C O N S I D E R - Actresses of 2017, 2nd Qtr

With the year's second quarter over, here's a listicle of noteworthy performances we'll eventually compare to what's to come. These are my personal favorites from screenings and releases from April 1st through June 30th (if the film hasn't opened in theaters yet, it's marked with an asterisk). Herewith the 17 best from the year's second quarter, divvied up into three categories. (If you'd like to group them with the women from the first quarter, that list is here). Did these actresses speak to you with their turns?

Disclaimer: Key actress-focused films I missed that I'll have to catch up with later were Beatriz at Dinner, Manifesto, A Quiet Passion and Rough Night. If you've seen them give their MVPs a shout-out.

6 LEADING ACTRESSES

 

Gal Gadot as "Diana" in Wonder Woman

Nicole Kidman as "Miss Martha" in The Beguiled...

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Susan Hayward's Final Oscar Appearance

SUSAN HAYWARD CENTENNIAL

by Nathaniel R

We're doing our Susan Hayward party all out of chronology and will end with an early role. It's our way of saying that the big movie stars never really die but live on in their films. But for the penultimate stop in this Hayward fest, let's take a lot at the 1973 Oscars. She made her last public appearance on April 2nd, 1974 when she presented Best Actress with Charlton Heston at the Oscars. They were contemporaries at the peak of their stardom in the 1950s (and both won leading Oscars in the late 1950s) but Heston's career was still going strong at this point while Hayward had only intermittently working... 

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Susan Hayward in "My Foolish Heart"

SUSAN HAYWARD CENTENNIAL WEEK

by Timothy Brayton

Yesterday, Eric did an extraordinary job of tackling Susan Hayward's performance in I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), which I think a lot of us might agree was her all-time best performance. Today, I'd like to offer up what I consider to be her most Susan Haywardiest performance: as the good girl-turned-wretched alcoholic in 1949's My Foolish Heart, the film that netted Hayward the second of her five Oscar nominations.

It's a story tailored with laser focus on letting the lead actress show off Everything with a capital "E"...

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Susan Hayward in "I'll Cry Tomorrow"

SUSAN HAYWARD CENTENNIAL WEEK

"this story was filmed on location... inside a woman's soul!"
-I'll Cry Tomorrow's tagline.

by Eric Blume

I’ll Cry Tomorrow, a biopic of singer Lillian Roth, won Susan Hayward the fourth of her five Oscar nominations, in 1955.  The film starts with a young Lillian and her stage mother, played by Jo Van Fleet. Ten minutes in, though, Hayward gets a true star entrance belting out “Sing You Sinners” in a lengthy number with only four cuts.

It’s a fun introduction, partially because you try to place yourself in 1955, when part of the excitement (one guesses) was hearing Hayward sing for the first time, and it’s quite a boisterous number. Then Hayward was known mostly as a tragedienne (Hollywood star variety), it must have been a blast for audiences to see Hayward let loose (Hollywood star style) in a big production number where she gets to snarl and dance (Hollywood star style, as the musicality doesn’t come easily to her)... 

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Emmy FYC: Eva Green and Christian Camargo, "Penny Dreadful"

Team Experience shares their dream Emmy nominations. Consider it an FYC as nomination ballots are out...

by Dancin' Dan

Showtime's now cancelled gothic horror show Penny Dreadful has never been one to receive much awards love, even when it should have been (has there been a better villain on any television show in recent memory than Helen McCrory's Evelyn Poole in the show's second season?). Part of this had to do with timing: Airing always began around June, near the time the Emmy nominations for the previous season were voted on, meaning that by the next nominating period, it was long forgotten. The other part is the nature of the show itself. Emmy has rarely favored genre shows, much less ones as bloody and occasionally over-the-top as this.

Sadly this has meant that the series's leading lady, Eva Green, has been ignored despite giving the most committed, most fearless, and best performance on television...

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