BAFTA Guru: Tilda & Meryl

Have you heard of the BAFTA Guru initiative? It's a new venture from the British Academy meant to benefit young actors and filmmakers (target market: 18-30) who are just starting out though surely any creative who hasn't yet "made it" (whatever that means) can learn from the people who have. BAFTA Guru interviews stars on their early years in the business and they'll also have lectures from filmmakers. It seems like it's less about practical advice at this point and more about eliptical impressions... early sense of cinema and acting, or anecdotes about lucky breaks. 

Neverthless we love to hear actors talking about their careers. Here's Tilda sharing a moment when she was 11 realizing she was faking emotion (and the mystery that keeps her interested in acting) and Meryl talking about how she got the part in The Deer Hunter.

Meryl Streep's career start suddenly makes so much more sense. Of course DeNiro would go for her admittedly  shameless moment ;) He has the ham actor's spirit himself. 

Love Tilda's bit on what keeps her interested in cinematic performance:

You can never ever know what someone else is really thinking. What they're going to tell you or what they're going to show you may not be everything, you know? There's always a reason to go looking."

Tilda Swinton is endlessly fascinating... as is the art of acting.

Naked Gold Man: Oscar Wears No Watch, But It's All in the Timing

With more and more of the heretofore unseen contenders (Tintin, J Edgar, Young Adult, War Horse, etcetera) beginning to show their goods to tastemakers and balloting voters of various orgs & circles & associations... where to now? Or when to?

Time is a funny thing with Oscar watching. Though the race progresses chronologically in familiar ways each year through its many stages, it's simultaneously a non-linear experience. We're always hopping around in the timeline from the future (What Will Happen on Oscar Nomination Morning? On Oscar Night?) to the past (Statistics, Past Grudges, Happy Memories, The Perennial Subject of "Overdue" and "Momentum" and Over Analysis of Things That Just Happened). Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The time we're very rarely in is the present. If we're in the present at all (wrist check: it's 2:19 PM on 11|06|11 as I begin writing this) it's to take immediate stock of our surroundings  and then suddenly we're gone again. We've either instantly reduced the present to how we predict it will affect the future... or we've turned it into validation of our past biases or predictions.

A hypothetical example now. J Edgar reactions* range from reverential but not unqualified raves to respectful with a heavy cloud of "meh" to plain old "wow, it's just not any good!" thumbs down. Which means...

J. EDGAR is... [check whichever box applies in your hypothetical future tenses]

⎕ Still in key races. It's a biopic by Eastwood.
⌧  Out of the race but for Best Actor because it's that kind of role and he's that kind of star. 
⎕ Going to bomb with Oscar and the public.  

* no, I don't know why some critics have to obey embargoes and some don't.

That's all hypothetical, understood?!?

ACTOR, ACTRESS, and PICTURE past | present | future after the jump.

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Oscar Horrors: The Death-Defying Effects of 'Death Becomes Her'

Oscar Horrors continues...

Here lies...the 1992 Oscar for Visual Effects – err, here he would be lying, lamenting his fate as a reward to the f/x folks behind Batman Returns or Alien 3, had he not been bewitched by Isabella Rossellini's youth potion. Now, he stands immortal on a mantle shared by Ken Ralston, Doug Chiang, Tom Woodruff Jr. and Douglas Smythe, who brought you the butt-tightening, head-twisting, belly-blasting cinemagic of Robert Zemeckis's Death Becomes Her.

Kurt here. I LOVE this movie – or should I say, I'm "Mad as Hel" for it. Regardless of what it might say about me, it's a major film of my youth. Prepping for this post, I planned to just skip around and watch the expensive effects scenes, but by the time a grossly overweight and psychotically vengeful Goldie Hawn was twisting her hankie and growling through gritted teeth, "I want to talk about Madeline Ashton," I was hooked yet again and watched the entire thing. Flaws be damned, Death Becomes Her is so funny and so cleanly paced. There's hardly a wasted moment. It's packed with great sequences (such as the tongue-in-cheek imagined plot in which Hawn's Helen Sharp tells Bruce Willis's Ernest Menville how they're going to drug and kill Meryl Streep's Madeline), but what it's most remembered for are its nifty visual tricks, which support the crimes-against-nature moral by serving up the comic mutilation of two A-List actresses' undead bodies.

The film's centerpiece scene is one that sees all secrets revealed. After being pushed down a marble staircase by Ernest, an incident that twists her into a pretzel and makes a periscope of her head and neck, a pulseless Madeline takes her rage out on Helen, whose gut she blows a hole in with a double-barrel shotgun. When Helen stands up, it's clear both women have drunk the neon pink Kool-Aid, which gives eternal life, for better or worse. What follows is a shovel duel that, for me, is quite iconic, beginning with the immortal line, "On guard – bitch!"

In general, I'm no more easily surprised than the next seasoned moviegoer, but when it comes to visual effects, I do tend to be a "how'd they do that?" kind of person. For example, even looking back at a film from nearly 20 years ago (wow), I'm not sure how that Oscar-crowned quartet was able to seamlessly present Hawn with a dinner-plate-sized hole in her mid-section, through which you can clearly see the rest of the scenery. At one point during the duel, Helen sits down on a couch that's been speared with a broken shovel handle, and she lets the handle poke through her new orifice. There's a flash where you can see the handle nudge the edge of the hole. Streep's rubbery neck is one thing, but how'd they do that?

If you ask me, the true visual effects of Death Becomes Her are Hawn and Streep themselves, which sounds like a gooey cliché, but never, ever have these two ladies looked more breathtaking than they do in this movie. Streep was 43, Hawn was 45, and both looked utterly flawless, like they'd never passed age 32. The irony, of course, is that watching this movie now gives you a sting that validates Rossellini's rants about "life's cruel curse," and reminds of how even stunning actresses are slave to the ticking clock. Which is certainly not to say that time hasn't been kind to both ladies (it has), but you can't help but wonder if, when they revisit Death Becomes Her, they wish they had just a couple drops of that pink stuff.

"Do you remember where you parked the car?"

Related Posts
Oscar Horrors - Poltergeist, The Birds, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby and more...
She's "Mad" at "Hel" and She's Not Going To Streep It Anymore - Nathaniel on Meryl Streep's sudden swerve towards comedy in the 90s and the many joys of Death Becomes Her.
Great Moments In Screen Bitchery #701 - 'I can see right through you!' 

Q&A: Ryan's Harem, a SMG Triplet, & Streep/Close Duet.

Because I am super late in this week's (er.. last week's Q&A column) I'm answering more questions than usual. So let's get right to it. 

Ed: After Michelle Williams and Evan Rachel Wood, which actress under 30 would you love to see Ryan Gosling falling in love in the big screen?

I've been joking with friends (offscreen) that Ryan Gosling has basically made it his goal to bang every hot future Oscar winner in Hollywood (onscreen): Rachel, Evan, Kiki, Michelle, Carey, Emma. He's the envy of every straight and/or actressexual moviegoer out there. So pretty soon he'll have to get around to ANNE HATHAWAY, right? I'd be interested to see what he'd be like paired with Andrea Riseborough, Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood), and... Oooh... totally random also small screen that needs to be bigger: Katee Sackhoff! She's 31 (Ryan's age) but she never gets good roles despite so much screen presence and I'm imagining that they'd completely burn holes in the celluloid if paired. (Unless they were shot digitally of course.)

Andrew K: I've seen you mention, in passing, that X actor should campaign in leading instead of supporting and although you're usually referring to the despicable nature of category fraud I'm curious as to whether or not you consider a Leading Oscar superior to a Supporting One.

I do not. And I don't think anyone else would either if it wasn't so often used as a demotion just to get a nomination or statue for the big stars. But the combination of egregious widely-accepted category fraud, the use of supporting statues to honor novelty acts or entire movies instead of performances (you all know what I'm talking about)  and the natural human tendency to think being a movie star (i.e. lead) is better than being a character actor (i.e. supporting) have only strengthened this belief that a supporting Oscar is an inferior prize. An Oscar is an Oscar if you ask me.

Julian: Christina Ricci, under-rated or over-rated? 

Depends on who you're talking to. I'd say early Christina is underrated and contemporary Christina is overrated. I mean it when I say she should have three Oscar nominations already: Addams Family Values (1993 -- not joking), The Ice Storm (1997) and The Opposite of Sex (1998). She's still totally watchable and charismatic but there's some missing ingredient lately. Black Snake Moan seemed like such an ideal opportunity to wow again but she didn't quite elevate it. In Pan Am she just seems like window dresssing. Adorable and pretty and funny window dressing yes... but not much more. It seems weird to hire her and then give all the good storylines to the lesser known actresses in that show? 

Daniel: What´s your favorite musical? And song in a musical?

My favorite musical is West Side Story which had its 50th anniversary this weekend and I was so stressed out I forgot to celebrate it godddddddamnit. I've long thought about doing a top ten favorite song performances in musicals but I'm not sure I'd ever be able to narrow it down. It depends on the mood...

favored songs, TV soaps, and a Streep/Close switcheroo after the jump.

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Curio: Meryl, 30 Years Ago

Alexa here. Digging through my magazine collection (I'm not a hoarder, really) I came upon this Meryl Streep-covered issue of Rolling Stone from October 1981, back when Annie Leibovitz was photographing for the magazine, and when Meryl was promoting French Lieutenant's Woman.  She was a mere 32 years old then, younger than Kate Winslet is today.  There are a lot of choice bits in the interview inside, confirming again that she is just, well, the best and most endearing of them all.

On her method (or lack thereof):

I don't have any method. People who have est, or people who have other means of relaxation, feel sure they have 'The Way' tucked inside their scripts. I don't have that. I sort of go at everything from a different direction.

On fame:

Put yourself in this position. You're passing the newsstand at Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, and there's your face on the cover of a magazine. And one week later, you're on the subway, and there's that cover, with your face, on the floor. Somebody's probably pissed on it. It's an immediate sense of recognition of what this is.

On having just starred in Alice in Concert, a musical version of Alice in Wonderland, at the Public Theater: 

I had just done three movies, and I needed to jump and leap and feel the way I see my little boy play. And I wanted to forget the way I look, to become un-self-conscious, to have that freedom children have when they're doing something in the middle of a room full of adults looking at them - and they just totally don't care. Sure, maybe I can go to an analyst to try not to be self-conscious, but it never occurred to me to do that.

On her choices:

This is a particularly unadventurous time intellectually and artistically, even in terms of entertainment. And I feel worried, because my livelihood is threatened because I'm not interested in doing most of the films that are being made. People think you make choices based on some array of characters that are placed in front of you. Well, it isn't that way. There are so few beautifully written scripts that if there's something with any promise, you latch on. You pay them to do it.