50th Anniversary: Liza Minnelli in "The Sterile Cuckoo"

by Camila Henriques

Pookie Adams is one of a kind. When we first meet her, she’s on her way to college and is the type of quick witted character that could very well be the Adam’s rib to the Amy Sherman-Palladino girls we have loved for the past two decades. With her round glasses and pixie haircut, Liza Minnelli’s Pookie is easy to love in Alan J. Pakula’s The Sterile Cuckoo. As the film turns 50 today (!), it’s magical to witness how  Judy and Vincente's offspring always had a sparkle of her own, capable of turning a manic pixie dream girl archetype into a layered character that rightfully earned her that first Oscar nod.

Liza was by no means a newcomer when The Sterile Cuckoo came out. A child of Hollywood, she famously grew up on hotels and movie sets and, at the age of 17, made her debut in an off-Broadway play and did a number of performances alongside mama Garland...

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"Bombshell" screens shaking up Best Actress

by Eric Blume

Potentially great news just arrived for the undernourished Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress races:  Jay Roach’s Bombshell had its first screening in LA on Sunday night, and the word out of the gate seems overwhelmingly positive.

Reviews for the film are embargoed for another eight weeks or so, but various sources online are saying Charlize Theron’s “transformational” performance as Fox News personality Megyn Kelly is explosive and catapults her into the top of the Best Actress race...

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Oscar History: Dame Maggie Smith

by Cláudio Alves

Younger audiences may know Dame Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall and the sharp-tongued Countess of Grantham, but, before Downton Abbey and Harry Potter, she was already a British national treasure, having won two Oscars by 1979, with four additional nominations. This awards season, with the Dowager Countess promoted to the big screen, she might return to the Academy’s good graces.

Her Downton Abbey role has already proven an awards magnet with three Emmys and a Golden Globe. Maybe its popularity will translate to movie awards? 

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She Had Oscar Buzz!

Yes, the title is an homage to our friends podcast "This Had Oscar Buzz". Here's a piece from new contributor Elie Chivi that we think you'll love on women who strangely haven't been nominated yet... 

by Elie Chivi

After Kirsten Dunst’s comments last month about the relative lack of awards attention she’s received throughout her career, I couldn’t help but think of the many other never-nominated yet deserving actresses of the past couple of decades. Some actresses can get Oscar nominations for doing the bare minimum (think Frances McDormand in North Country or Catherine Keener in Capote) due to a mix of bandwagoning on to a bigger lead performance or simply because of who they are. 

On the other hand, some of our finest actresses consistently do interesting, complex, or hilarious work yet always come up short on Oscar nomination morning. From the crop of post-90’s era performers, the list below highlights five of the most egregious members of the never-nominated list...

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Best Actress / Supporting Actress - Chart Updates!

We fully expect Marriage Story to be nominated in all four acting categoriesBEST ACTRESS and BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS charts are now up. Strangely, this year doesn't feel as competitive as usual when it comes to these two categories. That said, given the lack of a wide field of wildly loved work, we're expecting some unexpected volatility to occur. If one of the early precursors throws a major curveball expect everyone else to follow suit if the field isn't inspiring them. 

We are starting to wonder if Lupita Nyong'o is closer to a nomination for Best Actress than we thought she'd be at this point. (She's great in Us but we assumed the genre trappings would hinder her... but is enthusiasm there for other performances the way it was earlier in the year for hers? That's a campaign strength right there if Universal goes for it.)