Supporting Actress, My Ballot

With Oscar barrelling towards us (at last) I have no choice but to wrap up my own awards. I don't know where I'll find the time but forward into film bitch awardage...

there's an anchor of grief under those voluminous dresses pulling her down

My Best Supporting Actress Starter Kit, about 20 actresses long, was quite a lot different than the one we heard about all pre-season. For starters Helen Hunt and Ann Dowd, who Oscar season dubbed "supporting", were leading stars for me (Hunt's designation is entirely debatable, Dowd's is not). I am, as ever, more impressed with stylized genre-friendly work than awards bodies, particularly Oscar, ever are. I think Eva Green in a movie that wasn't much good (Dark Shadows), Gina Gershon and Nicole Kidman in movies that might accurately be called "trashy" (Killer Joe and The Paperboy) were all running circles around more respectable names like Maggie Smith or Amy Adams that kept cropping up in "Best of" lists. And though surprise Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver did make my top 12 for her homey egg-shell peace-making in Silver Linings Playbooks, my personal vote for Doing the Most With The Least this year would go to Olivia Munn in Magic Mike... though I didn't go quite so far as to nominate her.

That's all just preface - the point being that I debate this with myself (and with you in the comments) all year long. In the end while Oscar chose an entirely respectable list (save for the exclusion of the incomparable Nicole Kidman which I shall forever deem indefensible) my list has only two women in common with theirs. I had to make room for Diane Kruger (Farewell My Queen) and Lorraine Toussaint (Middle of Nowhere), too.

MY NOMINEES AND WHY I CHOSE THEM

As always I welcome respectful disagreements, fan mail and counterpoint lists. In Actressland many five-top opinions are welcome in "Best" lists.

SAG Carpet Pt 1: Silhouettes and Character Arcs

Red Carpet Line-Up Returns. I don't know if you've missed it but I have. This two-part SAG edition is less quickfire chat and more epistolary but we haven't talked to Kurt Osenlund in way too long since he flew the coop for The House Next Door. 

NATHANIEL: Kurt  I miss you. You have moved to the far off land of Brooklyn and we never see each other. And yet, when I watch the Best Actresses walking the red carpet I know you're out there somewhere gazing at the same visions. So a few questions to kick things off about the Screen Actors Fashionista Guild.

Which of the Best Actresses did it for you? And was this in line with what you think of their performances or the inverse of that? Character arcs aren't cut from runway cloth but sometimes I think people judge the gowns based on how much they're currently loving the woman inside.

"Impossible" Naomi, Dress-Lining Jennifer, "Mama" Jessica, Marion Cotillard

poll by twiigs.com

Anyway, tell me your "best", both performance wise and clothing wise. (Don't cheat and say Helen Mirren since she didn't show. Or the cameras just didn't bother searching for her because 'getouttahereHitchcock'!). [More plus Supporting Actresses after the jump]

Click to read more ...

You Link Me. You Really Link Me!

The Wrap Sally Field (Lincoln) is the talk of the Palm Springs festival with her lively speech.
The Playlist has a clip of the new Pixar short The Blue Umbrella but be forewarned. It's really not much bigger than a new film still it's so short.
EW in another break with tradition Seth MacFarlane rather than an AMPAS official will be announcing the Oscar nominations on Thursday morning with the requisite actress (this year: Emma Stone)

Letterbox'd Vadim Rizov isn't terribly impressed with Zero Dark Thirty
Pajiba has amusing standards when it comes to red band trailers. (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters)
The Advocate promises that actress Busy Phillips is as awesome as she appears to be. (Michelle Williams has always had such good taste!)
Slate's movie club beginswith Dana Stevens, Wesley Morris, Stephanie Zachareck and Keith Phipps talking up Zero Dark Thirty and Django and moral ambiguity in film
The Carpetbagger talks to Baltasar Kormakur about The Deep

It turns out that there is a reason most directors don’t film shipwrecks in the open water”

Ha.

Smash!
29 DAYS UNTIL "SMASH" RETURNS!'

I'll be recapping as I did last year. I'm not crazy about this sneak peek which sadistically continues to pretend that Megan Hilty is NOT the true star of Smash (LIES. ALL LIES). She's not even #2 anymore according to this trailer which seems to suggest a season all about American Idols Jennifer Hudson  and Katharine McPhee. Meanwhile the cast album of "Bombshell", the stage musical within the tv musical series, will be out in mid February. If Hilty doesn't get the Marilyn solo numbers on the "cast album" than they shan't have my moneys! 

NYFCC Loves Sally & Matthew & Zero Dark Thirty

The New York Film Critics Circle, the oldest critics organizations founded in 1935 has 35 members. Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York is the current chair and today they announced their winners, with a strong showing for Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln. Will the other groups to come talk back or merely parrot their choices? And on and on until Oscar.

♫ ladies of Tampa... New York City ♪

FILM Zero Dark Thirty
DIRECTOR Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty
ACTRESS Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea
ACTOR Daniel Day Lewis, Lincoln
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Sally Field, Lincoln
SUPPORTING ACTOR Matthew McConaughey for Bernie & Magic Mike
ANIMATED FILM Frankenweenie
DOCUMENTARY The Central Park Five
FOREIGN FILM Amour
FIRST FILM David France for How to Survive a Plague 
SCREENPLAY Tony Kushner for Lincoln
CINEMATOGRAPHY Greig Fraser for Zero Dark Thirty 

Do you approve of their choices? (Other than Zero Dark Thirty which you probably haven't seen yet.)

I understand the appeal of giving people awards for multiple films in a stealler year but I'm not sure what Matthew McConaughey did in Bernie in particular to merit diluting his Magic Mike performances with a share. This seems highly uneccesary. The most surprising choice (thus far) is Sally Field, an obvious Oscar hopeful but I didn't expect the critics orgs to rally for her... unless it's one of those years where they're just sticking close to the Oscar buzz titles.

THR Actress Roundtable Final Thoughts

But what she really wants to do is laughSee Part One for the full video and commentary on first half hour

The Hollywood Reporter's Actress Roundtable has become an event I impatiently await more than any other non-awards part of the season. It's how I used to feel about Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue before too many dud covers and too many other types of issues using that template. But I digress. Though I am deeply thankful for actresses on every day of the year it IS Thanksgiving so I'm eager to get to the festivities with my family of friends. So just a few quick final notes on each actress before turkey and pie!

Naomi Watts
Her palpable terror about auditions is fascinating when you pause to connect it with the exact moment that essentially made her a star: her persona-switching audition scene in Mulholland Dr. Unlike Anne Hathaway my tendency is not to go pollyanna and I completely don't believe that 'everything happens for a reason' as most people are so fond of saying in a soothing way when bad things happen but maybe those years of career trauma were worth it because Mulholland Dr just wouldn't have been so special without her absolute genius in that dual role. (I do not find her amnesia about I ♥ Huckabees amusing. That movie is so great and she is quite funny in it. "Fuckabeeeees!")

Helen Hunt
The Sessions star flips the questioning on to the reporters who completely lie through their teeth 'Yes, we'd ask the men the same questions'  LOL. (I've never heard that 'when were you last victimized?' school of questioning toward male actors that the "when did you feel forced into doing something you didn't want to do?" question belongs to.)

Helen Hunt is a smart one. "would you ask the same question of the men?"

Sally Field

It's cute the way she's so embarrassed about how much she hogs the conversation but if you're a good raconteur, as she is, hog away. I'm desperate to see this spy movie that Anne Hathaway wanted to write for her and how random is that?!

Anne Hathaway & Marion Cotillard
I will think of little else for the next hour than which movies they were talking about when they expressed that they were in over their head and can't even watch it (Anne) and so miserable and in hate with the director that they couldn't perform (Marion)... though I suppose Marion's will be easy enough to figure out given the clues.

Amy Adams
Still looking like she doesn't want to be there in this Part 2. What gives?

Rachel Weisz
The most surprising contender in the roundtable and, quite possibly, the most fun to have a drink with afterwards. I'm really pissed to hear that the studios responded with "no one makes movies like that" about her proposed very solitary Julia Butterfly-Hill movie. Um... Cast Away? 127 Hours?

Let's end with a poll.

Each actress was asked to share a role she really wanted to play or write or make happen somehow. Which of their imagined movies do you most want to see?

"I would like to play a monster. Like the Gollum."

poll by twiigs.com