The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
The hit Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale resumed production last week, becoming one of the earliest major productions to return to filming in Canada after filming was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During an interview for TV Line, Emmy winner Bradley Whitford said that the production underwent two weeks of “hardcore quarantine” before they could even pick up where they left off last march.
Emmy history, Season 3 recap, and personal resonances follow after the jump...
We all know the story of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Four 16-year-old Maryland girls who’ve been friends since birth - Lena Kaligaris (Alexis Bledel), Bridget Vreeland (Blake Lively), Carmen Lowell (America Ferrera), and Tabitha “Tibby” Rollins (Amber Tamblyn) - are about to spend their first ever summer apart. The day before they set out on their separate journeys, they find a pair of jeans that somehow (magically?) fits each of them perfectly. They vow to share the pants the whole summer, each wearing them for a week before mailing them off to the next sister. What surprised me is that the movie did not structure itself around said paints but spent time with all four girls regardless of who had them. To paraphrase one of Carmen’s last lines, the pants aren’t so much a character in Sisterhood but a witness to some of its events. Maybe you think it’s a little iffy to categorize them as supporting, maybe you think the structure giving each one their own plot and weaving them all together at the end allows for it. What’s not up for debate, at least for me, is that America Ferrera’s performance as Carmen is the undeniable highlight of the whole film.
There are a few reasons outside of Ferrera’s performance why I think Carmen’s section of Sisterhoodis the strongest...
Our annual cinematic jamboree, the Film Bitch Awards, continue with the categories of best actors and actresses in limited roles. This category is reserved for the kind of performances given in one or two scenes where'd you'd be happy to wander outside the camera's purview just to spend more time with them. Or, more accurately, since the characters aren't always pleasant, performances so strong that you wish you could follow them into another scene or five to watch the actor dig in yet deeper.
We're talking about performances like Brian Tyree Henry's in If Beale Street Could Talk, who crystallizes the film's conceits about the systematic oppression of black men as his innocent ex-con monologues through the film's most moving sequence. His eyes drop us into the abyss of his prison memories where his words won't take us. We're talking about performances like Bradley Whitford's glib lawyer, oozing shamelessness with his soul long-since sold, who comes at a bedraggled cop threatening him with such confidence that at first you think he'll win and the movie will be a very short one. That is until you watch the star (Nicole Kidman) up her own already impressive game to spar with an actor that's sparking her inner ensemblist.
We're talking about performances like Jeanne Balibar's in Cold War or Jane Curtin's in Can You Ever Forgive Me? that are played with such precise panache that you can imagine a different type of movie just off to the side of the one you're watching, where they're the leads instead and this moment is but a subplot in their narratives. Check out the nomination page for more on these fine performances and others from Leticia Brédice, Rebecca Field, Elizabeth McGovern, Simon Russell Beale, Philip Ettinger, and Corey Hawkins and a list of other names we also loved in tiny roles this past cinematic year.
Has anyone else noticed the enormous overlap of faces in Oscar buzzing movies this season? It’s like they ran out of character actors in Hollywood. For the record, I love everyone listed here, but surely there are other talented thespians who need work! Here are the actors I spotted in multiple awards movies, in alphabetical order. If I left any off the list, jump in to add them (for the sake of having a touchpoint, I was including any movie that appears anywhere on Nathaniel’s Prediction Index):
Chris here. I was just mentioning the other day that we had yet to see any real goods on Steven Spielberg's The Post, and voila: we just got a new trailer and poster. And the promise of the film being a potential major Oscar player has just gotten a whole lot more intense.
If we thought this one aims to capture the zeitgeist, the first look makes good on that and then some. Gender equality, journalistic integrity, a lying government, etc. The Post seems to hammer all of these in a graceful way to make for what looks to be a richly entertaining drama. There has been steady buzz for this first look online (and not just from movie obsessed folk like us at The Film Experience) since dropping late last night, so we may also have a big box office hit on our hands.
So what Oscar questions might have been answered here? For starters, Streep is definitely a lead performance, landing both top billing and the majority of the trailer's attentions - so the Best Actress race just got definitively more crowded. Giggle at the various hairpieces, but it's worth pencilling this next to other Makeup and Hairstyling hopefuls.
Of course with any reveal, there is also inevitably more questions. In The Post's case, which of these featured supporting male actors could be a contender? Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, or Bob Odenkirk perhaps? Might Sarah Paulson's earnestness get her an awaited first nomination or is she more of a crucial bit player? Give us your first impressions and burning questions in the comments!
Friday, September 18, 2020 at 10:00AM 
