FYC BFCA

'Critics Choice' Ballots are due today at 3 PM EST and I challenge my BFCA brethren and sisters to squeeze in one more screener / screening before sending off their ballots. I'll unfortunately have to send mine off without having screened Django Unchained (which I'm seeing as ballots are due) but I did not choose to have the flu this last weekend of voting when it finally started screening.

FYC #1 - Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy. Nicole Kidman is 5'11" and wears massive heels but even seated, squatting or horizontal this performance towers over most of the Supporting Actress Field. 
FYC#2 - Michael Fassbender in Prometheus. He's not being talked up in the Best Supporting Actor race because Oscar taste in acting doesn't ever stretch to androids but you can vote for him in the Best Actor in an Action Movie acting race. FWIW he's on both of those ballots for me because I won't be constrained by Oscar buzz; I'm voting "best" not "most likely to be nominated". 
FYC #3 - Remember that the Young Actor (Under 21) prize has more viable contenders than just Hushpuppy from Beasts of the Southern Wild. Also age-relevant and therefor eligible: Logan Lerman & Ezra Miller from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Tom Holland from The Impossible, Elle & Alice from Ginger & Rosa and the kids from Moonrise Kingdom. This has the potential to be an amazing category if voters don't get lazy. 
FYC #4 -Weep that they don't televise half the categories because that makes them essentially useless as critical causes go (unless you count fine print on fyc ads) but vote strong anyway: Holy Motors, Les Misérables and Lincoln for Best Makeup! 

Actress Battles: Jessica vs. Jennifer, Quvenzhané vs. History

In a rather beautiful turn of events, both Les Misérables and Zero Dark Thirty arrived to implications of raves (ah, pointless Les Miz embargo) and actual ones (ZDT had no embargo) and though neither are opening until Santa's elves are deep into overtime, they've made the forthcoming Oscar race much more exciting. What we have are real competitions in multiple categories. At least for now; precursor prizes have a way of flattening out the drama if they arrive at consensus too quickly. We've already discussed Les Miz's first screening and the Hugh vs. Daniel Best Actor race.

But while you're waiting for my Zero Dark Thirty review, let's discuss the confusing Best Actress race.

This particular shot is the second half of one of my favorite cuts of the year... from the screen she's watching to this face.

BEST ACTRESS
What's the confusion, you may be asking. Yes, Jennifer Lawrence is still the frontrunner for Silver Linings Playbook and yes Jessica Chastain will be nominated for anchoring Zero Dark Thirty with single-minded determination. More...

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Jodie Foster at 17

Our Jodie Foster 50th Anniversary Celebration continues...

Her answer is priceless

Michael C here to pass along this clip I discovered while researching the estimable Ms. Foster. Nowadays child stardom is commonly seen as the first stage in an inevitable downward trajectory of substance abuse and self-destruction so it's a bit jarring to watch this footage of Jodie Foster interviewed at age seventeen.

It's a rare thing to hear a movie star – or a politician for that matter – of any age speak with such poise and thoughtfulness. To listen to it after having lived through the E! News and TMZ takeover of celebrity reporting makes it seem positively alien. I love the way she keeps gently steering fluff questions toward substantive answers, like when she responds to a question about a potential boyfriend with an observation about the phoniness of fawning celebrity praise.

I imagine many young stars that meet with similar success so early in life receive a shock when they discover the world is not going to unroll at their feet in all their future endeavors.

Yet here we find the young Jodie Foster already tempering her big ambitions with the knowledge that there will be surely be failures along the way. Agents of up and coming celebrities should play clips like this for their clients to study. 

Jodie Foster in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"

For Jodie Foster Week I invited guests to talk about favorite Foster films. Here is one of my favorite authors Manuel Muñoz ("What You see in the Dark," "The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue") on a pre-Taxi Driver Scorsese/Foster collaboration. - Nathaniel R]

Coming up with another word for “precocious” is hard, since its precision begs no real qualification. The word bothers me a little as a go-to choice to describe Jodie Foster’s brief appearance in 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. What are we seeing in her portrayal of a girl who dislikes her real name (Doris) so much that she ditches it in favor of another (Audrey)? I thought my pleasure in rewatching Alice would come in getting to see Foster in that vulnerable adolescence where few of us had learned to mask, moderate, or amplify our sexual identities. How much more apparent would this be on camera, especially when we, as viewers, sometimes willingly blur the lines between performer and performance?

I’m happy to come away from Alice seeing Doris/Audrey as more than a thinly written tomboy role... [More]

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Playing Dress-Up: Jodie Foster in "Bugsy Malone"

[For Jodie Foster week, I invited a few guests to write about pivotal Jodie Foster movies for them. Here is Susan Posnock, who you may remember as a regular on Awards Daily a few years back. - Nathaniel R]

With Jodi Foster turning the big 5-0 tomorrow, Nathaniel asked if I would come out of my semi-retirement from film writing to help celebrate the actresses’ oeuvre. He offered up a number of films to reflect on, but the one I immediately thought of – despite the fact that I hadn’t seen it in about 30 years – was Bugsy Malone.

Long before the Internet, DVDs and even videos, I remember catching the film as often as I could (and my parents would allow) on HBO. In addition to Foster in a relatively small part, as tough-talking gangster’s moll Tallulah, it starred then-unknown Scott Baio in the titular role. Watching it this week I was struck by how completely odd it is – something I didn't pick up on as a kid. But as an adult, its unique flavors stand out. [More...]

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