Almost There: Reader’s Choice Edition
Tuesday, August 4, 2020 at 6:15PM 
Over the past few months, in the Almost There series, we’ve explored many performances that were at the threshold of an Oscar nomination but, for one reason or another, ended up without that golden hosanna. The choice of subject for each episode has been up to me. In an attempt to avoid negativity, I always went with performances I greatly admire. Why not try a more reproachful assessment or, even more difficult, an ambivalent review? So, the next two performances to be dissected in the series won’t be chosen by me. That’s where you come in…
First up, a selection of performances, new to streaming, making for a timely lineup of potential study objects. Which one do you choose?
Secondly, we have another field of possibility, all from the year 2005, our theme this month as we approach another Smackdown. Which will it be?
You can vote on each poll once a day until Saturday, August 8th. If you like this initiative, we might repeat it in the future. As always, your feedback is appreciated.
Reader Comments (24)
Any one of these would be good but I nearly chose Thandie as it's performance that is very uneven and she did win a Bafta but went with Joan Allen whom I still believe gave one of the 3 best performances of the 2000's plus they owed her for Nixon.
I chose Shirley as I'd like to see an 89 Smackdown soon.
Great, Claudio. Thank you. ;-)
Hands down, Joan Allen gave the best female performance in 2005.
Cameron Diaz for BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and Thandie Newton for CRASH, please and thank you!
I voted for Shirley MacLaine both times ❤️
I don't recall Jim Carrey being that close to a nomination for Eternal Sunshine, but it's definitely a performance worth talking about, so I'd love to read your take on it. Looking at the nominees that year, I distinctly remember Clint Eastwood being a mild surprise (he got no precursor nominations, but it wasn't that surprising to see him make the cut given that Million Dollar Baby was surging). The spot he took was, as I remember it, thought to be a battle between Paul Giamatti for Sideways and Javier Bardem for The Sea Inside. Carrey was probably only in eighth place that year. Maybe even ninth depending on if Liam Neeson for Kinsey was ahead of him (which I genuinely can't remember, but I know that movie had lost a lot of momentum by the time nominations were announced).
I voted for Gyllenhaal and Johansson, they are fantastic, I still don't know how they didn't get the nomination.
Jim Carrey ("TESOASMind") &... Scarlett Johansson ("Match Point")
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I was divided between ScarJo and Joan Allen, but I find her "Match Point" snub a peculiar one: dynamite performance from a rising star, sexy as hell, a Woody Allen comeback and she got an atrocious snub for "Lost in Translation" a couple of year before. I guess she'll make for an interesting analysis subject (please and thank you)
I will forever be mystified at how the Academy snubbed Jake Gyllenhaal. That performance is just incredible.
Please do Cameron Diaz.
J.Lo can take heart in the fact that another super popular actress was totally passed over by Oscar again. And again. And AGAIN.
Seriously, with those precursor nominations for Being John Malkovich, Vanilla Sky, and Gangs of New York (a movie Oscar clearly saw and liked), I think Diaz is safe to assume the Academy really doesn't like her. And it would've never happened simply because of genre, but she had to (somewhat) be in the running in '98 for There's Something About Mary with that NYFCC win and Globe nod.
Nice idea!
I'd love to read your take on Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger. After I saw the film I was sure she was a shoo-in for a nomination.
Same for my other pick-Rupert Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding.
At some point I'm hoping you include Linda Darnell's performance in A Letter to Three Wives in the series. She's brilliant in the film (so many great performances in it but she shines a little brighter) and was apparently widely expected to be nominated but missed in favor of some truly bland work by Loretta Young (for the dreadful Come to the Stable) and Jeanne Crain in Pinky.
It is still terrible that Cameron Díaz doesn't have not only an Oscar nomination, but an Oscar herself and that the most prominent win she has, was the Best Lead Actress by NYFCC back in 1998 for her superb comedic performance in There's Something About Mary.
Now her career is completely mishandled but between 1994 and for a decade, she had a strike of absolutely amazing performances and probably she should have won an Oscar either for Being John Malkovich (sorry, Catherine Keener, I love you but Díaz was even better) or Vanilla Sky. And yes, her "Mary" should have landed her an Oscar nomination, the same way that Julia Roberts earned one for Pretty Woman or Gwyneth Palthrow won the damn thing for Shakespeare in Love.
I think that her "Mary" is one of the best comedic performances of all time, and an extremely challenging role in which she had to be an up-to-date sexbomb, self-aware to some extent, engaging, attractive both in body and mind, and justify on screen the obsession all her stalkers have for her... nothing easy to pull off, and despite all the slapstick around her, the movie works specially for her.
I hope she's given something good in the near future and she comes back to the place where she belongs, in film Olympus, one of the very best actresses of her generation. And I think that her performance - which I do not have a problem with, though - in Gangs of New York marked the beginning of the end of her interest in quality projects.
Markgordonuk
89 has been covered before:
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/8/31/smackdown-1989-anjelica-brenda-dianne-lena-and-julia-roberts.html
I voted for Ziyi. On a recent re-read & rewatch of Memoirs of a Geisha I found them both to be much weaker than I’d originally experienced them. However in both I found myself more drawn to Hatsumomo - who I think is a more tragic & ultimately more sympathetic character. Gong Ki was clear MVP of that film, she picked up some supporting critics awards for the performance I think?
My choices -
- Cathy Tyson for a performance I love by an actor I love... really wish she worked more nowadays...
- Zheng Ziyi for a performance I don’t like by an actor I love... and she grabbed almost every precursor so hers was a true snub by voters...
Shirley Maclaine for "Postcards from the edge".
Donald Sutherland for 'Ordinary People"
Faye Dunaway for " Mommie Dearest"
Julianne Moore for " The Kids are allright"
Barbra Streisand for " Yentl"
There are heaps more of performances that deserved an Oscar nomination and there are heaps more of unworthy performances that DID get an Oscar nomination ....and even a win!
John Travolta for " Pulp Fiction"
Dustin Hoffman for " Rain Man"
Hillary Swank for "Million Dollar Baby"
Jane Fonda for " The Morning After"
Katherine Hepburn for " On Golden Pond".
Don't be dumping on Jane she's great in TMA just the film is sloppy.
I love Joan Allen and voted for her, but she didn't show up at any of the major pre-cursors at the time, so it feels more like she had buzz and acclaim vs. being almost there.
Russell Crowe, on the other hand, came very very close.
Rupert Everett in My Best Friend’s Weddng : one of the most hilarious perfomance of the decade! And what a great chemistry with Julia Roberts!
Joan Allen was great in The Upside of Anger. I really don’t understand why she wasn’t nominated!
Other omissions that hurt me ; Jake Gyllenhaal, Cameron Diaz, Maria Bello.
I agree that Gong Li was the best part of Memiors of a Geisha. She did win the NBR that year but there were a lot of great performances that year.
I voted strictly by what i most wanted to hear your opinion on since i'd read any of these articles. So my choices were Scarlett Johansson in Match Point (a performance that doesn't quite work for me though i tend to love her as an actress) and rupert everett in My Best Friend's Wedding (because i absolutely adore that performance and wanted him to win the Oscar he wasn't nominated for)
Funny how seeing the vote totals influences one's own vote...or at least it did for me. I looove Paul Bettany in MASTER & COMMANDER but given that he has no chance, well...I'd much rather read about Jim Carrey in ETERNAL SUNSHINE than his two closest competitor (and anyway didn't Michael C recently do an excellent post on NIGHTCRAWLER?), so...
Similarly, I remember being really impressed by Paul Giamatti in an otherwise rather unimpressive movie...but I gotta go for my girl Joan Allen since she actually has a good chance of getting the coveted Claudio nod. :)
Side note: I loathed MATCH POINT, and I loathed most of all its treatment of ScarJo's character. Not ScarJo's fault, it's just the way the character was written. Woody's misogyny at its worst.
Fabulous ! Love this series. Please definitely look into the careers of these stunning versetile actors who never got nominated - and they are very obvious choices BUT anyway it hurt looking at them:
of course Emily Blunt (so very close in Devil, Mary Poppins & Quiet Place!)
James McAvoy (Split / The Last Station)
Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge ? / Beginners / Trainspotting ...)
John Goodman (Big Lebowski)
he's more divisive but I do like
Richard Gere's (Chicago)
Voted for easy: Gyllenhaal (sin!!) & hard: Ziyi (as I love Bello, loved Newton & Allen)
Just rewatched "The Upside of Anger" after this Reader's Choice edition... And Allen was brilliant, in fact! But when I went to search the movie's awards and nods, I was shocked how all major precursors ignored her...! Can we say she was "almost there"? She deserved to be there nonetheless