Black History Month: Spotlight on Octavia Spencer

by Steven Fenton

On February 26, 2012, Octavia Spencer won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her endearing performance as the feisty Minny Jackson in Tate Taylor’s The Help. With her win, Spencer joined an elite group, becoming just the sixth black actress to win an acting Oscar (and only the seventh overall, if you count Irene Cara’s Original Song win for Flashdance, since she also starred in the film). Prior to 2011, Spencer had worked steadily since the mid-90s, gaining a reputation as a warm and generous co-star and a beloved character actress. So her win in February 2012 felt like an authentic opportunity for the academy to recognize an industry favorite.

Spencer was an indomitable force in the 2011 awards season, snatching wins at the Critics Choice, SAG awards, Globe Globes, and BAFTA, and beating out a talented crop of women in sensational breakout performances, including: Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids), Shailene Woodley (The Descendants), and Spencer’s co-star, Jessica Chastain (who had taken both the LA and NY Film Critics awards for her outstanding trio of performances in The Help, Take Shelter, and Tree of Life). Spencer’s Oscar win was a foregone conclusion early in the race. The real competition that was year between Viola Davis and Meryl Streep in Leading Actress. Viola could have made history that night as the second black woman to win in lead, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, Spencer walked away with The Help’s only win that evening. Little did we know then, Octavia’s Oscar story wasn’t over, and she definitely wasn’t done making history...

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Links: Car Eyes, Sad Batman, Oscar Guesswork, Inspiring Denzel

General Linkage
i09 Mad Mad Fury Road meets Pixar's Cars
AV Club ignoring that nobody on god's green earth could possibly want to relive the election fiasco of 2016, Megan Ellison and Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty) are developing a miniseries about it right now. Too soon.
Interview Mag there's going to be a biopic of Sammy Davis Jr. They have casting suggestions including Elijah Kelley as Sammy and Delroy Lindo as his father
Cinesnark has an ode to Keanu Reeves, calling him 'the last great movie star.' I personally think the demise of the movie star is a myth (that's been being told my entire lifetime... and yet my lifetime has had plenty of new movie stars in it) but I tend to like pieces like this anyway because worshipping movie stars is fun
The New Yorker looks at the silent film Different From Others, reportedly the first gay romantic drama on film

MNPP Tom Cullen has been at the gym and has a movie coming out co-starring his love Tatiana Maslany
Screen Crush Ben Affleck rumored to want out of the Batman game. I mean... he does look miserable doing it, so why not? Batman is the star not the actor playing him anyway. Notice how many faces he's already worn since 1989 and he's still just as popular
Tracking Board Mahershala Ali is joining Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy for a new crime drama called Triple Frontier

Oscar Stuff
Feinberg Forecast Feinberg is predicting 10 Oscars for La La Land, losing only 3 categories
Variety on the backlash to La La Land and why "exuberance" matters. I co-sign this post. I hate when films are deemed "not important enough" as that leads to comedies and family films and adventures and romances and all sorts of genres that produce classics being regularly overlooked at the Oscars
Write Out of LA is, on the other side, all in for the La La Land backlash 
Variety Netflix sharing Ava DuVernay's with classrooms, community groups, and book clubs
Variety Moonlight took the USC Scripter prize for adapted screenplay
Indie Wire Anne Thompson says Moonlight is "guaranteed" one Oscar win. Guaranteed feels like too strong a word for me when both of its potential wins (Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor) have to face off against a surging Lion which took both of those categories at the BAFTAs
... oh and BAFTA wins and gowns in case you missed those posts here! 

In Case You Missed It
Denzel Washington gave an inspiring speech at the NAACP Image Awards. I'm still torn as to whether he'll pull off a third Oscar win for Fences but I'm rooting for it, since it can't be Viggo!

Podcast: The Oscars are coming! How many will 'La La' win?

Nathaniel, Joe, and Nick discuss the Oscar nominations with just two weeks to go until the High Holy Night.

Index (42 minutes)
00:01 Nomination morning formats
05:45 How much did Amy Adams miss by?
07:35 Cinematography & Score
10:30 Deepwater Horizon
13:00 Which categories will La La Land lose and to which: Lion? Jackie? Hacksaw?
23:00 Denzel vs Casey / Emma vs Isabelle / Salesman vs Toni Erdmann?
30:25 Picture & Director splits. Spreading the wealth. (Remember The Revenant? No?)
39:00 Ryan Gosling & Visual Effects. Byeeeee!

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Pre Oscar Show Part 1

DGA & ASC Winners: La La Land and Lion

Last night was a huge night in Hollywood with three award events: The Directors Guild of America, American Society of Cinematographers, and the Annie Awards (which we'll get to later today). Which would you have attended if you had to choose?  La La Land continued its seasonal dominance but Lion unexpectedly roared, too.  

Some of the winners last night are names you'll recognize from different contexts. The list and comments are after the jump...

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10 Takeaways from the SAG Awards

Two handfuls of moments from last night's SAG Awards have stuck with me. How about you?

All Politics Are Personal
Julia Louis-Dreyfus early win and a speech that got political, her father being an immigrant, set the tone and politics never went away. It was there in every speech, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes poignantly. People who scream "no more politics" are always forgetting that all politics are personal. The laws that are made, the character of the country we live in, the rights we enjoy or can't, the laws that goven our workplaces, the type of healthcare we get, the size of the paycheck. All of these things affect every single person personally whether they see that it connects to D.C. or not. If there was any doubt that Mahershala Ali was going to win the Oscar next month for his terrific work in Moonlight (and also, yes, as a symbolic win for the film itself which often happens in the supporting categories) it surely vanished last night. Ali was deeply touched at the prize, humble, but also upset given T***'s unconstitutional Muslim ban. He brought up his own conversion to Islam and the initial conflict it raised with his mother. Touchingly he revealed that they're both long since over the conflict since. A bonus of Ali winning is we got to see shots of the Moonlight table and they unfortunately didn't get another chance to shine. 

Lily Tomlin, Denzel Washington, Winona Ryder and more after the jump...

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