The Winning Moment & The Loveable Losers

Oscar night is still rich with the thrill of victory but not, I'd argue, with the agony of defeat. At least not anymore. The Oscar race has never been as sports-analogous as some would like but the victory part in the modern awards season maybe. That requires true endurance... months of campaigning and appearance and interviews and people whisking you here and there. The agony of defeat is surely now lessened by way of expectations. There didn't use to be all these signposts along the way that you're never going to win which might account for how polite and calm the losers are in their little live-television grids. Nevertheless we still love to slow-mo the shit out of those moments.

We're doing three and a half categories (Supporting Actress, Director, Actress, and ?)  starting now...

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The Beautiful People

The Class of 2013 via The 86th Academy Awards,  March 2nd, 2014!

Damn, that's a good looking bunch. It occurs to me that there was more than just a little bit more of a consensus this year behind "shoulds" when it came to acting winners, hence the repeats from ceremony to ceremony. That was true even here at The Film Experience. Though McConaughey didn't win his reader's poll here (he came in 3rd in a tight race for 2nd with Chiwetel, both behind Leo), the rest were your preferred winners as you can see on their percentage totals on the individual charts. And Cate and Lupita were also my gold medalists in the The Film Experience's long running Film Bitch Awards, too.

Group Tidbits & Trivia
• Cate and Matthew are the exact same age (44) and I wonder when or if that's ever happened before with the lead winners? It probably doesn't happen often given Oscar's double gender standards when it comes to what age its appropriate to honor male and female actors; generally speaking, women win most often when they're in their late 20s to mid 30s wherease men have much better luck in their 40s.
• The lead winners are both married and both have three children. The supporting winners are both single and keep publicly joking about the rumors that they're dating

Jennifer and Lupita reenact the last month of the internet backstage!

• another cute Lead/Supporting divide. The leads brought their spouses to the Oscars and both Lupita and Jared brought a sibling!
• Interesting gender divide in terms of origins. The women are international (Australia and Kenyan/Mexican) while the men are both from the Southern US (Texas and Louisiana)
• All four went to college --  so since Ellen went there with a joke: stay in school, kids

Jared Leto photobombing Anne Hathaway

• Cate is the old pro (6 noms / 2 wins) but the other three are all 'first time's the charm' winners
• I interviewed 75% of this group, alas not a perfect fab four: ICYMI my chats with Matthew, Jared, & Lupita
• Four different zodiac signs but we have two waters (Matthew & Lupita) and two earths (Cate & Jared) and yes, I have insomnia, or else why else would I be looking this up?!

All the BAFTA Acceptance Speeches

I would like to thank the academy... the audiences... the clipreels... the cast and crew... the parents of the cast and crew... the podium... the microphones... the cameras... the gown-makers... and anyone or anything else that made awards shows and acceptance speeches possible. My deepest gratitude...

Sincerely, Awards Show Addict

Best Actress: Nathaniel's Ballot & Oscars

It's time to get back to our Film Bitch Awards. I've 18 days to finish everything. Give me strength! 

I was rooting for Brie Larson all season, but Oscar had bigger stars in mind

When it comes to Oscar's Best Actress field this year I'd rank the performances in this order without hesitation: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) > Adams (Hustle) ≥ Streep (August) > Dench (Philomena) > Bullock (Gravity). But as usual my own lineup differs quite a lot. I looked beyond the twelve titles that voters were considering nominating for Best Picture and then conveniently dropping onto their ballots in each and every other category. I also had to consider shoeless Emma (Mr Banks) who obviously just-missed Oscar's cut-off since they were all about their ol' standbys this year (this year's amalgam of all five contenders has been nominated 7.6 times which is probably a statistical "most" record in any acting category). So in addition to Oscar's conversation topics I took long hard looks at the Before... franchise's Julie Delpy again (she was nominated right here in 2004), Jane Adams and Paulina Garcia in the little seen arthouse gems All the Light in the Sky and Gloria respectively, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said), too. And then there were the fresh faces (well, fresh before the spaghetti sauce and sobbing) like Adele Exarchopoulus and familiar young stars like Brie Larson (Short Term 12) and Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha) who are just now coming into what feels like their true power as screen stars. I even considered Melissa McCarthy in The Heat, she of the perfect line readings, who was quite unjustly robbed of a Golden Globe comedy nomination this year. 

It was a tough call. I tore my imaginary hair out. In the end, as always, you want six or seven nominees but you conly get five. And here they are with my capsule comments... The Best Actresses of 2013.

P.S. If Oscar voters choose anyone other than Cate Blanchett, it's going to be so catastrophic for my mental health that you'll see me on a park bench somewhere in 2014 chattering away to no one in particular as I replay the events of 2013 endlessly on a loop, torturing myself as to how it all went so terribly wrong.

P.P.S. The Best Actress Oscar Page now has "how they were nominated?" theorizing and a reader poll

P.P.P.S. Like TFE on Facebook and follow Nathaniel on twitter. Why haven't you already? Lot of exciting plans for 2014 including more interactivity with you.

A Personal Note on Allen/Farrow and a Plea For Sanity

I'm about to pull a Hannah Horvath and make something that's not about me entirely about me for a moment but... I had a really difficult week. As long time readers undoubtedly now, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow as artists and as a unit were largely responsible for making me the cinephile that I am today. The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) was a major turning point in my life, the moment that I realized innately if not quite in a self-aware way, how much the movies meant to me.

Woody & Mia in the 80s

I will never be able to thank either of them enough for that gift. Were it not for them, and over the rest of the 80s an actress we should probably just call "Michellyl Glenn Turnstreepfer", I would not be the person I am and you would never have read The Film Experience as it would not exist.

So Allen and Farrow were a superhero duo to wee Nathaniel and their movies, events. To this day, I'd rather think of them that way. I turned up every year from 1984 (Broadway Danny Rose, my older brother drove me because he said "it looks funny") through 1992 (Husbands and Wives, their last film together) even when I had to drag reluctant family or friends. The catatrosphic end of their relationship -- there's no other word for it -- drove Farrow away from Hollywood and thus tarnished her justified place in film history (I hate how often I've had to explain her career/celebrity/talent to people over the years) and permanently tarnished Woody's own reputation; no one who has ever been accused of child molestation, whether or not they are convicted (and Woody was never even charged), is ever presumed innocent again. [more...]

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