Isabelle Huppert, French Legends, and Oscar Stats

by Nathaniel R

Are you biting your nails yet? No prediction for this year's Best Actress shortlist can come without some degree of "I could be getting this very wrong!" nerves. We've been Oscar watching for a long time and it's genuinely never looked this open this late in the game (with the possible exception of 2003 but for nearly the opposite reason). If Best Actress is not a five-way lock up by now (and it often is) it's usually at least settled but for a minor battle between two women for the "just happy to be nominated" fifth spot. This year is different. Seven women remain strong and precursor supported and virtually any combination of five names seems possible as long as you include both Emma Stone (with the reliable boost of leading a Best Picture frontrunner) and Natalie Portman (with the reliable boost of Oscar's deep-deep love for mimicry).

We always believed that Isabelle Huppert was a genuine threat for a Best Actress nomination this season for her phenomenal star turn in Elle. It wasn't so much that Elle, in which she plays a video game enterpeneur who becomes obsessed with her rapist, was a a fresh look at an old star (against type) or right in Oscar's wheel house (a dark comedy about rape. LOL, no). The appeal instead is that in Elle is a suffusion of everything that's special about Huppert: her superior intellect, fascinating opacity, tortured psychology, and her daring sexuality. Oscar would be wise to pounce in a year where the media has been this celebratory about her unique place in the cinematic landscape. 'It's time!' feelings don't generally come around all that often for true iconoclasts or women of a certain age. She's both so they must act now.

Binoche, Cotillard, Adjani, Deneuve

Here's another far more superficial but still excellent reason why Isabelle Huppert needs to be nominated...

Click to read more ...

Thoughts I Had Looking at Binoche, Fiennes and Scott Thomas

by Murtada

This weekend the Rome Film Festival celebrated the 20th Anniversary of The English Patient with a special screening, attended by its three stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes.

• The English Patient was 20 years ago????
• Juliette laughing and KST mistily looking away is reminiscent of their characters, warm melancholy Hannah and icy melancholy Katharine.
• I miss KST’s icy grandeur… now that she is a Dame will she get a new wind to her career?
• Am I K in your book?
• I still lived in Sudan in 1997 where cinemas were scarce. I remember wanting to see the movie for months and finally managed to see it on a trip to London a month after it won 9 Oscars. I went straight from the airport, dropped my bags and rushed to an afternoon screening in Leicester Square. That’s how bad I wanted to see it, I couldn’t wait another minute.

What are your memories of the first time you saw The English Patient?

It has recently come to my attention... that I enjoy link roundups

The Toast has a hilarious rant about Sebastian Stan's hair in Captain America Civil War
Variety details beginning to emerge on Lars von Trier's serial killer drama The House that Jack Built. (Sounds typically overly complicated as befits von Trier's masochistic working methods)
/Film visits ILM to see "groundbreaking" effects work on the forthcoming Warcraft
Variety Warner Bros already planning a Harley Quinn movie for Margot Robbie. Exactly how many superhero films will we get before Marvel ever dares one?
Tracking Board Jenny Slate reuniting with her Obvious Child director for a comedy called Landline co-starring Edie Falco and John Turturro
People Sad news: James McAvoy and Anne-Marie Duff divorcing after nine years of marriage
Women and Hollywood Laura Dern and Ellen Burstyn starring together in The Tale about a middle aged woman coming to grips with sexual relations she had at 13 with adults - sounds compelling!
Guardian Juliette Binoche on gender in film and disappointment that Scorsese & Spielberg don't feature female leads - disheartening but not totally surprising that Spielberg cites The Color Purple, a film he made 31 years ago, as proof he doesn't have a problem with lack of interest in female characters
The Playlist Another strike against Marvel - they forced a sex change on the villain in Iron Man 3 because they wanted to sell more toys
Variety Madeleine LeBeau, last surviving cast member of Casablanca, has passed away 

Other Showbiz...
THR Broadcast television's upcoming slates - cancellations, surprises, moves, etcetera
Boy Culture we were just celebrating Truth or Dare's 25th anniversary and now we hear that Donna & Niki, Madonna's once longtime backup singers have released a new version of "Rain" 
MNPP Milo Ventimiglia's Ass gets top billing in new TV series "This is Us" 

Today's Must Read
This new profile on Chloë Sevigny by Xan Brooks at the Guardian has been getting a lot of attention for its provocative pullquote on her "disdain for auteurs" but the whole article is interesting.

Photo by Jody Rogac for The Guardian.

Of special interest is her candid conversation about her 90s 'it girl' years in indies.

When Sevigny was Oscar-nominated for her turn in the 1999 indie drama Boys Don’t Cry, as the girl with whom Hilary Swank falls in love, it looked as though mainstream stardom might be hers for the taking. Sevigny scoffs when I say this; she doesn’t think anything is “there for the taking”. But the fact remains that she turned down the sidekick role taken by Selma Blair in Legally Blonde (“which might have made me some money”) and a raft of similar offers. “A few little things like that, more comedic, and it probably wouldn’t have hurt to have done them.” She wrinkles her nose. “But I was very purist back then.”

She also reveals that she really wanted Uma's part in Nymphomaniac and prefers working in television to film now.

César Winners: Mustang, Fatima, Michael Douglas and More...

Busy awards weekend, huh? The Spirit Awards commence this evening (Murtada will graciously live blog so yours truly can reserve last fumes of energy for Oscar night) but France's own Oscars, the Césars were already held. (We discussed their nominations earlier right here.)

<-- The glorious Juliette Binoche graced the poster for the big event and also presented best picture. Michael Douglas was the honorary winner (they love their Hollywood stars at the Césars in that particular way).

It turned out to be quite a Ladies Night as three films about women battled it out for supremacy: Fatima, an immigrant drama was the surprise Best Picture winner; Marguerite an operatic musical/comedy (based on the same story as Meryl Streep's forthcoming Florence Foster Jenkins) was the nomination leader and won multiple tech trophies and Best Actress; and, finally, the great Mustang (France's Turkish-language Oscar nominee and on my top ten list) took Screenplay, First Film and Editing prizes

The full list of winners and ceremony photos are after this amazing picture of 3 giants of French cinema: Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, and Emmanuel Béart

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Beauty vs Beast: Crazy Comes Classified

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" for your consideration -- Jennifer Jason Leigh will be celebrating her 54th birthday this upcoming Friday February 5th, after finally earning a long overdue Oscar nomination this year with her joyously profane work as "Daisy Dahmer-goo" (sorry I can only type it like Kurt Russell says it) in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.

But Daisy's hardly my favorite villainous turn from the actress - she's always been willing to tap into the crazy, and that was a willingness that reaped righteously trashy rewards with 1992's psycho-roomate-thriller Single White Female, one of my favorites from the "psycho [fill in the blank] genre" that dominated in the early 90s. And meeting her all the way was a terrifically sweet and dazed Bridget Fonda (good god I miss Bridget Fonda), slinking around foolishly in that silver coat that haunts my dreams.

PREVIOUSLY Last week's actressy showdown didn't incolve Steven Weber getting a high heel to the forehead (much to Clouds of Sils Maria's detriment, obviously) but it did involve an incredibly close race from start to finish, and just ekeing it out in the end was (drumroll please) Kristen Stewart, with literally half of a percentage point lead over The Binoche! Talk about a photo finish. Said AndPeggy:

"This result is just testament to how great these two actresses are together. Their interplay and chemistry is what makes the film so memorable."