Red Carpet: Supporting Actresses & Stray Beauties

Red Carpet Lineup Time as we struggle to wrap up Oscar night! It's time to say goodbye to the Supporting Actress Class of 2014 and it occurs to me that though I know you favored Arquette to a very wide margin in the race, I have no idea who y'all think was best dressed of this annual rotating quintet? So please do vote!  

poll by twiigs.com

NATHANIEL: In the meantime please welcome back our LA beauties Margaret and Anne Marie to the fashion panel. In the spirit of the times, when red carpet press have been encouraged to #AskHerMore, let's do that. We've never cared "who" people are wearing anyway... just that they're giving us glamour for our favorite International Holiday, Oscar Night. What questions immediately come to mind when you see this lineup?

MARGARET: What I'm desperate to know is, who are these ladies going to work with next? With perhaps the exception of California-law-mandated nominee Meryl Streep, they all have fresh momentum that should give them their pick of projects..

ANNE MARIE: Maybe they can all work in a movie together. They certainly make a great lineup standing next to each other.

NATHANIEL: Actresses are not allowed to work together! They must choose which man they'd like to mother, inspire or longsuffer for.

MARGARET: In my very vivid head-world where I am a massively wealthy movie producer, I would definitely finance the heck out of some Empire-style movie about which ambitious and capable protege of Meryl's should take up the torch of some high-powered business.

NATHANIEL:  I think it wisest we keep Laura Dern away from big corporations.

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Links. And Not *Just* Oscar Post-Mortems

The Playlist Jessica Chastain joins the increasingly star-studded cast of The Huntsman - pretty soon no one will remember this started as a Snow White franchise (which is probably why they keep adding big stars).
Vanity Fair Katey wonders if Netflix can stay in the original programming business when its obsessed with nostalgia 
Empire Calista Flockhart and Laura Benanti join TV's Supergirl for the fall as boss and mom respectively (sigh). Benanti is so mega-talented and freaking hilarious. Doesn't anyone want to build a series around her?
US Weekly AHS's "Meep" actor Ben Woolf has died after being hit by a car 
My New Plaid Pants you're probably giving Bryan Singer some side eye for casting yet another super twink beauty in X-Men: Apocalypse. Meet Ben Hardy.
i09 looks at the troubled comics history of Aquaman and the challenges Warner Bros faces in resurrecting him
i09 Something hilarious you've never thought of. The designers on Guardians of the Galaxy spent a lot of time worrying about Groot's crotch. 

Oscar Oscar
Slate on Graham Moore's problematic but well intentioned acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay
IndieWire why the Spirit Awards need to stop mimicking the Oscars 
LA Times was Boyhood, an unusually quiet unfolding drama, undone by the usual outsize Oscar campaigning? 
The Carpetbagger bids the season "adieu" 
Awards Daily I'm with Sasha on this one. Patricia Arquette has been treated horribly after her speech with people willfully misunderstanding. Our outrage culture is doing no one, least of all the progressives (who are so easily outraged and willing to turn on their own) any good. A real pity since Patty has been a wonderful activist over the years. The people leading the hate brigade would do well to step back for a little perspective: guarantee you she was fighting for trans awareness and other social causes before they were.  
In Contention sings the praises of Fox Searchlight and New Regency. They've got two back to back Best Picture winners now. And that aint easy to do.  
The Dissolve just two days after the Oscars, the American Sniper trial ended with a guilty verdict for the man who killed Chris Kyle  
Vulture Michael Keaton stashing his acceptance speech when his name isn't called *sniffle*  
Variety Iñárritu on his own Oscar wins 

And this just in...
The stunt-casting veers away from Oscar winning/nominated beauties of a certain age to...

Make your reservation now. #GagaAHSHotel https://t.co/o9ixi5TaFy

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) February 25, 2015

Apparently they are promising a major renovation to the American Horror Story brand this October. I hope said renovation is giving up that infinitely tired and kinda misogynistic in its relentlessness storyline about the faded vain beauty who wishes she was still in her prime. Is this Gaga peak, Is that enough for you to make reservations after this season's expected downward spiral?  

Oscar Stages Through the Years

Ask and you shall receive. Manuel here to take up Joel V's suggestion in the comments (for this post on the gorgeous graphics we saw on Sunday) and give us a look at past Oscar stages. I will hand it to Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, while NPH was only so-so (though thankfully willing to embrace the male gayze) and that ceremony ran way too long, they sure know how to make the telecast a stylish affair.

NPH amidst a stage that's giving us steampunk Oscar glam realness

This is Derek McLane's third time desigining the Oscar stage (he won an Emmy for last year's) and it's clear why Meron & Zadan love him, though please let us not speak of his designs for Peter Pan Live!

But, how well does this year's stage design hold up? Take a look at the last ten years of Oscar stages, which have in the last decade alone garnered 5 Emmys for Outstanding Art Direction for Variety, Nonfiction, Reality or Reality-Competition Program, nabbing a nomination every single year. Talk about a hot streak!

86th through 77th Academy Awards after the jump... 

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From the Vaults: Nathaniel's Audience with Julianne

It's your daily reminder that Julianne Moore is now an Oscar winner! I spoke to Julianne very briefly this season at a party for Still Alice. We laughed about her line reading of "Anne Hathaway. How does that work?" in Maps to the Stars (OPENING THIS WEEKEND!) which she told me she was horrified she had to say. Sorry Anne! Which only confirmed how nice she always is. Five years ago, though, I met Julianne for a sit down interview on The Kids Are All Right (2010). Here's how it went if you've started reading the blog only in the past few years. 

Originally Published on July 8th, 2010

The occasion was the release of The Kids Are All Right, Julianne's 48th movie and one of her very best. Julianne plays "Jules" the flighty wife of "Nic" played by Annette Bening. They've raised two children together. Nic had Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and soon thereafter Jules had Laser (Josh Hutcherson). It's one of Julianne's best comic performances in a career that's mostly been noted for her dramatic magic with internally shell shocked women. But it wasn't always accolades. Julianne's big screen career started twenty years ago this summer when the horror flick Tales of the Darkside was released. Inauspicious beginnings but no matter.

My history with Julianne doesn't stretch back quite that far. I first took true notice of Julianne in Benny & Joon (1993) when she was playing a former (bad) actress turned waitress. In one of the movies most endearing scenes, Johnny Depp mimics her horror performance that he's memorized as they watch it together. She nearly dies of embarrassment. Five years later, I did more than notice her. I fell madly in love in her next bad actress incarnation as porn star Amber Waves. Though two 'bad actress' roles began the obsession the woman herself is the polar opposite: she's one of the greats.

The first incarnation of The Film Experience was actually a print zine called "FiLM BiTCH" in the 1990s and Julianne Moore was the first iconic (literally) cover girl. I painted her as a religious icon. I met her for the first time in 2002 on the Oscar campaign trail for Far From Heaven but it was a simple 'hello, good luck' type of public event and my girl friend snapped this dorky photo which you can see after the jump with the full interview...

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Ask Nathaniel

Got a question you'd like answered? Here's an open thread to ask it. Perhaps your questions will inspire podcast discussions or future posts.If you don't have a question, how about healing words? (Note: Do not get sick! This is a nasty one, whatever I've got and it's taking forever to get over. Brutal winter we got here in the Northeast.)