Oscar is really dropping the ball in terms of never giving out special achievement statues. I can't even remember when the last one was -- was it for Toy Story (1995) before there was the Animated Feature category? Pat Carroll's work as Ursula is the single greatest voice performance in the history of animation. (Team Experience shamefully put her in only 3rd when we took a poll)
The days of specialized voice talent getting prime opportunities like that are gone but there is hope: Pixar uses celebrities sometimes but they don't rely on them exclusively the way Dreamworks and other lesser studios do. And sometimes their "celebrities" aren't exactly household names so they aren't using them for advertising purposes, but because they genuinely love the voice. Wasn't Richard Kind a great choice for "Bing Bong" in Inside Out?
DEBORAH: If you could choose one lesser-known movie each from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that everyone should see, what would they be (and why)?
THE ANSWER AND EIGHT MORE QUESTIONS AFTER THE JUMP...
Only one? And lesser known? Tough. I'm going to ignore the "everyone should see" part of this question as these three are all peculiar and divisive movies. But I like to recommend them to people because they're all absurdly underseen, ambitious or interesting. 1970s: Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) is a great companion piece to the Crucible in its feverish demented excoriation of organized religion, abuses of power, and mob mentality. Plus, it's just gonzo filmmaking and quite possibly Vanessa Redgrave's greatest performance ever give or take Julia or If These Walls Could Talk 2; 1980s: I was briefly obsessed with Alan Rudolph's weirdo love triangle Choose Me (1984) starring Genevieve Bujold, Keith Carradine and Lesley Ann Warren and though I don't remember it well I keep waiting for an excuse to revisit it and have someone to talk to about it. Perhaps we should do that here; 1990s: John Greyson's Lilies is one of the most inventive LGBT movies I'd ever seen. The film, is about a bishop hearing confessions of a convict but the inmates also theatrical reenact the true story/crime. It still flashes into my mind on occasion.
VAUS: How do you feel about critic score sites such as RottenTomatoes or Metacritic: Like or Dislike? Do you consider a C+, such as you gave Mirror Mirror, should be classed as rotten by RT?
NATHANIEL: I hate binary thinking when it comes to movies. I worry that these instant categorizations sites actually encourage people to see less movies. Why limit yourself to two thumbs when you have ten fingers? I only use grades because readers demand it and it helps with lists later. But that's as serious as I take it -- as a vaguely tiered list-crutch. Now I'm off to update my RT page. I'm constantly forgetting to add reviews there because I dread picking "fresh" or "rotten" for those B-/C+ films.
EVAN: What is the last Oscar film you were dreading that ended up surprising you with how good it was?
NATHANIEL: I assume you mean Oscar Bait as opposed to Oscar winner or nominee? I really had no intention of seeing Love & Mercy and was really taken off guard by it once I did. I think it's compromised in an obvious and unfortunate way but it has a lot of interesting beats and Dano & Banks are both great. The last perfect example of this is probably Lincoln (2012) though. So many strikes against it going in: I can be allergic to biopics, am a known hater of lengthy running times rarely finding them justified by content, and I feel no awe for Spielberg so I go into his movies without the rose-tinted glasses most people see his movies with, but I thought that picture was incredibly involving. I'm still pissed that that lost Picture, Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay to the films it lost them to.
I was also mildly surprised by The Theory of Everything last year which I realize is not a popular opinion. It's not perfect by any stretch but it's better and more emotionally complicated than most entries in the Great Man With Long Suffering Wife genre. That said I still wish that Eddie Redmayne hadn't won the Oscar. Oscar chose poorly with their nominees in that category but Michael Keaton was right there for the crowning. SIGH.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
ANONNY: Back in the day, many thought the exceptionally talented, young & beautiful cast of Friday Night Lights would go on to be superstars. Hasn't quite happened yet. Thoughts? Surprises since?
I sometimes forget how much I loved this show until someone brings it up, so thank you. At the time it went off the air I assumed two of the cast members would have huge big screen careers: Taylor Kitsch and Michael B Jordan. I was 50% right. I was so impressed with how much vulnerability and expressiveness Jordan brought to a "tough" private jock character that I knew he had big things in him. Taylor Kitsch I was wrong about it. I think it came down to his particular appeal as Tim Riggins being so laid back. Laid back can sometimes read as entirely blank once you're asked to fill huge leading big screen space. Male protagonist roles in mainstream pictures are often underwritten and they can require outsize screen persona to make them feel "full". Cruise has that intensity that seeps into all the dead space and Willis has that confident slyness which makes you want to know more even if there's nothing more to know. Etcetera. Kitsch was just too blank. But I like him on True Detective Season 2 a lot when he's not asked to carry the whole thing and when they've flipped his chill appeal into something closer to emotionally paralyzed. I don't much like the show but I like him on it.
My least favorite teen from the original cast was actually Jesse Plemons and he's shaping up to have the best or at least the most actor's actor big screen career -- I never saw that coming! The others seem better suited to TV but I'm usually happy to see them show up, especially Adrienne Palicki who was a godsend on Agents of SHIELD (so much so that I wish I could have seen her take on Wonder Woman) and I always really like Minka Kelly when she pops up, too. There's something about her that just reads as so genuine and warm. I can see her being a popular "mother" actress when she's much older due to this.
The two I've been most disappointed in since, are Jurnee Smollett-Bell who I thought was amazing on that show but terrible on True Blood (?!?) and Zach Gilford who I didn't think was all that great of an actor until the end of his run and then I was like Holy Hell... where was he all hiding this gut punch power? I've lost track of him since -- which is why I'm disappointed -- which I assume means he went to TV shows I don't follow?
DUSTY: I love that TFE has focused more on TV lately, but I've been wanting know more about your thoughts on "classic" shows predating the '80s and '90s. Were you ever a Nick at Nite junkie? Does Mary Tyler Moore (my personal favorite) turn your world on with her smile?
Sorry to disappoint but I was never all that into TV. I've only ever been into TV on a case by case (i.e. show by show) basis so my obsessions (and I have several like anybody does) have almost always been contemporary as they aired. Truth: I don't actually turn the television on at home unless I think I have something recorded on the DVR.
BVR: Name an actor and an actress with two of the most expressive pairs of eyes in cinema.
You asked this question before Omar Sharif died but now it's weirdly timely. Because he would have to make a top ten list. Others that quickly come to mind: Paul Newman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sissy Spacek and Bette Davis.
... and Colin Farrell's eyebrows. They're more beautifully emotive than some people's entire faces.
Supporting vs. Lead - A Suite
FADHIL: What supporting performance that you wish to have been the leading instead in a movie?
Oh god, where to even start with that question. So many movies have more exciting peripheries than centers. Don Jon is a good recent example. It's all about Don (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) but his lovers (Scarlett Johansson & Julianne Moore) are more interesting as characters. I loved Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris but only wanted to hang with the supporting cast.
Rework the Blackhat screenplay to make Viola Davis the lead (it wouldn't be hard to do since she has to assemble the team). Result: instantly better movie.
But mostly this happens to me when an actress I love is in a part that is unworthy of her or just way too small. So... basically any time Toni Collette or Viola Davis are in a movie.
DAN: Which Best Actress nominations do you think would have won if they had been categorized as supporting. A few I believe would have fared better, Talia Shire "Rocky", Valerie Perrine "Lenny", perhaps even The Bening in "Kids are Alright".
I refuse to play this game! Do NOT encourage Category Fraud.
CHRISTOPHER: Now that the Emmys have a strict rule on how to distinguish between Guest Acting and Supporting Acting for category fraud, what if the Oscars had one to distinguish between Supporting Acting and Lead Acting? What would your specific qualifications be if you could make a steadfast rule on the subject be and what are some of the performances it would affect?
While I admire the Television Academy for taking a stand it's a lot easier to count 50% of aired episodes when you're talking about television episodes than screentime when you're talking about feature films. This is one of the main reasons that people can get away with so much fraud in movie awardage. Well that plus years of awards show conditioning. If you had asked people in 1984 or 1991 to say who was the one lead in Amadeus or Thelma & Louise they would have laughed you out of the room but now fans will rush to bend themselves into pretzels explaining why Cate Blanchett is a supporting player in Notes on a Scandal (2006) even though the entire movie is about her relationship with Judi Dench and if one of them had a penis nobody would ever pretend it was anything less than a two-lead film. It can drive a person (okay, me) crazy. Generally speaking my rule is simple. If the movie is primarily about the relationship between two characters they are both leads. Anthony Hopkins is a lead in Silence of the Lambs even though he only has 20 minutes of screen time or something miniscule because the movie is totally about his relationship with Clarice and if you take either of them away from the equation, the movie simply cannot exist. Brokeback Mountain has two male leads. Full stop. Anyone who argues differently is rationalizing and cannot be trusted. Title characters are usually leads of course so it's laughable that in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford people claimed that Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) was "supporting"... even though the movie begins and ends with him and he has more screentime than Jesse James.
There are of course exceptions and debatable grey areas and some roles can indeed go either way in which case I am okay with deferring to the Oscar campaign. This is why I would never support a hard and fast rule about what qualifies but have always pushed the idea of an Academy committee overseeing classification which is then set in stone (the way the Tonys do it) to prevent flagrant abuses of the system. Some fraud would still happen but you would never end up in stupid situations where you call the protagonist of a movie (like, oh, Jamie Foxx in Collateral!) supporting just because the movie studio or the actor is super greedy.
AND THAT'S IT FOR THIS WEEK'S ROUND-UP.
As ever I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. I don't actually run this blog only to hear my own opinion!