What do the Oscar gowns of the past 22 years tell us?

It's something like an urban legend that actresses only wear gold to the Oscar ceremony if they think they are going to win. But check out this frankly amazing infographic from US Dish for lots of other interesting statistics regarding our favorite public thing (Oscars) and one of our secret favorite things: colorology.

What pleasurable research hours they must have put in! They've broken down Supporting Actress and Actress gowns from 1990-2011 ceremonies to determine the top trends for the nominees based on designer, color, dress style, and hairdo. And they've crunched those numbers further to show which elements are most likely to appear with winners and losers. So, for instance, if you really really really want to win you should be wearing gold with your hair up in a floor length gown designed by Gautier. Or at the very least updo, floor-length, brown Randolph Duke!

IT'S SCIENCE!

It won't surprise you to hear that of the 200+ dresses of the nominees, black was worn most often (28% of the time) but I was mildly surprised to see that red was down in 4th place (8%).

I only wish they would have had a Streep Sidebar, since she's there the most frequently and it's actually really hard to find EVERY Oscar dress worn by one specific actress over the years. Not that I've tried b... okay, I've tried. Don't judge.

SAG Ensemble Flashback: "The Birdcage!" & Oscar Trivia

With the Screen Actors Guild Awards less than a month away, let's look back at the history of our favorite SAG Category, "Outstanding Performance by a Cast" i.e. Best Ensemble. Though the Guild had long been in the business of lifetime achievement awards, they didn't hold their first full fledged awards ceremony until 1995 for the 1994 film year. That first SAG year did not include an Ensemble movie prize which is strange since they handed out TV ensemble prizes from the start so it's not like they hadn't dreamt up that honor! The next year Apollo 13, which was something of a frontrunner for Oscar's Best Picture prize (it eventually lost), won the inaugural ensemble prize. It beat a field that included only one other Oscar Best Picture nominee (Sense & Sensibility)... a percentage ratio you rarely see today.

At the third annual ceremony the award went to the (thankfully) dated gay marriage comedy The Birdcage (1996), based on the 1978 French classic and three-time Oscar nominee La Cage Aux Folles. The films farcical comedy emerges when a gay couple (Robin Williams & Nathan Lane) try to fool a conservative couple (Gene Hackman & Dianne Wiest) into thinking of them as a "reputable" traditional family so that the son can marry the other couple's daughter (Dan Futterman and Calista Flockhart). Everything goes wrong over dinner as the gay couple has a terrible time keeping up the facade.

This is so Guatemala. They put hardboiled things in everything down there. Because, you know, chicken is so important to them. it's their only real currency. A woman is said to be worth her weight in hens and a man's wealth is measured by the size of his cock."

Will you excuse me?"

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So... Meryl is Really Campaigning This Time, Eh?

The Diva Wears Prada Sweaters and Jeans for her TV profileDid any of you catch Meryl on "60 Minutes" on Sunday? She got one quarter of those minutes. Someone else noted this on Twitter, not I, but it's wonderful to imagine her prep work for these interviews. 'Oh, 60 Minutes is here? I'll just run a comb through my hair.' 

My favorite bits from the 15 minutes

• On the realness of her work becoming the characters: "I'm not insane. I do know that I'm acting!"
• The moment where she "acts" her own voice to demonstrate that she and Thatcher both have "light" voices and you need to take them deeper for dramatic resonance or to be taken seriously. She was also the morning announcer at her high school so THAT VOICE was always drawing attention to itself.

• The actreses she loved when growing up, were not contemporaries but classic movie queens: Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck. 

I like girls with attitude, you know? Moxie. There's an old word."

She also talks about the strength of women repeatedly and is obviously proud of her track record at working with female directors (we have some names for your wishlist Streep!).

• Her flirty "not to me" when asked if the legendary Joe Papp was a taskmaster on stage.
• I didn't know this but during that first flush of stardom one summer post Deer Hunter, she was working on Kramer vs. Kramer and Woody Allen's Manhattan during the day and then playing "Taming of the Shrew" at night on stage! Crazy.

• That they compare Streep to Royalty. So this here then is one of America's royal families. The Gummers.

Mamie (28), Henry (32), Grace (25), Luisa (20) looking up at mom & dad: Meryl and Don

FAV QUOTES, IRON LADY, and OSCARs AFTER THE JUMP.

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Burning Questions: Can You Skip the Precursors?

Michael C here to take stock of the performers left in the dust by the recent rush of precursors. 

With the announcement of the Golden Globes and SAG nominations behind us the first round of the elaborate Kabuki dance known as Precursor Season is concluded. A week ago we could let our imaginations run wild with the possibilities of our favorite performances making good. Now if an actor hasn’t heard his or her name called by either group? Well, as George C. Scott once said to Peter Sellers, their chances have been quickly reduced to a very low order of probability.

So how low is low? What are the chances of a performance getting nominated without a Globe or SAG nomination? 

Approximately 1 in 20. That's what my remarkably un-scientific research tells me. For this I took a look at the last 10 years. If you go back too far the stats become less relevant. Plus, 10 is a nice round number and if I wanted to do complicated math I wouldn’t be a movie blogger. So, 10 years = 200 nominated performances. and out of those only 12 failed to receive either a SAG or GG nod first. They are:

Nominated Without Precursor LoveLead Actor

• Javier Bardem – Biutiful
• Tommy Lee Jones – In the Valley of Elah
• Clint Eastwood - Million Dollar Baby 

Lead Actress

• Laura Linney – The Savages
• Samantha Morton – In America

Supporting Actor

• Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road
• Alan Alda – The Aviator
• Djimon Hounsou – In America 
• William Hurt - A History of Violence 

Supporting Actress

• Maggie Gyllenhaal – Crazy Heart
• Marcia Gay Harden – Mystic River
• Shohreh Aghdashloo – House of Sand and Fog

12 out of 200 is 6% meaning roughly 1 in 20, or about one a year on average. So contenders have their work cut out for them, or at least their publicists do, if they want to get a ninth inning rally going. 

How to best spot those contenders that are flying under the radar? I admit this might be a Beautiful Mind-like exercise in finding patterns where none exist, but here are the lessons I can draw from recent history, plus the 2011 contenders who may benefit:

Coattails
5 out of 7 of the surprise supporting nominations were for films that also landed nominations in the lead categories, and one of them - Michael Shannon - came close. Only Tommy Lee Jones represented his film’s sole nomination so you need the film to do some of the work for you.
Advantage: Carey Mulligan, Ezra Miller, Judy Greer

Playing Favorites
None of the surprise names in the lead categories were receiving their first nomination. In the big categories don't underestimate the proven vote-getters.
Advantage: Woody Harrelson, Ryan Gosling, Michael Shannon

Category Confusion
A few of these unexpected names were the result of a slot opening up when supporting contenders like Kate Winslet jumped to lead.
Advantage: Nobody. Category placement seems pretty solid this year, no? 

December
Of the 12 curveball nominations listed above only 3 (Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt and Tommy Lee Jones) were from films released prior to Thanksgiving, and none were released prior to September.  Once voters get to the bottom of those screeners currently piling up next to the TV there is bound to be a late-breaking favorite or two.
Advantage: Gary Oldman, Max Von Sydow, Patton Oswalt

Nail It
Of course, when all is said and done it doesn’t hurt to deliver a performance that absolutely tears the house down. I can recall the impact in the theater when Michael Shannon tore through his brief screen time in Revolutionary Road like a wild animal. When that kind of electricity is coming off the screen prognosticators can be forgiven for keeping that person in their predictions no matter what the odds.
Advantage: Vanessa Redgrave, Oliva Colman, Andy Serkis

So if you want to keep rooting for your favorite underdog, there's your sliver of hope. And personally, I think I will keep on clinging to my hopes of a groundswell for Bruce Greenwood's performance in Meek's Cutoff regardless of any logic to the contrary.

Is there an important angle on this I missed? Let me know in the comments. You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film

Q&A Crumbs: Best of Best Supporting Actor + Legendary Why?

If the Q&A column were a TV series it'd be one of those painfully confusing ones that goes off the air unexpectedly only to return with 2 hour specials and extra webisodes and then go on hiatus again. I can't control it! It controls me. I've already answered small screen questions, and Thursday's column was on movie etiquette, crowd reactions, and purposefully bad acting. So here's are a handful of Q&A crumbs that I felt the need to answer and now we are dunzo until the next round. Whew.

As ever, I love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments. The more the merrier when it comes to movie discussions, don't you think?

MESHI: Are there any legendary performances (like, Vivien Leigh as Scarlet O'Hara-type legendary) that you just don't get what all the fuss is about?

I have a hard time understanding the fuss over Marlon Brando in Last Tango In Paris. To me it feels less Method then Show-Off with no one willing to say, 'pull it back dude. Modulate.' So, no, I don't get that one despite its enormous acclaim. I will entertain the possibility that I saw it when I was too young for it, though.

MARY: What are you most excited for? "Mirror Mirror" or "Snow White and the Huntsman"?

I believe you'll find my answer in if you click on the Snow White tag. I'm pretty good with the tagging at the bottom of each post to make things easy for y'all to investigate topics of interest. Short answer: Hunstman by a country mile on a horse drawn carriage with a bad wheel. 

CAL ROTH: Call the next Oscar winners now in acting now. No guts, no glory. Don't think too much about it. Just say how do you feel about these races.

I hate doing this because it's a lose-lose proposition before nominations are announced. If you're right and you go with the party line (I guess at the moment that's: Clooney & Streep, Redgrave & Plummer) you risk being part of that horrible machine that takes all the fun out of Oscars by making it into one big echo chamber that reenforces lazy voting. If you're right but you appear to be wrong (hmmm: Pitt & Davis* & Spencer & Plummer?) because your answer sounds too "two months ago*" people don't remember and they just think you're not that good at prognosticating. Anyway, i much prefer predicting nominees to predicting winners which is TOTALLY BORING due to the echo chamber... particular in the last stretch when the same 4 people will start winning every award and people will only guess otherwise to have something to write about.

* I often wonder why people have perpetual amnesia about the fact that buzz volumes always rise when a movie opens or start screening (provided it's not bombing) and always subside when it's been out a few months and is "familiar". But... buzz volume levels rise and fall and rise again...and fall again. The only thing that matters is how volumous they are when voting is happening.

SOSUEME: As an avid reader of TFE for the last two years, I finally had my first Nathaniel dream...in it, you were moving to California...obviously, the dream has more to do with me than anyone else, but it got me thinking...would you consider moving to CA to be closer to the industry, the events, possibly more money, or does New York suit you just fine?

I'm happy right here though I'd totally be bi-coastal if I could. Writing can be a lonely activity so you need handy social escapes for sanity. Nearly all of my closest friends live here so I gotta stick around. Plus: New York City needs me ;)  ...most of the Oscar pundits are in Los Angeles but AMPAS is bicoastal!

ONE MORE.... SPOTLIGHT QUESTION!

Best Ever Consecutive Run for Supporting Actor Oscar?

MITCHELL: What do you believe to be the most deserving performance to ever win Best Supporting ACTOR?

This is my least favorite of the four acting categories within Oscar because it seems to have the least correlation to actual quality year after year. For whatever reasons it's more beholden to other Oscar factors that aren't really about the work in question: career honors, which "types" they like, which films they like, fame levels before the nominations. This category is also particularly egregious in terms of category fraud. I mean you could argue that it's been five years since an actual supporting performance won (that'd be Alan Arkin) even though the last four winners were four kinds of miraculous in terms of actual quality [tangent: best run ever in this category if you allow for the fraud!]. Once you remove all the co-leads I think there are a few absolute essentials who not only did inspired work but who elevated already strong films by virtue of their lynchpin contributions to its tone, identity and overall aesthetic punch.

So without pouring over the books for too long I'd say I couldn't really live without Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Joel Grey as "the emcee" in Cabaret (1972), or Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994).

But this list might change on a different day and I can't choose just one! Can you?