The Seven Best Ladies of the Globes

Chris here with a post-Globes actress love hangover. Sorry boys, but unless your name was Denzel, you didn't do much during the ceremony to win our attention. Here are the seven women who won the evening (and we're not even talking best dressed yet. In no particular order, except for this golden girl.

C O N S I D E R

Let's hear it for Brie Larson! After earning accolades for Room and keeping her social media game on point, she's finally got a big prize to set her apart from tough competition. Add in a charming speech where she credited the Room team above and below the line (including best friend Jacob Tremblay), and we've got the once-supposed frontrunner securing that status for real.

Oh and speaking of that winning speech...

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Leo & Kate Rising. Plus Globe Darlings of Yore

Updated/Revised

While the Golden Globes are famous for not repeating themselves when it comes to TV honors (and thus earning our love because the world desperately needs the anti-Emmys). But this is not to say that they don't have favorite performers. The Globes, like every other awards body, have their personal pets, their default players, and their great loves. The names just don't totally line up with any other awards body... which is how it should be. Any awards group that seeks to share the same taste with another group (or predict it) would be immediately dismantled in a perfect awards world.

The Reunion. Why can't they make a movie together every 5 years or so?

We had a reminder last night of four performers who know Golden Globe Love biblically. They know its scent, its desperation, its passion, its tenderness, even its cool rebukes (well, not Jennifer Lawrence yet. So far it's all rose petals and til death do us part promises). Denzel Washington received his third Golden Globe (the Cecil B Demille), Jennifer Lawrence received her third consecutive Globe for working with David O. Russell. And those Titanic lovebirds Kate Winslet & Leonardo DiCaprio received their fourth and third Globe trophies respectively.

The single best bit of the night actually skewered our obsession with more and more that awards shows and statistical madness thrive on. Jim Carrey was killing it as he perpetually described himself as two time Golden-Globe winning actor Jim Carrey.

More...

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Interview: Affonso Gonçalves and the Art of Editing Great Actresses

Affonso Gonçalves with this ACE win for editing True Detective (2014)Affonso Gonçalves is a man that every actress lover ought to both thank and envy. Over the course of his career in TV and film he has been privvy to a consisently vivid series of strong and sometimes downright iconic performances by several of our greatest actress. He's helped shape the way we see them, too.

His career began in earnest with as an assisant editor on Todd Solondz's cult hit about a nerdy teenager Dawn Weiner in Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) and soon thereafter he was editing multiple films for Ira Sachs and other independent minded directors. In the 20 years since his debut he's edited performances by Tilda Swinton (Only Lovers Left Alive), Kate Winslet (Mildred Pierce), Kerry Washington (Night Catches Us), Michelle Williams (The Hawk is Dying), Kim Basinger (The Door in the Floor), and  Patricia Clarkson (Married Life). More famously he's edited two star-making young performances that went on to be Oscar nominated for Best Actress in Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone (2010) and Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). Next week he'll likely be able to add two more Oscar nominated performances to his editing triumphs with Cate Blanchett & Rooney Mara's duet in Carol.

I had the pleasure recently of grilling him about watching and shaping these Best Actress performances in Winter's Bone, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Carol. Here's our conversation (edited for length and clarity) with very mild Carol spoilers if you haven't yet seen it. The film opens in additional theaters this weekend. More after the jump...

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Contrarian Corner: Age is Just a Number As J.Law Dazzles in 'Joy'

Jose continues our new series Contrarian Corner in which team members who feel very off-consensus about a particular topic can work through it... 

One of the most surreal moments in my life occurred when I was able to speak to Winona Ryder about Jennifer Lawrence. Like J.Law, Ryder became the “it girl” early during her career, and during the early 90s earned back-to-back Oscar nominations and critical/commercial adoration. Unlike J.Law, Ryder wasn’t able to make the most out of what fame and screen maturity had granted her, as she was denied serious parts because of her age. She looked “too young” to play “older parts”, and reached a point (i.e. her 30s) where she was “too old” to play younger parts. Perhaps because she has the good fortune of staying away from social media, Ms. Ryder was unaware of the constant criticism J.Law faces whenever she teams up with David O. Russell.

I don’t even know how old she is. I always thought she was the age of her characters”

Kudos to Ms. Ryder for reminding us that films are all about suspending our disbelief.  [More...]

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You Need Serious Hair!

Kyle back in the house to address a very serious topic: Hair. Caution: Joy hairdo spoilers ahead.

The extent to which certain moments of David O. Russell’s Joy are deliberately soap opera-y is an open question. The movie’s latter scenes, in particular, draw on clichéd images of toughness: pleather jacket, sunglasses, and, of course, newly shorned hair. It seems that nothing says a woman is serious quite like taking matters, i.e., her hair, into her own hands.

I’ll happily debate the merits of having a narrative arc reveal a woman to be a badass—since most already are in my book—but I’d rather hear what some of your favorite DIY hair-cutting scenes are. Here are three of the most dramatic that leap to my mind after the jump...

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