Mother-Daughter Duos at the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

Fernanda Montenegro in Walter Salles' I'M STILL HERE.

This past week, Fernanda Montenegro celebrated her 95th birthday. A living legend of Brazilian culture in various mediums, she is our oldest living Best Actress nominee. Montenegro is back on the awards trail with Walter Salles' I'm Still Here. While her late-film cameo won't excite many voters, Brazil's Best International Film submission is raking in Audience Awards at festivals worldwide and sterling reviews to match. Perhaps Sony Pictures Classics can even look away from Saoirse Ronan and Almodóvar's leading ladies for a moment, and mount a Best Actress campaign for Fernanda Torres. Her performance as Eunice Paiva is nothing short of magnificent. 

Though a longshot, Torres' nomination would be amply deserved, making her and Montenegro one of the few mother-daughter duos to score acting Oscar nominations. It's a very exclusive club that includes…

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TIFF '24: "I'm Still Here" is a staggering piece of political cinema

by Cláudio Alves

An absence is a scar. You might not see it like you would scarred flesh, but deep down, you feel it. Memories are both a salve and a burning touch that keeps the tissue raised, red and angry. Memories are all that's left in the absence, so they define it as much as they soothe the pain. People are covered in such scars, littered all over their spirit. Places have them, too, like the ghosts of paintings and photographs taken down from the wall, leaving faded patches within a home that is no more. Countries bear them, their history a story of scars. We can learn from them. We have to, for the alternative is forgetting and forgetting is the death of history, of justice. If a country forgets, new scars will come to pass, torn with impunity in a vicious cycle without end. So, treasure the memory and learn to acknowledge the pain of absence. For absence is a scar, and we are our scars.

In his latest film, I'm Still Here, Brazillian director Walter Salles weaves these notions into every frame, articulating a passionate plea. His is a cinema that fights for the national memory and cries, bloody and furious, against forgetting…

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Fernanda Montenegro should have won!

by Cláudio Alves

Glenn Close was right. During her latest awards campaign, AMPAS' favorite also-ran recalled the 1998 Best Actress race, concluding that the rightful winner wasn't Gwyneth Paltrow but "that incredible actress that was in Central Station." While that year's Oscar champion gets a lot of undue vitriol –she's excellent in Shakespeare in Love – it's hard to disagree that the trophy rightfully belonged to the great Brazilian thespian Fernanda Montenegro. The only Portuguese-speaking performance to be recognized by the Academy, this star turn has a special place in my heart. So much so that I feared my love was a product of nostalgia goggles. A re-watch disabused such notions. Montenegro's nominated work remains a towering achievement…

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Don't Miss "Invisible Life"

by Cláudio Alves

After a limited release in US theaters, Karim Aïnouz's Invisible Life is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. The film was Brazil's submission for last year's Best International Feature Oscar and, although the Academy chose to overlook its merits, that doesn't mean the picture is undeserving of our attention. This tropical melodrama is one of 2019's most ravishing cinematic experiences, a saturated explosion of deep feeling and chromatic excess, as beautiful as it is devastating. Harkening back to the glory days of Old Hollywood's women's pictures, Invisible Life is like a cocktail made of equal parts Douglas Sirk and Black Orpheus, a hint of Fassbinder adding an abrasive zing to the recipe…

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Q&A: Oscar Ceremonies, Sex Work, and... The Warlocks of Eastwick?

Soon, we'll be buried in an avalanche of awards news again so tonight a brief respite from the current Oscar race. It's Q&A time. Here are eight reader questions I chose to answer. I skipped anything on Category Fraud because I feel so exhausted by that fight ("though undeterred in my moral superiority!" he says arms akimbo and chin up, like a superhero with cape billowing behind him, sworn to upheld 'the Awards Way') and I might have to freak out all over again on nomination morning so let's ignore it for now.

MDA: What 2015 release that you were looking forward to watching disappointed you the most?

NATHANIEL: It feels stranger to answer with a film I liked, especially one that's already getting a critical rethink by way of surprise top ten placements but maybe Magic Mike XXL? While I admire its super cajzh vibe and its focus on female pleasure, I'm puzzled as to why they went more demure with the sequel when they kept promising it would be more stripperific i.e. what everyone expected from Soderbergh's first brilliant film (which you'll remember was a Bronze medalist for Best Picture right here.)

Another big disappointment was Sisters. It's totally funny don't get me wrong. But that's all it is. It's strange that we know that Tina Fey can write brilliant comic masterworks (30 Rock, Mean Girls) but keeps wasting her star power and comic gift on propping up other people's wildly underwritten cliché-filled scripts. I'm beginning to wonder is she even wants to make another comedy classic? Perhaps she's fine coasting until retirement. But it's hard to not wonder what could be if she'd only apply herself again. 

EZ: I hereby grant you special powers to go back in time and attend an Academy Awards Ceremony of your choosing. Which year do you choose and why?

NATHANIEL: This question sounds nice until you realize the genie has only granted you one wish instead of three.  So stingy!

Retro Oscar Races, Domnhall Gleeson, Bridget Jones's Baby, and more after the jump...

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