A small break in the Iranian Film Blogathon proceedings (thank you all for your participation and support! We still have the rest of the week left – so looking forward to it): I said to Kevin Lee, the editor of Fandor, that it is hard for me to be hard on actors. I so appreciate what they do, even when they fall short. But I was happy to accept my latest assignment:
Report Card for the 5 Best Actress nominees.
Any chance to discuss acting? I’ll take it.
Other report cards by other Fandor writers:
Best Actor
Best Director
“The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them…”
At last! A report card you can read with and for pleasure, as well as for insights deeper than “does not play well with others.”
About the only correct prophecy I’ve made was that Karol Wojtyla would call himself Pope John Paul II, but as Annette Bening doesn’t have to contend with Hilary Swank this time around, I’ll try for another: I think she’ll take home the Oscar.
The relationship of Cindy and Dean isn’t the same as that of “Gun Crazy’s” Annie Laurie and Bart, but Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling do support another so well in “Blue Valentine” that both should have been nominated. I don’t think Ill mind if Williams wins, but then any woman who can rattle off the Presidents as she does has to have a place in my heart. (I wonder if she could do it with the Vice-Presidents, too. Contrary to what Mr. Kringle says in “Miracle on 34th Street,” Daniel D. Tompkins was not John Quincy Adams’s Vice-President, but James Monroe’s.)
Agree with you on “To Die For,” which is a terrifying performance because Suzanne Stone is so smiling and pleasant that it’s a shock to realize how villainous she truly is. (Shakespeare went on about how a man could smile and smile and be a villain, not a woman, remember.) If it’s surprising that Kidman was nominated for “Rabbit Hole,” it’ll probably be more surprising if she wins, given her Oscar for “The Hours.”
“If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men…”
Or women in this case.
Well-roar’d, Sheila!
I haven’t seen any of these yet… i just still can’t manage to wrap my head around the idea that Hailee Stanfield is being called a “supporting actress”. That was her movie.