Does Box Office Matter to Best Actress Hopefuls?

by Nathaniel R

Helen Mirren's The Queen was in many ways a completely standard win... a solid success before the nomination and an even bigger hit afterwardsDoes Box Office matter to Oscars? It does and it doesn't. And how much it matters varies from year to year and from category to category. It obviously matters, regardless, if you're either a flop or a big hit but anything inbetween (where most movies fall) is up for speculative debate.

For instance, just this year people have debated whether The Wife's box office take is strong enough for a Best Actress nomination for Glenn Glose (hint: it totally is... though winning will be harder) and whether it will matter that Roma won't really have that much of a theatrical presence (it might. it might not. The streaming only/mostly thing is relatively uncharted territory) or if the major success of A Star is Born will make a win possible for Lady Gaga (it won't hurt!)

For fun let's look at how much the Best Actress nominees films made before they were nominated for the past fifteen years and see what patterns emerge. The films in red won Best Actress Oscars.

BOX OFFICE RANK OF BEST ACTRESS FILMS
BEFORE THE NOMINATIONS (2003-2017)
AND WHERE THIS YEAR'S LEADING ACTRESSES CURRENTLY FIT...

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Les rousses

TIFF Review: "Gloria Bell"

by Chris Feil

Naturally, English language remakes of already great (and recent, at that) foreign language treasures are a dubious business. But Sebastián Lelio’s revisiting of his own Gloria, formery led by the immaculate Paulina García, presents a convincing alternative to other misguided or less effective attempts. Now titled Gloria Bell and starring Julianne Moore, this version is one not only worthy of its predecessor, but an equal that may even edge it out ever so slightly...

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Months of Meryl: The Hours (2002)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#29 —Clarissa Vaughan, a higher-up and hostess of the New York literary scene attempting to throw a party for her dying friend.

MATTHEW:  Even before Meryl Streep stepped before the cameras as the unraveling hostess Clarissa Vaughan on Stephen Daldry’s The Hours, the actress already possessed a role in Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer-winning, tripartite meditation on love, loss, and Virginia Woolf. Early on in Cunningham’s 1999 novel, Clarissa, while shopping for flower, catches sight of a movie star who may be Streep or Vanessa Redgrave or, much less excitingly for Clarissa, Susan Sarandon emerging from her trailer with an “aura of regal assurance.” Streep’s ephemeral appearance in what will prove to be one of the most pivotal days of Clarissa’s life signifies, quite literally, the sublime; her quasi-cameo is a perfect encapsulation of one of those chance, indirect encounters with a famous face that we use, with varying levels of embarrassment, to distract us from the mundanities of our daily routine, a glimpse of the extraordinary amid the everyday. That Streep the Star, who was gifted a copy of "The Hours" by Redgrave’s late daughter Natasha Richardson, is removed from Daldry’s film speaks to the many, many excisions that occur within any page-to-screen transfer, but it also informs us that Streep’s cinematized Clarissa Vaughan is simply beyond distraction...

I will always appreciate Daldry’s version as a rare if principally partitioned meeting of three extraordinary screen stars...

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Beauty Break: Happy Mother's Day!

Michelle Pfeiffer with her daughter Claudia Rose early onHappy Mothers Day to any of our readers who are mothers and Happy Mother's Day to all of your mothers, too. Herewith some of our favorite actresses with their first born...

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Cannes Carpet #1: Cruz, Bingbing, Adjani, Moore and more...

by Nathaniel R

Chloe, Chiara, Fan Bingbing, and Carey

With Cannes two days strong now, let's survey the first round of fashions with 16 of the most memorable looks to date. Chloe Sevigny has moved past her fashion muse days but still brings the style while jurying one of the sidebars. It's sort of a starchy pleat with silver gift wrapping. (I don't know what I'm looking at exactly which is sometimes welcome!) Actress Chiara Mastroianni, child of not one but two bonafide legends (Mastroianni & Deneuve, don'cha know) appears to have stepped out of the 1980s directly into 2018. From a distance the dress is like a splatter painting on acid. And Fan Bingbing generally brings several trunks (or maybe trucks?) worth of fashion to Cannes. This Ali Karoui mint-green strapless number is the best of them so far...

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