Awards season is truly upon us. The red carpets are unfurled and waiting for the glitterati to trample them. Tomorrow night is the Golden Globes (we'll be here live-blogging it old' style if you'd like to join us!) but for now one last look back at the Critics Choice Awards held Thursday night. For this edition of Red Carpet Convos I've invited Joanna Robinson from Pajiba to join me. Joanna is a longtime reader of The Film Experience (she even won a contest once years ago!) and a delightful person, too.
Nathaniel: Hey Joanna. Welcome. Let's start with the pastel field and uh... HAPPY EASTER!?!
Olsen, Pyle, Woodley, Miller, and KrugerJoanna: As faberge as Elizabeth Olsen looks, I think she looks better than her "fashion plate" sisters have looked in years.
Nathaniel: Give her time. If the Olsens practice hand-me-down fashions she's in trouble.
Joanna: I see burlap sacks in your future, girl! Also, whoever designed Diane Kruger's dress hates both women and their anatomy.
This is Joanna! Go read her stuff.Nathaniel: Speaking of women and their anatomy. We've gone so "exotic" for this red carpet convo. I'm speaking to a biological woman. Joanna: I have anatomy!
Nathaniel: What IS going on with that dress though. It's like her breasts are being caged in.
Joanna: And around her, um, lady garden? Are those horns? I am baffled.
Nathaniel: I was thinking it was a rare moment of restraint. The designer wanted to trap her vagina in as tight as her breasts but decided to go "subtle"
Joanna: Speaking of subtlety, I actually think Missi Pyle looks lovely. Really sweet.
Nathaniel: Agreed. Though sweet, lovely, and subtle aren't the adjectives I normally think of with Missi for which I entirely blame her for being so convincing and hilarious as a crude perpetually drunk and horny partier in Spring Breakdown. Tell me you've seen it!
Joanna: I haven't! But her larger than life performances in Dodgeball and Big Fish are enough to make me a Pyle fan. And her Lina Lamont impression in The Artist was perfection.
Nathaniel: Yes. I almost wanted there to be sound just so she could say "I CAINNNNNNtSTANNIT."
Joanna: EXACTLY!That being said, when did Penelope Ann Miller start gunning for Helen Mirren's "hot grandma" title? Say it ain't so, Betty Lou!
Nathaniel: Thursday night, I guess. I met her just recently and she was blond and 40something looking in a lovely simple blue dress. And suddenly she's gone silver fox.
Joanna: Honestly? I think she looks incredible. Helen Mirren must be quaking in her stylish yet affordable stripper heels.
Nathaniel: Hmmm. I do love the dress. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that silver hair only works if you're a 20something popstar, a 60something GILF or Tilda Swinton at any age (though she's black to plain old blonde now)
Joanna: Tilda Swinton can pull off any accessory. Including Charlize Theron.
Evan, Tilda Theron / Charlize Swinton, Kiki, Michelle, Judy Greer
Joanna: I know you photoshopped them together, but how delicious sapphic do Tilda and Charlize look? They would make the best Hollywood power couple.
Nathaniel: I did not actually photoshop them together. They were hanging on each other just like so. No sapphic projections. Just reality!
Joanna: Yes! Let's start this rumor!
Nathaniel: I don't know if the world could handle that much GODDESS, alien and human, at the same time.
Joanna: Evan Rachel Wood is raising her eyebrow as if to say, "No, mortals, you are not ready."
Nathaniel: That's just her face. It seems to be frozen now in a perpetual "come hither" dare. "You think you can handle this?" This lineup is depressing me, though. It's crazy how the little black dress is such a must for wardrobe but black, which can be so elegant, is always disappointing at awards shows when there's a sea of it.
Okay so Joanna. As someone with lady parts which of the looks so far would you actually wear?
Joanna: As an expert in the field of lady parts, I would have to pick Ms. Woods. I love the freshness of Pyle's dress. But you can see that her rack is being pinched to all hell. Evan looks beautiful, comfortable and it frames her silhouette nicely. I might have picked a different color. (As you say, black is drab.) But that doesn't jive so well with Evan's Elvira Queen of The Night persona.
Also I think everyone loves Michelle Williams' wrap dress, but, to me, it looks like she forgot she was already wearing something long and black and threw something white over it. Like a fancy, satiny, bathrobe over a ball gown.
Nathaniel: Yes. I don't like. There's something that's always very too contained about Michelle on the red carpet. I don't want to say "safe" exactly but something conservative even when she's wearing brighter colors. I'd love to see her show up in something that's just kind of wild. Would it have exciting frisson with her somewhat demure star persona?
Joanna: Shape that short hair into a mohawk, lady! Do it for Nathaniel!
Nathaniel, as a man, with man parts, which of these looks would YOU consider wearing?
Nathaniel: LOL.
Joanna: (I'd advise against Shailene Woodley's dress. That thing is being held up by hope, and hope alone.)
Nathaniel: I look absolutely terrible in yellow so Olsen & Diane are out. Tildas would be the too safe Androgyny R Us choice, so I'd go with Penelope Anne Miller's because it could be kind of a glam rock genderfuck moment. VELVET SILVERMINE! (or is it VELVET CHAMPAGNEMINE! Metallic colors confuse me.)
Joanna: YES! Grab a passing Ewan McGregor and make the night your own.
Nathaniel: I promise to actually do it at the next awards show if Toni Collette or Jonathan Rhys Meyers will be my date. OMG we're running out of time. I know you need to go and I'm picturing you losing a glass slipper as you run for the door.
Joanna: I'm going to hang around a little bit! Because there is no way I don't get to talk about my crush on Jean Dujardin
Nathaniel: okay then we'll head straight towards the man parts.
Joanna: Beeline for the man parts!
Jeremy Irvine, Paul Rudd, Bérénice Bejo, Jean Dujardin, Brad Pitt and Cane.
Joanna: How PERFECT does Dujardin look?
Nathaniel: Quite.
Joanna: I mean you sammiched him between (the admittedly hobbled) Crown Prince of Hollywood and the ever dapper Paul Rudd. And he STILL wins.
Nathaniel: True but all of these men are so attractive they kind of destroy the curve for everyone else. I'm going to say that maybe Paul Rudd's tux is a smidge too big on him?
Joanna: Yes, look to the ankles! Bag City. (And, for the record, Bérénice Bejo looks scrumptious. Just perfect. So very Peppy.)
Nathaniel: FTR When I met her recently (gag. name dropping!) she did the Peppy wink while we were talking complete with jutted out elbow and it kind of startled me without the distance of the movie screen and the safety of black and white.
Joanna: Ew you disgust me with your name dropping of only slightly well-known French actresses. You fiend.
Nathaniel: I am filled with glittery shame. I still haven't heard what's going on with Brad Pitt's cane... but I love it because it adds a sort of wounded bird endearment, like when his arm was in the sling throughout Se7en. He's like my favorite thing on two legs plus.
Joanna: I've heard CONFLICTING rumors. But most of them involve him throwing himself on the ground to save one of the blessed Jolie-Pitt babies. Possibly the Tomboy one.
Nathaniel: Save them from what, though? Never mind. It's not important. The cane is wonderful. Especially paired with his alarming long-haired youthfulness.
Joanna: A Yeti? The threat, not his hair.
Also, quickly, before I have to motor... Jessica Chastain, you beautiful tempestuous beauty, why are you hiding your light under a pink sack? I know you've met her as well. Can you tell your BFF that she needs to not a) wear pink b) wear a sack c) wear her hair so tight.Tell her that for me, mkay?
Viola, Jessica, Emma, Allison, Cicely, Ahna, and Octavia
Nathaniel: It's hard to tell that one anything. One sentence can't pass before she's signed a new contract or teleported to a new set. Blink and she's gone. It's possible that this was not the actual Jessica but a hologram. Thanks for playing along.
Joanna: Thanks for having me Nathaniel.
Nathaniel: Before you go, which of Team Help's dresses would you wear?
Nathaniel: Before you go, which of Team Help's dresses would you wear?
Joanna: Oh, Allison Janney's. Not a single question. With apologies to the usually fierce Viola, how magnificent does Janney look?
Nathaniel: Wondrous. But I think you could pull of Cicely's hat. I really do.
Joanna: Love that hat! Only Cicely. Hopefully my breasts and I were of some help to you today.
Nathaniel: Both of them!
Joanna: That's sweet of you to say, but I feel like the right one did most of the heavy lifting. Okay! With that disturbing image. I am away!
