Simone Signoret @ 100: A love letter to a great actress

by Cláudio Alves

This week, we've been celebrating Simone Signoret's centennial, an unlikely sex-symbol of the midcentury and an even more atypical Oscar champion. Previously, Daniel wrote about the French actress' brief appearance in La Ronde, and Eric paid tribute to what's probably her most excellent vehicle, Casque d'Or. Now that it's my turn to wax poetic about Madame Signoret, I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. You see, even before the centennial celebrations, the actress had been on my mind. Though, it wasn't because of a film she starred in or individual performance. Watching the animated film No. 7 Cherry Lane, I can't help but think that no one will ever be able to create a more beautiful homage to this star than director Yonfan…

Click to read more ...

Actors Turned Producers @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

We've already posted about many records broken with this year's Oscar nominations, but one particular achievement remained unmentioned. With her double nominations for Nomadland – for Best Picture and Best Actress – Frances McDormand became the first woman to earn an acting and a Best Picture nomination for the same project. This comes after a decade when this feat became incredibly common for male performers. Historically, ever since the 1950s, when AMPAs started to list producers with Best Picture nods, instead of merely the studios' name, actors have been producing their movies and earning added honors for those efforts. Still, it was only in the late 60s that someone scored the elusive double citation by the Academy…

Click to read more ...

87 years ago today... Katharine Hepburn & the Academy began their one-sided romance.

On this day, March 16th in 1934, the 6th annual Academy Awards were held honoring the films of 1933. The event was little like it is today, not yet televised, and with only 13 categories (3 of them for short films). There were only six acting nominees. Cavalcade won Best Picture and it shared the "most nominations" stat, four in total, with the war drama A Farewell To Arms and the Capra comedy Lady for a Day...

Click to read more ...

The New Oscar Actress Hierarchy - Glenn & Frances Rising

by Nathaniel R 

We thought it would be fun to revise the Oscar Acting Hierarchy we last shared when Julianne Moore FINALLY won an Oscar six years back. What follows is a List of Oscar's 36 All Time Favorite Actresses... (you can see the corresponding actor list here) restricted to women with 5 or more nominations (though 4 nominations will get you in the list if you've won twice). Only the acting statistics are accounted for so Emma Thompson, for example, is not ranked. If you included her screenplay win she would have made the list. If you counted non-acting nominations, you'd also see Shirley Maclaine jump a rank as she was nominated for documentary once. Now that virtually every major star is also a producer these types of extra stats will only get murkier so we're opting not to include them and focusing only on what the Academy thinks of them as actors.

🔺 = the actress has moved up the chart or strengthened her placement since the last publication of this list (in February 2015). An explanation of how the rank was determined is at the end of the post. 

OSCAR'S HOLY TRINITY 
And 33 More Royals 

 

Click to read more ...

Jane Austen @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

After multiple articles about Jane Austen movie adaptations over the past year, you might have figured out I'm a big fan of the Regency writer. Her delightful mix of social satire and comical romance is pretty irresistible as are many of the films that have been made out of the author's works. Since the Oscar nominations are upon us, it feels appropriate to consider these two personal obsessions together, awards love and Austenian fandom. As it stands, many are predicting Autumn de Wilde's Emma. to score a couple of nods in the Moulin Rouge! categories of Production and Costume Design. If that happens, this latest entry in the Jane Austen cinematic universe will join a select group of movies…

Click to read more ...