Readers' Ranking: Streep's Oscar Noms, #10-6

Previously on Streep Reader Rankings we covered The French Lieutenant's Woman, Music of the Heart,  Doubt, The Deer Hunter, One True Thing, and Ironweed. Now we hit the top ten. Ten and Nine were a statistical tie, constantly trading dominance as I tallied the results of your ballots. Since both films were listed in last place on 7% of the ballots, I broke the tie by looking at first place votes. Only one of the two had any.

TOP TEN STREEP NOMINATED PERFORMANCES
According to The Film Experience Readers

10. Julie & Julia (2009)
Role & Balloting: Streep has played many biographical parts in her long career which accounts for some of her record-obliterating nomination haul (8 of her 17 nominations are for biographical roles and she is now 5 nominations beyond her nearest rival Jack Nicholson). This widely seen warm serio-comic interpretation of the famous chef Julia Child is the last film in the countdown without any #1 placements on reader ballots.

Who Won the Oscar: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Other Nominees in Guesstimate Order of AMPAS Love: Meryl (Julie & Julia), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), Carey Mulligan (An Education) and Helen Mirren (The Last Station)
The Dread Sixth Place Finish?:  One supposes the fifth slot was neck and neck between Mirren and Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria). There wasn't a ton of enthusiasm for either film though, since the top four candidates absorbed all the Oscar heat. 

09. Out of Africa (1985)
Role & Balloting: Streep had another huge success with this romantic epic about the Danish author Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blixen). If Geraldine Page hadn't been so absurdly overdue (It was her 8th nomination which was at the time the longest stretch by any actor without ever having won the gold. Peter O'Toole now holds the record with 8 nominations without a win) the Best Actress race would've been between Whoopi and Streep both headlining very very big hits. (The Eighties were a different time with box office and moviegoing;  people still flocked to prestige dramas in big numbers.)

Who Won the Oscar: Geraldine Page, The Trip To Bountiful
Other Nominees in Guesstimate Order of AMPAS Love: Whoopi Goldberg (The Color Purple), Meryl (Out of Africa), Anne Bancroft (Agnes of God) and Jessica Lange (Sweet Dreams)
The Dread Sixth Place Finish?:  Cher was left on the outside looking in for Mask as the mother of a deformed boy. The snub even resulted in an Oscar night moment when Cher, clad in one of her typically outre outfits quipped:

As you can see, I did receive my Academy booklet on how to dress like a serious actress."

Reader Comment. Marcos writes:

I first noticed Streep in The Deer Hunter. I liked her a lot and was impressed, but I became utterly fascinated when I was able to realize the extent to which she immersed herself in roles that were so different. Choosing between Bridges and Out of Africa [for #1] was difficult. One of Streep's best scenes ever was her lover's funeral. She moves forward to grab a handful of earth to throw it on Robert Redford's grave. She moves ahead, but the camera stays still. She grabs some earth and extends her arm to throw it on his grave. Her hand starts shaking and, without releasing the earth, she brings it to her chest and walks away."

Three more Oscar roles after the jump

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Readers' Ranking: Streep's Oscar Noms, #16-11

Last month we asked readers to rank all of Meryl Streep's Oscar nominated performances...

There were 16 of them when the polling began since The Iron Lady was still unseen by many and too fresh for retrospective rank as well. Here are the results in ascending order.

I've included comments on and from the ballots for extra flavor. You'll also find details and guesstimates about that year's Oscar voting though I'm sure you'll "correct" me if you have different ideas about how it all went down, won't you?

16. Music of the Heart (1999) 
Role & Balloting: Streep's true story arts-friendly role about a violin teacher (yes, she learned the difficult instrument) is widely seen as her most obvious "default" nomination and though not everyone agrees with its low place in the Streep canon, it ended up in last place with Film Experience readers on 30% of the ballots. Quite a feat when you consider that it was also one of the least seen, absent from another 30% of the ballots. Yikes.

Who Won the Oscar: Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry
Other Nominees in Guesstimate Order of AMPAS Love: Annette Bening (American Beauty), Janet McTeer (Tumbleweeds) and Julianne Moore (The End of the Affair) and Meryl (Music of the Heart)
The Dread Sixth Place Finish?:  T'was obviously Reese Witherspoon in Election, damnit. Oscar should've picked Flick!

15. Ironweed (1987)
Role & Balloting: Her performance as a severe alcoholic former singer "Helen Archer" was greeted in the 80s as one of her strongest "technical" performances since she's virtually unrecognizable. Nowadways it's the least seen Streep nominated role and one of the most divisive considering where it ranked on ballots that had seen it (all over the place). Ironweed got some attention recently when Anne Hathaway resurrected Streep's "He's Me Pal" for the Kennedy Center Honors.

Who Won the Oscar: Cher, Moonstruck
Nominees in Guesstimate Order of AMPAS Love: Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction), Holly Hunter (Broadcast News), Sally Kirkland (Anna) and Meryl (Ironweed)
The Dread Sixth Place Finish?: I was personally nuts for Emily Lloyd's debut in Wish You Were Here but she wasn't Globe nominated so maybe she didn't have traction. Any 80s Oscar obsessives have an idea about who finished sixth that year? I don't have a strong sense of who.

#14 through #11 and more Oscar hoopla after the jump 

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10 Things I Learned About Kathleen Turner This Week

Kathleen Turner as Molly Ivins

Those of you in the Los Angeles area have two enticing theater options coming up. The first -- an absolute must see -- is the Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. It's coming to LA soon from Broadway intact but for Bernadette Peters who will be replaced by another major but less famous talent, Victoria Clark (The Light in the Piazza). The other theater option is currently playing. I can't vouch for since I haven't seen it, but it's the one and only Kathleen Turner playing Molly Ivins in the one woman show Red Hot Patriot.

I have however seen Kathleen Turner live on stage twice (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and High) and she doesn't lose even one ounce of her charisma or gift on the stage the way many screen stars do when they attempt the transfer. Earlier this week she had a live chat at the LA Times Culture Monster and, though I've never participated in one of those before it was my darling Kathleen (she along with Pfeiffer and Streep is how I became such an actress-obsessive in my formative years) so I had to!

I told her I missed her onscreen and her response went like so.

I have a film coming out called A Perfect Family sometime this Spring. I still enjoy camera acting, but it's not as exhilarating to me as being on stage."

Ten other things I learned during her chat with fans after the jump...

10 Notable Bits From Kathleen Turner's Live Chat

10. Her favorite actors are Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Judi Dench. How strange is that? MOMENTS before this live chat we had just made a major plea for them to present at the Oscars together. This is empirical evidence that Kathleen was reading the Film Experience as she answered questions! ;) But in all serious lord knows if she ever googles herself, she's seen the site.  

"PUSSY WILLOW"

09. Her favorite of her own films is Serial Mom because she has so many wonderful memories from the set ("most laughs") and she is still close with John Waters. This movie prompted the funnest questions from her gathered fans. Had she ever made a prank phone call "For heaven's sake, no! Nor will I". One fan said the house the real Serial Mom lived in in Baltimore was for sale. Should he buy it and give tours? "Good luck!" was her perfect succinct response. 

8-1 after the jump

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Sally's Short Suspense

Sally sings a lullaby she wrote in "African Chelsea"A confession: I've never been this caught up in the drama of the short film categories before. But this year I await Oscar's finalist list on pins and needles. At least four former Oscar players are involved in shorts from the long 70ish wide semi-finals list (the actual list has been hard to come by with no AMPAS press release detailing it). One of them is 80s nominee Sally Kirkland who I've always felt a certain kooky fondness for. She campaigned tirelessly for the actressy drama Anna back when campaigning wasn't so loudly expected of people. She was rewarded with a spot in the 1987 Best Actress list which turned out to be one of the greatest in Oscar's entire history. There's not a dud or even a "just good" performance in that shortlist; they're all freaking great. Sometimes you've got to work for the nomination when your film is small.

There's a new somewhat provocative piece up at the LA Times Envelope about her current director Brent Roske's campaigning for "African Chelsea" the short she's currently co-starring in. Campaigning for short films is not, you see, the norm... though people do do it. I've recently been in contact with the short's director Brent Roske and I reached out for a comment today on working with Sally. Turns out he plans to do it again and quick-like no matter what happens with the short film race.

I've just finished writing an inspiring dramatic feature that Sally will be starring in called 'Alice Stands Up'. I'm hoping I can get her in the Best Actress discussion next year."

Ah, directors and their muses. We love it when they stand by their divas. It's probably too much to hope that a miracle like Anna could reoccur again but we wish him luck in trying. Shine that spotlight on Sally! 

Sally Kirkland sure was vivid in "Anna". Have you seen it? It's available on Netflix Instant Watch

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Burning Questions: How Much is "Overdue" Worth?

Michael C here to introduce my new column: Burning Questions. Every week I will tackle an issue of pressing importance to film lovers the world over - or I'll just let fly with whatevers on my mind when I sit down at the laptop. Either way, I'm jazzed to get started. First up, the question of the "career honors" Oscar win. 

One of my most vivid memories as a young Oscar viewer is the '97 race when Juliette Binoche beat out Lauren Bacall’s heavily-favored performance in The Mirror Has Two Faces. The press had declared Bacall a mortal lock. Not only was she Hollywood royalty, she was overdue Hollywood royalty. Should've been nominated for To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep and a half dozen others, so forget everything else and bet the farm on the former Mrs. Bogart. The unmistakable shock on both her and Juliette’s face when the envelope was opened suggests they had read the same coverage I had. It turns out that when voters were presented with the privacy of their ballots, Bacall's history of snubs proved no match for a strong performance in a popular film.

Yet despite this, every year we still get prognosticators writing about this or that star's overdue status as if it were a simple bank transaction, collect enough overdue points and trade it in for a shiny new trophy. This year the race is crowded such names. From Christopher Plummer with his career stretching back to Sound of Music, to the equally legendary Max Von Sydow, to five-time runner up Glenn Close, Albert Brooks, Nick Nolte, and the still never nominated Gary Oldman. With so much delayed Oscar justice poised to be dealt out it begs the question:

How much is “overdue” status really worth?

Of course, it's impossible to pin down the murky motives of Oscar voters with much certainty since the Academy doesn’t conduct an exit poll (Now there’s a thought). People often attribute Henry Fonda’s win for On Golden Pond to career honors, to name one example, but I think it had more to do with the fact that his was the strongest nominated performance and it was from one of the year’s most popular films. I think it’s safe to assume even if he had he won for Grapes of Wrath way back in the day, his performance in Pond would have gone home with the trophy anyway. 

To be fair, there are more cut and dry examples. One could make a strong case for John Wayne’s and Paul Newman’s Oscars being as much about career achievement as the winning performances. But even if that were true, it still shows the limits of such sentiments. Both triumphed over relatively weak, or in the Duke’s case divided, competition. If Wayne’s True Grit had come out a year later and gone up against George C. Scott’s Patton, all the overdue standing in the world would not have brought him a victory.

On the other hand, the list of superstars who missed in their last stabs at Oscar glory is long indeed. The wildly overdue Richard Burton lost for the seventh and final time to the youngest Best Actor winner ever up to that time, Richard Dreyfuss. Both Judy Garland and Monty Clift received their last career nominations for Judgment at Nuremberg and both were pushed aside to make way for the fresh-faced stars of West Side Story. The urge to hand Fred Astaire his first and only nod at age 75 was good enough to see him nominated for tripe like Towering Inferno, but all that good will went out the window when he went up against the young DeNiro’s take on Vito Corleone.

And let us not forget Peter O'Toole, the patron saint of Oscar also-rans, who set the all-time record for nominations without a win in '06 when he received his eighth Best Actor nod for Venus.  And what did all that accumulated good will buy him? A front row seat to witness the Forest Whitaker juggernaut cruise to victory - on his first nomination, no less.

So for all the importance placed on it I think it’s fair to say “overdue” status is over-valued. It’s a bump. A nudge. A tie-breaker. Did it help Alan Arkin eke out a win over Eddie Murphy? Probably. Will it be good enough for Glenn Close to beat this year’s stiff Best Actress competition if Albert Nobbs' reception remains lukewarm? Doubtful. In the final tally, the greatest benefit of overdue status lies less in garnering votes and more in garnering buzz, bringing attention to performances that are worthy on their own merit. All the career honors chatter is great for winning Beginners viewers, but when the ballots go out better for people to remember how terrific Plummer is this year than to think back on how badly he was snubbed for The Insider.

Any other questions you want me to tackle? Let me know in the comments. You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm