First & Last 010
Tuesday, June 27, 2023 at 8:00AM Can you guess the movie from its first and last shot?
The answer is after the jump if you scroll down...
That's Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). Or, as we like to refer to it... "a colossal waste of a best actress slot in 2007". This isn't the Emmys. There's no need for repeats! Now, we can't complain too much because The Lovely Laura Linney did manage a surprise Best Actress nomination (which we somehow predicted despite no precursor love!!!) for her incredibly funny work in Savages but Blanchett's double-dip for Queen Elizabeth surely cost Angelina Jolie a nomination for A Mighty Heart (2007). She had snagged Globe, SAG, and Critics Choice nominations that season. As a reminder the nominees that season were
- Blanchett - Elizabeth: The Golden Age
- Christie - Away From Her
- Cotillard - La Vie En Rose
- Linney - Savages
- Page - Juno
Some people wanted Amy Adams in the mix that season for Enchanted (2007) and while that would have been an inspired nomination, there's no way that Jolie wasn't in the dread sixth spot that season given that Oscar voters nearly always value dramatic biographical pictures more than silly comedies with inspired leading performances, however delightful they may be. Adams probably wasn't even in 7th place since Keira Knightley was also in the running for Atonement (which received a Best Picture nomination).
Remember Cate Blanchett's displeasure at her own Oscar clip that year?
first and last
Reader Comments (16)
I remember Cate’s excitement when they announced Marion’s name.
Such a ride with Cate Blanchett. When I started following the Oscars around 2003, she was dead B-list. She was considered a casualty of the 1998 Best Actress race—to have missed her shot at winning an Oscar five years ago, resigned to playing elves and murdered journalists in minor films. She definitely wasn’t thought to possess the beauty or star quality to compete with Kidman, Zellweger and the A-listers of the era. She was almost a charity case on the margin of mainstream actressexuality.
Then she was everywhere, getting Oscar attention for work that felt important at the time but in hindsight feels like a “neat trick” (her Hepburn, her Bob Dylan) or ludicrous (Elizabeth: The Golden Age, arguably Notes on a Scandal).
Then 2013 came and she instantly became the best and most important living actress, a title she's held for 10 years.
DK: That is frighteningly accurate!
Not only do I remember Cate’s displeasure at her clip but I also remember her total surprised enthusiasm when Marion’s name was called. And the super weird thing if you watch the clip is how UNenthusiastic the entire audience is. Not only doesn’t Marion get any sort of standing ovation but it’s like they didn’t care at all. She was only the second foreign language performance to win that category right? And it was an upset. So weird that nobody but Cate cared about her winning.
Jolie absolutely should have been nominated over Blanchett. Then maybe they could have passed her over the next year for her subpar work in Changeling and nominated Sally Hawkins for Happy Go Lucky.
I also definitely would have booted Page for either the actress from Secret Sunshine or one of the leads from 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.
Angelina Jolie was majorly snubbed - that easily would've been her best nominated work.
Which reminds me that Julie Christie had been a surprise nominee for Afterglow, which knocked out Pam Grier for Jackie Brown :/
At least in Laura Linney's case, the surprise nomination feels worth it.
I wonder if Laura Linney might make a longlist prediction this year?
@Mike —I think people blamed Gwyneth Paltrow for Blanchett’s temporary failure to launch. That’s why “Cate was robbed” meme stuck, it felt like she needed that Oscar to properly take off in Hollywood, and didn’t for several years. Ironic in 2023!
Elizabeth was never a good enough performance (nor Shakespeare in Love a “bad” enough performance, remotely) to justify the level of hostility 1998 generates.
A colossal waste of a slot doesn't cover how much I hate this nomination
1 - she was nominated for a superior turn in I'm Not There in supporting so why do double up
2 - she's not as good in this as she was first time round.
3 - the films not very good and the cast is below par bar Morton
4 - better competition Knightley,Jolie,Adams plus others doing great work in more niche films Nicole Kidman,Tang Wei,Ashley Judd.
5 - I always think Knightley is the 6th spotter better nominated film and Bafta and Globe nods.
Blanchett was always going to be in the lineup that year. She showed up at all the precursor events as well. If anything Linney took the spot from Jolie as she surged last minute.
I do look back on 2007 with fondness as this was the best I ever did for first predictions. I predicted Blanchett, Linney, Christie, and Cotillard for my early bird predictions (Knightley was the last one) I also predicted Ronan before she became an Oscar favorite and I'm still proud of that.
This, by the way, was the first Oscars that I started following this site.
@DK — The 1998 hostility definitely feels way overblown in retrospect. Not just with Gwyneth beating Cate, but also Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture. I’m not sure a Best Picture win has ever hurt a film’s reputation as much as that did, honestly. Because while I think most people would say there have been worse Best Picture winners before and since, the level of outrage over this was really something, and I don’t think the general perception of Shakespeare in Love has ever recovered from it.
For the record, I actually prefer Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan (which I frankly don’t like at all, really), although I think 1998 was one of those years that I look back on and think, “They had all of THOSE movies to choose from, and they nominated THESE?” It genuinely might be my least favorite Best Picture lineup from that decade. Nonetheless, it’s hard for me to not chalk it up mostly to people being beside themselves that a super-serious, very violent, very American, decidedly masculine war movie made as a memorial to fallen soldiers lost the award to a lighthearted, somewhat feminine British rom-com about Shakespearean theatre. That really seemed to send a lot of people into a jingoistic rage that they still haven’t let go of.
All this post does is make me angry at the Academy ALL OVER again for them snubbing both Knightley and McAvoy from the brilliant ATONEMENT. That movie should've racked up the nominations AND Oscar wins. SIGH.
Or how about Ashley Judd in Bug? She could’ve been the nominee over Blanchett. How cool would that have been?
Adams, Jolie, Knightley, and Judd all would have been good nominees, and I already like most of the nominees! Never saw the need to watch Blanchett's sequel. Still feel that way.
Thank God it was Blanchett instead of Angelina’s brownface in A Mighty Heart!
"a colossal waste of a best actress slot in 2007"
Really?
The movie isn't great, but Blanchett deserved her nomination, her double nomination and her pitbull nomination.
Frankly, sometimes the best thing a man can do is to keep his mouth wide shut.