Monday, October 17, 2011 at 1:30PM 
As a child I loved to climb everywhere. I'll let the psychiatrists decide why. Maybe I wanted to escape my time? Maybe I wanted to see the world from a different perspective? I was an explorer at heart? Who knows and who cares."
Oscars (00s), documentaries Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 7:08PM 
Ten years ago tomorrow, the bad cop / good cop drama Training Day debuted in theaters. It was a relatively inauspicious debut (for our purposes) in that, though the film was an instant hit, Oscar fanatics weren't really breathlessly awaiting its debut like it was a 'prestige picture' per se. The film surprised and wound up with two nominations for its leading actors, one in lead (Denzel Washington) and one in supporting (Ethan Hawke) because that's how Oscar do.
All it took was a couple of awesome soundbites and a sense that Denzel Washington was peaking as a movie star with that loss for Malcolm X still a regularly discussed Academy embarrassment and *BOOM* Julia Roberts was all
I love my life!"
.... and it was Oscar Number Two for Denzel!
Were you watching?
King Kong ain't got shit on him.
Oscar #2 let Denzel into the slim ranks of actors with two competitive gold men. Here's the complete list in the order it occurred (because I like to make things difficult for myself).
* They won again after this for a total of 3 Oscars (except Hepburn the all time leader with 4 competitive acting wins)
The thing I find most interesting about seeing them all together like this is that it instantly reveals that if someone is going to win a second Oscar it usually happens quickly after the first... 3 to 6 years being common. (which immediately makes you wonder about people by the name of Helen Mirren, Marion Cotillard, Javier Bardem and Kate Winslet). The list also shows us that the late 1930s were just brutal for actresses whose names weren't Bette or Luise, that the 1970s were the most friendly towards previous winners and that 1938 and 1994 are strange anomalies, years in which three of the four Oscar winners had already won gold. It's only so long before we have a year with all four since there's a first time for everything.
Third time acting wins have only happened in 1940, 1968, 1974 & 1997
Only four people have ever won more than two acting Oscars and the last to join the club was Jack Nicholson in 1997 for As Good As It Gets. The universe assumes that Meryl Streep will be the fifth, but will she? Quite a few two-timers are still working.
Answer Me These Questions Three
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:00PM 
This past summer we polled you once or twice a month about the Best Actress characters that you think of the most often from the past 50 years of the cinema taking us all the way from 1961 through to this past spring's Oscars for the films of 2010! With the new fall season of The Film Experience kicking off and the Oscar films arriving, I thought we'd take one last look back at that polling.
It was quite fun for little OCD actressexual me to peruse and "sort" and all of that in excel. If you're OCD like me and want to know how I compiled the chart, which is listed in alphabetical order below and pictured in slide show format in chronological order, there's more information after the list. I'd love to say that we'd do 100 articles to celebrate (one for each of your fav' fictionalized ladies) but that would be an insane thing to promise. But we'll use the chart for inspirational somethings! Give these characters a big round of applause for all their years of entertaining service.
By all means if you haven't seen any of the 98 films represented, make it a viewing priority.
Your 100 Most Memorable Best Actress "Characters"
50 Years | 100 Greats (1961-2010)
List presented visually (chronologically) and in text form (alphabetically) after the jump. Plus: Statistics!
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 3:17PM 
As you know if you're paying attention (there will be a quiz) I've been offline for 72 hours. GASP! So if some of the following links are GASP 72 hours old, you will forgive. For the record I highly recommend spending 72 hours in a cabin in the woods without internet, tv or cel phones (provided there are no serial killers nearby). Highly relaxing!
Let's catch up with pieces/stories you (by which I mean "I") might have missed!
The Film Doctor on Contagion and the "die-off" scenario.
Go Fug Yourself succinct funny snappy boring Brangelina
Blog Stage will Broadway actress Mary Farber be a new SNL cast member?
Towleroad the continuing antics of James Franco. This time painted pink for Woooo mag.
My New Plaid Pants Kate Winslet... and Elizabeth Taylor
Natasha VC remember a time via Pauline Kael when Nicolas Cage was sorta wonderful. I saw Moonstruck again recently and it was just ♥♥♥♥... well that's amore!
Empire Online Hugh Grant joins the already gargantuan name cast of Cloud Atlas which, if you'll recall, already has three directors. It sounds like a mess but Empire is feeling hopeful.
Awards Daily on Oscar and sex. Do they really take issue with explicit films? (in short: yes)
IndieWire Remember when I made that brief Oscar prediction about Shailene Woodley in The Descendants and people made fun? Well, her buzz isn't boiling or anything but it is simmering ever since Telluride.
WSJ Asia Scene Deanie Ip (A Simple Life) who just won the Venice Volpi Cup for Best Actress on why she took a long break from acting...
I think nobody wants me, because I’m very difficult.
Towleroad Clint Eastwood kicks off the UnOfficial (but not for long) Armie Hammer Best Supporting Actor campaign for J. Edgar while Hammer boasts of his own chest hair
The Telegraph interviews the ascendant Ryan Gosling
If I'm still acting at 46, I'll be surprised.
Say it ain't so. Of course it isn't. I wish I had kept a spreadsheet of all the alarmist things celebrities have said over the years because no one ever remembers... including me. As I typed this sentence I was about to share this anecdote about what Matt Damon said this one time in a magazine about making ridiculous amounts of money and how that would mean he would... but I've already forgotten what he said he wouldn't do anymore. It was something about quitting or not doing any press. Something silly. Because of course he went on to make gazillions and still works in front of the camera and plays to it in interviews.
Today's Must See Video
Madonna on the whole silly Venice Film Festival loathing hydranges "story"
There really is nothing better than Madonna with a sense of humor about herself. It's always been her saving grace and if she doesn't locate it as often as she once did, at least it's still there! And it's great timing since she's hitting the publicity circuit with such gusto. Two of my friends/acquaintances, fraquaintances? even interviewed her: Peter and Scott. I can't imagine how either got through it. Honestly, I can't.
Finally...
if you're as interested in editing as I am, you might enjoy this very thorough analysis of a key action sequence in The Dark Knight (2008).
In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight) from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.
I highlight it because, like Jim Emerson, I have always been thrown by that film's editing (the Oscar nomination is baffling to me) as it doesn't make coherent sense, spatially or time-wise. (If you don't share this pet peeve -- I realize many people enjoy contemporary cinema's rule-free freneticism of editing -- you might not enjoy this video. This is actually the #2 most prominent reason as to why I have never been a Christopher Nolan convert. I prefer action filmmakers like James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow who never (or very very rarely) sacrifice coherency for thrills.
Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 12:28PM Craig here with Take Three. Today: Viola Davis
Take One: Far from Heaven (2002)
Davis, currently elevating The Help as a long-suffering maid, had already supplied some hard home graft back in Todd Haynes’ 2002 race-and-homosexuality Sirkian pastiche Far from Heaven. Davis quietly excelled as Sybil, Cathy’s (Julianne Moore) full-time housekeeper and part-time confidant. She does a lot with a little. Ever present she curiously lingers within its most emotionally fraught scenes and makes a subtle impression in more incidental ones. Sybil maintains a watchful eye on proceedings, on how Cathy and Raymond (Dennis Haysbert) play out their furtive longing and on the arguments between Cathy and husband Frank (Dennis Quaid).
Whilst Moore is delicately cracking up due to wifely duties and illicit romance, Davis is on hand to help keep her together. “I don’t know how on earth I’d ever manage...” Cathy begins, cautiously trailing off. She knows her words reveal volumes about the very issues facing her, Raymond and indeed Sybil herself. Davis gets to assert her character as the narrative becomes more sweepingly emotional. She lets on to Cathy more about her life away from the Whitakers and, in her best moment, finally allows herself to tell Cathy about Raymond’s injured daughter. Davis plays the scene with a minor requisite guardedness. I can only imagine that had Haynes opted to fold more of another Sirk film, Imitation of Life, into his emotive meta-study, Davis may well have come front and centre.
Take Two: Eat, Pray, Love (2010)
Davis isn’t often, if at all, mentioned in synopses of Eat Pray Love. Her character Delia Shiraz, Julia Roberts’ best friend, isn’t significant enough to the overall narrative, apparently. This is a shame, as although she’s only in the first thirty minutes she’s its most resonant performer. In fact, I’d rather it had been about happily-married yet realistically cynical new mother Delia. There’s ample reason, given in a handful of scenes, that she would’ve made a far better lead character. Davis gets to flex her acting chops and be delightful regardless. But the best evidence of why she should’ve been the one doing the global traipsing is to be found in the lesser-seen only-six-minutes-longer director’s cut.
Before Roberts’ Liz jets off to vainly find herself across three continents, a rightfully sceptical Delia sees her off. It’s the first time Delia does more than provide mere friendly solace for Liz. "You know why I was giving you such a hard time?” Delia reluctantly says.
I love my job, my guy and my kid, but... I wish I could go."
Instead of coming across as lightly bemused or content, as in earlier scenes, Delia is starkly honest. Imagine the resounding emotional tug the film could’ve pulled for Delia’s plight (and with more at stake) had her and Liz traded places. Through Davis’ well-balanced turn, Delia exhibits a better understanding of life in one line of dialogue what takes Roberts’ Liz 133 minutes to grasp. Evidence, if any were required, that top-tier character actors are most often the ones doing the best work. With simplicity, Davis intriguingly suggests why Eat, Pray, Love should’ve been Let, Viola, Shine.
Take Three: Doubt (2008)
If anyone’s going to make mighty Mezzer Streep question her certainty it may as well be Viola Davis. In Doubt, her one-scene, barely twelve-minute role as Mrs. Miller, mother to a troubled boy at a Bronx Catholic school, was of course performed entirely alongside Meryl’s sister act. An hour in, Davis’ brittle, quietly astonishing and astutely underplayed performance causes a major Nunquake measuring 9.5 on the actressing scale. She totters along in dowdy beige coat, armed with pre-work accoutrement (she never lets go of brolly or handbag – she “only has half an hour” before work) and, with pin-point concision, razes the film’s emotional territory. And all before a noon shift cleaning floors!
Davis’ performance is open-wound acting of the rawest kind. It seeps through the celluloid, embedding within it a strain of desperate, matchless emotion. She steals the film outright from its trio of big hitters.
Mrs. Miller’s baffling, questionable revelations reverberate through the remainder of Doubt. Sister Aloysius (Streep) is understandably perplexed at her reactions, but defiant Mrs Miller seemingly overlooks her son’s current well-being in favour of his future betterment. The undertow of this sad, richly dramatic exchange displays a vivid understanding of 1960s race issues. Davis’ succinct performance allows valuable in-roads into Mrs. Miller’s life; she clearly deserved the highest accolades. If the Academy gave Judi Dench a statue for six minutes in Shakespeare in Love – ditto Beatrice Straight in Network – then they really should’ve given one to Davis for twice their time and quadruple their quality. But 11 other award nominations and six wins point to it being a lasting portrait of bleak determination none the less.
Three more key roles for the taking: Solaris (2002), State of Play (2009), It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010)
Doubt, Eat Pray Love, Far From Heaven, Oscars (00s), Take Three, Viola Davis 