The New Oscar Actress Hierarchy - Glenn & Frances Rising

by Nathaniel R 

We thought it would be fun to revise the Oscar Acting Hierarchy we last shared when Julianne Moore FINALLY won an Oscar six years back. What follows is a List of Oscar's 36 All Time Favorite Actresses... (you can see the corresponding actor list here) restricted to women with 5 or more nominations (though 4 nominations will get you in the list if you've won twice). Only the acting statistics are accounted for so Emma Thompson, for example, is not ranked. If you included her screenplay win she would have made the list. If you counted non-acting nominations, you'd also see Shirley Maclaine jump a rank as she was nominated for documentary once. Now that virtually every major star is also a producer these types of extra stats will only get murkier so we're opting not to include them and focusing only on what the Academy thinks of them as actors.

🔺 = the actress has moved up the chart or strengthened her placement since the last publication of this list (in February 2015). An explanation of how the rank was determined is at the end of the post. 

OSCAR'S HOLY TRINITY 
And 33 More Royals 

 

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Showbiz History: Jupiter Ascending, Coraline, and silent sex symbol Ramon Novarro

6 random things that happened on this day, February 6th, in showbiz history

1942 The comic western Valley of the Sun hits theaters. Hollywood was struggling to figure out what to do with Lucille Ball that decade. This was one of those 'well, how about this genre?' attempts...

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YNMS: The Glorias

From guest contributor Matt St Clair...

Oscar Winner Julianne Moore stars in the latest entry of what’s suddenly become the Gloria Cinematic Universe. Mrs America starring Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem is still fresh in the memory (and competing at the Emmys on Sunday). And after playing the titular heroine in Gloria Bell, Moore now plays the iconic Gloria Steinem in the upcoming biopic The Glorias, which once again has Moore playing a Gloria in glasses, and has a “glorious” new trailer. Let’s give this preview the Yes No Maybe So treatment and see whether you think it’s bound for “glory.” (Sorry)

The official IMDB synopsis:

The story of feminist icon Gloria Steinem's itinerant childhood's influence on her life as a writer, activist and organizer for women's rights worldwide.”

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10th Anniversary: The Kids Are All Right

by Deborah Lipp

In the second year of Oscar’s expanded, ten-nominee slate for Best Picture, the change proved its worth. The occassion was the nomination of The Kids are All Right, a film of such perfection that there can be no doubt of its worthiness, yet who could have imagined its inclusion? In 2010, we definitely weren’t ready for a queer picture to win, and ten years later, it seems like we’re still not ready for a female-centric film to win. But inclusion is victory, and anyone who watched The Kids are All Right solely because it was nominated was also a winner.

The Kids are All Right is an intimate and human movie. Everything and everyone here has skin that is fully lived-in, fully human, and perfectly, adorably messy...

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The Furniture: Social Distancing with Safe

"The Furniture" is our series on Production Design by Daniel Walber. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Safe turns 25 years old this week. I’d say it’s “more relevant than ever,” but just typing those words felt ridiculous. Todd Haynes made Safe about the way America responded to AIDS, and that’s still relevant because America has not changed. And so here we are, in another crisis of public health, watching the same phenomena play out in similar ways.

Let's talk about two of them. First, the way that AIDS was ignored by those who saw themselves as unaffected, even immune. Reagan could choose to do nothing because, to so many Americans, it happened to “other people.” Second, the way that its victims were blamed for their own sickness. Contracting HIV was seen as the result of a moral failure - something we’ve seen time and again, from cholera and tuberculosis to SARS and COVID-19.

25 years later, another Republican president is playing the same game. The response has been a torrent of virulent racism and an utter denial of medical reality. And once again, there is a prevailing attitude that contracting the virus is one’s own fault.

Did rewatching Safe make me feel better about any of this? Absolutely not. But it did cause me to think about a new relevance...

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