Ahead of "The Life Ahead," Actressing in Subtitles in the 2010s

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Cinema legend Sophia Loren makes a potential comeback with this year’s The Life Ahead this Friday on Netflix after more than a decade of career hiatus. Loren made history as the first Oscar winner for a performance not in the English language for 1961’s Italian film Two Women. Her second Best Actress nomination came with 1964’s Marriage Italian Style. If nominated for The Life Ahead, Loren would break the record for the longest gap between nominations with 56 years (though she'd only tie the record for most nominations for subtitled performances since her frequent co-star Marcello Mastroianni holds that record with three).

Loren is part of the longstanding tradition of Best Actress nominations for performances not in the English language (it happens far more often there than in other acting categories). Whether through sheer talent, strategic campaigning, and/or the dearth of quality roles for actresses in Hollywood, these performances overcame the one-inch barrier of subtitles and ended up with Academy recognition...

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Inception's dreamy femme fatale

by Cláudio Alves

It's a bit strange for me to be writing a celebratory piece about Inception on the movie's 10th anniversary. I've always considered the picture to be a tad overrated, undeserving of the titles of life-changing masterpiece or perfect action movie that I've seen people bestow upon it. Aside from a deadening first hour of exposition, my main issue has always been a matter of imagination or lack thereof. The world of dreams and the human unconscious is so rich in possibility, that it's disheartening to see Christopher Nolan bend it to fit the model of a heist picture.

Even the set design reflects that. There's much talk of impossible architecture, but what we get is modernist lines as far as the eye can see, bellicose fortresses and concrete cityscapes without a hint of surrealism. Notoriously, Satoshi Kon's Paprika, an anime hallucination with a lot of similarities to the Nolan blockbuster, is a good example of how the oneiric world of dream-sharing can be used to explode the rules of cinema. Still, has previously stated, this is a celebratory write-up and, while Inception's creative limitations may be frustrating, it would be a lie to say they are devoid of value.

After all, the most interesting character in the whole flick is an archetype of crime pictures and film noir. She's a trope, an old character type that has deep roots in men's fear of complicated women. She is Marion Cotillard's Mal…

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Almost There (x 2): Marion Cotillard in "Nine" & "Public Enemies"

by Cláudio Alves

It's become somewhat uncommon for Oscar champions in the acting categories to be a "one and done" type of deal. A good amount of the winners from the past 25 years have either received nominations after their victory or already had them before their golden coronation. All this to say that, after Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Academy Award for her work in La Vie en Rose, it felt like it was just a matter of time before she'd be in another Oscar lineup. That follow-up nod would come until 2014 for Two Days, One Night but, before that, there were a couple of failed Oscar bids to account for.

Previously in this series, we talked about her 2012 Best Actress snub for Rust & Bone. Now, let's look further back, to the Best Supporting Actress race of 2009...

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The New Classics: Two Days, One Night

by Michael Cusumano

I become invested in the struggles of Sandra in Two Days, One Night in a way I rarely do with other protagonists. 

The Dardenne’s unadorned style combined with the rawness of Marion Cotillard’s performance convince me completely of the reality of what’s unfolding, and I monitor Sandra like a friend for whom I am gravely concerned, inspecting every downward glance for hints of an impending crack up. When she teeters on the brink of a deep abyss after the film’s brutal first act, I can intuit that she is probably one more setback away from surrendering to her darkest impulses. The film doesn't need to say so...

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Tweetweek: Special Gallows Humor Episode

This message popped up on Twitter and we all had a good laugh about it. Niche humor for Oscar watchers only but something might be wrong with Twitter's notification algorithms.

They are??? pic.twitter.com/5RRsUkMzwW

— Kevin Jacobsen (@Kevin_Jacobsen) April 24, 2020

More after the jump including Mad Men, proprietary feelings about Keanu Reeves, a Nicole Kidman ditty, Simu Liu's quarantine and lots of gallows humor because that's the world we're living in...

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