Take Three: Melissa McCarthy

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with Take Three. Today: Melissa McCarthy

Take One: The Nines (2007)
The three things that struck me most about the twisty-turny Ryan Reynolds sci-fi drama were Melissa McCarthy. (Reynolds’ much-bared torso came a close fourth). In the film’s three loose-linked segments she plays: Margaret, a perky PR handler; Melissa, a TV actress version of ‘Melissa McCarthy’; and Mary, a housewife. There’s plenty of mystical musings about 9s being everywhere and meaning everything – though thankfully not as much number mumbling as there was in The Number 23 – but it sort of makes its own kind of brain-beaten logic by the end.

The second and third sections give McCarthy lengthy scenes  opposite Reynolds:  She aces “Melissa”'s cringe inducing pissed off moment where she’s told she’s being dropped from a TV show by this narrative’s version of Reynolds, and in the is-it-a-show-or-is-it-reality? final segment "Mary" gets an emotional scene which nicely shows off McCarthy's vulnerable side; in both segments she’s quietly phenomenal, often showing Reynolds, and everybody else, up. 

But the actress really excels in the first section, as the troublingly bubbly PR keeping Reynolds’ fire-starting actor under house arrest with knowingly witty pleasantries.

I didn’t mean to eat my way into a ten-year shame spiral, but I did! 

There’s an unsettling Truman Show-esque weirdness to this Melissa incarnation that the giggly sarcasm she uses can’t hide. With three roles, McCarthy gets to display triple the versatile character work in one decent movie.

Take Two: The Back-Up Plan (2010)
There’s only one good reason to watch The Back-Up Plan and it’s McCarthy.

Click to read more ...

Extremely Loud-Mouthed and Incredibly Close-Up Oscar Predix

...and everyone is doing it now that the year is half over. Wheeee.

Best Picture
Here are updated predictions in all categories from Best Picture down to Best Key Grip. The new Best Picture rule -- they can have anywhere between 5 to 10 nominees and we won't know until Oscar nominations are announced -- is causing me chart difficulties. I can't figure out, aesthetically, how to divvy up charts with so many different numerical outcomes. If you must know I would like to make this wild July speculation that there will be 6 nominees to include War Horse, The Descendants, We Bought a Zoo, J Edgar, The Artist and new entry Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which now plans to arrive in 2011.

It's not that I have any particular hunch or faith in that upcoming Stephen Daldry 9/11 film. It's more like anti-wishful thinking: See, I'm allergic to movie representations of that day since I was here in New York City and I tend to find the world's and especially the media's obsession with it absolutely grotesque. (For reasons that have nothing to do with cinema or the Oscars, so let's move on...)

John Williams and Steven SpielbergBiggest Annoyance
The music categories are always high-maintenance in terms of predictions. Original Song has zillions of hard to figure eligibility issues. Plus, there are still so many films that have not announced their composers in the Original Score category. Yes, it's often a late-to-the-party job as movie productions go. But I always suspect that even after the composers are announced that it takes a good long while for that information to trickle onto key pages like official sites and the IMDb. If you know of a better source of who's scoring what, do let me know. (I don't want to have to call 12 production companies!) With J Edgar, however, which also hasn't announced, it feels safe to assume that Clint Eastwood will compose some simple piano motifs for it because that's how he do.

That said, this category might be easier to predict than usual because the King of the Category John Williams will surely take up 40% of it. Oscar's music branch has always trembled for his Treble, zinged for his Strings and mooned over his melodies so they'd never pass up the chance to honor him for The Adventure of Tin Tin and for War Horse now that he's scoring again after basically a six year break from features (excluding that Crystal Skull reprising). John Williams turns 80 next year and chances are strong that they won't want him to retire without a sixth Oscar.

Craziest What If?
The new prediction I'm most enamored of because it's a Winding road way off the well-paved Bait path and because it would be highly awesome if the crazy thing came to pass and I predicted it first is an editing nomination for the Cannes hit Drive (2011). I mean why the hell not, right? It's July. Think outside the Bait Box! The prediction holdovers that I was initially excited to imagine but am now worried about -- though I didn't change them -- were all the Captain America nominations (Costumes, Makeup, Visual Effects). When I went there months ago I was totally confident that it could happen but public fatigue with superheroics makes me wonder if all films from this genre will be snubbed even in seemingly likely places like visual effects. Did Green Lantern leave an emerald stain?

The movies are getting all jumbled in my head now.

Why is Gosling driving off with the good Captain. Where is he taking him? "SHOTGUN!"

And on a final note, looking over Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor the competitions and competitors seem far more interesting than usual. Supporting Actor, for example, seems to have a number of Career Honors vs. Career Honors vs. Career Honors possibilities and in the lead race, could it finally be Leonardo DiCaprio's year?  Or maybe the manly half of the acting lineups will get boring real fast and it really will come down to a Close vs. Streep 80s throwback Actress-Off. Maybe it's just the oppressive July heat warping our crystal ball.

Comments? You realize we cry a single tear for every post that doesn't enter double digit comments, right? Don't cause us any more agony. Once you're done contemplating Oscar, hit the gym, the links, and the (Italian) showers. Yeah, yeah, it's summer ...but this blog has air conditioning.

200 Days Until Oscar Nominations. Let's Predict!

200 Days? How about that...it's practically tomorrow.  Kidding! All of the following predictions are thus 100% accurate since every contending film is currently in release and consensus has long since been reached. Kidding²!

Big (speculative) gains for Bridesmaids and Midnight In Paris as they continue to do fantastic leggy box office, The Artist (since it hasn't lost even 1〫of its Cannes heat), and minor gains for films which have recently won distribution like W.E., Albert Nobbs and A Dangerous Method.

Prediction Page Revisions in Progress.
Completed: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Screenplay. 

And yes I am feeling really good about that Bridesmaids prediction. Why not, right? Big comedy hits have been nominated before and what a fun way to honor Kristen Wiig who no one expects to show up in Best Actress, you know? Unless of course you're talking Golden Globe Actress in which case, bitch better be there!

Clutch The Pearls! "The Iron Lady" Teases

What timing!

Oscar nominations are exactly 200 days away. Immediately after hearing that Glenn Close's Albert Nobbs now has a distributor, her ostensible "overdue" Best Actress competition -- that'd be Meryl Streep -- starts teasing us with this one minute teaser clip, the first from The Iron Lady.

We'll save the "Yes, No, Maybe So" for a full trailer. But you are immediately forgiven if every line reads as an Oscar tease as well.

You've got it in you to go the whole distance!"

Consider eyebrows raised, but why can't I shake the vocal / aural image of Streep as Julia Child on first glimpse of Streep as Margaret Thatcher? Is it just the Oscar proximity? (Can you?)

P.S. Oscar Prediction Pages updates have begun starting with Best Actress

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"

One more Yes, No, Maybe So to take you into the holiday weekend. This one is the espionage thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy adapted from the bestseller of the same name by John LeCarre. The movie arrives in September. Let's break it down.

The trailer is quite riveting. I blame the intriguing imagery, the cold precision of the editing and those musical trills (not sure if that's the right word) in the score. (Though with scoring in trailers it's always a bad idea to get excited because chances are it's another score entirely in the film. Turns out this score is Danny Elfman from The Wolfman) The trailer is also smart about setting up the central dilemma 'there's a long term mole in our ranks and it's one of these five men!' without fussing too much over the details... or even which five cast members, exactly, that we're talking about. I understand from plot descriptions of the novel that the main character George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is pulled back from semi-retirement to uncover the mole so you've got your old hoary trope in there too. One Last Job!

It's 2011 and knowing the internet, we'll hear who the mole is any second now, let alone waiting for the big reveal within the film in September while we're watching it. Not the film's fault of course but it hasn't taken some of the electricity out of all genres that use mystery and twists for their thrills. Then there's a more personal thing: Two hours without any actressing to speak of though... in a genre I can take or leave. Speaking of personal pecularities: though it pains me to say it for fear of the virtual retribution, I've really never been one for Gary Oldman. No, I am secretly not a member of AMPAS but they've really never really been into him either: Note the  "BAFTA Winner" above his name during the cast shuffle before the "Academy Award Winner" for Colin Firth; Oldman has never been nominated for an Oscar. Will this year be different? (Best Actor Predix - updating in a few days)

The director Tomas Alfredson made the remarkable Let The Right One In (which we were just reminded of) and he's brought back some of the same team for this one which means it will, at the very least, be strongly moody with sticky images. That's a big plus for any thriller. The cast is also sharp. Tom Hardy gets a lot of face time in the trailer but there's also Mark Strong, Toby Jones and John Hurt (among others). It'll be interesting, too, to see if Colin Firth can keep up the remarkable momentum he built from A Single Man and The King's Speech. Will that prove a two year peak or will he have another couple more years up top of the "must-cast pile"?

And finally: how the hell will this fare with Oscar? It's so hard to say since the genre and filmmaking team are not Oscar Bait in and of themselves. When you aren't carrying obvious bait, you've got to have strong golden hooks (excellent reviews, showy performances, surprise hit status) if you hope to catch Oscar.

The Trailer in Question...

Are you a yes, no, or maybe so? Break it down in the comments

Previously: Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, War Horse, Moneyball, Footloose, and A Dangerous Method