One and Done? Toni Collette

by Matt St Clair

Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe. Those are just a few of the grand talents from Australia to grace the big screen. Then there’s someone who doesn’t have the same kind of Oscar record as those A listers: the painfully unsung Toni Collette who, despite having an eclectic fascinating career with roles that range in size, genre, accent, etcetera, in many noteworthy films, somehow only has one Oscar nomination under her belt. 

The Nomination

Her sole bid (thus far) came in 1999 when she was nominated in Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lynn Sear, a working-class mother whose child can see ghosts in The Sixth Sense...

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Oscar's complicated history with the "complicated woman"

by Matt St Clair

Remember when Maggie Gyllenhaal won a Golden Globe for her starring role in the miniseries The Honorable Woman? During her acceptance speech she spoke about not just the wealth of strong roles for women on television, but roles as complicated women, saying, “when I look around the room at the women who are in here and I think about the performances that I’ve watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy, sometimes not. Sometimes honorable, sometimes not.” Complicated female characters on TV still receive more proper acknowledgement than those in the movies. 

While Carey Mulligan earned a recent Best Actress nomination for her role as the duplicitous avenging angel Cassie Thomas in Promising Young Woman, the Oscars have a historically spotty track record when it comes to acknowledging actresses for playing complicated, and sometimes calculating, women....

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March 25th is a super-duper Oscary day

If today, March 25th, is your birthday please brag about this fact...

Audrey Hepburn & Prince at their Oscar winning ceremonies

More Oscar ceremonies have been held on your birthday than any other day in history with the exception of March 29th, which has had the same amount of Oscar ceremonies: five. (Supposedly in 2022, these two March dates will have to share this peculiar honor in a three way tie with February 27th.)

1954 The 26th annual Academy Awards are held honoring the best of 1953...

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Oscar history: Titanic's not-quite clean sweep, Julia's ascendance, and Chicago vs The Pianist

5 things that happened today, March 23rd, in Oscar History only...

1950 The 22nd annual Academy Awards honoring 1949 are held. All the King's Men wins Best Picture but it's the Olivia de Havilland classic The Heiress, among the Best Picture honorees, which wins the most Oscars (Actress, Costume Design, Art Direction, and Score) and has had the longest cultural shelf life thereafter.

1990 Pretty Woman hits movie theaters becoming a sensation and Julia Roberts ascends to superstardom...

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Oscar History: Marty vs Rose Tattoo, The Piano vs Schindler's, Shakespeare vs Private Ryan

5 random things that happened on this day, March 21st, in Oscar history only: 

1941 The Sea Wolf starring Edward G Robinson and Ida Lupino is released. Director Michael Curtiz is warming up for his rather incredible peak decade (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce are next) but this one only snags one Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects

1956 The 28th annual Academy Awards are held honoring the films of 1955...

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