Smackdown '00: Chocolat, Billy Elliott, Pollock, and Almost Famous

Welcome back to the Supporting Actress Smackdown. Each month we pick an Oscar vintage to explore through the lens of actressing at the edges. This episode goes back to the turn of the millenium, when Almost Famous, Pollock, Billy Elliot, and Chocolat were new in theaters and the following actresses were having a moment...

THE NOMINEES 2000 provided a bevy of possibilities in the supporting actress category but Oscar ignored the gifted comediennes (Parker Posey in Best in Show and  Elaine May in Smalltime Crooks), the foreign divas (Catherine Deneuve in Dancer in the Dark and Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger), indie darlings (Lupe Ontiveros in Chuck & Buck) and even women in Best Picture contenders (Catherine Zeta-Jones in Traffic, Connie Nielsen in Gladiator). What they came up with instead was an almost eerily archetypical shortlist which included five different kinds of traditional Oscar-friendly roles: long-suffering wife, feisty grandmother, manic pixie dream girl, mama bear, and the tough mentor. The mix of actors was also super traditional: Oscar voters invited back two recent previous winners (Judi Dench and Frances McDormand), one returning nominee (Julie Walters), and welcomed to the club one rising character actress (Marcia Gay Harden) and a golden child of Hollywood (Kate Hudson). 

THE PANELISTS Here to talk about their performances and films are (from left to right) actor Nicholas D'Agosto (Trial & Error, Masters of Sex), journalist Kyle Buchanan (New York Times), actress Vella Lovell (Mr Mayor, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), and from The Film Experience, Eric Blume and your host Nathaniel R. Let's begin...

 SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST  
The companion podcast can be downloaded at the bottom of this article or by visiting the iTunes page... 

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Gay Best Friend: Michael in "Billy Elliot" (2000)

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.

The face of coming out to your crush, who's also a male ballet dancer.By: Christopher James

What do our interests say about our sexuality?  From sports to dancing, so many hobbies carry with them gendered expectations. Set in 1984 rural England amidst the coal miner strike, Billy Elliot follows one boy as he defies his family’s expectations of him and pursues dancing instead of boxing. Claudio recently gave us a beautiful write-up on Jamie Bell’s performance as the title character as part of his Almost There column. Needless to say, I second all the points he made in his article.

For the purposes of this column, we want to look specifically at what the film has to say about sexuality, specifically as it relates to Billy’s best friend, Michael Caffrey (Stuart Wells)...

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Podcast: MidSommar & Wild Rose

with Murtada Elfadl, Nathaniel R, and Chris Feil

 

Index (56 minutes)
00:01 A spoiler-filled discussion of Ari Aster's new horror film MidSommar starring Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor. We have three different opinions about its value.
38:10 Tom Harper's Wild Rose. You've seen this musical drama before but three performances by Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters, and Sophie Okonedo and the music (the finale song is by Mary Steenburgen!) elevate it. 
50:00 Lots of randomnees including Almodóvar movies, bad television, and future movies we're looking forward to including The Farewell and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

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? 

Reading Assignments
• Chris Feil's MidSommar review
• "The End of Empathy" -Andrew Kendall on MidSommar
• Halfway Mark Actresses - Nathaniel's fav performances of 2019
• Nick's VOR ratings -an explanation

 

MidSommar & Wild Rose

Mary Poppins vs. Mary Poppins Returns: Supporting Characters

by Lynn Lee

Among the sharper observations I’ve seen regarding Mary Poppins Returns is that it is to Mary Poppins what The Force Awakens was to Star Wars: A New Hope.  In each case, the sequel feeds shamelessly off fans’ nostalgia by recreating every beat of the original film – the plot arc, the character dynamics, even the distinctive look of the original, tweaked to reflect the changing mores of the past several decades.  In short, it’s the same movie, just repackaged.

Setting aside whether it needed to be made at all, does Mary Poppins 2.0 improve at all on the original formula?  In The Force Awakens, the one real added value was the new characters.  In many ways they felt like rebooted archetypes from A New Hope, yet for the most part they also felt fresh and intriguing.  Is the same true for Mary Poppins Returns?  Let's do a side-by-side comparison...

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Months of Meryl: Mamma Mia! (2008)

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

#39 —Donna Sheridan, a dancing queen, hotelier, and single mother of a bride-to-be.

MATTHEW: When it comes to motion picture musicals, the old adage certainly holds true — they really don’t make them like they used to. But when it comes to Mamma Mia!, the 2008 cinematic adaptation of the long-running jukebox stage show/certified cash cow that’s still chugging along on the West End and in numerous cities across the globe, one could justifiably say that they, thankfully, never made them quite like this.

Structured around the music of ABBA, the story is thin but not automatically dire, at least on paper: Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) is an unusually deceptive 20-year-old engaged to be married to Sky (Dominic Cooper) and living on the fictitious, picturesque Greek island of Kalokairi, where her mother Donna (Meryl Streep) owns and operates a modest yet crumbling hotel...

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