Amy & Isabelle... and that perplexing Best Actress race.

Isabelle Huppert shared this lovely glamorous blur of two of our Best Actress Contenders at a Globe party on her Instagram account. Share worthy it is though our favorite part is Huppert's matter of fact no-frills captions which are usually "avec [insert celebrity's name]" brief. 

These two ginger beauties remind us that we've been playing with that Best Actress Chart all day and no combo of five women still feels quite right. Something's got to give. But we don't want to give any of them up! Now more than ever can't we cancel one of the male acting categories and just give them women another 5 slots?

Who do you think is stronger than the buzz suggests? I keep thinking Ruth Negga which is why I still am betting on her (for this update at least. We'll obviously have to revisit each chart for final predictions). And which leading lady is more vulnerable and could be a surprise miss? Sound off!

Who got the biggest Oscar boost from the Globes?

I'll be updating the Oscar charts once the Globe results have settled and the BAFTA nominations are thoroughly parsed. To do so we must ask the time old precursor awards question: who benefitted most from winning or losing at this speed bump on Oscar's highway (sorry for the clumsy metaphor -- I have driving on the brain due to La La Land's big deal opening number). Perhaps the obvious answer is Isabelle Huppert who has had a tremendous week winning the NSFC and the Globe and her movie winning the Globe, too, and finally passing the not insignificant $1 million mark at the box office (making it the one of the most successful foreign language film in the States this year.)

Moonlight's Best Picture win and La La Land's sweep (now the biggest Golden Globe winner of all time with 7 prizes) is perhaps the most "what does it mean?" prize. It's good news for both films obviously, at least for marketing purposes, but since Moonlight's was the last prize of the night and it had won no other awards, will it be anyone's "takeaway" from one of television's biggest awards nights? And do La La Land's seven prizes feel like overkill?

I grilled Team Experience who they thought benefitted from the Globe trophies...

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"It's pink and there are stars on it."

- Emma Stone when asked about her dress. (Early contender for quote of the evening. Are you watching the Golden Globes tonight?)

more Globes

Winner List | Jimmy Fallon La La Land Opening | Golden tweeting
 Emma vs. Isabelle | Ryan & Andrew Kiss-Kiss |  Best Dressed Men 

NSFC Gives Isabelle Huppert the Critical Triple

The National Society of Film Critics have spoken. The last important critics prizes of each season is sometimes idiocyncratic but not this year. They've gone with the the leaders in every single category (in terms of past critics prizes from all over the nation) except Best Cinematography. That award has varied from groups to groups and here it goes to Moonlight.

Most importantly they've given Isabelle Huppert the rare triple crown of film critic prizes. She'd previously won both New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. To show you how infrequently that happens a list of the previous winners of all three after the jump...

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Isabelle Huppert, French Legends, and Oscar Stats

by Nathaniel R

Are you biting your nails yet? No prediction for this year's Best Actress shortlist can come without some degree of "I could be getting this very wrong!" nerves. We've been Oscar watching for a long time and it's genuinely never looked this open this late in the game (with the possible exception of 2003 but for nearly the opposite reason). If Best Actress is not a five-way lock up by now (and it often is) it's usually at least settled but for a minor battle between two women for the "just happy to be nominated" fifth spot. This year is different. Seven women remain strong and precursor supported and virtually any combination of five names seems possible as long as you include both Emma Stone (with the reliable boost of leading a Best Picture frontrunner) and Natalie Portman (with the reliable boost of Oscar's deep-deep love for mimicry).

We always believed that Isabelle Huppert was a genuine threat for a Best Actress nomination this season for her phenomenal star turn in Elle. It wasn't so much that Elle, in which she plays a video game enterpeneur who becomes obsessed with her rapist, was a a fresh look at an old star (against type) or right in Oscar's wheel house (a dark comedy about rape. LOL, no). The appeal instead is that in Elle is a suffusion of everything that's special about Huppert: her superior intellect, fascinating opacity, tortured psychology, and her daring sexuality. Oscar would be wise to pounce in a year where the media has been this celebratory about her unique place in the cinematic landscape. 'It's time!' feelings don't generally come around all that often for true iconoclasts or women of a certain age. She's both so they must act now.

Binoche, Cotillard, Adjani, Deneuve

Here's another far more superficial but still excellent reason why Isabelle Huppert needs to be nominated...

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