How I Feel / How I Wish I Felt

As acted out by the infrequently employed Matthew Broderick...

How I Feel / How I Wish I FeltApologies that it's so slow going here for the past two days. I haven't been stung by a bee but I had an allergy attack that was so bad yesterday that I spent the day rubbing my eyes and trying to make out words on the screen through a cloud of eyedrops, fuzziness, tears and sneezing. I woke up with one of my eyes sealed shut this morning! I'd much rather be singing in the shower with not a care in the world.

Off to the pharmacy for heavy duty allergy meds -- anyone else suffering? I haven't had a problem like this since I was nine or ten. What the hell is in the air? -- after which posting will resume.

p.s. in the meantime, please note that I listened to your requests and have reinstalled the "comment du jour" to the new site's sidebar. I'll try to update daily. I've also updated the movie calendar (easiest way to view is clicking the "agenda" tab)

Tuesday Top Ten: Actress Psychic ~ The Winners

As faithful readers know, The Film Experience has been doing a little contest called ACTRESS PSYCHIC for the past four years. It goes like this: Readers have to pick their 5 predicted BEST ACTRESSES in the first week of April and those actresses earn points throughout the year through special events, nominations, wins, certain magazine covers, etcetera. In other words, guessing LONG before there is much buzz at all outside of Sundance entries. In 2010 Nathaniel (c'est moi) majorly biffed this contest due to time constraints and a series of unfortunate events. Points were never tallied and the drama of the contest was lost.

 
And boy would there have been drama. I definitely picked the wrong year to drop this (crystal) ball. The shame, the shame.

BEST ACTRESS was unusually competitive this year and a lot of the women that readers picked would have racked up some points here and there like Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right) and Noomi Rapace (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). The most common guess that didn't pan out was Anne Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs... but NO ONE was psychic enough to say "I bet she won't get traction but will become the next Oscar host!" Whod'a thunk it? Hilary Swank in Betty Anne Waters (that's what Conviction was called a year ago) was also a very popular guess. At least the Swankster got a SAG nomination. Helen Mirren in The Tempest and Carey Mulligan in Never Let Me Go were popular guesses that never caught fire in reality later on. The most frequently cited names for films that didn't show up at all (this happens every year) were Hiam Abbas in Miral and Robin Wright in The Conspirator.

I didn't want to let awards season end without sharing a hearty congratulations to a dozen contestants in particular. 12 READERS GUESSED FOUR OF THE EVENTUAL FIVE ACTRESSES THAT WERE NOMINATED. Well done! You're in the tippity top percentile of Oscar Psychics!  The order of the following over-achievers is estimated since we biffed the contest and point tallying but Portman would have obviously been the highest point earner (wins and celebrity ubiquity) and Williams worth the least points (not an Oscar newbie, low profile and not showing up in each battle.) From the people who were not nominated Hathaway, Moore, Swank, Rapace and the like would have probably been worth the most due to Globes, SAG or BAFTA recognition.

THE TOP TEN PSYCHICS

Best Actress 2010: Portman, Williams, Lawrence, Kidman, Bening

10 (3 WAY TIE)  Ryan RM, Ronald R and Chicano1616 guessed 4 of the 5 Actresses correctly but they all chose the wrong film for Annette Bening (Mother and Child which was not an uncommon guess either) and that would have costs them many of the Bening-centric points.

09 DJ guessed everyone but Portman. Whoops: Robin Wright

08 Lucas G guessed everyone but Portman. Whoops: Hathaway

07 Wayne guessed everyone but Portman. Whoops: Hathaway but nailed the tiebreaker by predicting The Kids Are All Right to get 4 nominations.

06 SaveFerris guessed everyone but Williams. Whoops: Jennifer Connelly

05 sasnyder guessed everyone but Lawrence. Whoops: Hathaway

AND NOW OUR MEDALISTS...
Imagine Canada and US national anthems now.

04 (BRONZE)  SCOTT L guessed everyone but Williams (Whoops on Hathaway) but I am estimating that Williams would have been the lowest point earner of the 5 eventual nominees and Hathaway would have been worth a bit.

02 (SILVER MEDAL TIE) RICH AUNT PENNYBAGS missed only Kidman. (Whoops on Swank).
DEREK in NY missed only Williams. (Whoops on Hathaway) They tied on the tiebreaker going over and under the correct answer.

01 (GOLD MEDAL)  MIKE28 is our winner. He missed only Michelle Williams. (Whoops picked Anne Hathaway though she was still worth some points. Saturday Night Live hosting and more.) And his tiebreaker answer for number of nominations for The Kids Are All Right: 4. Spot on.

This is Too Rich...

And by too rich, I mean frugal.

Thanks to Guy Lodge for alerting us via Twitter. It seems that porn producers UKNakedMen may have repurposed The King's Speech's memorable sets for some man-on-man action. And not the kind involving speech therapy though, come to think of it, Colin Firth was seen gagging on balls in the film. (Sorry!)

Mildly NSFW sample / link after the jump 

Click to read more ...

Polling You

Oscar Ballots are due extremely soon (today) at their final destination but YOU can still vote. The Oscar pages are fully updated and ready for the big night, save for your votes in the categories. We like to include a readers choice to go along with Nathaniel's votes (the film bitch awards) and the Oscars themselves. Some years they line up, some they don't. Vote! PIC, DIR, ACTOR, ACTRESS, SUPP ACTOR, SUPP ACTRESS. Polling ends Saturday. Enlists your friends and read all the silliness. Did you know that Mark Ruffalo has both the most fertile character and is the most fertile Supporting Actor with 3 kids? Did you know that Helena Bonham Carter (Supporting Actress) and Tim Burton are both Oscarless? Can you name two pairs of living director/actress lovematches that both have Oscars before reading them on the page? Did you know that Best Actress Michelle Williams helped launch a yoga for single moms program? For some reason, I can't picture Michelle doing yoga, there's something about her physical screen presence that's too compressed for stretching. And my imagination is usually so fierce with the actresses.

(Oscar madness will end soon and we'll pick back up some long awaited blog threads. Stay tuned.)

"Baby there's no other superstar you know that I'll be... ♫ "

Michelle Pfeiffer sightings are so rare these days that I have to share them every time (the last big day out was the White House Correspondents dinner in May of last year). Here she is at the Lady Gaga concert at Madison Square Garden yesterday. (I'm guessing she was on her way out because she's totally smiling and Gaga concerts are fun.) Which means she was right here in NYC last night. Wheeee.

They filmed that particular concert for HBO. She and David E Kelley were taking their kids Claudia Rose and John Henry who are now 17 and 16 respectively. This is all an effort to make me feel old since I still remember the first photo I ever saw of Claudia Rose, her daughter, (who turns 18 very shortly), which happens to be my favorite paparazzi photo of Michelle  since she looked ridiculously happy. I'm sure she didn't like the intrusion of the cameras though since Pfeiffer is not a Fame Monster. She once told Rolling Stone.

I act for free, but I demand a huge salary as compensation for all the annoyance of being a public personality. In that sense, I earn every dime I make.

What does Pfeiffer make of Lady Gaga and her ilk, the celebrities who LIVE for their own celebrity? Different times. Different breeds of stars. When Lady Gaga was born (1986), Michelle was probably filming The Witches of Eastwick! Bye Jack. Now Gaga is the horned one.

What do you suppose La Pfeiff's favorite Gaga song is?