Hello, Gorgeous: Best Actress of 2017

A new series by Juan Carlos Ojano

This year’s slate of nominees showcase five performers strategically placed within the vision of their respective films right from their introductions. Whether introduced in a scene with actual spatial detail that immediately relates to the core of their characters or configured within the film’s style and tone in a more general sense, none of our first glimpses of them are deficient in meaning and purpose. It is probably not a coincidence that most of these performances appear in Best Picture nominees (and the one that didn’t probably came close too), a rarity in the Best Actress category.

Are you ready? The year is 2017...

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Hello, Gorgeous: Best Actress of 2020

A new series by Juan Carlos Ojano

Women are at the center of the Oscars conversation*. Two female nominees for Best Director. Chloé Zhao making Oscar history. Highest number of female-directed films nominated at the Oscars as well as highest number of eligible films at the Oscars in total. Maybe it’s too early to say, but this year is looking like the bellwether of a significant change that is about to happen in the cinematic experience and landscape in the years to come. In a time when cinema as we know it was changing right in front of our collective eyes, this year in film has shown that the future is female indeed.

As for Best Actress - save for one co-lead situation - women are also the center of their respective films’ narratives (longtime Oscar fans know that’s not always the case). The roles nominated during this time exemplify the complex emotions of the year. Social unrest and grief are big forces that confronted us that year. And look at what we have: their nominees’ character introductions are reflective of that.

Are you ready? *The year is 2020...

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Oscar Volley: Can Penelope Cruz or Kristen Stewart land in Best Actress?

Our Oscar Volley series is almost at an end. Here are Matt St Clair, Josh Bierman, and Baby Clyde to talk Best Actress

Matt St Clair: Even though Best Actress has a pretty clear frontrunner, the rest of the category seems mostly up for grabs. Do you guys agree and also, besides Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter, do you think there's hope for another non-biopic performance to make the cut?

Josh Bierman: Interesting. I don’t agree that there's a clear frontrunner! I assume you mean Nicole Kidman who is the most solid lock for a nomination. This is a category where I think I have to wait to see who’s nominated before I can declare a winner...

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NYFF: The visual wonder of "The Tragedy of Macbeth"

By Nathaniel R

“When” is the first word of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, uttered by one of three witches. Though the word precedes a question it sounds more like a definitive statement in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth; the writer/director even grants the word its own solo title card. Later the word “Tomorrow” will also grace the screen alone. Time, we immediately understand, is at the heart of the latest big screen Shakespeare. And it’s running out. Coen’s adaptation casts two older-than-usual actors as the titular Lord (Denzel Washington) and Lady (Frances McDormand). As a result their infamous power grab plays like a violently desperate game of “last chance”…

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Oscar Predictions: Will Best Actress be dominated by biopics yet again?

by Nathaniel R

Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin in "Respect"

We'd love not to be a broken record but until the Academy isn't, we must sing the same choppy tune: The Academy has a biopic problem. They just can't give them up and nearly always view mimicry (of various degrees) as more of an achievement than character creation from scratch. We'll never understand it exactly but it keeps reasserting its truth. So that's always where you have to begin with predictions. This year's Best Actress category has the potential to be entirely performances based on real people.

Not that it will be. There are (that we know of thus far) seven real life characters as female leading roles this season...

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