Musings from SAG screenings (Pt 2): Judy, Bombshell, Little Women, and Dolemite

renee's first SAG winsIf you missed part one, we've invited a longtime SAG member to share this thoughts from SAG Nominating Committee screenings of the would be contenders... 

JUDY:  This one definitely got the most lackluster response.  When the movie was over, there was only a smattering of applause—though I had the feeling that had something to do with the way it ends.  It kind of ends with a whimper. But people got on their feet for Renee Zellweger—who appeared along with Finn Wittrock. They gushed about her performance—the acting, the singing, all of it.  And she had some interesting things to say about the research she did—particularly in regard to addiction. It’s an engaging performance, I think—but is it really as much of a “transformation” as people say?  I feel like you see a lot of Renee Zellweger in there—like, it’s as much Judy Garland playing Renee Zellweger as it is Renee Zellweger playing Judy Garland. Does that make any sense? And for what it’s worth, I hated the Oz stuff.  Was Louis B. Mayer a sexual predator?  You can’t just drop that suggestion into all the other horrible stuff and move on.  It all felt very undefined.

BOMBSHELL:  With no disrespect to Ms. Zellweger, the “transformation of the year” has got to be Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly...

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Best Actor / Supporting Actor - Chart Updates!

by Nathaniel R

Netflix would like to have 80% of the BEST ACTOR field (Driver, Murphy, Pryce, DeNiro) but that will prove impossible.

The new predictions are in. Best Actor is more exciting and competitive than Best Actress this year which is a strange and unusual development... and we don't like it! We kid. The male actors deserve their moment in the sun occassionally, even if they're not as fun to shine light on. The strangest thing about the leading actor competition is, at least at the moment, Netflix literally appears to have about 1/3rd of the entire competitive field. But since their can be only 5, we think that this shotgun approach will only result in two nominees at best. Right now we're going with Adam Driver (who feels like the ultimate winner... though let's not pretend anything's locked up yet in late September) and Eddie Murphy (who could easily not happen given Netflix's other horses in the race).

As for Supporting Actor. It isn't that much different than Best Actor this year. This year has been fairly heavy with duet films for men (The Lighthouse, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Ford v Ferrari, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Two Popes) so naturally a few of the co-leads will definitely block out supporting players for the coveted nominations. We're mostly giving the side-eye to Willem Dafoe. He's the most egregious category frauder this year since you can't be a supporting actor in a cast of two! (There are technically a few other actors that appear in The Lighthouse but they're non-speaking cameos. It's a duet film from start to finish). It's a shame that Dafoe is competing supporting because we think he'd still be competitive for a nomination in lead despite the strong year. The only traditional-sized supporting role that we think won't be hurt by the co-leads muscling in is Alan Alda's divorce attorney in Marriage Story. In some ways he's the film's most loveable character, and Alda has been nominated for less (The Aviator). At 83 he'll have sentiment on his side, too.

UPDATED CHARTS
PICTURE | DIRECTOR | ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTOR | INTERNATIONAL FEATURE | ALL INTERNATIONAL FEATURE SUBMISSIONS 

Lorrell loves Jimmy... it's true 🎵

The Furniture: Fame Flattens Your Dreamgirls, Boys

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

 This probably goes without saying, but movie musicals tend not to take place in the real world. Gene Kelly doesn’t just serenade French children in An American in Paris, he leads the cast through a dream ballet of wild abstraction. The oddness of public singing is often just the door to an even more fantastical world. Even those about actual musicians, who need no special excuse to croon, often break free from realism.

In this context, Dreamgirls is a bit of an odd duck. Director Bill Condon tries to split the difference. Some of the songs are entirely within the context of a real performance, while others incorporate non-musician characters and non-realistic settings. The back and forth can be a bit confounding...

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The Pryor Life

JA from MNPP here again, taking a look at the news that no less than Lee Daniels is about to sign on to directthe long-gestating bio-pic of the comedian and actor and genius Richard Pryor.

Apparently Bill Condon almost made it a couple of years ago, but I guess that's fallen through since here we are. I was really looking forward to Daniels making his interracial gay action movie, possibly to star Alex Pettyfer, but I'm not exactly surprised that producers aren't throwing money at that.

And not only do we have a director, but we have a trio of names that're rumored to be up to play the troubled, brilliant comedian. Eddie Murphy, who's been considered for the role for as long as they've been thinking about making the movie really, is still in the mix, although if they want to focus on Pryor's life in his 20s and 30s that seems a bit of a stretch, doesn't it? Eddie Murphy is 52 years old.

Of course also in the mix is Damon Wayans, who's actually a year older than Murphy so what do I know. (Condon was considering using Damon's brother Marlon, and he makes more sense to me.) But I guess they've got that CG they used in the third X-Men movie to make Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen look young, they can just spend millions and millions of dollars using that. (I hesitate to even mention make-up since I thought the make-up Daniels used to age people in The Butler was just awful.)

I personally find the third name in contention the most appealing - Michael B. Jordan, hot off a great performance in Fruitvale Station, and buzzy as all get out. I don't see why Daniels doesn't consider David Oyelowo too though - he was my favorite thing in The Butler (granted, I didn't like The Butler).

So who would you cast? And what do you think about Daniels tackling not just Pryor but another bio-pic largely set in the Sixties and Seventies so soon?