Zoinks! Nicole + Cate, Holly + Anna

Aussie actresses Nicole and Cate are fans of each others. We shouldn't be surprised and perhaps we already knew but have forgotten. The March issue of In Style asked four Oscar winning actresses Nicole Kidman, Anna Paquin, Hilary Swank and Susan Sarandon to name their "Oscar Inspiration" and they chose Cate Blanchett, Holly Hunter, Jessica Lange, and Vanessa Redgrave respectively.

This photo has a certain imaginary Film Experience spark as it's an actress (Kidman) that readers tend to think I'm rather too scarily devoted to combined with an actress (Blanchett) that I tend to think readers are rather too scarily devoted to. ;) Not that they both aren't great actresses, mind you.

The article may well have been titled "Airbrushed Inspirations" because all of the photos are way way glossy. But it's a fun concept. Here's what Cate said about her Oscar win for The Aviator.

I was frankly relieved when I won -- relieved I wouldn't have to answer all the questions about what it feels like to lose, and relieved because, playing Katharine Hepburn, you can't but disappoint some people. You have to throw caution to the wind when you take on those real-people roles; you can't think of the outcome.

I don't see this info at In Style's official site but here is a photo-set. The Hilary Swank/Jessica Lange photos are fun but the one that just thrilled me, for the sheer nostalgia, was seeing The Piano's mother and daughter Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin reunited.

The Piano (1993) is among my all time favorite movies and who wouldn't want such a reminder. Anna is apparently now taller than Holly! Although one reason I object to the super processed/airbrushed photo shoots that are the norm these days is that in the age of Photoshop when a photo looks too plastic, I just assume no one was in the room together. Let me see an errant hair or a wrinkle or a weird pucker of cloth, or some PROOF that these are flesh and blood people in a room together.

The other thing I think of when I look at this photo is: DOES HOLLY HUNTER WATCH TRUE BLOOD? Heh. I do. I wonder.

The Short Films: Part III

Michael C from Serious Film here to wrap up our look at the short film categories with a tour of the Documentary shorts.

In this field we have that rarest of specimens: the genuine five-way race. I'd go so far as to put it right up there with Lead Actress as the most quality stacked category of the night. Since they are such uniformly strong contenders I'll skip the for/against format I've been using thus far and instead try to pinpoint what edge each film might have to push it ahead of the competition.

the nominees are...

KILLING IN THE NAME - USA, 39 Minutes, Dir: Jed Rothstein

Issue: Terrorism, specifically the killing of Muslims by Muslims

In 2005 Alshraf al-Khaled's wedding was interrupted by a suicide bomber who killed 27 guests including the fathers of both the bride and groom. Since then al-Khaled has devoted himself to confronting the sources of such terrorism and breaking the Muslim world's code of silence concerning Muslim on Muslim violence.

Killing in the Name makes for a powerful viewing experience. The astonishing footage it compiles includes a wrenching meeting with the father of a man responsible for one of the deadliest suicide attacks ever, an interview with an al-Queada recruiter, and, most disturbingly, al-Khaled's confrontation with a classroom full of young people indoctrinated to view these mass-murderers as heroes. Killing might be too impressive a feat of documentary filmmaking to refuse the prize.

Secret Weapon: In Alshraf al-Khaled the filmmakers have found a bona fide hero. His mission, at no small risk to himself, is equal parts inspiring and horrifying. He is the answer to every TV blowhard who seeks to paint the whole Muslim world with a single brush.

SUN COMES UP - USA, Papa New Guinea, 38 Minutes, Dir: Jennifer Redfearn

Issue: Global Warming 

Rising sea levels are slowly but surely sinking the Pacific Island paradise of Carteret. The village sends out a group of young people to the nearby war-torn island of Bougainville to see if they can find a new home for the hundreds of soon-to-be-displaced families.

Carteret Island is portrayed as a place just short of the Garden of Eden and it is heartbreaking to watch the Islanders as their worst-case scenario gradually becomes a reality. The filmmakers choose their moments well to convey the complex series of obstacles the Islanders face in their diaspora. The film is not without a few glimmers of hope at the end, but they are hard-earned and bittersweet. 

Secret Weapon: Even though all the shorts are extremely emotional (watching them back-to-back was a bit overwhelming) Sun Comes Up might just be the most touching of the lot. It is impossible not to be moved watching its inhabitants' sadness and bravery in the face of their loss. Who would have the heart to deny them the Oscar win?

THE WARRIORS OF QIUGANG - USA, 39 Minutes, Dir: Ruby Yang

Issue: Pollution, Government Corruption

The most conventional of the documentary short subjects, Warriors is the portrait of a village of simple Chinese farmers whose community is decimated by the pollution from a new factory. Their fight for change comes up against such obstacles as government corruption and threats of violence. The central figure emerges as one villager with a middle school education who becomes the reluctant leader of the cause. Teaching himself the intricacies of the law, he finds - to his own surprise as much as anyone else - that he is a formidable foe for the forces who seek to crush dissent. There are echoes of the Oscar-winning The Cove in the fight against a government aggressively trying to ignore a problem.

Secret Weapon: Scope. The familiarity of the subject matter shouldn't detract from the achievement of the filmmakers here. Not content to just point the cameras at ruined crops and hulking gray factories, they stuck with this story for years getting the full picture of the story and the society that produced it.

POSTER GIRL - USA, 38 Minutes, Dir: Sara Nesson

Issue: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the Iraq War, The Treatment of Veterans

Poster Girl looks at all its big issues through the portrait of Iraq War veteran Robynn Murray who at the age of 19 went from all-American cheerleader to hard boiled machine gunner roaming the streets of Baghdad. Now, years later, she suffers from crippling anxiety attacks, has trouble coping the memories of war time, and has to navigate a labyrinth of red tape in order to claim her disability checks.

More than any of the other entries of this field Poster Girl leaps off the screen with a burn through intensity, largely due to the riveting presence of Sgt. Robynn Murray. You seriously can't take your eyes off her as she boils with anger, crumbles in pain, and rages articulately with feelings of betrayal at the institutions she trusted. Poster Girl is a tough film to shake.

Secret Weapon:  As much as Academy members can sympathize with the plights facing poor foreigners Poster Girl is going to hit closer to home. For British and American Academy it is going to reopen a lot of wounds.

STRANGERS NO MORE - USA, 40 Minutes, Dir: Karen Goodman, Kirk Simon

Issue: Prejudice

Although the horrors of war exist constantly around the edges of Strangers No More, this is the most hopeful of the documentary shorts. Strangers tells the story of the Bailik-Rogozin school in the heart of Tel-Aviv bringing together displaced children from dozens of countries around the world many who have arrived in Israel fleeing for the lives.

Strangers is perhaps the least impressive nominee from a filmmaking standpoint. Its straight forward account of one school year unfolds pretty much how you would expect. At feature length I would say this doc needed to dig deeper into how this school came to be, but at forty minutes I think they were correct to focus on the children and their harrowing stories. It is a simple film, well executed.

Secret Weapon: All those great kids! It's difficult to overstate the emotional impact of watch a kid go in the space of a year from a wide-eyed refugee completely lost in his surroundings to a student speaking fluent Hebrew and cracking jokes with his friends. I have no doubt that will be enough to get a lot of voters to mark their ballots right then and there. 

Marking Your Oscar Pool: Since all the films can lay claim to social significance - and since there is no World War II focused doc to break the tie - the usual Oscar method of choosing the most important-seeming film won't work here. I could easily see any of the five shorts taking the prize, but forced to predict I'm going to go with the film that would be getting my vote and say Poster Girl is going to barely edge out Strangers No More and Killing in the Name and take the Oscar. All the shorts make an impression but Poster Girl is the one that really gets your heart pumping. 

Part I - Animation

Part II - Live Action

This & That: Working Class Brits, Great Gatsby, Whoopi Goldberg

Advertising Age how Twitter made us care about stupid awards shows again.
Boston Wesley Morris on Oscar snubs and the problem of comedy. It's not serious enough for gold.
Orlando Sentinel really interesting piece about Matt Damon not wanting Steven Soderbegh to retire. Damon still wants to make Liberace with Michael Douglas.

“I’ve talked at length with Steven about it. He is going away for a while, I think. He genuinely wants to paint... But I see it as a waste of this incredible depth of knowledge of filmmaking. But his thing is ‘form. I’m only interested in what I can do with form. I’ve made almost every movie I want to,’ he says. ‘And if I see another over-the-shoulder shot, I’m going to kill myself.’"

Awards Tracker I hadn't read this but Anne Hathaway credits Penélope Cruz's filmography with helping her deal with doing nudity on film. Interesting... though if only she and Jake had lent those magnificent bods to a better movie than Love and Other Drugs.
LA Times Magnolia Pictures bought Lars von Trier's Melancholia. Yay. They did a great job pushing I Am Love last year. Hopefully this will fare better than Antichrist (which IFC bought) which got a ton of press but didn't even crack half a million at the US box office.

Boston Wesley Morris again (sorry, I've become obsessed. I blame Nick.) with a terrific piece on Whoopi Goldberg's reaction to the lack of black talent in the Oscar race and her career since The Color Purple.
BBC British actress Maxine Peake claims class snobbery is at work for Brit actresses. It's something I'd never considered but maybe this will be more clear to British readers? She says

I remember feeling, at drama school, that if you were male and working class you were a bit of a poet, a working class hero. But if you were female, you were just a bit gobby and a bit brassy and common.

Finally, The Hollywood Reporter let's us know that Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby will go before the cameras in August in Sydney. Be careful what you wish for people. I am always begging Baz to work again and he chooses an adaptation of my favorite novel that I don't think should be a movie AND he casts three people that I like but that I am not really excited for in these roles AND he shoots it in 3D. Sigh.

The Short Films: Part II

Serious Film's Michael C. back for Part 2 of our trip through the short film categories. This time it's the Live Action nominees.  Your cheating yourself out of some Oscar night drama if you don't check out these contenders. This year there is an even a small scale Shakespeare vs. Private Ryan, comedy/drama showdown happening. While the majority of the country is making popcorn I'm going to be on the edge of my seat.

The nominees are...

THE CONFESSION – UK, 26 minutes, Dir: Tanel Toom
This is a quietly somber short about a 9-year-old boy who is nervous to make his first confession. What if, he worries, he doesn’t have anything to be sorry about? So he is and his friend decide to pull an innocent prank that will serve the purpose, but things quickly spiral out of control.

For It: Toom shows an impressive control of tone and manages to get decent work out of his child actors who need to carry some weighty material, especially in a nicely played final scene. Voters who equate heaviness of the subject matter with quality could respond to this heaping serving of tragedy. The way circumstance piles up tragedy on top of tragedy recalls an Inarritu movie like Biutiful or 21 Grams.

Against It: It lays on the Catholic guilt awfully thick at times. The story heaps one too many devastating twists of fate onto the protagonist to remain believable, and at this short length one can really feel it when things start to get contrived. It’s hard to imagine voters going for The Confession when there are other serious shorts that are not so unrelentingly bleak. 

WISH 143 – UK, 24 Minutes, Dir: Ian Barnes
When a 15-year-old boy with terminal cancer gets a visit from the English equivalent of Make-a-Wish he informs them he doesn’t want to meet an athlete or go to Disneyland. What he would really like is to get laid, please.

For It: Though it deals with children with cancer the filmmakers bring a refreshingly light touch to the material. The relationship between the kid and a priest sympathetic to his situation is also well handled and acted, especially by veteran character actor Jim Carter, an actor most recently seen in Nathaniel obsession Downton Abbey. Unlike The Confession the story here never feels forced. Its mixture of substance and honest sentiment could prove winning.

Against It: Though it never steps wrong into the maudlin or cloying, it never exactly wows either. The story has its heart in the right place but it is also pretty predictable. Wish’s admirable restraint might actually hurt its chances since it never goes for the big emotional catharsis. It is difficult to imagine it overcoming such strong competition.

NA WEWE – Belgium, 19 Minutes, Dir: Ivan Goldschmidt
When the ethnic civil war in Rwanda spills over into Burundi it leads to a nerve-jangling confrontation as van full of civilians is stopped by a group of violent rebels who interrogate and terrorize them.

For It: Na Wewe is first and foremost a beautifully crafted piece of filmmaking. Often the shorts have some amateurish touches that make them feel like the cinematic minor leagues, but Goldschmidt’s work here could stand proudly alongside similar work from, say, Paul Greengrass. It’s also a story perfectly suited to the short film length. Some shorts suffer from trying to cram feature-length arcs into half an hour but Na Wewe (You Too) gives the perfect slice to let the one scene stand as a microcosm for the big picture. It also stands out from the other shorts by being damned exciting. Delivering the substance as well as the thrills in a movie-movie kind of way = a tough combo to beat.

Against It: Nothing I can spot. Here is your frontrunner.

THE CRUSH – Ireland, 15 Minutes, Dir: Michael Creagh
When an 8-year-old boy is devastated to find out that the teacher he has a crush on is engaged to marry a lout who doesn’t deserve her, he takes the surprising step of challenging her fiancé to a duel to the death. Obviously the guy doesn’t take him seriously, though perhaps he should.

For It: Dark comedy isn’t the Academy’s favorite genre but it helps that a cute kid is center stage. Voters who like having a short with a clear beginning, middle, and end will be entertained by The Crush, which is much more concerned about its twisty plot than about atmosphere or grand themes. If enough voters are impressed by its cleverness it could surprise.

Against It: It's difficult to be too tough on a solid, enjoyable short but it starts to strain believability, and honestly the climax disappoints. It settles for cute when it had set the stage for something more surprising. As a result it ends up feeling slight, even next to its comedic competition. And the sight of young boy waving a gun around will make some queasy regardless of the light-hearted resolution.

GOD OF LOVE – USA, 18 Minutes, Dir: Luke Methany
In the only purely comedic short director/star Luke Methany is Raymond Goodfellow, a jazz singer hopelessly in love with Kelly, his drummer who only has eyes for Fozzie, his guitar player and best friend. After months of non-stop prayer for assistance the Gods finally intervene with a gift of Cupid-style love darts to help him win Kelly’s heart. 

For It: If anything is going to upset Na Wewe it will be this charmer from star-in-the-making Luke Methany. Like Na Wewe, Methany shows a control of tone and pacing that can compete with the feature length competition. On top of that God of Love is filmed with gorgeous black and white visuals that stands out from the competition and highlights its superior craftsmanship in a way that a comedy wouldn't otherwise. God of Love is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise somber lineup.

Against It: Say it with me: It’s a comedy, and with the Oscars that means stepping up to the plate with two strikes against you. Although maybe in the short category voters will loosen up enough to vote their heart and let the feature length films carry the weight of importance.

Marking Your Oscar Pool: If you want to play it safe check off the box next to Na Wewe, no question. The fact that it is a right in the Academy wheelhouse in terms of subject matter shouldn't detract from the fact that is is an extremely deserving winner. But my vote, and a strong upset possibility, would be God of Love for its control of tone, its originality, and for announcing the presence of a big new talent, Luke Matheny. 

Part I - Animation

Best Actress. Final Notes

My favorite category didn't disappoint this year, offering up the strongest overall lineup in quite some time. In fact, though these 2010 Best Actress roles won't prove as iconic in the long run as 2006's primo batch, I actually think as an entire range of performances, it might be that year's equal. Would you agree?

Should Natalie Portman be nervous about her chief rival? Or is it all in her head?

The question in terms of who will win is whether Natalie Portman's long lead is going to pay off or if a recent arguable passion / mood to finally crown The Bening has grown enough in the industry to yank that shiny gold man away. If that happens, Natalie, not Annette, will be the one yelling "Interloper!"

But I don't think it's going to happen. The Bening can console herself with the knowledge that she is one of my 33 all time favorite actresses. ;)

THE UPDATED BEST ACTRESS PAGE
includesPOLL "Who Should Win?" and the reader requested "how they got nominated? silliness. Which is actually not ever entirely silly even though it's meant for fun. We all know Oscar is not only about the performances. And if you don't know that, you must have slept through Sandra Bullock's win last year.