According to the list-order posted on oscars.org, we’re on Best Actress. And here’s the CRAZY thing: The five nominees this year have 29 nominations and just three wins between them. Let that sink into you head for a moment:
In any case, that is gobs and gobs of talent. Of the five, though, only two are past winners: Meryl (Sophie’s Choice, Kramer vs. Kramer), and Dame Judi (for Shakespeare in Love). However, Kramer and Shakespeare garnered the ladies only supporting-role statuettes.
I like Penélope Cruz. Here’s the thing, though: I’ve only seen one other movie she was in. Oh, oops, three. According to IMDB she was in Blow and Gothika, but I have no recollection of her in either. Considering she was the female lead in Blow, not too promising. Maybe it’s a function of language barriers, or just quality. The movie I remember her from is Sin noticias de Dios (No News From God—or, as the DVD I watched was labelled—Don’t Tempt Me). This was a gorgeous, lavish, incredible film, one which owes a nod of gratitude to Danny Boyle’s Life Less Ordinary. Cruz completely and utterly made the film; she dominated it as an angel sent from a Hell which bore a striking resemblence to America (specifically LA), to claim the soul of a boxer. Her rather bland (but brilliantly acted) antagonist was an angel from a Parisian Heaven. The angels fall in love (a little bit with the boxer, and with one another). The plot thickens. The movie was filmed in three or four languages. Cruz was insanely good in it. She always seems to be more charged and more powerful in scenes where she plays opposite other women than when sharing screentime with men (or maybe just when she’s allowed to speak her own language). In Volver, my impression is that there are possibly not even any male actors in it; if there are, they aren’t on screen for long, and this should prove a distinct advantage to her. I’d be delighted if she won her first time up; if I’d not seen Sin noticias, I’d likely be grumbling about this nom.
Dame Judi, as I affectionately call her, is one of those brilliant theatre actors that England seems to be producing fewer and fewer of in each passing year. She’s a perrenial favorite of mine—and of the Academy. As Entertainment Weekly snarked last month: “If it’s Oscar season, it must be time to honor Judi Dench.” So while I feel a big rush of delight in each of her noms, it’s no real surprise. That said, I am actually not sure what I think of Notes on a Scandal not having seen it; I’m not even sure I have any desire to watch it, although I’ll likely Netflix the DVD and be very, very happy if Dame Judi wins. It is wonderful that this big-crazy-female-centric movie bursting with spectacular, psychologically complex women’s roles exists at all, even if the premise is a bit creepy. And Dame Judi in a concentrated-evil-variety role is a fairly innovative turnabout.
I heart Helen Mirren. Like Dame Judi, except moreso, she’s done her time in the trenches and on the boards. (People do tend to forget how sexy she used to be, though. A risk of hitting it big later in life.) It’s always incredibly strange when filmmakers decide to make a biopic about a still-living person, and I’m not really sure how I feel about this one. But I’d still be super-happy if Helen (aka twice-queen, or “both Lizzies”) won this Academy Award for this role.
It’s an odd, but eminently fitting, logic that is required to view Miranda Priestly as the protagonist of The Devil Wears Prada, eponymousness aside. On the surface, the movie is a featherweight bildungsroman-in-microcosm, with the narrative “I” (Anne Hathaway’s throwaway gamine) front-and-center. Yet, Steep’s Miranda steals the stage, and the show. I think that the trashy, exploitative novelist who penned the story thought she was writing a thinly-veiled autobiography (I haven’t read the book); the movie, however, is a celebration of and paeon to and vital study of Miranda. This is the only nominated performance in this category I’ve seen, and here’s the full disclosure bit: I saw it in the theatre. Twice. And, honestly, the 8 seconds or so in which Miranda’s critical eye absorbs Emily’s outfit, and the look on Streep’s face, that right there, that single moment, was where she earned the Oscar from me: moments like that are what acting—and honoring acting—should be all about: nothing in her face moves, yet the emotion and message are broadcast loud and clear. Here’s the reality check, though: it’s sort of boring to give Meryl Streep yet another Oscar. The movie is not heavy-duty obvious Oscar-bait in the way that The Queen and Little Children are. That said, it would create a charming precedent to see what could potentially be dismissed as really just a “teen movie” score an Oscar, any Oscar.
Kate Winslet annoys the crap out of me. Can I say that? Her face just bugs me, although it might simply be her giant eyebrows (which irrationally remind me of a viciously evil girl who bullied me with great glee all through elementary and junior high school). Titanic bored me; Eternal Sunshine irked me. Quills was hot, and is probably the only role for which she maybe possibly might have begrudgingly deserved an Oscar nomination. Haven’t seen (or, before nominations came out, even heard of) this movie, but I really, really would be upset if she won against any of these other actresses.
Bonus: dresses!! I’ll shoot my mouth off here and now and predict that Helen Mirren and Penélope Cruz make it onto a ridiculous number of best-dressed lists.
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