OVP: Actor (2003)

OVP: Best Actor (2003)

The Nominees Were...

Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Ben Kingsley, House of Sand and Fog

Jude Law, Cold Mountain

Bill Murray, Lost in Translation

Sean Penn, Mystic River

My Thoughts: All right now we're talking.  After two relatively lackluster acting nominations, we get into the 2003 Best Actor field, which might be pound-for-pound, one of the best lineups in the history of the Oscars for this field; there are some lineups in the 1970's that could likely take it, but in the 2000's you'd be hard-pressed to find a better Best Actor field.  With one exception, and we'll get him out of the way first, I adored all of these men's performances and all will be repeating on My Oscar Ballot next week.  It is honestly odd, because in order to get here Oscar had to go pretty atypical-there are two comedic performances here, as well as a romantic lead from a devastatingly sexy man (neither of these are great hooks for Best Actor where Oscar wants you grizzled and over 40).  But going outside of his comfort zone got AMPAS some rich rewards.

The one performance I wasn't feeling is from Ben Kingsley.  Kingsley is an interesting film performer for me in that he reads a bit like Laurence Olivier, someone who would be dynamite onstage (I'd assume), but who plays to the back of the room in most of his screen performances.  I have yet to see a couple of his more celebrated works, but I like him better when he's cold-and-calculating in a popcorn flick like Sneakers than most of his 21st Century work where he's given roles that demand scenery-chewing.  He's surprisingly subdued, and much better, in the first hour of this picture, but in the last 20  minutes (when the entire movie goes down the toilet), he can't handle it & becomes far too hammy.  I get why this was nominated (Kingsley is an Oscar favorite, and overacting is something AMPAS goes for), but it's still a blemish on an otherwise unimpeachable list.

After all, Sean Penn manages to keep it reeled in for most of his picture, always a risky game with one of the better actors of his generation.  Penn had been marching toward an Oscar for years when Mystic River came along, and this has every bait-y hook that you can imagine: a crime lord trying to avenge his daughter...how are they going to turn that down?  But Penn also keeps his character the right modulation, never too laid back but never too much.  It's a delicate balancing act, playing a live wire so well, but that's kind of how Penn became one of his generation's great actors-when he's playing it right, there's few that can strike that balance so perfectly.  This is one of his best performances (maybe my favorite of his ever?).

Bill Murray is also giving his career-best performance with Lost in Translation.  This is one of my favorite movies partially because Murray was born to play this part.  He totally brings a world-weariness to Bob Harris that feels so informed.  Think of the scene where he's singing karaoke, and you can tell (without him ever breaking focus on the song) that he's trying to tell Scarlett Johansson that there is so much truth in the song's lyrics...that life is made up of these beautiful little connections, and they're the best part of it.  Playing someone who is having a midlife crisis without it feeling self-indulgent or too expositional is a challenge, but Murray knows how to do that-how he knows the best parts of his life are likely behind him, but that he still wants to ensure he goes on having a life of value...it's a tough part, free of a lot of Murray's more sarcastic tricks, and I loved it.

Unlike Penn or Murray, I wouldn't say that this is Jude Law's best performance (that's probably either Ripley or AI), but we're not judging on a curve here, and Cold Mountain is a marvelous piece from the actor.  His Southern accent is strong (stronger than Zellweger's, and she's the only American in the main trio), and he plays his slowly broken-down deserter who is fleeing for the woman he abandoned for the war.  It's hard to play a man with a modern sensitivity without it feeling inauthentic, but Law captures that through his short, clipped reading of the dialogue & the way he uses his beauty to tell a story that the script occasionally wants to gloss past.  Perfect casting, a wonderful performance, and the heart-and-soul of Cold Mountain.

It's hard to remember right now his career has had so many chapters, but Johnny Depp was once not just not a proper blockbuster movie star, but also he wasn't an Academy favorite.  Both those things changed with Captain Jack Sparrow.  This film didn't need to be as good as it was, and Depp didn't need to give the performance that would define his career...but he did.  Jack Sparrow arrives fully-fleshed, and stays that way, with the confidence of creating an iconic character that would redefine much of how we think of the summer movie for the next twenty years.  I have no notes here, other than I am still shocked the Academy was willing to take a chance by giving a Best Actor citation to a man they'd ignored up until then for a summer pirate movie based on a ride at Disneyland.  Few Oscar nominations have been so weird (and few so richly deserved).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes of course break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama went to Sean Penn against Law, Kingsley, Tom Cruise (The Last Samurai), & Russell Crowe (Master and Commander), while Comedy/Musical favored Murray against Depp, Jack Black (School of Rock), Jack Nicholson (Something's Gotta Give), & Billy Bob Thornton (Bad Santa).  The SAG Awards went with Depp, besting the Oscar lineup except that Law was replaced by Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent), while BAFTA went with Murray against Depp, Law, Penn (for both Mystic River and 21 Grams), & Benicio del Toro (21 Grams).  I think Law was probably the most vulnerable, and based on its award count I have to assume that Russell Crowe was probably in sixth place (which was also a good performance-well done Oscar).

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I don't entirely know how you judge the work of Elijah Wood & Viggo Mortensen, both of whom were only giving a third of a performance in The Return of the King rather than a completed body-of-work, but it seems a damned shame that neither of them ever got a nomination for Frodo & Aragorn, and given the opportunity I would've rectified that for at least one of them.

Oscar’s Choice: A true threeway race between Penn, Depp, & Murray ended with the more traditional of the three winning.  It's a pity that they didn't get more adventurous by giving it to one of the other two, considering that Penn would win five years later and both Depp & Murray will likely go Oscar-less.

My Choice: Depp.  I've thought about this a lot, and even rewatched Lost in Translation to confirm, but what Depp does in Pirates (and throughout the whole franchise) is honestly one of those things that define the movies for me, and I can't pick anyone else.  Murray, Penn, Law, & Kingsley follow.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to stick with Oscar & Sean Penn (I won't blame you) or will you ride the Seven Seas alongside me & Captain Jack?  Do you think Law, Depp, or Murray will ever win an Oscar or was this their shot that got away?  And how would you have handled the Return of the King lead actor quandary?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2003: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2003

Past Best Actor Contests: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019

OVP: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Film: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Stars: Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Meng'er Zhang, Fala Chen, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh, Ben Kingsley, Tony Leung

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I'll be real-coming out of Spider-Man: Far From Home, I was a bit over the obligation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  I knew that I wouldn't entirely be able to escape it-projects like the OVP and just general osmosis were going to keep me coming back even if I decided to skip some installments, but I wasn't thrilled about what a post-Thanos world would look like for the organization.  Something happened, though, during the pandemic when I couldn't see any major blockbusters-I developed a hunger for them.  In retrospect, for me the MCU became a place of nostalgia that it couldn't have been in its ubiquity.  Most of the product since Avengers: Endgame, though, has been lacking.  Spider-Man and Black Widow were too dry, Falcon & Winter Soldier and Loki were a snooze, and What If has yet to live up to the fun of its potential.  Only WandaVision, a complete departure from the MCU's traditional formatting, has shown itself to be truly worthy.  That is, until Shang-Chi, currently lighting up the box office & totally defying convention, potentially changing some of the "evolution to streaming" conversations (supposedly Shang-Chi has convinced Disney that they should release Eternals exclusively in theaters as well).  Shang-Chi is doing this not just through exclusivity-it's also one of the best films in the MCU, showing that even if it's sticking to the formula, it can find ways to drive a fun action-adventure that doesn't need a name-brand to keep it afloat.

(Spoilers Ahead) Taking place in the years after Avengers: Endgame (though weirdly it's never explained which characters were blipped or not), the movie is about Sean (Liu), a valet driver who speaks multiple languages but doesn't aspire to much more in his life other than hanging with his friend Katy (Awkwafina).  Things change, though, when a man on a bus tries to steal Sean's necklace, and rather than giving it up, Sean fights the man in a blistering whirl of martial arts, to Katy's shock.  It turns out that Sean is actually Shang-Chi, the son of a ruthless crime boss named Xu Wenwu (Leung) master of the mystical "ten rings," who is attempting to steal these magical necklaces from both Shang-Chi and his sister Xu Xialing (Zhang) in order to take on the home village of their mother, whom he believes is trying to keep her captive, despite them understanding that she was killed when they were children.  They initially are captured by their father, then escape and go to the village, lead by their aunt Ying Nan (Yeoh).  Nan leads them in battle against their father, who in turn awakens the Dweller-in-Darkness, whom Shang-Chi and Katy ultimately kill.  The film ends on something of a cliffhanger, with Shang-Chi and Katy joining up with Captain Marvel, the Hulk, and Wong, presumably joining the Avengers in the process.

Shang-Chi suffers in some regard from some of the problems you get from the Marvel franchises.  The third act is a bit sloppy (they really are not great with ending their films), throwing too much CGI into the battle with the dragons (it made it a bit blurry & washed out, which is the case for a lot of the Marvel films where they simply have too much CGI to make it look realistic), and I will admit that there is maybe not enough information in the pre-Shang-Chi period of our main character's life (I would've liked at least one scene of him as "Sean" without Katy there so we could understand what he was like while he was alone).

But these are small complaints, as Shang-Chi is the best MCU film since Black Panther.  Casting Simu Liu in the lead turned out to be a stroke of genius, as he is totally prepared to play the slacker qualities of this figure, while also believably rising to his destiny as the film continues (also, it must be said, Liu is the hottest addition to Marvel's universe since Thor took off his shirt).  Awkwafina's character might need a bit more explaining in a future film (like, does she have a superpower other than being good at shooting arrows...and isn't that Hawkeye's thing?), but she proves to be one of the most reliable comic reliefs currently in movies, totally nailing the the "comic" part of this and giving us a playfulness that has been lacking in a lot of recent Marvel product.  The remainder of the cast is superb, particularly Leung & Yeoh, both icons of Asian cinema for decades, proving their movie star chops in a big-screen American product.  About the only thing I wanted out was Ben Kingsley's unnecessary connection to the larger Marvel universe (was anyone really clamoring for him reviving his work as "the Mandarin?").  Combined with some terrific stunt work & fight scenes (the fight on the bus is epic, as is the sequence where we first meet Xialing), Shang-Chi is a spry shot-in-the-arm for the MCU films headed into a consequential fall, where both Eternals and Spider-Man: No Way Home come with sky high expectations...it's proof that Marvel can believably achieve such levels still.

OVP: House of Sand and Fog (2003)

Film: House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Stars: Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Ron Eldard, Jonathan Ahdout
Director: Vadim Perelman
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actor-Ben Kingsley, Supporting Actress-Shohreh Aghdashloo, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I have walked out of two films in my lifetime.  One was a movie called Gomorrah, which was the second part of a double feature and one that I (and the friend I was with) just couldn't get through after having already sat through a pretty heavy movie (to this date I have never seen it despite it getting quite a few hosannas at the time).  The second, though, was a movie that I didn't walk out of voluntarily.  I was at the Southdale Mall in Edina, and randomly there was a fire about twenty minutes into House of Sand and Fog in the mall's food court, and I had to evacuate, along with my friend Katie, and we never went back to see it.  Seventeen years later, I'm starting to cross off the remaining "missing" films of the 2003 OVP (more will be coming in the next month, so get excited), and this movie popped to the top of the list.  Little did I know what a turn the movie would take after the first twenty minutes nearly two decades after the fact.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Kathy (Connelly), a recovering drug addict whose husband has recently left her, and who has suddenly found that she's being evicted from her home for a business tax that she shouldn't have been charged, but has put a lien on her house to the point where it's being repossessed (it seems absurd that $500 would result in such a situation, but sadly believable).  Before she's able to prove to the city that she shouldn't be penalized for a tax that wasn't hers in the first place, they have already resold the house to a former Iranian Colonel who has emigrated to the United States named Massoud Behrani (Kingsley), and his family, including his wife Naderah (Aghdashloo) and their teenage son Esmail (Ahdout).  Massoud views this as a jumping off point for his family to live a similarly-luxurious lifestyle to what they achieved in Iran, but Kathy and her new boyfriend Sheriff's Deputy Lester Burdon (Eldard) are putting intense pressure on the family to give her back the house.

Here's where I want to interrupt the plot description, because honestly-this sounds like a good movie. There's a lot of really intriguing interplay at work here, and a situation where two sides are both in the right & wrong.  Massoud bought the house legally and there's a reason he can't just give the house back, but Kathy shouldn't have been penalized for a tax erroneously (even though her not opening the mail resulted in her being evacuated).  But House doesn't have the skill to try and maintain this odd sort of standoff-they don't have the prescience that someone making this film in 2020 might have had to lean into the housing crisis that was about to devastate people like Kathy nor the skill to resolve a standoff between two flawed but honorable people.  Instead, they need to make villains...even if I don't think the filmmakers realize that's what they're doing.

Because in the last thirty minutes of House of Sand and Fog, the film goes nuts.  After throwing away his marriage and potentially his career out of sexual obsession with Kathy, Lester comes to the house, finds that Kathy has attempted suicide in the driveway, and blames the Behranis, imprisoning them in a bathroom.  He then, at gunpoint, forces Massoud & Esmail to go to sign the money from the city to Kathy, but in the process Esmail is shot by an officer who thinks he is taking Lester hostage, and not the other way around, and Esmail is killed.  Lester goes to jail as a result, but that's not even the end...Massoud, unable to cope with the loss of his son, kills his wife and himself in a murder-suicide she has no say in, with the final scenes being Kathy being asked if "this is your house?" and she stoically answering "no."

This busts the film in half.  Any sort of subtlety that had been earned initially, particularly from the surprisingly subdued Kingsley, goes out the window as we keep hitting horrifying plot point after plot point.  It's a mess, and doesn't really have the time to admit that this is almost entirely Kathy & Lester's fault things go awry.  Kathy, in particular, gets away relatively unscathed (it's probable she even will get the house back after all of this), despite having ruined two families in her quest to fix a mistake that she could have corrected if she'd simply opened her mail.  The film seems to want our sympathies for Lester as well, but in 2020, I don't have time for anyone trying to make excuses for a cop that endangers the life of a young man of color (it's weird how different this movie plays today than it was intended to in 2003).  The movie becomes a sideshow of horrors, and any sort of originality from the plot evaporates.  The film won Oscar nominations for acting and music, but I think both are a stretch.  Aghdashloo & Kingsley have moments, but Aghdashloo never rises much above "long suffering wife" and Kingsley completely falls apart when he gives into his hammier instincts in the last twenty minutes (thankfully Jennifer Connelly's novocaine work didn't bump someone more interesting in Best Actress).  And the score is-well, it makes itself known.  Let's leave it at that.

OVP: The Jungle Book (2016)

Film: The Jungle Book (2016)
Stars: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken
Director: Jon Favreau
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Disney is not shy in recent years about restarting its animated properties and bringing them to life as real-life movies, having us rediscover our beloved childhood classics (and yet they can continue to reinvest in stuffed animals and toys from the animated films that are now popular).  All-in-all, it's a lucrative racket, one that, if you're a parent, you've probably already been suckered into at this point.  That doesn't, however, mean that the end product is any good.  Indeed, one of the things I've noticed with these live-action Disney films is that they are deeply hit-or-miss.  They all look good initially (OMG-how do you think they'll handle X scene...it's happening!), but at the end of the day you can't just rely upon a classic story to carry you across the finish line.

(Really-you need a Spoiler Alert on The Jungle Book?) That's what happens in this adaptation of Kipling's classic tales.  The story of Mowgli, the young boy raised by wolves, has been seen by almost all of you (with $1 billion box office, I was clearly behind the curve here), but it felt pretty played out even early on in the film.  It hurts that Kipling's least interesting character is, in fact, the chief protagonist in the film-Mowgli is not interesting, and utterly predictable (gee, I'm going to haphazardly go off into the jungle and hope that Bagheera will save me when I inevitably get caught doing the thing he specifically told me not to do), and Neel Seethi doesn't really add anything exciting or revolutionary to the character.  As a result, we're already saddled with one of the duller protagonists in the Disney canon.

Of course, the point of The Jungle Book is the side characters, but even here we're stuck by some people I wasn't wild about, to be honest.  Some of the casting choices felt uninspired-let's just get this out there, this is a boring movie.  I found it dull.  I think if you'd put the characters of Bagheera, Baloo, and King Louie in front of me and told me to cast them in the most generic way possible, I'd have gone with Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, and Christopher Walken.  They're all men who have put in terrific performances before and have created iconic movie moments, but if you give them a chance to coast because it's a "kid's movie," they'll take it, and they rely almost entirely upon the earlier Disney film, rarely adding much to the live-action aspect of the film.  Idris Elba is better, though the only person that I think is truly adding something special to this film is Scarlett Johansson, who makes Kaa sexy and dangerous, going in a different direction from the animated feature and it pays off-the Kaa scene is easily the best of the movie.

The film will surely be nominated for its special effects, but even here I quibble.  You may say "it's better on the big screen" but everything's better on a big screen, and I thought that the lighting in the film was so poorly done (the cinematography was difficult to focus upon, as the shadows were unnatural), that it took away from the special effects.  Yes, I'm not blind so there are moments of wow (King Louie in particular stands out to me), but watching essentially an animated movie, it frequently felt odd compared to the rest of the picture-you could tell you were watching a visual effect, which is never the point, and then I felt somewhat cheated because all of that green-screen started to grate after a while, taking away the few special moments that came out of the picture.

So all-in-all, I was not impressed here-I wanted to like it (the reviews were solid, and with that box office I wouldn't totally discount a sequel), but I didn't.  This is a dud, and our classic film moments deserve to be better reimagined than this.  Hopefully Beauty and the Beast can find a way to overcome these obstacles next year.  In the meantime, agree or disagree in the comments-don't pretend you haven't seen this yet.

OVP: The Boxtrolls (2014)

Film: The Boxtrolls (2014)
Stars: Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Elle Fanning, Ben Kingsley, Toni Collette, Jared Harris, Dee Bradley Baker, Simon Pegg
Director: Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

One of the things that I miss in animated films is a clear sense of morality and in particular, a sense of danger surrounding the actions of others.  One of the things that made the films of the 1990's and the Disney Renaissance so intriguing was that there was something moral and fascinating about the characters onscreen.  The Little Mermaid was about the importance of your own voice and not letting vanity take over your own self.  The Lion King is about finding yourself in the harshest of conditions, and rising above your expectations of yourself.  Pocahontas tackled environmentalism and racism.  These are all stories that probably wouldn't be able to be told by Disney today in the same way, even in an era of Frozen making billions of dollars for the company, giving them a pretty long license to do whatever they want.  Thankfully, Laika continues to tell such tales, and in doing so, carries on this lovely tradition.

(Spoilers Ahead) You can see this in the way that the story unfolds, and one of the things I noticed about this film is the care they put in establishing characters and the world these people occupy.  I loved the way that we not only got an introduction to the world of the boxtrolls (creatures that are identified by their boxes, which they use as the equivalent of a Batman utility belt, but are essentially just adorable little creatures who scavenge for metal to keep creating their little underground gizmos), but we also had a clear message of greed surrounding Archibald Snatcher (Kingsley) and Lord Portley-Rind (Harris).  Snatcher uses a tragedy (the kidnapping of a baby) as an excuse to gain more power and to exterminate the innocent boxtrolls in the process.  We find years later that he continues to use fear to control the people of Cheesebridge, enforcing a curfew to keep the citizens from seeing him capturing and torturing the poor boxtrolls, using them as a means to ensure his climbing the social ladder of the town and securing a white hat, an arbitrary status symbol.

This is clearly the sort of (not-so-subtle) messaging that Disney wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole (the fact that Frozen is still a pretty solid metaphor for coming out of the closet still stuns me, though they've shied away from that message in a way that I doubt Laika would).  A power-hungry man using fear to exterminate an entire race of people who are misunderstood?  That sounds like a lot of different genocide tales through history, and we see those illusions frequently throughout The Boxtrolls, with a particularly uncomfortable scene where the townspeople cheer to kills the boxtrolls, even though they're just clever little creatures who haven't actually harmed anyone (as any audience member with half a brain could suspect, the baby that was kidnapped was not in fact kidnapped, but rescued from Archibald Snatch as he was trying to blackmail his father).

The film continues on this way with Eggs, the stolen baby (Hempstead-Wright, best known as Bran on Game of Thrones) trying to rescue his kidnapped friends and along the way befriending a macabre girl named Winnie (Fanning).  There is of course an element of romance to their relationship, but Laika continues to work outside the box and makes them more friends in the end than anything else (Winnie in particular, a girl of singular interests, is in desperate need of a friend).  The better part of this journey is the way that Eggs has to deal with trying to instill a sense of bravery into the boxtrolls.  No one in this film is perfect, which is a nice change of pace from other animated films so intent on making their heroes flawless, and we see the problems with the boxtrolls (they are too meek and too willing to acquiesce for their own good) in addition to the caste system that drove Archibald Leach mad.  The ending unfolds in a relatively expected way (Lord Portley-Rind learns his daughter is more important than material things, Eggs is reunited with his dad, the boxtrolls live above ground in peace with the citizens, and Archibald Leach...well, there's a pretty gross scene involving him that you wouldn't normally get in a Disney film even in the Disney Renaissance-there are places Laika is willing to go that most aren't), but up until the last thirty minutes or so, we've got a complicated story with a terrific set of difficult questions regarding tyranny and what we want to sacrifice in terms of personal freedoms to feel comfortable, and coupling that with a tight script and consistently brilliant animation (this house continues to push the stop-motion button and along with Coraline and Paranorman has created some of the most fascinating animated films in years) we get one of the most thought-provoking animated films I've seen in a while.

Those were my thoughts on The Boxtrolls-what were yours?  Did you like the clear allegory between the film and tyranny?  Do you enjoy Laika's distinctive gruesome-but-gorgeous animation style, or do you find it off-putting?  And where will this film rank in an extremely tight Oscar race for Animated Feature?  Share in the comments!

Oscar Trivia: The Quest for Six Decades

An Oscar nomination is a truly amazing moment in an actor's career.  For many, it's the moment they have dreamt of all of their lives-the culmination of years of work, determination, and a little bit of luck when just the right fates align and nab them their career high point.

And for most Oscar nominees, that's it.  If I remember my statistics right, it's about 65% of all Oscar nominees for acting will only get that one nomination, that one moment in the sun that will be in the first two lines of their obituary.  And that's great-we'll get to all of you in the OVP (or we've already gotten to you, in which case don't get greedy).

But for other actors, that one Oscar nomination is hardly enough, and they want more.  Some of these actors enjoy quick bursts of nominations like Renee Zellweger or Russell Crowe, but we're going to focus today on people who have managed to sustain decades of Oscar stamina.

It's actually extremely rare to be able to be nominated at least one time in four different decades, and even rarer to pull it off consecutively.  Since we're about to hit the decade's halfway point (can you believe that?!?), this is the perfect time to see who is on-track to continue their streaks and who might be in trouble.

Before we start, let's go through the people who have passed on and are no longer in the running but hit 4 or 5 decades (as the title alludes to, no one has hit six...and yes, this is a trivia article so if I missed an actor, share in the comments below).

Five Decades in a Row: Laurence Olivier (1930's-70's)
Five Decades Non-Consecutively: Katharine Hepburn (1930's-1980's, no 70's), Paul Newman (1950's-00's, no 70's as well)
Four Decades in a Row: Bette Davis (1930's-60's), Jack Lemmon (1950-80's), Geraldine Page (1950's-80's),
Four Decades Non-Consecutively: Mickey Rooney (1930's-70's, no 60's), Peter O'Toole (1960's-00's, no 90's)...both of whom never won competitive Oscars though they both won Honorary ones

Again, it's a short list, and one that has gotten considerably longer as the stars of the 1960's have stuck around further than was typical with stars of yore.  We'll start out with those actors that are still living and have already hit three decades.

Waiting for the Fourth...

Of the thirteen living actors who have been nominated in three separate decades for acting awards (and for the record, the year the film came out is the beginning of the decade-none of this "Google Search Driving Miss Daisy won the 1990 Oscars" crap), some actually have to wait a few more years before they can try again as their third nomination came in the 2010's and they can't get another decade under their belt for a few more years.  Most of these actors did this in the 1990's, 2000's, and 2010's: Brad Pitt, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, and Annette Bening all have nominations in each of the past three decades (it's worth noting that Bening is the only one of these four actors who doesn't have an Oscar, and is one of only two actors who have hit more than three that is still alive without an Oscar-I'm just saying AMPAS, but keep that in mind in a few years when you're handing out Honoraries and Bening is still empty-handed).  The only non-consecutive actor who has scored this decade would be Sally Field, who took a 28-year gap between her second and third nods, and did this oddly with only three nominations (Lincoln, her most recent nod, is her only loss to date).  And though it's hardly worth listing all of the actors who have two decades behind them, at least a trio of theoretical threats this year (Julianne Moore, Hilary Swank, and Marisa Tomei) could potentially join this list.

There are eight other actors, however, who could well reach their fourth decade citation in upcoming years.  Most promising of the bunch would be Robert Duvall, who is actually on most people's projections for a nomination later this year with The Judge (though Duvall has come extremely close to grabbing a nomination before with Get Low in 2010 and came up short so he may miss again).  Duvall is in the majority in not having consecutive decades: he's joined by Jodie Foster (who hasn't been nominated in twenty years), Sissy Spacek (who skipped the 90's), Ellen Burstyn (who also skipped the 90's), and Al Pacino (who skipped the Aughts).  All of these actors work fairly consistently, though Burstyn is more about television these days and Pacino is more about cashing in on his once grand legacy as an actor.  Still, though, if Robert de Niro can randomly get nominated for Silver Linings Playbook, anyone can come out of awards show retirement.

Only three actors are working on the slightly more impressive four consecutive decades: Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, and Holly Hunter.  Freeman and Kingsley work consistently and constantly, and Kingsley in particular is the sort of actor who gets nominated every time there's something prestigious about his work (he also has that feel of an actor who may score one last supporting win to get two trophies).  Hunter has long since been relegated to television (she got her third-in-a-row for a supporting role in Thirteen in something of a comeback, and you only get so many of those).  Still, these are actors to be on the lookout for in coming years to see if they can continue their respective streaks.

Waiting for a Fifth...

Once again, we can start out with five actors who have already scored their 2010's hit and are now just biding their time until they can try again.  Two of these actors have done five decades (shockingly) non-consecutively (which means they very well could have been in the running for six if they'd had a little more luck in a certain year).  Jeff Bridges skipped the 1990's (missing for The Fisher King) and Robert de Niro missed the Aughts (probably getting closest for Meet the Parents...though admittedly not too close).  The other three actors, though, have hit every decade since the 1980's consecutively: Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, and Daniel Day-Lewis (all, oddly enough, nominated in 1989), and have already gotten this decade crossed off.  Day-Lewis has notably won in three of those four decades.

Another twelve actors have scored four decades and are on the search for a fifth.  They range from actors who are constantly churning out films to actors who have largely retired from the cinema but are thankfully still kicking.  Though many of these actors scored their nominations consecutively, only one of the dozen is currently on a streak: that would be Diane Keaton, who has scored a nomination every decade since the 1970's (and only one nomination per decade, it's worth pointing out).  Keaton rarely challenges herself since Something's Gotta Give, but she's the sort of actor who bides her time until something brilliant randomly comes along and everyone remembers how much they love her.

Other working actors that could make it include busy actors such as Jon Voight (who skipped the 1990's despite constantly making movies since his big break in Midnight Cowboy), Shirley MacLaine (who, had she scored for Postcards from the Edge as she was expected to, would be a column down), Vanessa Redgrave (her botched campaigns for Atonement and Coriolanus actually mean that she could well have had the record by now!), Dustin Hoffman (who continues to make enough films often enough that he should be able to pull this off in a surprise supporting role, despite missing the Aughts), and of course Dame Maggie Smith (who skipped the 1990's, but came roaring back in the past ten years as a genuine box office draw and nearly won a citation for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel a couple of years ago).  The only one with a legit shot this year appears to be Smith, who has what could be a sleeper hit later this fall in My Old Lady (in a weak Best Actress year her name could be enough, and she's my dark horse contender for a nomination).

Other actors who are looking for a fifth don't work as often or are notoriously curmudgeonly about working again.  Joanne Woodward (not nominated since 1990, but extending all the way back to the 1950's with her streak, the earliest nomination for a living person in this article) rarely works anymore, and Gene Hackman (who missed for The Royal Tenenbaums due to category confusion, costing him his fifth consecutive citation) is happily retired.  Albert Finney (who missed the 1990's) hates the Oscars and only does bit parts these days, though he's the other actor (aside from Bening) who is living and has hit the 3+ decade counter, so he'd also be a decent contender for an Honorary Award (that he'd never show up for it in a million years).  Warren Beatty keeps claiming that he'll make another movie (that long-rumored Howard Hughes biopic is the stuff of cinematic legend), but I'll believe it when I can hold a ticket for the film (my plan is to see it as a double feature with Flora Plum)-he missed the Aughts but made it back to the 1960's with Bonnie and Clyde.  And finally there is Julie Christie, who has resumed working if not necessarily in major cinematic work.  She skipped the 1980's and bizarrely has only received one nomination in each decade she's been cited in (much like Keaton).

Waiting for a Sixth...

As the stats above corroborate, getting a sixth is damn hard work, as there's a reason no one has done it.  Kate Hepburn probably could have had she done more significant film work in the 1970's, but she spent most of that time on the stage, and she's probably the only one who has come close until now.  Three living actors have pulled off five decades in a row, and one in particular seems determined to break yet another of Hepburn's records (not settling for a tie).

Meryl Streep is the only actor who has managed to pull off a 2010 nomination already and have five in a row.  Streep, it's worth noting, is also the only actor to have more than one nomination in five different decades (Olivier getting Rebecca made a year too late), a record that may stand for infinity (of all of the living actors we've profiled, Robert Duvall is the only other actor who has gotten more than two in each of his eligible decades, and he's twenty years behind Streep and is 83-years-old).  Streep will need to continue her current stamina to hit the goal, but at this rate she could well take it in the 2020's (she'll only be in her seventies).

That is if one of the two other living actors don't go for the title first.  Both have received consecutive nominations since the 1960's, and at least one is still working.  Michael Caine, an actor you don't always think of for such lists, got his first nomination in 1966, then got cited in 1972, 1983, 1986, 1999, and 2002, and despite being 81, continues to work constantly (he'll be in the highly-anticipated Interstellar later this year) and has made no secret about his desire to win a third Oscar for a leading role.  Just one nomination would land him the record, and put Streep in a difficult position-2030 is a long way to go to actually beat this title outright.

The other person is the recently retired Jack Nicholson, who made his last film four years ago and claims he is done with cinema.  I don't want to call Jack a liar, but part of me wonders if his best friend Warren Beatty couldn't talk him out of that self-imposed exile to do a showy supporting role in that long-gestating Hughes biopic (surely Beatty's final film?) and get one last nomination.  Either way, it's hard to deny he's had a spectacular career.

And there you have it folks-a morning's dose of Oscar trivia.  Do you think that Streep, Caine, or Nicholson could take the record?  Who will be the next person to score four or five decades' worth of nominations?  Share in the comments!

The Ender's Game Conundrum

While I was sitting in on Gravity this past weekend, one of the film's during the trailer caught my eye.  Though this may have been on the internet for a while (I don't seek out trailers unless someone pushes them into my lap), I thought it was interesting.  I've been thinking quite a bit about the movie lately, and  since I've never read the book, this was my first experience with the film.

Though the quality of the film didn't look quite to the standards of the film that I was about to see, the plot definitely looked interesting.  I'll be seeing Gavin Hood's Oscar-winning Tsotsi in a few weeks and Netflix assures me I'll like it, so the director seems fine.  Ben Kingsley, Harrison Ford, and Viola Davis are all actors that I enjoy, and in the case of the latter, actively seek out in movies.  The Sci Fi genre as a whole is one that I buy into with far more readiness than comic books, and taking on iconic science fiction is something I'm hugely supportive of for filmmakers.

"So what's the problem John" ask those of you who somehow have missed the giant homophobic elephant in the middle of the room.  The problem is the author of the original novel which the movie is based upon, Orson Scott Card, has said truly awful things about gay marriage and gay people in general.

Card, in a 2004 essay, said that most gay people were gay because they had been molested or raped.  He has said that gay marriage will destroy the Constitution.  He served for four years on the National Organization for Marriage, a vehemently anti-same sex marriage group.  He has been enormously vocal about his antiquated views on gay people and legal recognition of gay marriage.  All-in-all, he seems like someone on a personal level that I would grossly detest.

But what role should that play when it comes to art and whether you partake of it?  Forget the fact that Lion's Gate, the movie studio behind the film, has a strong history with gay marriage.  Forget the fact that Viola Davis and Harrison Ford have both publicly supported gay marriage.  The question is larger than that: should an artist's political beliefs matter?

This question boils down to whether you see yourself as someone who is a discerner or a consumer of art, and which ultimately drives your decisions.  If you're a discerner of art, you probably take that question from the standpoint of "I separate the art from the artist."  This is all well-and-good, but generally these people are talking about someone they at least somewhat agree with (though maybe not to the same level).  Someone like Jane Fonda or Spike Lee who is on the liberal end of the spectrum on many issues, and you somewhat see their point even if you wouldn't go out and share it publicly.  Even when they're on the arch-conservative end of the spectrum, though, you probably can figure out a way to separate the two.  It's impossible to deny the genius of Richard Wagner, for example, even when you have to admit he was a raging anti-semite.

Then there are those who view art as something to consume.  These people see the money they are contributing to a particular artist and think about the ramifications of that purchase.  They're the ones who will contribute to this argument with an "I don't want my money to go to blank" or "it's his right to say what he thinks, but I don't want to contribute to it by buying his product."

I tend to fall in the middle of these two decision thought processes.  For me, it's far easier to boycott a specific company than an artist.  I will gladly not eat Papa John's or Chick-Fil-A or Barilla Pasta as a result of their political views-giving up something where the sole purpose is singular is pretty easy (though of course, it shouldn't be; the CEO's of these companies may have views I despise, but the workers in them may not-it helps that the only one of these that I truly eat regularly is Barilla and I've recently given up pasta).

When it comes to artistry, though, it's just difference.  By not partaking in a significant film of the autumn, I am neglecting my duties as a connoisseur of the arts, a self-designated job that I take very seriously.  I'm not supporting Davis, Kingsley, and Ford in making what appears to be a strong movie.  And my AMPAS-viewing OCD is a bit compromised because I think this movie could factor into the Visual Effects Oscar race if it's a big enough hit.

So in the end, I'm still deciding what to do, but I'd love your thoughts on the matter.  Do you boycott art based on the artist's political and social views?  Do you think this is fair when the work is a collaborative effort such as a film?  And, regardless of Card's bigotry, did the Ender's Game trailer make you interested in the movie?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Iron Man 3 (2013)

Film: Iron Man 3 (2013)
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, Ben Kingsley
Director: Shane Black
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It's been going on for several years, but I'm still trying to get my head around the Marvel universe that Disney has wrought, and in particular, what it means for the franchises as a whole.  While the Avengers are the biggest things on the planet right now, what's going to happen to these characters when the actors that play them decide they've had enough (it's hard to fathom RDJ ever wanting to give up the Fort Knox he's found in this franchise, but actors tend to move on, and they get older).  Are we in a Doctor Who/James Bond sort of situation where the characters stay but the actors alternate, or is this simply a brief moment where the Marvel universe runs the world, and then it passes into oblivion for another twenty years in a way similar to the Superman franchise?  We shall see...

In the meantime, my complicated feelings about the franchise don't just revolve around the eventual future of the series, but what the series means for the cinema.  There have been a lot of series in the past few years that have wanted to transform more into a television-style approach to their stories-multiple, sometimes endless tales that relate to each other, with the next chapter just around the corner, and occasionally spreading the films a little thin (Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, Pixar, and even oddly The Hangover films all seem to fall into this unnecessarily long series mode).  No one has quite done it in the same fashion as The Avengers, however.  Not only have we received the phenomenally successful Joss Whedon film, but we also have individual outings from Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America (you have to feel a little bit bad for Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Mark Ruffalo's Hulk that they don't have the same sort of solo series cache).  These films all work on their own merit, but they also rely heavily on each other, and to miss one means to be left out of the inside jokes on a future film.  I'll admit that I like this better than the stretches that Twilight, for example, took with their source material when it wasn't necessary to make a fifth film-it seems more in-tuned with the core comic book mentality, where superheroes regularly visit each other (they live in the same world, after all), and yet also have their own adventures.  This true-to-the-source approach is, however, having a serious impact on my pocketbook.

But I digress, and should be getting to the film at hand.  While we last left Iron Man in the successful mission in New York City, the last time we left Tony Stark by his lonesome, I have to say I left the film quite disappointed.  The heavy-handed attitude of Iron Man 2 was out-of-character both for RDJ as well as for the approach filmmakers have taken for the Marvel franchises (this sort of self-reflexive, brooding attitude is more at home in the DC Universe).  This film, thankfully, got a lot more fun out of its superhero, and as a result felt fuller and more at-home stylistically.

(Spoilers throughout) Tony Stark, of course, does still have issues from his time in New York, PTSD that has developed as a result of his fighting off Loki and his band of evildoers, but that's more of a plot device than a plot driver, and we get to see him gamely flirting with anything that moves, and of course challenging bad guys and floating through the air cockily (or arrogantly, depending on your Downey tolerance level), and having a damn good time doing it.  Stark slowly starts to rebuild his post-Avengers lifestyle, and while PTSD is what he attributes it to, part of me sort of wonders if he is jonesing for the high of working with the Avengers again, wanting to return to that universe once more.  I felt as the film ended, at least, that this was what the writers were hinting toward (depending on how many Greek islands it's going to cost to keep Downey in the picture).

The film also has two villains, and one disappointment on that front.  Guy Pearce plays Aldrich Killian, who is a nerdy scientist who develops, along with his assistant, Maya (Hall) a virus that makes the user regenerate their own body parts and become practically invincible.  For a part of the film, you're sort of wondering why the movie isn't focusing on the clear villain, the iconic Mandarin from the comic books (played by Ben Kingsley), but slowly you realize that the Mandarin himself is nothing but a front, and the true mastermind of the evil plots is Pearce.  The Mandarin is just an actor playing the part of a terrorist, which makes for some hilarious scenes with Kingsley, though I'm a bit disappointed that they took the teeth out of such an important Marvel villain.

The film's battle sequences are epic, and though nothing quite hits the heights reached by The Avengers, this movie comes close with the great sequence destroying Tony Stark's house.  The movie never really takes a breather, but it feels well-paced.  I could have done without the heavy-handed lusting of Killian after Pepper Potts in one of the early scenes (couldn't just once we not have the villain and the hero falling for the same girl?), but the women in the film are actually relatively interesting, as opposed to some of the other Marvel movies.  A lot can be said about how well-cast Downey is as Tony Stark, but Paltrow is pitch-perfect as his gutsy, level-headed girlfriend/assistant/CEO.  Paltrow's gift has always been more in comedy than in drama (where she tends to get a bit melodramatic), and she effervesces in the film without ever lulling into a Mary Jane Watson teen-girl fantasizing.  Hall was also strong in her role as Maya, though even those who weren't familiar with her character from the comic books could smell that she was the "good-girl-masquerading-as-bad" a mile away.

The film's final scenes got too long (how many times can Stark or Killian come back from the dead?), and occasionally Stark's lack of humility wears thin (the trite scenes with the boy in the small Tennessee town were a bit saccharine for me), but overall this was Summer blockbuster fun without veering into too effects-driven or plot-deprived.  However, I'd love to know what you thought?  Do you like the direction Marvel is taking this franchise?  Do you also wish that they'd throw in a female-lead action adventure, rather than just giving the solos to the boys?  And should Iron Man remain a trilogy or should a fourth film be greenlit as soon as possible?