Blueprints: "The Kids Are All Right"

To celebrate Pride Month, every week of June Jorge will be highlighting the script of a movie that focuses on a different letter of the LGBT acronym. For “L”, he looks back at one of the most touching family dramas of the past decade.

For years, one of the biggest goals of the LGBT community (although certainly not the only or the most important one) has been to be seen as peers by the rest of the world. As people that, albeit in a different manner, go through the same experiences and have the same types of feelings: growing pains, heartbreak, the ache to share our lives with someone special…

On film, this sentiment of “We’re just like you” has been the most prevalent in family-focused narrative. The Kids Are All Right magnificently balances the act of showing a lesbian couple as readily familiar as any heterosexual marriage, while at the same time depicting struggles unique to them. Let’s take a look at a breaking point in the story; a moment where this harmony between a pleasant exterior and the turbulence of the couple is broken, and how it looks in the page. Via a single strand of bright red hair...

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Q&A: Best 'Best Actress' Decade? Gay for Play as Actorly Rite of Passage?

Four more reader questions to kick off the weekend. Wheeee. As ever, I'd love to hear your answers to these questions thrown my way.

MATT ST CLAIR: Is there an unseen awards contender this year that you are hoping doesn't fail?

NATHANIEL: My "please let this be successful" hopes reside with Blade Runner 2049 (because the original's reputation being tarnished would be such a pity), The Greatest Showman (because musicals MUST continue to thrive) and Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (because it's infinitely annoying that Annette Bening doesn't have an Oscar yet and didn't even get nominated for such gorgeous work in 20th Century Women). While we're well- wishing please let Wonderstruck, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and The Florida Project could be bigger hits than usual for Todd Haynes, John Cameron Mitchell, and Sean Baker, since they're three of our most distinctive American auteurs. I could go on but I'll stop as no genie grants unlimited wishes.

CATBASKETS: I've been thinking a lot about straight actors getting their starts or big breaks playing gay roles--Hugh Grant in Maurice, Guy Pierce in Priscilla, DDL in Beautiful Launderette, Charlie Hunnam in Queer as Folk, Eddie Redmayne in Savage Grace, etc. etc. Do you think this was/is a major rite of passage for actors? Do you think this will slow down now that there's more awareness/active demand for gay actors to play these roles?

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All the Oscar Nominated Performances, Ranked (2010-2016)

Per reader request!

ALL 140 OF OSCAR NOMINATED PERFORMANCES THIS DECADE RANKED (THUS FAR)
by Nathaniel R
Asterisks indicate Oscar winners

1. Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine *
2. Cate Blanchett, Carol
3. Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
4. Marion Cotillard, Two Days One Night
5. Christopher Plummer, Beginners *
6. Isabelle Huppert, Elle
   
   
7. Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
8. Viola Davis, The Help

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Odd Golden Globe Nominations This Century

by Brian Zitzelman

The Golden Globes take the spotlight again tomorrow night, however briefly. As the Oscars shine with prestige, the Globes remain its bratty little brother; he seems well behaved, but does enough wild things (drinks, watches too much tv, dresses down) that he'll never escape his elder sibling's shadow. And annually he let's strange nominees slip out the gate... 

This is not to say that Oscar doesn’t occasionally include films and performances that are immediately forgotten or unworthy, but nobody beats the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for oddball picks, both deserving and not. So, if you’re curious why the Globes are such an easy punching bag for movie hounds, while nonetheless being a delight for their originality, here are a few of the most peculiar nods of this century. Not all of these are laughably bad -some reveal a daring and interest in films outside the 'prestige' norm, yet in the world of film awards, they are indeed odd... 

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Why Amy Adams May Have to Sit This Oscar Year Out...

The news of Amy Adams winning the NBR delighted many and also stirred up the usual "The Film Experience hates her!" complaints in the commentary. We do not. Being frustrated by an actor's ubiquity and dullness at one particular annual event is not the same as hating them or their work. Amy Adams is a very fine actress. She has given many delightful performances, two of which would have even made non-controversial Oscar wins had she managed to actually nab the statue (Junebug or The Fighter).

Amy Adams (5), Albert Finney (5), and Glenn Close (6) are the living actors with the most Oscar nominations who have never won.

And it's true that she's quite amazing in Arrival, serving as the audience vessel to in two simultaneous and important ways that the movie couldn't succeed without: she's awestruck by what she's watching (she's our eyes and surely our facial expressions in the dark); apart from that awe she's emotionally and intellectually engaged with the events in order to grapple with them and suss out meaning which is what the audience is always doing when they're watching grand films that demands that they pay attention with both their heart and their mind.

But for all of that I don't think she's making the Oscar lineup and here's why...

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