All This, and Linking Too
Monday, April 9, 2012 at 9:02AM Matt Patches gives us the best news of the day for New Yorkers. The Alamo Drafthouse is coming.
Lists of Note Preston Sturges "11 rules of box office appeal" Tee hee.
Cinema Blend new details on Matt Damon's Promised Land. It involves fracking.
Scanners a wonderful interview with Bette Davis circa 1988. She would have turned 104 this weekend.
Pajiba the highest grossing female led action films (not adjusted for inflation)
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The Awl unanswered questions about teen movies. Here's a sample:
Say Anything…: How many times did Lloyd use the boombox trick in future relationships, and was his song selection always “In Your Eyes,” or did it change to reflect the current hits?
Tom Shone on the Titanic 3D conversion. I love Tom Shone.
Finally Boy Culture reminded me of this year old interview with one of my favorite character actresses (and incidentally one of my favorite lesbians) Miriam Margolyes. I love her in everything -- remember how fun she was lusting after The Bening in Being Julia?. She is hilarious and she was totally dissing the Oscars for their big stars in supporting categories problem.
It was a very good film called The Age of Innocence and I was marvelous in it. I was! The reason I wasn't nominated was because of WINONA RYDER AND I DON'T LIKE HER! What happened was she was nominated as a supporting actress instead being nominated as a leading actress. If she'd jolly well kept herself to herself and been a leading actress, they would have nominated me as supporting. I was livid."
Reader Comments (24)
i LOVE miriam margolyes. about twenty something years ago when i was in drama school and over enthusiastic about everything i wrote her the only fan letter i've ever written after seeing her onstage in 'gertrude stein and a companion' (three times). she wrote me a thank you note in reply and about a month or two after that, when she'd returned to london, she wrote me a longer gossipy letter thanking me again and answering some questions i'd had about the play.
if i only i could find those freakin' letters....
That was so awesome in so many ways!
I didn't even know her name (I know, I know..) and now I'm suddenly a huge fan!
I think it's in one of the related videos (M.. M... 2, I think) where she says that she doesn't remember whose voice she did in either Flushed Away or Happy Feet.
Thanks so much, Nathaniel!
Can someone please offer her a "Miriam Margolyes at Liberty" kind of gig?
Come on. Winona was perfect in her supporting role & should've won. If she has went lead then Michelle Pfieffer would have went supporting, not that old gas bag.
Nate,
who is the woman in the first pic under "all this, and linking too?"
Thanks...
Never paid attention to this actress before. Her natural character is so saucy and honest.
Screw category fraud being a vital issue at the Oscars. 70 women only 70 have won Best Actress. Hepburn with 4—12 women with 2—there was 1 tie—only 1 non-white actress won. 70 out of 85 statuettes given out from 84 years. Thank you God that Kathy Bates is forever a Best Actress.
I love this! I much prefer feuds between actors over quality work. I mean, it's much more refreshing for an actor to say "I don't like her" ON TV, than some passive aggressive twitter update… Yawn. If you really have something to say about someone, say it on TV!
thank you for posting that interview Nat. OMG Miriam you are a treasure, don't ever EVER stop. (Has she got a book deal in the works?) Can you imagine that occuring on any american tv show being said by any american movie star?
BTW - for some reason I didn't realize until halfway through that that was Stanley Tucci to her right - but goodness talk about "straight people who are better at playing gay than gay people" (I'm assuming all three gentlemen were straight, and I've have pegged any one of them for gay.)
I get what she is saying though about not wanting to play a lesbian character in case the other women she is kissing "thinks she fancies me" but if one is a professional actor on the job, doesn't kissing become clinical anyway?
You know what's weird? She still looks exactly as she did in the Age of Innocence...like has not aged since that moment. I guess she's one of those people who just got old early, like John Slattery.
Janice the whole panel is gay but Stanley.
3rtful: What are you trying to say by bringing up the "only 70 women" thing? And also, it can get very vital and close to rage inducing in the worst years. A case or two every year of Lead's being nominated in supporting actor is a given these days (politics and all that), but there's one year that is just INSANE. I look at 2010's nominated Supporting Actor stock, for example, and I see ONE actual supporting performance relative to the construction of the movie (John Hawkes) and he was probably just a vote or two away from being knocked out for Andrew Garfield (also a co-lead in my book.) If the Academy's actors have so many lead male performances they're interested in, why don't they just expand the Lead Actor queue to eight? A larger field as an experiment might actually help cut down the more rampant category fraud in the Supporting Actor category. (Compare: There's 8 or 9 (haven't seen Age of Innocence for judgment's sake) instances of category fraud in Supporting Actress (with, at most, two instances in a year if I judge Age of Innocence has fraud). There's 29 instances of category fraud in Supporting Actor (including the mentioned 2010, which, as I mentioned, has a ridiculous FOUR IN A SINGLE YEAR).) I think, then, that a male character actor speaking out about the choices for the 2010 nominations almost entirely leaving supporting performances out in the rain in early 2011 would, personally, hold a lot more weight than a female character actress speaking out about A SINGLE, nearly 20 year old, performance of hers missing out on a nomination.
Come on, now Ryder wasn't supporting in The Age of Innocence?
cal: If you're referring to me, read carefully because I qualified all my statements. If you're referring to Margolyes placement of Ryder, I can't answer either way.
I thought Ryder was supporting. The main storyline was really Michelle and Daniel.
Honestly, I think Miriam is pushing it by thinking she would've been nominated. Her performance didn't outshine the core three.
cal -- it's true that it's a stretch but i suppose she's on the border. what's more true than anything though is that character actors have been all but shoved out of the awards game. Sad but true.
Mark -- the women there are kate winslet and bette davis
What are you trying to say by bringing up the "only 70 women" thing?
That Best Actress is a fucking narrow minded category.
3rtful: 73 men to 70 women. That actually sounds fairly close to reasonable and even, doesn't it? That a single woman (Katharine Hepburn) has managed to win four is weird, but not something to be utterly knicker twisted over. I'd say: If it were 73 men to, oh, 45-50 women, that'd be something to be angrier over than category fraud. But, as the apportionment currently is? Be angrier over category fraud, please.
she likes Maggie Smith, that's more than enough to forgive anything :P
Kate Winslet and Bette Davis. What a combination.
Is the title a reference to Florence + The Machine? She's so great :)
Hilarious interview. What gay abandon by Miriam. At one stage my hands covered my face! Graham Norton's interviews can be a riot at times, depends how "open" the guests are.
@ Janice, 3rtful: Actually, only the host (Graham Norton) is gay. Stanley Tucci, you'll know about, and the other guy is a British comedian called Jimmy Carr, who, like a lot of British comedians, plays with metrosexual ambiguity but is definitely straight.
Not that this even matters, Miriam Margolyes is awesome.
On a separate note, I was rather disappointed to find out "fracking" wasn't meant in the Battlestar Galactica sense.
@3rtful & David - oops. Thank you for the correction (I thought Miriam or someone made a reference to the host not being gay, which I obviously misunderstood.)
//what's more true than anything though is that character actors have been all but shoved out of the awards game. Sad but true.//
Preach, brother.
Oh and I did read the Bette Davis interview, thank you for the link, Nat. They say they "don't make 'em like that anymore" but I'm not sure they "made them like that" back in the day either - she seems such a singular character.
Ryder was definitely supporting in The Age of Innocence. I can't imagine her screentime was close to Pfeiffer's. Stars don't always play the lead.