Seeing Double: Best Actress

So, Meryl Streep won the BAFTA for Best Actress playing British political icon Margaret Thatcher and looked great doing so. At first all I could think was Dynasty power bitch combo pack (Collins power / Evans warmth) with those shoulder pads and the dramatic bodice.

But then it hit me...

Aunt Josephine!

Congratulations to Streep and all the BAFTA winners. I know there's been a lot of drama among The Film Experience readers and Streep fans -- the categories overlap ;) -- about who should win Best Actress . This site attracts more than its share of the drama in that regard given that we talk about the category so often even when nobody as beloved as Meryl is involved. I assume the race is neck and neck and neither outcome would surprise on Oscar night. Streep was always going to win BAFTA with the added advantage of the already awards-magnetic gift of mimicry hitting the eyes of the people who would recognize the skill of the mimicry the best and The Help being very American-skewing in its appeal (I'm actually a bit surprised it was nominated for the BAFTA). The Iron Lady was dodgy enough politically not to really get people riled up about its always controversial subject which I think hurt the film but helped the Meryl awards prospects if that makes any sense. But even though she was always going to take it (I never doubted) it still does help her stay in the Oscar conversation; Oscar ballots are due on the 21st so people are still voting.

I hope we can all agree that when the Oscar conversation involves actresses as massively gifted as Meryl and Viola we all win.

That said I still hope it's Viola just on the grounds of these two performances and because if someone has to beat Streep I'm much more comfortable with it being an actor who you know can really throw down with her. Too often Oscars go to people just because they're well liked and not because they're Oscar caliber talents. This is why so many of the greats don't have even one Oscar... and people don't like to think about the harsh realities but if Viola loses that would mean we'd have to add her to that list of Moore, Close, Bening, Weaver, Pfeiffer, et all who can't catch the gold man despite world class gifts.

Streep and Davis at the SAG Awards 3 years ago when Meryl wisely demanded that Hollywood give Viola great rolesI'll be happier for either of them since one is an all time favorite and one is a current favorite who I hope becomes an all time favorite. If only we could have a tie!

I hope we can all agree that if Viola isn't offered great roles after The Help, regardless of who wins next Sunday, we all lose.

I think that should be my last note on this particular Best Actress matter before Oscar Sunday because good lord this topic has taken up huge chunks of the internet and this blog. And to think the world spent the first half of the year obsessing over Meryl vs. Glenn!

Each year brings surprises and who would have ever predicted this neck and neck battle back when they were first watching Doubt (2008)?

Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer on Black Artists and Image.

I know I've gone on and on about Viola Davis this year. It's no secret that I'm rooting for her in Best Actress. She's such an enormous talent and such an interesting woman and she keeps on reminding me of of both of those truths in different revealing ways this year. (I'm really going to be disheartened if The Help doesn't lead to better and bigger things. I don't want to see her play one more lame anyone could do this "best friend to the heroine" part like in Eat Pray Love.) Thanks to Mark Harris for pointing out this new interview from the Tavis Smiley show on PBS and thanks to Tavis Smiley for starting with the rough stuff. He basically begins by telling the actresses that though he is rooting for them he is uncomfortable about awarding black women for playing maids some 73 years after Hattie McDaniel's Gone With the Wind win and he was also uncomfortable with Denzel Washington's win a decade ago for playing a dirty cop in Training Day. The stars and the host really get into it (respectfully). Here's Viola's take.

That mindset... is absolutely destroying the black artist. The black artist cannot live in a revisionist place. The black artist can only tell the truth about humanity. Humanity is messy. People are messy. Caucasian actors know that. They understand that. They understand that when you bring a human being to life you show all the flaws as well as the beauty. We, as African American artists, are more concerned with image and message and not execution. Which is why every time you see our images they've been watered down to a point where they are not realistic at all. It's like all of our humanity has been washed out. We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth tellers.

The conversation blossoms from there. They talk August Wilson. They talk Fences. They talk Red Tails. They talk about acting as baton passing. It's great stuff and nobody pulls any punches.

Octavia's late interview response about the difficulty of convincing Hollywood to bankroll more black projects takes a nice turn, too.

Let me tell you the other thing. It begins with the ticket buyer. Dee Rees wrote an amazing film called Pariah. And if you haven't paid to see it at a theater near you, you're part of the problem.

It's inspiring that some people, and people as visible as Meryl Streep and these two, have singled out Pariah for praise. It's just too bad the movie had such extremely limited distribution and too bad it was saved until the one weekend of the year when no one would be able to pay it any attention during the Oscar glut. But bygones. It's one of my favorite pictures of last year and I'm hoping it gets a better life on DVD.

The complete interview which I've embedded after the jump is well worth a watch if you have half an hour. 

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Readers' Ranking: Streep's Oscar Noms, #16-11

Last month we asked readers to rank all of Meryl Streep's Oscar nominated performances...

There were 16 of them when the polling began since The Iron Lady was still unseen by many and too fresh for retrospective rank as well. Here are the results in ascending order.

I've included comments on and from the ballots for extra flavor. You'll also find details and guesstimates about that year's Oscar voting though I'm sure you'll "correct" me if you have different ideas about how it all went down, won't you?

16. Music of the Heart (1999) 
Role & Balloting: Streep's true story arts-friendly role about a violin teacher (yes, she learned the difficult instrument) is widely seen as her most obvious "default" nomination and though not everyone agrees with its low place in the Streep canon, it ended up in last place with Film Experience readers on 30% of the ballots. Quite a feat when you consider that it was also one of the least seen, absent from another 30% of the ballots. Yikes.

Who Won the Oscar: Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry
Other Nominees in Guesstimate Order of AMPAS Love: Annette Bening (American Beauty), Janet McTeer (Tumbleweeds) and Julianne Moore (The End of the Affair) and Meryl (Music of the Heart)
The Dread Sixth Place Finish?:  T'was obviously Reese Witherspoon in Election, damnit. Oscar should've picked Flick!

15. Ironweed (1987)
Role & Balloting: Her performance as a severe alcoholic former singer "Helen Archer" was greeted in the 80s as one of her strongest "technical" performances since she's virtually unrecognizable. Nowadways it's the least seen Streep nominated role and one of the most divisive considering where it ranked on ballots that had seen it (all over the place). Ironweed got some attention recently when Anne Hathaway resurrected Streep's "He's Me Pal" for the Kennedy Center Honors.

Who Won the Oscar: Cher, Moonstruck
Nominees in Guesstimate Order of AMPAS Love: Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction), Holly Hunter (Broadcast News), Sally Kirkland (Anna) and Meryl (Ironweed)
The Dread Sixth Place Finish?: I was personally nuts for Emily Lloyd's debut in Wish You Were Here but she wasn't Globe nominated so maybe she didn't have traction. Any 80s Oscar obsessives have an idea about who finished sixth that year? I don't have a strong sense of who.

#14 through #11 and more Oscar hoopla after the jump 

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You Better Werk... And Link

Yahoo Movies! I talk Best Actress with a bunch of other internet peeps.
FourFour & The Daily "The Tao of Ru" and outtakes from Rich's week (!!!) with RuPaul, the world's most famous drag queen of all time. 
EW Gary Ross gets ahead of himself saying Jennifer Lawrence should be Oscar nominated for Hunger Games. Er... shouldn't we see even one of her competitors first, let alone dozens. It's... February! 
THR on Brad Pitt's Daily Show proposal for a new Oscar competition system "Hands on Oscar." This was fun last night. I ♥ Brad. I don't know if you know that about me. [Yes, I know you know that about me.]

You know what I think they should do? We should just put a trophy on the table, like one of those car contests, we should all just put our hands on it and see who can hold it the longest. And the last man standing takes the trophy! Hands on the Oscar”

Rope of Silicon Russell Crowe wanted for Noah in Darren Aronofsky's Noah's Ark. What's with Crowe being suddenly in demand again? He must have recently expressed interest in getting back to it.
Coming Soon reports that Viola Davis has signed on for two new roles, both book adaptations, Ender's Game and Beautiful Creatures. Strangely the latter is listed as a lead role but given the book description it sounds very much like a small role. Have any of you read the book?

IndieWire speaks up for "7 films you must see this February" 
Playbill You'd think Broadway would eventually get tired of adapting hit films into stage musicals. I mean, many of them flop so it's nothing like a guarantee. But they won't quit. Next up: Back to the Future.
Kenneth in the (212) has an interesting reaction to Madonna's Superbowl interview 
In Contention Kodak taking its name off the Theater O' Oscar? 
Awards Daily reports on the Martin Scorsese tribute at Santa Barbara 
Liz Smith is so right about how the Oscar nominees play the "no, no, I can't" game after their nominations 

"Dream Big, Dream Fierce" This Oscar Season

The SAG Awards are receding in the review mirror, but the afterglow remains. How much power can emotional narratives have within our seasonal awards journey? Viola Davis has been a major actress for a long time within the showbiz community -- this very website first handed her two gold medals way back in early 2003 for her gobsmackingly great single scene in Antwone Fisher and her breakthrough year of smart character work in Far From Heaven and Solaris -- but it's only in the past few years that the mainstream has begun to learn her name and key in to her potent gift.  There's nothing like a 'who's that?' Oscar nomination (Doubt), A List friendship (Streep) and a big fat juicy hit (The Help) to boost your profile.

So I wasn't surprised but was definitely delighted to see her receive a standing ovation when she walked up to accept Best Actress for The Help.

Perhaps the standing ovation is an annual occurence and I've merely forgotten.

In some ways our relationship with the awards circus is a long one with deep pockets of memories, held grudges and fond crushes. In other ways it's as if we're goldfish swimming round the bowl and we're surprised by that little plastic castle every time.

But I think the true indicator that Viola Davis is the likely winner of the Best Actress Oscar is not the win itself with SAG, which has a much wider more diverse voting body than Oscar, but the crowd response. Reducing co-stars to tears is probably no great achievement. They were in the trenches with you so naturally Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer and Cicely Tyson were crying their eyes out. But making Zoe Saldana and Angelina Jolie all misty? Boosting Dick Van Dyke's mood when he was already high on life? 

What is going on here? (More after the jump)

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