'97 til Oscar

It's 97 days til Oscar so we thought it might be fun to discuss Best Actress 1997. When I asked on twitter and here at the site what everyone's first Oscar ceremony was, this one came up alot. Titanic-mania was in full force in March 1998, bringing the Academy Awards many new young viewers! In fact, Titanic which had opened for Christmas had never left the number one spot at the top of the box office by the time Oscar night rolled around 14 weeks later. (Titanic spent 15 weeks at #1 in total. Can you imagine? in today's movie culture you're basically a true phenomenon if you can stay on top for more than 3 weeks - only Black Panther managed it this year with 5 weeks)

Do you remember these gowns? And who would you have voted Best Actress that year?

click to embiggen

• Judi Dench, Mrs Brown
• Helen Hunt, As Good As It Gets
• Kate Winslet, Titanic
• Helena Bonham-Carter, Wings of the Dove
• Julie Christie, Afterglow

Kate Winslet wasnt winning anything (besides millions upon millions of fans), but the rest of them divvied up the Best Actress gongs. Helena and Julie were neck and neck when it came to critics awards; Bonham-Carter snagged the NBR, BSFC, and LAFCA while Christie swiped the NYFCC and NSFC. That was it for both of them because Dench and Hunt both took home Golden Globes. It was something of a nail-biter between them on Oscar night, though Hunt had the edge given her SAG win. But would they really give a TV star the Oscar (remember the TV and movie divide was so much greater in the 1990s) ???

"I dont know. You erased me."

Beauty vs Beast: Sisterly Sensibilities

Jason from MNPP here using this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to wish a happy birthday to one of our favorite directors, the great Ang Lee. In a strange coincidence I spent some of this weekend talking Ang on Twitter even though I hadn't realized it was about to be his birthday today, so I'd say Fate chose this week's contest. And because more than anything a battle between actresses livens you folks up, let's face down the Sisters Dashwood of Ang's 1995 classic Sense & Sensibility.

And no before anyone asks I don't think Kate Winslet or Emma Thompson to be beastly in any manner. But seeing as the film itself pits their two ways of existing at odds with one another for the majority of its run-time (only to eventually decide, with fine wisdom, that the sisters could clearly stand to learn a little from one another) it doesn't seem completely far-fetched to pitch them against one another here. They are, for all their adoration of one another, each other's main antagonists once the who's who of romance falls away.

PREVIOUSLY Even though Angela Lansbury's original Manchurian Candidate performance won somewhat decisively over Meryl Streep's in the remake (she took 74% of the vote) it was a real battle in the comments. Said Jono:

"I am surprised this never came up before. I voted for Meryl because Angela will get more votes, and I love both performances. The Demme version is kind of underrated - everyone in it is uniformly great. But the original with Angela is impeccable."

Review: The Mountain Between Us

by Eric Blume

I know what you’re thinking:  you’ve watched the trailer for The Mountain Between Us, the new movie where Kate Winslet and Idris Elba are stranded in the mountains together after a plane crash.  And since you’re a smart moviegoer, you probably thought, 'okay the trailer looks a little bit terrible, but it’s Kate!  And Idris!  They’re so sexy and talented!  Surely the movie itself can’t be that bad?'

I’m sad to report, it truly is...

Click to read more ...

Actress Chart Updates: Kate Winslet is Buzzing

Wonder Wheel continues to gather quite a lot of pre-release hype. It's opening quite late for a Woody Allen picture on December 1st. If you look at the history of his releases they've been summer counter-programming for a very long time now. Midnight in Paris (2011) and Blue Jasmine (2013) have been his biggest Oscar and commercial successes since the 1990s and they both opened in the summer. You have to go all the way back to Match Point (2005) to find a successful December release for the annual Woody Allens and that one came up short of expectations on Oscar nomination morning (1 nomination) despite a lot of pre-release critical buzz.

But Amazon Studios, who plan to distribute Wonder Wheel themselves (a first for them), seem to have an eye on Oscar. Perhaps they've bought into the common (and very wrong) belief that you have to be a December release to catch Oscar's eye? Good luck to them and we hope the movie is as good as we're hearing!

Consider this high praise from Kent Jones who selected the movie to close the New York Film Festival in October:

I’m not quite sure what I expected when I sat down to watch Wonder Wheel, but when the lights came up I was speechless. There are elements in the film that will certainly be familiar to anyone who knows Woody Allen’s work, but here he holds them up to a completely new light. I mean that literally and figuratively, because Allen and Vittorio Storaro use light and color in a way that is stunning in and of itself but also integral to the mounting emotional power of the film. And at the center of it all is Kate Winslet’s absolutely remarkable performance—precious few actors are that talented, or fearless.

Now, it's important to note that Kent Jones is the Festival Director and thus has an obligation to promote his festival but still... wouldn't it be wondrous to see Kate rise again after the delicious hint of her full throttle starpower returning via The Dressmaker last year?

UPDATED OSCAR CHARTS
Best Actress - Kate, Emma, and Meryl on the rise
Best Supporting Actress - Holly Hunter securely up top... for now
Foreign Film Chart 1 - Afghanistan to Ethiopia speculation