Tues Top Ten: Best Best Supporting Actress Winners

"I Simply Cannot Do Alone" might well be the theme song all lead actors should sing to their stellar supporting castI felt a list coming on so I didn't fight it. Neither did I fight the order as I slotted them in, though you know how this goes if you've ever made such insane list. The order might change with a moodswing and it would definitely change (perhaps drastically) if I had an opportunity to rewatch all these pictures back to back. 

Ten Most Deserving Best Supporting Actress Oscar Wins

Runners up: I'm crazy about Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker and Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon but they're both unarguably leading roles so I'm not voting for them. My apologies in no particular order to Ruth Gordon, Wendy Hiller, Catherine Zeta-Jones and, oh, dozens of people. Never mind. Moving on! (The one winning performance I'm most frustrated to have not yet laid eyes on is Gloria Grahame's in The Bad and the Beautiful (given the hosannas I read about it... even right here.)  

10 I want to offer the tenth spot to either Mercedes Reuhl in The Fisher King (1991) or Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind (1956) though I haven't seen either performance in aeons. Both are sometimes regarded --even by me -- as performances that are so over the top they're buzzing about King Kong's head like tiny airplanes. But given that the films they're in are as colorful and eccentric as the Empire State Building is tall, they're truly excellent and memorable contributions to their movies if you ask me. 

She's got poise. The way she holds her head at just the right angle. That takes training. That takes years of training. I see what Willy sees. Willy's got big ideas, Jack."
-in All The King's Men 

09 Mercedes McCambridge, All the King's Men (1949)
She slices right through the thick air of political grandstanding. Modern and mercurial, I sometimes like to imagine McCambridge dropped right into today's pictures. Imagine her starch and steel freed up by looser contemporary mores. She'd be even better about complicating her movies. 

Where did April come up with that stuff about Adolf Loos and terms like "organic form"? Well, naturally. She went to Brandeis. But I don't think she knows what she's talking about. Could you believe the way she was calling him David? "Yes, David. I feel that way, too, David. What a marvelous space, David." I hate April. She's pushy."
-Holly's interior monologue in Hannah and Her Sisters 

#8 through #1
Tilda, Rita, Dianne and More after the jump

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Mainstream Oscar News Segments Are Silly

Through inertia I was watching CBS this morning (must have been the last station I looked at last night) and I perked up because they were reporting on Banksy's street art spreading around Los Angeles in the buildup to Hollywood's High Holy Night (They didn't call it. But I always have).

So the lead in was this little preamble about stars and campaigns. 'Oscar campaigns. Though it can be embarrassing to beg for votes Oscar winners do' -- I'm paraphrasing. So in the video edit lead in they show Julia Roberts (okay, I get it) and two other super famous made themselves ubiquitous winners (I forget who. sorry) and... Mo'Nique? Really, CBS? Mo'Nique didn't beg for votes, baby!

"First I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance, and not the politics."

Then they had on an "Oscar Expert" (everyone calls themselves that on TV) and he predicted The King's Speech, Firth, Bale and that Leo's going to lose (he didn't settle on who would win instead)... and Annette Bening. I wish people would stop getting our hopes up about the Bening. It's like Billy said in the Spirit Awards comments...

To quote Teri Garr in Tootsie, "I just want my pain now.". That is how I feel about Bening's inevitable defeat at tomorrow's Oscars ceremony.

P.S. I will be blogging and tweeting tonight. Stay tuned.

Baby, I Was Linked This Way

Pop Sugar gets a first look at Leonardo DiCaprio, Judi Dench and Armie Hammer suited up for Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar (pictured left). I'd embed it here but it's one of those annoying videos that starts itself and that won't do. Computers must be silent until they are asked to speak. Don't you agree?

Nicole's Magic explains the reason Nicole Kidman isn't in Just Go With It's marketing campaign (spoilery).
Gallery of the Absurd "commemorates" Lindsay Lohan's latest criminal activity.
The New York Times' dance critic reviews Black Swan. I'm so burnt out on Black Swan right now but this is a good read. Like this

It goes out of its way to contradict the old escapist idea that “everything’s beautiful at the ballet.” Instead it takes energy from the aspects of ballet that are cruel and unfair. Let’s not pretend, however, that those aspects don’t exist.

The Browser Speaking of... Here's a different type of article, Darren Aronofsky talking about his 5 favorite filmmaking books.
Movie|Line regarding that time Anne Heche turned down Speed. WHAAAA? Sorry I l-o-v-e Anne Heche and she does not have the career I long for her to have despite being a unique screen presence and fine actress. Damn you Hollywood, damn you!

Black Voices shares a recent controversial statement about black women and Oscars and extrapolates on that. I find this type of discussion fascinating but whenever people use Oscar nominations and wins to paint broad strokes I always want to school them a little on Oscar history in general. I know I paint with broad strokes sometimes, too, so I sympathize. But take this note for example.

Sure, Halle Berry and Monique won their awards because they played roles that Hollywood is incredibly comfortable with: black women yelling, screaming and suffering without makeup. But, it's not just white Hollywood. We're all incredibly comfortable with miserable black women. I call it pain porn.

I 100% agree that Oscar rewards things they are comfortable with.

But one could make an argument that it's not that Oscar loves seeing black women in pain, it's that Oscar loves seeing women in pain. Dramatic suffering has always been the easiest way to an Oscar. Look at your entire Best Actress lineup this year. They're all white, sure. They're also all suffering. The least tearful woman in the lineup (Jennifer Lawrence) is a tough one, but she also gets beat up and shunned by her own kin. And when she's not in pain porn, she's in poverty porn. (Poverty porn, like pain porn, is not about race with Oscar.) Was Annette Bening nominated this year because she ably conveyed boredom and confusion about her marriage and hilarious cluelessness about what emotions her children were logging? No. I bet you anything she was nominated because when tears welled up in her eyes and she asked her lying wife "did you take a nap, too?" you could feel the sting of betrayal and the disorienting fresh magnitude of her pain. Ever notice how many Oscar clips are people screaming, yelling and suffering? The bulk of them! The same is true for the men (albeit to a lesser degree)

Is that my daughter in theerrrrrrrrrrre?!!!???

But mostly I wanted to say something about this because to disparage Mo'Nique's win is to shun one of the best performances of the modern era. The last time I saw someone dig that deep and find that much humanity inside someone doing monstrous things was... um... I'm not sure that I have. I bow down to Mo'Nique's actressing. If someone doesn't give her another meaty movie role soon, we are all the poorer for it.

Off Cinema Break
Do you like Lady Gaga's new song "Born This Way?"

I'm not sure that I do. I have no doubt it'll work for the dancefloor but as a stand-alone pop melody? Sorry for my gay heresy. You can have the toaster back.

Top of the Oscar Morn' To Ya

7:43 AM Today's the day we find out what those 6,000 showbiz people were thinking as they filled out there ballots. Or even if they were thinking. I suddenly want to chuck out all my predictions and start over again. Oh jitters.

7:47 AM  I'm so nervous. 45 minutes whoooot

MO'NIQUE BABY

Mo'Nique laughs at a flubbed line

7:58 Who is awake? show of hands!

8:18 Okay, now I am showered, coffeed, fully dressed, if not quite mentally prepared for What Lies Ahead. The great unknown. Or maybe the known if they just follow the precursors this year. I'm suddenly feeling Sam Rockwell (?) and wishing i hadn't predicted a Kunis snub.

8:28 I don't think i've ever watched The Early Show but they only had it in them (the anchors) for crossing their fingers for The Social Network and The King's Speech. What imaginative calls! Clearly the female anchor doesn't go to the movies she made a convenient "i'm still watching. i can't say" comment which means I officially shun her. That'll show her.

will Gosling & Williams both make it?

8:33 Ugh. I hate Ben Lyons so much. Switched to E! and he's talking about the Academy "FINALLY getting younger." Maybe he doesn't know that the age statistics remain about the same all the time with the acting nominations. They like the women young, the men middle aged. That's always the way it's been and they way it'll stay. As we've discussed many a time. The only way this year is "younger" is the hosts and IF eisenberg, franco and gosling are all nominated in lead actor. That would definitely be a young Best Actor lineup even with Firth & Bridges involved.

8:34 "some movies you feel" they will not stop with these King's Speech commercials.

adams, bonhamcarter, leo, steinfeld, weaver -SUPPORTING

bale, hawkes, renner, ruffalo, rush SUPPORTING ACTOR

bening, kidman, lawrence, portman, williams ACTRESS

bardem, bridges, eisenberg, firth, franco ACTOR

aronofsky, russell, fincher, coen bros, hooper DIRECTOR (wow. 3rd DGA nom 3rd Oscar snub for Chris Nolan)

another year, fighter, inception, kids are all right, kings speech SCREENPLAY

127 hours, social network, toy story 3, true grit, winter's bone ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

biutiful, dogtooth, in a better world, incendies, outside the law FOREIGN

how to train, illusionist, toy story 3 ANIMATED

black swan, the fighter, inception, the kid are all right, the kings speech, 127 hours, the social network, toy story 3, true grit, winter's bone PICTURE

COMPLETE NOMINATION LIST