Viola Davis. 'Holy s***, that woman can act!'

Here's Matthew Eng on where we are in the career of one of the great screen actresses... 

“Holy shit, I love watching this woman act!” is what I immediately thought during Viola Davis’s doozy of a “big scene” in Get on Up, which nearly every review of Tate Taylor’s surprisingly strong James Brown biopic has been well-inclined to praise. As Brown’s aged, long-estranged mama, Davis—with the aid of terrific star Chadwick Boseman and some pretty expert makeup artists whose numbers Clint Eastwood should find immediately—manages to reinvigorate a set-up familiar from any number of tortured artist-biopics (i.e. absentee parent comes groveling years later to abandoned child-turned-superstar at the peak of his fame) with the same smart, electrifying clarity of character and tender yet tough-minded emotionalism that should be long-recognizable by now to anyone who has seen Doubt or Antwone Fisher or Solaris or Won’t Back Down, or else Fences, King Hedley II, or Seven Guitars on Broadway, or, more likely, witnessed Davis’ extraordinary, one-woman rescue job on Taylor’s The Help.

Holy shit, I love watching this woman act. It’s not the first time the thought’s run through my head.

Davis is, as usual, great in Get on Up, a superior musical drama that’s prone at times, like all entries in this genre, to some patchy plotting and tacky set-pieces, but which sports the affecting ensemble, sobering insights, and stellar, sweat-stained concert sequences that Eastwood and his animatronic Jersey Boys could only dream about. Davis’ role is also, as usual, brief but crucial to the movie at-hand. [More...]

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Be Careful What You Wish For: Lubezki's First Oscar?

"Oscar giveth. Oscar taketh away."

I've said it often and each year the phrase reasserts its truthfulness. One might also substitute this with "Be careful what you wish for." Oscar maniacs know this warning well. They beg for a first Oscar for Winslet or a third for Streep, for example, and then those things come true and no one is really satisifed with the way it came to pass. And that's just two recent examples. I don't much believe in "locks" in Oscar races in the way most pundits and Oscar fans do -- especially pre-Christmas locks. Upsets do happen, fates don't align, narratives don't take hold and so on. But if there's one or two Oscars this year that I feel are most probable at this juncture, yea even unto lock-dom, it's not Best Actress Cate Blanchett (though she's in third place for "most likely"), but the visual effects and cinematography of Gravity. 

Famed DP Emmanuel Lubezki is a true genius not just a "genius" in the overindulgent fandom sense. His work is exquisitely lit and beautifully composed but never in quite the same way, each time his light beautifully enveloping and serving the film at hand.  If you think of it like vocal range he's a Mariah Carey/Cyndi Lauper 4 octave diva while most other DPs, even the really fine ones, are closer to the standard 2 octave pop stars. I've wanted him to win the Oscar so many times and I still consider it insane that he lost for both Children of Men (2006) and The Tree of Life (2011).

Oscar Trivia, Computer Trouble, and more after the jump

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Best Actress "Character" ~ 50 Years 100 Greats

I was cleaning up a few folders on my desktop recently when I noticed this old poll and the accompanying visuals. It was too delicious not to revive. See back in 2011 when The Film Experience got its beautiful redesign as a site, I polled y'all about the most memorable best actress "characters" of the past 50 years (1961-2010) and in chronological order these were the women you voted for...

How many have you seen? I'm still pised that Sally Kirkland's "Anna" and Kathleen Turner's "Peggy Sue" didn't place... but I felt like posting it again right now since 3 Best Actress nominees from 1980, a year we're currently revisiting, placed (Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin, Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People, and Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter)

If we updated who do you think would make the list from 2011-2012? Who just sticks in your memory. Let's take a vote on it. You can only choose 2!

poll by twiigs.com

We don't know the 2013 nominees  just yet but I'm guessing Cate Blanchett's very blue "Jasmine" wouldn't have any trouble placing in any such future lists. Which is 90% of why she's still the frontrunner for the win in her category.

Emmy AND Oscar-Nominated Documentaries

The eligibility of documentaries for awardage from both that lusted after winged woman (Emmy) and the coveted naked man (Oscar) is a labyrinthine maze from which we would never exit were we to foolishly enter. In fact, someone needs to make a documentary about THAT to sort it all out. Documentaries leave strange crumbs all over both the big and small screens on their long walking journey through often complicated and extremely protacted "releases".

I bring this up because a portion of the Emmy nominations were announced today (like The Grammys there are hundreds of categories) in the non-fiction fields of news and documentary. I was surprised, for example, to see Semper Fi: Always Faithful, The Loving Story and We Were Here as nominees. You may recall they were all Oscar finalists (though not nominees) back in 2011 and now they're up for 2013 Emmys! Actual nominees from that Oscar year show up too, particularly those from the Best Documentary Short category. I thought we'd highlight a few categories in case you've seen any of these films. They might be familiar to you even if you spend more time in theaters than in front of your television. 

OUTSTANDING INFORMATIONAL PROGRAMMING - LONG FORM

• Semper Fi: Always Faithful -MSNBC Documentaries
• The Interrupters -Frontline PBS (read our interview with director Steve James)
• The Suicide Plan -Frontline PBS
• My Reincarnation - POV PBS
• Wish Me Away - Showtime 

OUTSTANDING HISTORICAL PROGRAMMING - LONG FORM

Awesome cinephile Vito Russo with fellow AIDS Activist Elizabeth Taylor

• The Loving Story -HBO Documentary Films
• Vito -HBO Documentary Films (read our interview with director Jeffrey Schwartz. Vito Russo wrote the groundbreaking book "The Celluloid Closet" which is all about the problems of LGBT presence in Hollywood films. That book and his AIDS activism are his legacy. This doc was also nominated for "Best Research")
• Jesse Owens - American Experience PBS
• We Were Here - Independent Lens PBS [Available on Netflix Instant Watch]
• Nostalgia for the Light -POV PBS

And there are several other categories of non fiction programming too like "arts and cultural, science, and economic" . Finally, all the fields seem to unite under the umbrella category "Best Documentary" which has six nominations, all of them previous Oscar nominees or finalists except for Nostalgia for the Light, which nevertheless had a movie awards presence winning Best Documentary at the European Film Awards and winning a WGA nomination as well. That said I should note that this is no guarantee that how the docs aired on television is the same way they aired in cinema since documentaries can shape shift as they switch mediums and details of their stories continue to emerge. Some get much longer and are divvied up into segments for news programs. 

BEST DOCUMENTARY

• Project NIM -HBO Documentary Films
• Saving Face - HBO Documentary Films
• The Loving Story - HBO Documentary Films
• The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom - HBO Documentary Films
• Hell and Back Again - Independent Lens -PBS 
• Nostalgia for the Light - POV PBS

Do you like docs and if so have you seen any of these films?

P.S. Of Note: 60 Minutes won a nomination for "Outstanding Interview" for their profile of Steven Spielberg during Lincoln's run. If winged Emmy is anything like naked Oscar, it won't win its category. 

P.P.S. The Emmy nominations most people talk about when they talk about Emmys are the ones that will be announced a week from today on July 18th. We'll talk about those soon!

"Oh putain!" It's Jean Dujardin

This just in from our friend Julien in Paris... Jean Dujardin, interviewed on Europe1 this week to promote his new movie Mobius, was asked about his acceptance speech at last year's Oscars and Emmanuelle Riva's nomination in Best Actress this year, the award he'll be presenting on Oscar night.

The actor famously proclaimed "Oh putain!" before launching into his acceptance speech which sort of translates to "Fuck!".  In fact, some people believe that it's the only word you need to know to speak French.  

Dujardin goes on to confess that he didn't vote (!?!) and congratulates Emmanuelle Riva on her BAFTA win. He promises the interviewer that if Emmanuelle Riva wins on Oscar night he'll shout "Oh, putain - It's Emmanuelle Riva!" when he opens the envelope.

Do you think he'll get the chance?

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