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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Monologue: Megan & the Dolphin

Have you missed Monologue Mondays? I know I have. So let's start again and try to do this weekly.

Though Bridesmaids' Melissa McCarthy probably won her Oscar nomination for a variety of reasons, you almost always need one Oscar "clip" to make the lineup. You know the kind. It's an instant fix of the performance, which works in the way soundbites do for politicians or catchphrases do for sitcom stars. It's something they can play at the Oscars or at awards shows that will a) remind people why they loved the performance b) remind them why they liked the movie and c) pack a mini dramatic punch that justifies the nomination for the millions who might not have seen it yet. This can be true even if the person is nominated for a broadly comic role, as rare as those nominations are.

 

I think you're ready to hear a little story about a girl named Megan, a girl named Megan that didn't have a very good time in high school. I'm referring to myself when I say 'Megan'. It's me Megan.

Now the Oscars don't always select clips this way. Continued after the jump...

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Links: Dujardin Sings, Madonna Votes, Camp Dies

Cats on Film Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) as experience by Jonesy the ginger tom.
New York Observer Good piece on 'the death of camp' and the new Broadway musical TV series "Smash" (which I do mean to write about soon).
Socialite Life teaser for Season 5 of True Blood. Ugh. If it really is about the return of King Russell, I think my love for the show will die. Repetition is so dangerous for good television and the show FINALLY wrestled its way out of the endless Sookie/Bill/Eric loop.
Empire Online has their annual "Done in 60 Seconds" competition. One minute amateur films spoofing on famous movies. Watch some and vote! Film Experience reader Jack made #20 on The King's Speech. Congrats for making the semi-finals, Jack! I haven't had the chance to watch any of this yet but they're 60 seconds long. I can squeeze a few in.

Boy Culture Magic Mike's Matt Bomer and Joseph Mangianello were friends in college (who knew?) and give great advice for male cast bonding.  
Serious Film top 10 overlooked performances of the year
Antagony & Ectasy doles out The Antagonists. I live for personal ballots. They're so much more interesting than consensus nominations. Yeah, yeah. I know I need to finish my awardage.
Vulture Best TV news ever? Shirley Maclaine joining the cast of Downton Abbey!
The WOW Report Channing Tatum signin' autographs and looking good 

24 Frames Madonna's vote for Best Picture (yes, she's an AMPAS member) sounds like it's going to The Tree of Life. Who knew?

I think it’s a spiritual, deeply profound movie. My mouth was hanging open the entire time I was watching it"

Flavorwire Harvey Weinstein's own take on The Artist. You win no points for predicting that he loves it! 
Focus on Women's Filmmakers has a Streep Oscar Chart that plays into all of my biggest pet peeves about awards season including the implict suggestion that it's wrong that she's the only thing ever recognized from her movies (um, what if the movies aren't good?) and including my #1 pet peeve, suggesting that she was the supporting actress in several movies. The modern awards campaign circus has completely destroyed collective understanding of narrative and now if you aren't the movies POV , you suddenly aren't a lead? Soon people will be --- NO, I CAN'T. MUST STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS TOPIC EVERY YEAR. [Breathe, Nathaniel. Breathe]
Guardian Awww, happy face. The original Eponine and Jean Valjean are joining the cast of Les Misérables... albeit not in their starring roles. 

Jean Dujardin sings after the jump!

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Review: "Albert Nobbs"

This review was previously published in my column at Towleroad.

Albert Nobbs is story of a woman living as a man in Ireland in the early 20th century. Albert (Oscar nominated Glenn Close) serves as a waiter at a little upscale hotel. His world is so small that he barely leaves the hotel and hardly ever utters full sentences to anyone but himself. Those private conversations generally involve the counting of shillings. Nobbs' inner life isn't quite as small. The waiter dreams of saving up enough to buy a small tobacco shop and run his own little business. When he meets a painter by the name of Mr. Hubert Page (Oscar nominated Janet McTeer) whose situation is not dissimilar but whose emotional life is obviously richer, his eyes are suddenly opened to new possibilities, including romance... or at least cohabitation.  But dreams aren't easy when a flea in your undergarments can give you away, when your career could be finished with one misstep around a wealthy patron, when a stroke of bad luck could put your employer out of business, or when the woman you set your sights on for companionship (Mia Wasikowska) might not have the purest of motives in returning your affection.

You know what's just as a hard as opening a tobacco shop when you're a woman living as a man in early 20th century Ireland? Getting your dream movie made when you're an actress of a certain age in the early 21st century... [More]

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Oscar Loves Two Women. In The Same Film. Often.

Amir here. Since the Oscar nominations were announced on tuesday we’ve all heard tons of new stats about this year's slate. All the ‘oldest’ and ‘youngest’ and ‘most’s aside, the one thing that caught my eye was the double nomination for Best Supporting Actress for The Help’s ladies Jessica Chastain & Octavia Spencer. This is now the fourth consecutive year that the category has included two nominees from the same film. For the trivia lovers among you, this equals the previous longest streak of double supporting actress nominations from 1947 through 1950: Gentleman’s Agreement, I Remember Mama, Come to the Stable, Pinky and All About Eve... (though the earlier run is more impressive since 1949 had two sets of double nominees.)

Trivia: The two longest double supporting runs (though 47-50 actually had a year with two double noms."Pinky" is not pictured by accident. Apologies). In both one actress appeared multiple times (Amy Adams and Celeste Holm) and one of those times she played a nun!!!

Last year’s winner, The Fighter’s Melissa Leo, was accompanied by her co-star Amy Adams, who had been nominated along with Viola Davis for Doubt two years earlier. When Adams was taking time off inbetween, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick filled in for her for their performances in Up in the Air. Had it not been for 2007's spread of wealth, the record could have been extended another two years since Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza were both nominated for Babel the year before.

If you look back through the history of the shiny gold man you'll find that in the 76 years since the Supporting categories were introduced 28 films have managed two supporting actress nominations. That’s an astonishing number but here’s what's more interesting. (Continued... with Pie Charts!)

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