Everyone knows that Meryl Streep is Oscar's all time acting nomination queen. This year the queen received her 20th nomination, this time for playing the worst opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins. But Streep's astonishing numbers get a little less intimidating if you break them up into supporting and lead categories. So let's do that to place Streep in a slightly different context in the history of Oscar'ed actresses.
We'll ignore wins in this particular exercize. Streep isn't #1 in the supporting sweepstakes, but she remains #1 by a very comfortable margin for leading actresses. More details after the jump...
"The Furniture" is our new design series. Here's Daniel Walber...
The Lady in the Van begins with a bloody hit-and-run accident. The title van-driving lady, played by Maggie Smith, collides with a young man and leaves him for dead. On the lam, bound by necessity to a vehicle that may also be a murder weapon, she finds her way to a quiet neighborhood full of artists and bourgeois intellectuals.
Then it turns into a delightful comedy about the social anxieties of Alan Bennett.
It’s a bit abrupt, to be honest. And it may take a fair while to warm up to the neurotic, Adaptation.-style doppelgangers that represent the split personalities of the playwright protagonist. The vans themselves, though, quite effectively capture a much more gradual transition, one that charts Mary/Margaret’s arc with care. What begins as an all-in-one murder weapon and crime scene becomes a home. [More...]
(How did I miss this photo last month?) Amuse us by adding a caption or dialogue to this photo of Dame Maggie Smith and Vanessa Redgrave taken a short time ago.
Team Experience is celebrating Valentines Day with favorite love scenes. Here's Lynn Lee on an 80s classic
Great Moments in Screen Kisses #20, Julian Sands and Helena Bonham CarterEveryone who loves this film remembers The Kiss. It’s the moment proper Edwardian girl Lucy Honeychurch (a very young Helena Bonham-Carter), vacationing in Italy, discovers romantic passion for the first time. She doesn’t know it yet, but the odd free-thinking young man she’s only recently met (Julian Sands) is her soulmate. He knows it, though.
Besides being (literally) storybook-romantic—a sun-drenched poppy field in Italy! lush soprano aria in the background!—the kiss is also wreathed in comedy, as the film cuts back and forth between Lucy, wending her way uncertainly towards George, and her fussy chaperone Charlotte (Maggie Smith) bonding with another fellow tourist, a hacky romance novelist (Judi Dench), over scandalous love stories before she starts to worry about Lucy. Meanwhile, the Italian driver who led Lucy to George looks on in amusement at what he has wrought. He knows what’s up, his own public display of affection having been previously smacked down by these uptight Brits. But the Kiss will not be denied.
It’s also the kiss that keeps on giving for the rest of the movie. Its memory haunts Lucy during her utter failure of a first kiss with her fiancé, Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis, vying for comic MVP with Maggie Smith), in England. It reappears again at a critical and exquisitely awkward moment as a passage in a terrible romance novel, penned by none other than Charlotte’s novelist friend, that the clueless Cecil just happens to read out loud to none other than Lucy and George. The tension that was simmering since George’s reentry into Lucy’s life then comes to full boil, precipitating a chain of events that eventually forces out in the open what Lucy’s been denying for too long: she and George belong together.
Imelda Staunton. Photographed by David Rose. [Source]Here's Murtada on his favorite subject; British ladies of a certain age who delight on screen and stage.
Happy New Year! Some Brits usher in the new year celebrating their newly bestowed knighthoods. This year Queen Elizabeth II honors, among others, Idris Elba and David Oyelowo. There are different designations to the honor. For example Imelda Staunton became a CBE i.e. not yet a Dame but well on her way. It’s obvious The Queen hasn’t ventured out to the theater in 2015 or Staunton would be Dame Squared for her triumphant Mama Rose alone.
This year’s newly minted Dames are British TV stalwart Barbara Windsor (EastEnders, the Carry On movies) and Welsh stage veteran Sian Phillips (Daniel Day Lewis’ mother in The Age of Innocence), who was once Mrs. Peter O’Toole.
But when we talk dames we mostly talk about the holy trinity who still have vibrant movie careers: Judi, Maggie and Helen. No last names necessary if you say Dame first. Oscars and other awards, big successes on the boards on both sides of the Atlantic and long thriving careers for all three.
But who is your favorite? To help you decide let’s dig a bit deeper. [More...]
Monday, February 6, 2017 at 1:01PM 
