Happy Nicole Kidman Day !

Proposal: Since Australia (grew up there, family and friends) and the US (born in Honolulu, lives in Nashville) share the one and only Nicole Kidman with citizenship and residence, a national holiday won't do. We propose an International Nicole Kidman Day, each June 20th to mark the birthday of one of the big screen's bravest and best and most beautiful.

Herewith a few lists to mark the day...

SIGNATURE WORK
The roles with which she'll arguably always be most associated

1. Moulin Rouge! (2001) -which speaks to her bonafide movie-star charisma
2. The Hours (2002) -which boldly underlined her cool (divisive) persona and intelligence
3. To Die For (1995) -her breakthrough and which initially and ungenerously clung to her rapid rise as a star on another star's arm

BRAVEST PERFORMANCE

1. The Paperboy (2012) - the psychic sex, the skanky past her prime makeup, the death wish
2. Birth (2004) - "you're a little liar, aren't you?"
3. Dogville (2003) -Here are some chalk lines, hyper stylized dialogue, and precious tchotchkes. Action!

SEXIEST PERFORMANCE

1. Moulin Rouge! (2001)
2. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
3. Batman Forever (1995)
4. To Die For (1995)
5. The Paperboy (2012)

FUNNIEST PERFORMANCE

1. To Die For (1995)
2. Moulin Rouge! (2001)
3. Herself... on talk shows

MOST AWARDS LOVE

1. The Hours (2002) - Oscar & Globe & BAFTA & Silver Bear wins, SAG nom
2. Moulin Rouge! (2001) - Globe & MTV win, Oscar, SAG & AACTA noms
3. To Die For (1995) - Globe & BFCA win, BAFTA nom
4. Rabbit Hole (2010) - Oscar, Globe & SAG noms
5. The Paperboy (2012) - Globe & SAG & AACTA noms

IT'S ALL IN A NAME 

1. "Grace" 3 characters: The Others (1995), Dogville (2003), Grace of Monaco (2014)
2. "Isabel" 2 characters: Bewitched (2005) and Portrait of a Lady (1996)
3. "Julia" 2 characters: Wills & Burke (1985) and The Peacemaker (1997)

BIGGEST GLOBAL HITS
*Movies that were far far more successful overseas than in the US

1. The Golden Compass (2005) $372* 
2. Batman Forever (1995) $336
3. Paddington (2015) $259*
4. Just Go With It (2011) $214
5. Australia (2008) $211*
6. The Others (2001) $209
7. Moulin Rouge! (2001) $179*
8. Cold Mountain (2003) $173
9. Eyes Wide Shut (1999) $162* 
10. Days of Thunder (1990) $157 

MOST COMMON ONSCREEN PROFESSIONS

1. Actress - 4 roles: Grace of Monaco, Nine, Bewitched, Moulin Rouge!)
2. Writer - 4 roles: Margot at the Wedding, The Hours, Hemingway & Gelhorn, Genius)
3. Reluctant Sexworker (or thereabouts) - 3 roles: Moulin Rouge!'s whore, Birthday Girl's mail order bride, Far and Away's temporary burlesque dancer)
4. Psychiatrist - 2 roles: The Invasion, Batman Forever
5. Boss Lady Who Moonlights in Kidnapping - 2 roles: The Golden Compass, Paddington

MOST FREQUENT CO-STARS

1. Tom Cruise (Marriage + 3 films: Far and Away, Days of Thunder, Eyes Wide Shut)
2. Colin Firth (3 films: Before I Go To Sleep, The Railway Man, and the forthcoming Genius)
   [tied with] David Wenham (3 films: Australia, Moulin Rouge! and the forthcoming Lion) 
3. Jude Law (2 films: Cold Mountain, and the forthcoming Genius)
   [tied with] Ben Mendelsohn (2 films: Australia, Trespass), Daniel Craig (2 films: The Invasion, The Golden Compass), and Dianne Wiest (2 films: Practical Magic and Rabbit Hole)

WHAT WE'D LIKE TO GIVE HER FOR HER BIRTHDAY

1. More of whatever makes her happy
2. One more classic as beloved as Moulin Rouge! or as Oscar-honored as The Hours or as widely argued over / prestigey as Eyes Wide Shut or as audience-friendly as The Others (we're not picky/greedy... any of those will do)
3. A project to do with her bestie Naomi Watts. It's been since Flirting (1991) c'mon... 
4. A project to do with Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge!) or Stephen Dillane (The Hours) because MY GOD THE CHEMISTRY in both of those cases. Why hasn't she worked with either again? 

Naturally, in the comments you'll want to share your five favorite things about this goddess and what you'd give her for her birthday

For Amélie, Silence is Golden

For The Lusty Month of May, we're looking at sex scene each night. Here's Denny...

Our favorite little Parisian pixie, Amélie Poulain, lives a quiet life. She amuses herself by posing silly questions...such as: How many couples are having sex at this very moment? 

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Black History Month: Monster's Ball and Representation

We were just wrapping up Black History Month when I heard from longtime reader/commenter Philip Harville who wanted to discuss Monster's Ball (2001). I wasn't touching that one with a ten foot pole (!) but here's Philip with a guest column on this perpetual hot potato. -Editor

As we know, black films are hard to come by and good black films can be even harder to come by.  This raises the question of what exactly a black film is. Is it simply a film that focuses on black characters? Or do we need to also have a black crew telling the story? The conversations unraveling from that thought are endless, but watching a certain film recently got me thinking. Monster’s Ball’s Leticia (Halle Berry) really suffers from a white male perspective behind the camera. The film gained a wide audience crowning Halle Berry as the first black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar, but did it create the conversation it should have? Good black films aren’t exactly churned out with the frequency of superhero movies (or Tyler Perry movies), so a flawed complicated film is a gift in its own right.

The film isn’t set in a definitive year, though it seems to be in a time where lynching and protesting were out of style, and casual racism has become the norm. We see the generational divide on the issue between the three males in the central family. [More...]

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Tim's Toons: Animated also-rans

Tim here. In his official Oscar predictions today, Nathaniel left out Best Animated Feature, but no matter. By this point, you'd have to hunt a while to find anybody predicting a winner other than How to Train Your Dragon 2, with a few Big Hero 6 holdouts just trying to pretend that things will be interesting. (Me, I'm thinking that we're about to see an unexpected explosion of write-in votes to make sure that Mr. Peabody & Sherman can finally get its due).

That level of predictability almost always ends up settling into this particular race (last year was an exception), which can make it hard, sometimes, to recall that the category has had a purpose beyond annually recognizing that yep, Pixar sure does make some pretty fine movies. So instead of prepping for Oscar weekend by celebrating winners, I want to pay tribute to some losers. The beautiful likes of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea are (probably) about the join the 36 films to have so far been nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar and lost out, and that's some fine company to be in. Here are some of my personal favorites.

The Triplets of Belleville (2003; lost to Finding Nemo)
Even after 11 years, the jazzy "Bellville Rendez-vous" remains one of the most memorable original songs in 21st Century filmmaking (it also lost a competitive Oscar). It's a brilliant component of a movie that I'm generally inclined to regard with fetishistic adoration, and will start recommending to people on even the slightest pretext. Like this one, for example. It's one of the most essential animated features of the last 15 years, easily, combining warped slapstick humor with an elegiac sense of melancholy, expressed in a scratchy graphic style that turns everyone into a grotesque caricature while given all of them full, vibrant personalities. Not bad for a film with less than a dozen spoken words in its entire running time.

Persepolis (2007; lost to Ratatouille)
Marjane Satrapi's adaptation of her own graphic novel memoir is a little redundant, perhaps. But taken on its own terms, this story of life during the Iranian Revolution, told in soft lines and crisp black-and-white, is terrific animated cinema both aesthetically and politically. Overtly feminist stories and animation for an appreciative adult audience are both rare, combining them is rarer, and using it all in the service of putting a human face to life in Iran that doesn't pander or beg for special pleading makes this one as bold as any animated film I can ever name. And yet it's so sardonic and brisk that it never feels capital-I Important in a boring way. A total success that deserves infinitely more attention than it's ever received in the U.S.

Kung Fu Panda (2008; lost to WALL·E)
When the first How to Train Your Dragon came out in 2010, it was greeted with critical hosannas as the movie that finally proved that DreamWorks Animation could make a movie that as every bit as good as its best competition. But then, the studio had already proven that with this brightly-colored, poppy tribute to Asian landscape paintings and schlocky '70s kung-fu movies. It's silly as hell, and the jokes have all the smirking anachronism of DreamWorks at its worst. But it's also funny and disarmingly sweet, and the company's fixation on all-celebrity voice casting never worked out as well as it did here, with Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, and Ian McShane among the many familiar faces we don't see.

The Princess and the Frog (2009; lost to Up)
The financial success of the following year's Tangled immediately swallowed up the small splash made by Disney's first-ever animated feature centered on an African-American protagonist. And then the behemoth of 2013's Frozen left it almost totally forgotten as the first attempt in a generation to make a classic Disney Princess musical. Neither of which is at all a fair fate for an earnest attempt at correcting the company's long history of representational yuckiness with a warm suite of Randy Newman songs, top-notch voice acting, and beautifully old-school 2-D animation. It's a sop to the studio's fans, sure, but as a fan, I am greatly pleased to have it in my life even now, far more than either of its bigger successors.

What are your favorite nominees to have missed on on the Best Animated Feature Oscar?

Posterized: Reese Witherspoon

Pink is also her signature colorWe haven't done a Reese episode of Posterized yet?

I OBJECT!

America's one time sweetheart (we go through them rapidly) is currently courting hearts again, albeit in much thornier and more adult settings. She's uptight and deskbound, if not quite straight-laced, as Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball in Inherent Vice and wandering and raggedy as the grieving Cheryl Strayed on the Pacific Crest Trail in Wild. The latter is expected to bring her Nomination #2 for Best Actress (more on that category tomorrow) and the former reunites her with Joaquin Phoenix, who helped her to Oscar win #1 in Walk the Line.

Since her Oscar win, Reese has been doing her own sort of wandering... away from the A list. Not really -- you can't really rub that off you when you're as charismatic as she! But a wandering away from something. The films weren't grabbing people and Reese didn't seem as dazzingly invested. Apparently she'll be discussing her career's most quiet period tomorrow night on 60 Minutes claiming that post-Phillipe-divorce (2008)...

I spent a few years just trying to feel better ... you can't really be creative when you feel like your brain is scrambled eggs, 

Hence this year's "Reeseurgence" which had a wee preamble with the indies  Mud and The Devil's Knot last year. Wild went wide this weekend adding over 900 screens (I love it and hope you'll go see it) and it seems like a great time to glance back as Reese makes such a memory-filled trek onscreen...

HOW MANY HAVE YOU SEEN? 
Reese's filmography in chronological poster form after the jump 

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