Top Ten Olivias

Here's a top ten stream of thought quickie for you. Let's just say it's in honor of Olivia Wilde who has been bouncing around in my head since that Boogie Nights live read last week and who won the StarMeter award from the IMDb last night. Congratulations on being so eminently, um, searchable, Livvy.

Olivia Wilde in Rush

I have to admit I don't quite get her appeal but Congratulations! Her career is white-hot right now (Rush is playing at TIFF and winningly surprisingly strong reviews) and she's engaged to Jason Sudeikis. Without further ado, off the top of my head and just for fun... 

The Ten Greatest "Olivia"s

10 Olivia Pope on Scandal
I don't watch Scandal (forgive) and the one episode I did see was atrocious and made me wonder what everyone is smoking when they praise it (blasphemy?) but I've been rooting for Kerry Washington since the very beginning of her film career (Our Song, holla!) and don't really wish to jump ship despite a few stumbles. Plus, she's up for an Emmy in this year's small screen Best Actress competition for this role, which is really quite historic if you check, television wise. If you love Scandal PLEASE explain why in the comments. [TFE's Interview]

09 Olivia Hussey
Romeo & Juliet need, desperately need, to be played by very young actors to maximize the authenticity and resonance of their tragedy. But it wasn't until Franco Zeffirelli's gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous 1968 adaptation that people finally understood this en masse. I am on record as complaining about the constant revivals of Shakespeare on stage and in the movies. But Romeo & Juliet I especially don't understand any more at least in movie form. [more...]

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Goodbye Glamour! Until Next Season. *Sniffle*

We'll wrap up the Oscar coverage this afternoon with the final podcast in a bit, but for now, please to enjoy some more beautiful dresses that I'll remember forever... (aka until the next awards show several months from now).

Nicki, Halle, Zeéeeee, CZJ, & Charlize

poll by twiigs.com

Did you notice the gold, silver, black & white theme this year. A huge batch of former Oscar winning goddesses and the new Best Actress looked like they'd coordinated their outfits.

Bond GIrl, Cannes Fashion Plate, Captain Kirk, Marcia Gay, Jane

Yikes with that slit Naomie Harris. Carefully of your stride. Who invited Fan Bingbing? (No offense but she is at every high fashion movie event and isn't it hard to get tickets to the Oscars?). Is it too much to ask that Marcia Gay Harden and Jane Fonda get another Oscar caliber role soon? It feels like forever since...

Olivia Munn, JGL, Zoe Saldana, Eponine, Rachel Mwanza

Fresh! Olivia Munn is my prediction for next year's Sci-Tech awards (Nick always makes me guess. I called this one first!). Zoe Saldana wass the only actress who was battling it out with Jessica Chastain for Best Dressed of the night in my head. And I included Rachel Mwanza because she was so colorful and also as apology for not mentioning foreign film nominee War Witch on my CNNi spot -- it was not an intentional slight. We just ran out of time.

I would have loved to have discussed these with special guests but after the nominees with Courtney and the men with Guy we were red carpet convo'ed out. The season has finally ground me down into a powdery nothingness.  I drift away...

It's your final chance to sound off on this year's Oscar fashions. Go!

Supporting Actress, My Ballot

With Oscar barrelling towards us (at last) I have no choice but to wrap up my own awards. I don't know where I'll find the time but forward into film bitch awardage...

there's an anchor of grief under those voluminous dresses pulling her down

My Best Supporting Actress Starter Kit, about 20 actresses long, was quite a lot different than the one we heard about all pre-season. For starters Helen Hunt and Ann Dowd, who Oscar season dubbed "supporting", were leading stars for me (Hunt's designation is entirely debatable, Dowd's is not). I am, as ever, more impressed with stylized genre-friendly work than awards bodies, particularly Oscar, ever are. I think Eva Green in a movie that wasn't much good (Dark Shadows), Gina Gershon and Nicole Kidman in movies that might accurately be called "trashy" (Killer Joe and The Paperboy) were all running circles around more respectable names like Maggie Smith or Amy Adams that kept cropping up in "Best of" lists. And though surprise Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver did make my top 12 for her homey egg-shell peace-making in Silver Linings Playbooks, my personal vote for Doing the Most With The Least this year would go to Olivia Munn in Magic Mike... though I didn't go quite so far as to nominate her.

That's all just preface - the point being that I debate this with myself (and with you in the comments) all year long. In the end while Oscar chose an entirely respectable list (save for the exclusion of the incomparable Nicole Kidman which I shall forever deem indefensible) my list has only two women in common with theirs. I had to make room for Diane Kruger (Farewell My Queen) and Lorraine Toussaint (Middle of Nowhere), too.

MY NOMINEES AND WHY I CHOSE THEM

As always I welcome respectful disagreements, fan mail and counterpoint lists. In Actressland many five-top opinions are welcome in "Best" lists.

The ½ Way Mark Finale. Best Supporting Actress

Previously: Actress, Actor , Supporting Actor and Picture.

As per usual even with only six months of film releases, not even of the prestige variety, there's more than enough to choose from for a solid Supporting Actress list. Though I'll always be most tied to Best Actress on account of movie star fascination, it's easy to understand why this is year in, year out, many readers favorite category.  

SUPPORTING ACTRESS  January through June Releases
For Your Consideration... my ballot as of July 7th. 

• Eva Green, Dark Shadows (discussed in the review)
• Frances McDormand, Moonrise Kingdom
  Magic. Don't you feel like you know exactly what it's like to be her child, her husband, or her middle aged lover while you're , to be her husband and her lover while watching this? 
• Olivia Munn, Magic Mike
  A textbook example of seizing an opportunity and making the most of a character. Her slumming grad student with an open body, adventurous spirit, but compartmentalized heart is a key foil to reveal Magic Mike's own self-awakening.
• Michelle Pfeiffer, People Like Us (previously discussed)
• Maggie Smith, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  Could she do this in her sleep? Probably. But that shouldn't negate the joy of watching her work or the affecting reveal of a kind heart buried under a nasty exterior and a lot of ignorance.

With apologies to Charlize Theron who made good on that Young Adult comeback twice over by ruling over Snow White and the Hunstman like a Queen, the royal kind, in Snow White and the Huntsman (maybe she went too big ... maybe... but someone had to keep that film from flatlining!) and an intriguingly robotic ice queen, the figurative kind, in Prometheus. 

Team Experience Votes?

Alexandra says: since I am at a loss, I have to give it to Anne Hathaway for Les Misérables, purely on the strength of the trailer ;)

Michael says: The Five-Year Engagement may have been a minor entry in the Apatow pantheon, but his technique of loading the supporting cast with comedy ringers continues to pay dividends. This time its Alison Brie, sporting an impressive English accent as Emily Blunt's sister, who ends up supplying the film with its most consistent source of laughs. It makes one wish the movie was changed to Five Week Engagement and rewritten to follow her and Chris Pratt's couple. 

Beau says: Eva Green in Dark Shadows. For (finally!) delivering on that promise she showed nearly a decade ago in Bertolucci's The Dreamers. For circumventing the limitations of the script and strutting off with the film in tow. For stealing a picture away from incredible name actors, looking quizzically at you when you mention that and denying it; you can't steal something when it was always yours.

Nicely said, Beau. Green would be my winner if I was forced to vote right now, too. On to the second half of the year! (After we get your ballots in the comments that is.)

And if you haven't seen them... my Current Supporting Actress Predictions

Review: "Magic Mike"

An exhilarating all night double date is winding down on a bridge in Tampa, just before the sun rises. Mike (Channing Tatum) stands up on the railing, looks over his shoulder and dives gracefully backwards into the water to the mild delight of the anonymous girls. His new protégé "The Kid" (Alex Pettyfer), already eager to follow in his new buddy's footsteps (and body rolls), jumps in awkwardly after him.

Hey Mike, I think we should be best friends!" 

The Kid blurts the invitation out with both of them bobbing in the water. He's like a little boy who's just discovered a whole new playground. It's a perfectly crush-worthy unguarded moment -- the kind that makes you give yourself over completely to a movie. My heart is yours, movie. Treat me right. 

This gem of a scene is also, as it turns out, the exclamation point to a perfectly formed Act One, "June". The movie takes place over the course of one life-changing summer for Mike and The Kid: June, July, and August. You go to Magic Mike to see seven spectacularly formed male bodies but the movie turns out to be all sculpted, too: June is introductions, flirtations and promise, by July you're deep in love/lust and too hot for clothing, and in August... 

the cock rocking kings of Tampa

Well, you know how sticky August gets...

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