1997: Gwyneth Paltrow in "Hard Eight"

We're revisiting the 1997 film year in the lead up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternates to Oscar's ballot.

I’m betting that we (the public, spiritual types, film people, you specifically) have some thoughts about Ms. Goop. Some of these thoughts might be compartmentalized to certain aspects of her career, while others bleed over into a general patina of how one perceives her. We (the writer of this article) won’t and frankly don’t have the time to get into the grifter empire, the nepotism, her instrumentality amongst the many journalists and witnesses who helped to bring down Harvey Weinstein, Bosco’s awful 'Snatch Game', the lazy potshots from Knives Out, or her advice to combat the symptoms of Long COVID using a keto diet as she is currently doing, but know that these thoughts are in the back of our mind at all times when the subject of Gwyneth Paltrow is summoned into a conversation. 

There’s plenty of opinions about her that one could have, but for the purposes of this write-up - a tribute of her resourceful, top-flight performance in Hard Eight that’s as worthy of recognition as anyone else in Boogie Nights the same year - let’s keep it simple and state, man, wasn’t she a fantastic actress when she wanted to be?

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Mrs. (H)Arris Goes to Paris: 1992 Edition

by Cláudio Alves

Originally published in 1958, Paul Gallico's Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, also known as Flowers for Mrs. Harris, is the first book in a series about the adventures of an English cleaning woman in her sixties. This particular novella concerns the widowed charwoman who, after falling in love with her employer's French fashions, becomes fixated on the idea of buying a Dior dress for herself. As the title suggests, she goes to Paris to achieve that goal, embarking on what can only be described as a midcentury fairytale. Way before Lesley Manville decided to step into Mrs. Harris' shoes for the 2022 production, the story was already adapted for the screen. Beyond filmed media, there's even a musical that premiered in Sheffield's Crucible Theater in 2016.

As we wait for the new movie to arrive in theaters, let's look back at one of those previous incarnations. Specifically, the 1992 TV movie Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, starring Angela Lansbury in the titular role…

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Streaming Tops: Top Gun, The Sea Beast, RRR, House of Gucci, etc...

by Nathaniel R

The original Top Gun (1986) has been popular on streaming all summer

We heard your response that adding streaming charts to the weekend box office was too much / too confusing so we'll do them separately. It's interesting to know what people are watching even if the data is highly questionable with no checks and balances to accuracy; we mostly have to make due with what the streamers themselves release (and who knows what agendas they have when there's no way to verify their figures) or third party services that also have unknown metrics. But we digress.

Charts are for July 12th or thereabouts (hint: there's also no set system of when numbers are reported from service to service as there is with the world of theatrical releases...)

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Almost There: Mia Farrow in "Broadway Danny Rose"

by Cláudio Alves

When presenting his list of new streaming titles for July, Nathaniel paid special attention to the 1984 Woody Allen comedy Broadway Danny Rose. It was the first Allen film he ever saw, and the first time Mia Farrow got serious Oscar buzz for her collaborations with the director. Previously, her closest brush with the Academy Awards had come with Rosemary's Baby, way back in 1968. But, of course, as we know, that buzz never materialized into an actual nomination, and Farrow remains Oscarless to this day, despite a filmography full of incredible performances. Indeed, this series could have an extensive miniseries dedicated exclusively to the actress, so vast is her number of "Almost There" cases.

That miniseries might happen one day, but, for now, let's focus only on Broadway Danny Rose and Mia Farrow's brilliant work in it…

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Complete Emmy Nominations

by Nathaniel R and Christopher James

JB Smoove and Melissa Fumero (who will soon be costarring in a Netflix show called Blockbuster) announced the Emmy nominations this morning. They started with a brief "bit" where they held JB's Emmy like it was a crying fragile infant before getting down to swift business with the headline categories (they did not announce supporting categories live just leads and series. True to the Television Academy's form, it was mostly a case of their old favourites landing in big categories even if the season or show in question wasn't as heralded as usual (hi Killing Eve in the acting categories or Sarah Paulson breaking through the super-stacked Best Actress Limited Series category for a performance nobody had talked about for months).

One of the most interesting things about the nominations was that recency bias paid off in the series categories but did NOT pay off in Limited Series where almost all of the nominees came from the fall/winter... as if the voters just couldn't sift through the spring/summer glut of programming. We'll review several categories at length over the next two months (the Emmys are on September 12th) but after the jump the  nomination list with a few comments and how well we did on our predictions...

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