How Do Stage-To-Screen Adaptations Fare At The Oscars?

Will Viola Davis be able to win Best Actress at the Oscars?The first step to Oscar success is appearing like a frontrunner. This is why adaptations always are at the top of people’s year in advance predictions. Yet, sustaining that early buzz (often sight unseen) can be a dicey proposition.

Both Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and One Night in Miami are play adaptations that are towards the top of many Oscar predictions right now. Now that both are available on streaming (Netflix and Prime Video, respectively), audiences are finally seeing and enjoying both films. While critics have been giving out their awards recently, the major precursors for the Oscars (guilds, Golden Globes, Critics Choice) still have not been announced. Can we look to the awards run of their source material as a signal for how they will perform at the Oscars?

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Fences & Elle now on DVD and Blu-Ray

By the end of April nearly all the Oscar's favorite 2016 films will be available on Blu-Ray and DVD (La La Land is the caboose on April 25th) in case you accidentally missed any. And if you purchase them from Amazon, by clicking over from TFE we get a teensy tiny cut as an Amazon affiliate (hint hint). 

Last Week's Fresh Batch
The Eyes of My Mother - Daniel recently paid tribute to this indie horror film's award winning production design film's
Jackie - We've sung its praises plenty and interviewed Pablo Larraín, too
Moana - a favorite among the podcast team

Brand New This Week
Elle - Verhoeven and Huppert's provocative collaboration had long legs at the arthouse and we called that Oscar nomination super early. Yay
Fences - Denzel & Viola reprising their Tony winning roles in this American classic of a black family in the 1950s from August Wilson's Pittsburgh cycle. The other nine will supposedly be filmed, too, albeit for TV rather than as theatrical features. Which is a pity since Fences proved the audience is there
Collateral Beauty - I swear Chris is obsessed with this film's badness. Will it one day be a camp classic?
Passengers -Daniel looked at its Oscar nominated production design. It did look like a million dollars despite its narrative problems.

How do you think these films will age? Will you be adding any to your collection?

Viola, the Speech of The Night

Chris here. That shockeroo at the end of the night wasn’t the evening’s only fireworks. But the kind of awe I’m thinking recalling is the kind that we watch the Oscars for: the acceptance speeches. Viola Davis’s in particular.

Viola’s Fences win was already such a forgone conclusion (as you may have heard during our Smackdown) that the lead-up to her category felt the tiniest bit underwhelming, in a way that it mightn’t have been if *ahem* she’d been nominated in Lead. But forgive me, readers, for momentarily losing sight that the best part of the Oscars has everything to do with after the name is called: the speech. Hers was the speech we were waiting for, both for the actress herself and as people who relish in awards speeches.

And was it ever one for the ages, sober and uplifting while recalling the themes that led to her winning performance. “You know, there’s one place that all the people with the greatest potential are gathered... the graveyard.” It’s the candid performer telling us what made them an artist, but also demanding representation for the unheard. For a night that ended up championing previously untold stories and dreams both fulfilled and unfilled, consider her speech the night’s gorgeous thesis.

A master class in gratitude and passion. Can we give her another Oscar? No, I mean, like now, today.

Podcast: Smackdown Companion Discussion

Nathaniel welcomes fellow team members Murtada, Chris, and Abstew to discuss this year's Supporting Actress race. It's a verbal companion piece to the "Smackdown" we just held. 

Index (42 minutes)
Longform discussion of this year's supporting actress contenders Nicole Kidman, Viola Davis, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Octavia Spencer, their futures, their films. What, if anything new, did they reveal to us this year and what would we like to see next from them?

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? 

Smackdown Companion - 2016 Supporting Actress

Smackdown '16: Nicole, Viola, Michelle, Naomie, Octavia

Presenting the Supporting Actresses of '16. This year's slate of nominees features a selfless adoptive mother, a doting but suddenly resentful wife, a woman whose tragic past has suddenly resurfaced, a savvvy mother hen and supervisor struggling to gain respect, and an addict who makes her sensitive son's life a nightmare of instability.

THE NOMINEES 

One long-time-coming breakthrough for an exciting actress (Get it Naomie Harris), two Oscar winners elevating their films with warmth and precision (Kidman & Spencer), and two Oscar darlings who arguably should have won already attacking tragic material (Williams and Davis). Who will be triumphant in the smackdown?

THIS MONTH'S PANELISTS

Though we usually arrange for special guests including actors, writers, and film critics, for the first Smackdown of the new season, we opted to do it all 'in house' with only TFE crew just to get the series back up and running: Nathaniel, Abstew, Chris, and Murtada (you can read about the team here) are discussing the nominees. And now it's time for the main event... 

2016
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN 

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