OVP: Actor (2002)

OVP: Best Actor (2002)

The Nominees Were...

Adrien Brody, The Pianist

Nicolas Cage, Adaptation

Michael Caine, The Quiet American

Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York

Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt

My Thoughts: We are hitting the Top 5, and one of the rare races in Academy history that featured five winners (four previous, one on Oscar night, and one guy who'd win two more in the years that followed).  I've talked a lot about the Oscar ceremony in 2002 for a couple of reasons.  First, I remember it vividly (we're still in the era where I was hyper-aware of the Oscar race and religiously reading magazines & articles about it online).  Second, we're going to hit a time relatively soon (probably in 2024 based on the pace of these articles) where I didn't actually watch the Oscars because I wasn't old enough (my first Oscars was 1994, my first completed Oscars where I was genuinely following along was 1995) and so I want to get out my first-hand knowledge while I can.  But the biggest reason is that 2002 was one of those rare years where pretty much everything was up-in-the-air...and on Oscar night, surprises abounded.

One of those surprises happened in this race, when Adrien Brody stunned everyone in the Kodak Theater (particularly Halle Berry) when he won the Oscar.  As you'll see in the precursors, Brody wasn't the favorite here (it was thought to be a battle between Daniel Day-Lewis & Jack Nicholson).  Still, the Academy had good taste.  Brody, for all of the career setbacks that happened after this, gives an astounding, lived-in performance in The Pianist, the way that he takes this gregarious, charming man at the onset and continually has to look inward as the world takes & takes away everything that he has to give.  He truly makes the film.

Nicholson was clearly hoping to get that fourth Oscar and tie Kate Hepburn in 2002, and I suspect was close to victory.  His work here is not reminiscent of much of the "Wacky Jack" that we came to expect in the 1990's (culminating in his third Oscar win for As Good As It Gets), and it pays off, giving us a complete performance of an incomplete man.  I love the way that he internally wrestles in the earlier half of the movie between feelings he knows are wrong and feelings that he can't help but share...it feels realistic to show a brittle man, only capable of a modicum of change.

All of these men have Oscars, but only Michael Caine doesn't have one for lead actor, a point he made in 2002 when he was pushing hard for this citation.  I think Caine is very good here (I honestly think this is the best Oscar lineup in a year that's sprinkled with them-2002 is a vintage that has held up), playing a deeply complicated man trying to fight for the affections of one woman.  What makes Caine's acting so specific (I'm a fan) is the way that he can switch so evenly between a calming demeanor and destroying a man's soul in the blink of an eye.  In some ways I liken him to Anthony Hopkins, where he's miraculous at one skill-set, and knows just how to use it in each character, which he does here.

Nicolas Cage's performance in Adaptation to some degree marked the end of Cage's career as a serious actor for the next couple of decades (countless direct-to-video movies, a weird feud with Sean Penn, and eventually parodying himself on film would ensue), but it's a nice swan song to one of the more inventive actors of the 1990's.  Cage suffers the most at the hands of Charlie Kaufman's wandering typewriter, but in the first half he's really excellent as two men, one fictional, one real, and does a good job deciphering the two figures for the audience.

Our final nomination is for Daniel Day-Lewis, in what might have been his most immersive role-to-date.  Bill the Butcher, where he literally covered his eye with glass to simulate having a glass eye (what?!?) might be something he hopefully took up with a therapist (I'm sorry, I love him, but that's too method for me), but the work stands for itself.  Day-Lewis is astounding, stealing every scene he's in, and honestly saving the movie himself.  No one else is doing what he's doing here, creating the kind of Travis Bickle-style figure that Scorsese specializes in, but putting him in the middle of Civil War-Era New York City.  What results is one of the best pieces of work from one of our most committed thespians.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama went with Nicholson atop Brody, Caine, Day-Lewis, & Leonardo DiCaprio (Catch Me If You Can), while Comedy/Musical gave their statue to Richard Gere (Chicago) atop Cage, Kieran Culkin (Igby Goes Down), Hugh Grant (About a Boy), and Adam Sandler (Punch-Drunk Love).  The SAG Award went to Day-Lewis, and was nearly the Oscar lineup except Caine was skipped for Gere.  BAFTA also went to Day-Lewis, and they had the Oscar lineup verbatim.  Gere almost certainly was sixth place, and in a similar fashion to Dennis Quaid & Alfred Molina in supporting, his best shot (to that point) for Oscar glory didn't result in any nominations in the years that followed.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: As I said above, this is a terrific lineup-no bad performances, no even middling performances, all ranging from brilliant-to-very-good.  But there's room for improvement.  Specifically Leonardo DiCaprio's best bit of acting (in Catch Me If You Can) deserved some sort of inclusion here-he's never been this natural & movie star charismatic in the years since.

Oscar’s Choice: Brody, likely due to the strong movement toward The Pianist (and the fact that everyone else in the lineup already had Oscars), pulled off an iconic win that would be impossible for his career to top in the decades that followed.

My Choice: Brody gets it.  In a strong lineup, he gives physically & emotionally the most captivating performance of the quintet.  I'd follow him with Day-Lewis, and then Nicholson, Caine, & Cage.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone here on Team Brody (a win that looks pretty strong in retrospect) or does someone want to advocate for the other legends?  Who came closer to the victory-Jack or DDL?  And will Richard Gere ever find his way into this mix again?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2002: 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, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2002

Past Best Actor Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Actor (2017)

OVP: Best Actor (2017)

The Nominees Were...

Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name

Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread

Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out

Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.

My Thoughts: We are going to, after a week off from the blog, hit the Big 4 categories at the Oscars & finish it off with a My Ballot look at 2017 this week.  The 2017 acting races were largely focused on Best Picture, like so many fields for Best Actor recently (only one of these nominees doesn't show up again in our remaining categories), but I will admit out-front that unlike many fields for Best Actor, this one has some differentiation even if it's only Best Picture citations, and is one of the better fields in recent memory.

For starters, only one of these five figures is playing someone in real life, Gary Oldman.  Oldman's performance in Darkest Hour for reasons that are both obvious & a little bit undeserved has not aged well.  Placed against young performers who have delivered on that promise & an acting icon who has (so far) stuck with his plan to not come back from a second retirement, Oldman's prosthetics-driven work as Winston Churchill is generally name-checked as a "bad" acting win, but I'll be honest-I don't see it.  Oldman takes on the guise of a character actor, becoming near unrecognizable as Churchill in appearance and manner, but still having the measured energy that makes an Oldman performance so special.  I loved the way that he plays Churchill as a man-of-history, but also a man who understands politics (Churchill enjoyed winning in all aspects of life), and I think this is a good performance that doesn't get all of its grace from simply "looking like" Churchill.

Based on the title you'd assume that Roman J. Israel might actually be a real person, but he's not.  Instead, he's from the creative mind of Denzel Washington, and more of our real-life people should be based on Denzel if this is the case.  Despite its unusual (SNL-mocked) title and a plot that doesn't really work, Washington plays the twists in Dan Gilroy's story excellently.  This might have read like a filler nomination when it came out, but it's very good work from the two-time Oscar winner.  He finds so many layers into the loneliness that Roman experiences, and makes the greed he feels authentic as he finds success after a lifetime of failure.  It's hard to have the center of a movie realize a new facet of their life and not also totally upend the character, but the Roman we meet at the beginning of the movie is the same man throughout, a testament to Washington's investment into small character details.

I have in the years since found Daniel Kaluuya performances (specifically Judas) that I can sign onto, so I am going to admit (and bury in the center of this article) that I didn't really get the hype around his work in Get Out.  I liked this movie, and the script was very good (though, as I said two weeks ago, Us is much better & more fully-formed), but I think that Kaluuya's very reactive performance in this film never takes off for me.  For me it's because he's not really asked to undergo a traditional narrative arc in terms of "learn what he's like, then we see how he handles the main problem of the story."  Instead, all of his performance is trying to reflect how uncomfortable he is with the story.  He's good at this, but it feels limiting to my understanding of this character-I feel like he's the one character not given enough room to breathe, which serves the narrative, but also makes this feel like a weird performance to cite.

There are moments initially where this feels like it might be the case for Timothee Chalamet.  After all, so much of the first thirty minutes of this movie is him reacting to the world around him, including his new crush Oliver.  However, as the film goes, we get a sense of not only young love, but young love that doesn't know that there's a ticking clock on this relationship (and how special it is).  Chalamet goes full throttle, making his Elio impetuous, reckless, protective...every emotion feels like it's being felt through-and-through even if it's not entirely understood.  Wonderfully, sometimes prickly chemistry with Armie Hammer helps a lot, but Chalamet takes this film to another level with his best work.  He hasn't been as good since, but honestly-how many actors top work like this even if they get fifty years of career?

Our final nomination is for Daniel Day-Lewis, who in Phantom Thread gives us a potential sendoff to a storied career.  Day-Lewis is always marvelous, even if you just observe him from a technical aspect (no actor does the kind of character legwork the extreme method actor puts into his creations).  His Reynolds Woodcock is an angry man, clearly starved as much for perfection (which he's able to make with his creations) as he is for something to disrupt his world...a challenge the actor can't entirely overcome.  The movie takes some weird detours with Alma, and I wouldn't say even DDL can pull off some of the twists late in the game, but that's a ridiculously high bar to ask an actor to achieve, and overall the performance here is a grand testament to a great performer.

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 with Oldman (who, like Janney & Rockwell before him swept the precursors), besting Chalamet, Day-Lewis, Washington, and Tom Hanks (The Post) while Comedy/Musical went to James Franco (The Disaster Artist) against Kaluuya, Steve Carell (Battle of the Sexes), Ansel Elgort (Baby Driver), and Hugh Jackman (The Greatest Showman).  SAG went with Oldman atop Chalamet, Franco, Kaluuya, & Washington while BAFTA favored Oldman against Day-Lewis, Kaluuya, Chalamet, & Jamie Bell (Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool).  In terms of sixth place, it was Franco, who had a late-breaking scandal that derailed his nomination, and as it would turn out, his entire career.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I try not to use an actor's personal life in picking who should win or be nominated for these awards, so I definitely would've found room for Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name.  Like Chalamet, he has never been as good before-or-since, but he finds a strange amount of sadness in his Oliver, a man who will never experience the world he's briefly being given insight into during a summer in Italy.

Oscar’s Choice: Some will frame this in years since as a closer race between Chalamet & Oldman, but the latter was so far in front that it's probable he won a majority rather than a plurality.

My Choice: Chalamet, hands down.  My favorite performance of 2017, possibly my favorite performance of the 2010's.  Just superb work.  Behind him I'll go Oldman, Day-Lewis, Washington, & Kaluuya.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to stick with Timmy & I, or do you think Oscar got it right with Winston Churchill?  I'm the only person who has actually seen Roman J. Israel, as it feels like more a poster than a movie at this point?  And who would Franco have ejected if his scandal hadn't broken (I know most would say Washington, but I kind of think it was Kaluuya in fifth)?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2017: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2017

Past Best Actor Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019

OVP: Phantom Thread (2017)

Film: Phantom Thread (2017)
Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Daniel Day-Lewis, Supporting Actress-Lesley Manville, Score, Costume Design*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

There are very few directors I run as hot-and-cold with as Paul Thomas Anderson.  I'm always there for his pictures (I've seen all but two, and both came out before I graduated from high school), but for me he's got one all-timer (There Will Be Blood), films I love (The Master, Boogie Nights), films I'm fine with (Inherent Vice), and films I absolutely abhor (Magnolia).  I genuinely feel like while I always know what I'm going to be getting with him (let's see what fun way we're going to twist masculinity this week), I rarely understand if I'm going to appreciate the recipe.  Phantom Thread, his latest (aware I'm behind on this review, but...I don't have an excuse-just read on, none of us is perfect), is an unusual picture for Anderson.  A director most interested in the stories of men (and to be real, that's ultimately what Phantom Thread is), he goes into the more feminine realm of fashion, and takes a look at what might be Daniel Day-Lewis's final onscreen role as Reynolds Woodcock.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a controlling, brilliant fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock, who spends most of his days meticulously designing dresses for women of upper-class London alongside his firm, more-mannered sister Cyril (Manville).  One day he meets a waitress Alma (Kreps), who becomes his muse & lover, despite their obvious difference in station and personality.  Alma frustrates Reynolds, and Cyril treats her as someone who will be around only shortly, but Alma proves resilient and survives Reynolds' behavior.  After a particularly brutal fight, Alma poisons him with mushrooms, and nurses him back to health, making him fall madly in love with her (through codependence).  The final quarter of the film is Reynolds realizing that his hold on the fashion industry is collapsing (Cyril implies that he's becoming dated in his style), but then having him submit to Alma poisoning him all over again, realizing that it is she, and not his fashion world, that will ignite his future meticulous routine.

The film is gloriously pulled together, with elegant music and immaculate costume work (truly both would have been worthy trophies for the Oscars), but it's those two twists (Alma's poisoning and then Reynolds' submitting to this as part of his life) that will dictate your opinions of Phantom Thread.  It's not expected, particularly Reynolds' signing off on Alma being the one who decides whether he lives or dies, and it's decidedly messed-up.  The film is hardly alone in looking at an almost BDSM-style relationship (we've seen that in other movies, most notably the Fifty Shades Trilogy), but it comes as shocking and unexpected in the confines of what we'd assume was a period movie.  Alma's revenge feels somewhat justified considering the abuse that Reynolds has slung at her, but it's still shocking.

It also doesn't entirely work.  Forgetting for a second that the idea of equating abuse with love is problematic at best and enabling at worst, it also seems strange for the film's final moments, with Alma assuming an idyllic marriage where she'll occasionally have to attempt to murder her husband, feels preposterous-do we really think that these two people can sustain such a relationship long enough for children and a family?  Do we want to?  The film's viewpoints feel muddled in the final third, perhaps bringing in an ending so shocking because Anderson doesn't entirely know how to finish the picture (his movies, in my opinion, generally struggle to find a connection between the set-up and the delivery).  This isn't to say that Phantom Thread isn't without its pleasures-the acting is raw and masterful, even if Day-Lewis has been here before.  Manville gains best-in-show among the cast with her Cyril, a viper who has been forced to pretend to be a stone.  There's a great scene where Cyril, who has so far not dared to talk back to Reynolds, destroys him verbally, with Manville breathtakingly stepping on Day-Lewis's lines in an almost Altman-esque manner, finding a way to dominate Reynolds in a way that we learn she was in control for most of the film.  However, these touches can't make Phantom into the classic that Anderson is hoping is being made-instead it's merely a fascinating premise executed with relative, not exceptional, skill.

OVP: Actor (2007)

OVP: Best Actor (2007)

The Nominees Were...

George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

My Thoughts: We continue on our newly brisk pace with 2007's OVP with a deep dive into the Best Actor field, one that features one first-time nominee, one man that for a brief moment there seemed destined to win a trophy, and three men who had already won a statue in their careers at this point.  It's strange to look at 2007's list in part because there are no newly-discovered talents here or character actors finally getting their due, as has been the case so often in recent years.  These are all five major leading men, though not necessarily at this point in their careers (looking at you, Tommy), who managed to make up yet another strong lineup in a great cinematic year.

Since I mentioned him and since he's the sore thumb in this lineup of movies that were otherwise huge in 2007, let's begin with Tommy Lee Jones.  Jones was that annual Oscar acting nominee that came out of virtually nowhere.  We'll get into some of the also-rans in a second, but pretty much no one had predicted Jones nomination when it was announced.  While Paul Haggis isn't my favorite director, I did like Elah, and I thought Jones did a fine if not-groundbreaking job in the movie.  I liked his quiet demeanor, and he underplays scenes that could have been a lot hammier for the actor (father looking for the man who killed his son is not a part that is lacking in dramatic opportunities).  There are moments where he feels like he's underacting, and Jones' style occasionally uses his own many movie memories as a crutch for the character, but I loved particularly his scenes toward the end of the picture, and overall this was a relatively pleasant surprise inclusion, even if I don't know if it deserved to be there.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Daniel Day-Lewis, who was assured this nomination perhaps the moment he signed the dotted line with Paul Thomas Anderson.  While Day-Lewis has played many iconic characters in his career, none have stuck in the pop culture subconscious quite the same as Daniel Plainview, and there's a reason for that: he's superb.  Day-Lewis dominates the screen as this larger-than-life character, a Mount Rushmore of acting.  The way that he makes Daniel both completely plain-spoken, obvious, and yet unknowable is a triumph.  He's addicting to watch, even if we're terrified and occasionally just want the character to be done.  Combined with great chemistry with Paul Dano's fascinating (and usually successful) take as Eli Sunday, he sinks his teeth into Anderson's raw script, and manages to create a truly haunting villain.  In my personal opinion, it's his best performance, and considering it's Day-Lewis, that's saying something.

Viggo Mortensen was the only first-time nominee at the time (though he would eventually get out of the one-and-done club this past year), and his Eastern Promises is a bit of an odd-duck in terms of nominations, as outside the 70's criminals don't typically get nominated for Best Actor, but instead stick to the supporting categories.  The performance is solid, if reminiscent of most of Mortensen's work.  His Nikolai is an unknowable creature, occasionally too much so as Mortensen doesn't quite mask the violent history of his character, of his own ambitions.  Mortensen probably won this nomination due to the iconic "naked bathhouse" fight scene, and while I'm not a huge sucker for physical acting the way AMPAS can be, this is an accomplishment in direction/acting, a groundbreaking sort of scene that has been mirrored everywhere in years since, and still is thrilling and frightening to watch.

I wrote in 2009 that I wasn't sure whether Clooney's best, most iconic role was Michael Clayton or Up in the Air, but upon re-watch I think it may well be his work in 2007.  Michael Clayton is the movie of 2007 that I really changed my first opinion on when prepping for this OVP series, initially writing it off as a Law & Order at the cinema, but then seeing all of the great ideas and acting behind it.  Clooney's Michael wouldn't work if he was a saint, and he wouldn't work if he was only in his dire situation with no other solutions.  I love the way that Clooney, playing a character that feels at-home in his movie star persona, still finds new facets in Michael, constantly reevaluating his situation and moving the character's confidence and demeanor around.  Later work from Clooney has veered into mugging, and it's hard to imagine him pulling off Michael today with the same sort of boldness and lack of scenery-chewing, but it's a pitch perfect star turn, something that's very hard to pull off.  I do in fact feel it's his best work because it's the performance that best melds that Grade-A movie star charisma he oozes with his fine, if usually underused acting chops.

Johnny Depp is our final nominee, and I have to admit that it's bizarre to me at this point to think of Depp as a serious actor who gets nominated for Oscars rather than a hackneyed over-actor who is intent on just getting a paycheck (I suspect this is what it'll be like when we start to revisit Jon Voight's pictures as well).  Depp's acting style meshes well with Sweeney, and I will admit up-front that I quite liked him in this role.  He has solid chemistry with Carter, and her choice of how to play Mrs. Lovett (a very different interpretation from either Angela Lansbury or Patti LuPone).  I love how even from the beginning he plays Sweeney as doomed, as someone simply on the borrowed time of revenge without any hope for a brighter future with his daughter Joanna; it's a smart decision considering a musical that is heavy on foreshadowing.  That being said, he does not remotely have the vocal pipes of Len Cariou or Michael Cerveris, and it strains in Sondheim's soaring score.  It's impossible not to think of what a better actor would have done, as Burton's rock interpretation of a thickly Broadway-musical doesn't always work, even if it looks great.  Putting in an actor who could belt may well have made the movie itself better, but considering he's not a good musical-singer, Depp still holds his own otherwise.

Other Precursor Contenders: We start with the Globes, which distinguish between Drama and "Comedy/Musical," and of course musical is a key word this year with Depp in contention.  As I've mentioned before Jones was a huge surprise, so he's out here while the other four show up: in Drama, Clooney/Mortensen/Day-Lewis are joined by James McAvoy (Atonement) and Denzel Washington (American Gangster), with Day-Lewis winning, while Depp triumphed over Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Real Girl), Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson's War), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Savages), and John C. Reilly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story).  The SAG Awards found room for Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) and Ryan Gosling over Jones & Depp, while the BAFTA's also skipped Jones/Depp in favor of McAvoy and Ulrich Muhe in The Lives of Others (which wasn't eligible for the Oscar that year as it had won the trophy the previous year for Foreign Language Film...so we'll get there eventually).  Day-Lewis won both trophies, but the real question here is who gets sixth place.  My gut says that Hirsch and McAvoy were both too young and pretty, and that instead the Academy would have gone with Gosling who had dominated precursors and had just been nominated.  However, considering that Oscar went with the more traditional work of Jones for the fifth slot, it's also possible that Washington or Russell Crowe may have been lurking behind the scenes for American Gangster, as both are major Oscar favorites.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Oscar has a weird obsession with ignoring the pretty boys, but Emile Hirsch and James McAvoy were both stupendous in the best work of their careers in Into the Wild and Atonement, respectively, and it's a shame Oscar didn't find room for at least one of them.  More glaring, though, is that Brad Pitt is giving a triumphant performance in The Assassination of Jesse James, truly one of the most iconic in his long career and the kickoff to a huge string of successful roles for the actor, and no one seemed to notice.  His dangerous, fascinating relationship to himself, Casey Affleck, and literally everyone in that movie is dynamite, and it's a pity that in a year where Clooney and Day-Lewis were both shooting for the stars Oscar didn't latch onto the third iconic performance on its plate.

Oscar’s Choice: There was never anyone that could beat Daniel Day-Lewis, a performance that arguably could have won in any year of this millennium.

My Choice: Day-Lewis has to win it, it's too good to deny.  Behind him is Clooney, followed by Depp, Jones, and Mortensen.  All-in-all, though, not the lineup I would have picked but there's no stinker in this bunch.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you agree with the awards consensus of Day-Lewis, or is there someone out there who wants to side with one of the other actors?  Why do you think that McAvoy and Hirsch never seemed to make it into major contention again (and quite frankly-what is Emile Hirsch even up to these days)?  And who would you have cast in Sweeney Todd if they'd have gone with a more musically-inclined take on the Sondheim masterpiece?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2007: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2007

Past Best Actor Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

We're bringing back to the blog an old series that we haven't done in a few months this week in my quest to create a more ideal version of my life (more on that at some point maybe-I'm making a lot of changes in my life, particularly in my attitude toward the word "can't," let's just leave it at that for now), and so I'm excited to announce that we're doing another link roundup, a series of posts from across the web that I found interesting but haven't had a chance to discuss quite yet.  Without further adieu...

In Entertainment...

-By far my favorite article of the week, and in part why I brought back this series, is Boy Culture's ode to Marilyn Monroe at ninety.  The site chronicles ninety things that would have happened had Marilyn Monroe lived through her drug overdose, and they are astonishingly realistic and accurate.  From marrying a gay fan (it would have happened) to randomly getting an Oscar nomination for playing a prostitute (probably losing to Jane Fonda or Glenda Jackson) to endorsing Hillary Clinton (Trump would have surely tweeted something vile about her as a result), it's a wonderful look at what might have been had the quintessential blonde lived to go grey.

-For film fans, there's probably no better news this week than that Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis will be reuniting for a film about 1950's fashion.  Honestly, I don't really care what it's about-both of these men have strong track records and ridiculously awful work ethics (if you're trying to think of what movies DDL has made since Lincoln-it's none!), so I will be there with bells on.  The fact that they are teaming up after last making Day-Lewis' iconic Daniel Plainview is just icing.  For the record, if you are interested in that year's Oscar race make sure to be following along with us as we chronicle the many nominations for There Will Be Blood over the next few weeks.

-This is relatively new news, but Michelle Collins has reportedly been axed by The View.  This might seem odd on this site (we don't focus a lot on television), but I actually used to be a HUGE fan of The View, watching it religiously every single day back in the post-Rosie, pre-Jenny McCarthy days (still my favorite quintet of hosts), but that show has become a hot mess, hasn't it?  Honestly, without Walters there to give it an instant boost of gravitas (she's occasionally ridiculous, but she's a pioneer in journalism no matter how many goofy stories she tells about stealing the president's towels or making every hot topic about her own life) the show needs to actually be entertaining, and hiring a bunch of comedians who talk over each other was not the answer (Nicolle Wallace was, especially considering the election season we're about to have, but unfortunately they didn't stick with her).  With Whoopi looking to exit in August, how long will this show even last?

In Politics...

-While I have deeply called into question the journalistic integrity of pretty much every person in the media in the face of their gleeful celebration of everything Donald Trump (can someone press him on a legitimately difficult question-please?-just one interviewer should try to get him to give specifics to one of his foreign policy plans), there are occasional exceptions and one of them is Bill Scher's terrific reminder that the 2000 election bares a lot of similarities to the one we're going through today, namely in the way that people want to run Bernie Sanders as a third party candidate or how moderates think there's "no difference" between Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.  I know it's hard to believe for younger readers, but they said that exact same thing about George W. Bush and Al Gore.  Yes, the man who started a trillion-dollar war and the man behind An Inconvenient Truth were called identical by many members of the American populace, and that allowed Ralph Nader to spoil the election (you want to disagree-fine, the comments are there, but know that it's an indisputable fact that if Nader hadn't run Al Gore would have been the president).  Keep that in mind the next time you say Hillary and Donald are "the same."


-New York Magazine has a deep, in-depth look at Hillary Clinton that I found fascinating.  Occasionally these types of articles get repetitive and quite frankly a little much for me (everyone's human-what a shocker!), but I think it's different with Clinton in part because she's someone that is so repeatedly attacked for not showing any humanity that to see a journalist go beyond the "her friends say she's great" and actually go a bit more in-depth, particularly from someone who doesn't seem wildly friendly or like a longtime admirer of Clinton's, is impressive.

-Longtime readers of this blog who remember this series will recall I have a penchant for Politico Magazine, and it wouldn't be the new season of this series without a quick look at the weirdly academic branch of the gossip-y Gawker of the political world.  This piece is oddly about one of our most forgettable presidents, Zachary Taylor.  The similarities between our current election and the one of 1848 are severe and intriguing: after all Taylor was a political outsider who ended up winning the nomination despite not really agreeing with a lot of the Whig Party's platform, and he bested an experienced former cabinet secretary and senator.  The fact that he won and that he ended up destroying the party should make Democrats and Republicans alike look up from their morning coffee.

YouTube Video of the Week...

-Okay, since I've slammed Republicans a couple of times this piece, I'll give them a reprieve here and highlight one of their more talented celebrities (in front of the camera-his politics are, well, insane).  Kelsey Grammar tells a wonderful story about how he came to be Sideshow Bob (there's a bizarre thrill watching him actually do the voice):

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

-My thoughts on a Sanders/Stein style ticket (I'm not charitable, if you can only guess).

Just One More...

-Huffington Green has an article about the Coral Reef, and like most environmental news lately, it's not pretty.  Nearly one-third of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the most beautiful places on the planet, has been bleached, possibly permanently.  It's a horrible reminder that while National Security has become an important part of the national electorate, the world is in a bad place in terms of environmentalism and climate change, and voting (and not just for your presidents or prime ministers, but all up-and-down-the-board) with a green thumb is an important way to make yourself heard.  Also, volunteer for an environmental charity (I've started doing that, and it feels great to make a contribution in that way).

The Elusive Fourth Oscar

Meryl Streep's Oscar win for The Iron Lady meant many things.  First, it meant that after waiting 29 years and twelve nominations, Streep fans finally got to see Meryl pick up another Oscar.  Considering how much her fan base has grown in the past decade, this was a big moment for all of her fans (myself included) who weren't even alive when she won for Sophie's Choice (myself included).

It also meant that Meryl was now one of only five actors to have won a third Academy Award; Streep would make that number six when she handed off a trophy to Daniel Day-Lewis the following year for Lincoln.  This also means that both she and Day-Lewis are now poised for the long held record enjoyed by Katharine Hepburn: winning four Academy Awards.

Hepburn did this for 1981's On Golden Pond, over thirty years ago, and no one has been so well-poised to take her on as Streep and Day-Lewis, so I figured it would be worth exploring what exactly happened to the careers of the four other people who have won a third statue.  Here's a peak:

Walter Brennan
His First Three Oscars: Come and Get It, Kentucky, and 1940's The Westerner
Age at Third Oscar: 47
Number of Nominations Achieved at Third Oscar: 3 (Brennan's Oscar statistics are staggering)
Number of Nominations Achieved after Third Oscar: 1 (for 1941's Sergeant York)
Life After the Third Oscar: Brennan is one of the oddest aspects of Oscar history.  His winning three trophies in five years puts him in the company of people like Meryl Streep and Kate Hepburn, but his career doesn't remotely resemble theirs.  While Brennan did receive an Oscar nomination in 1941 (losing to Donald Crisp in How Green Was My Valley), because of the lack of precursor awards in those days (the Globes hadn't even begun when Brennan was winning his third trophy), it's hard to say if he was consistently snubbed after his third Oscar.  He so quickly moved to television in the 1950's and 1960's that I doubt he ever came close again post his work in Sergeant York)

Katherine Hepburn
Her First Three Oscars: Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and 1968's The Lion in Winter
Age at Third Oscar: 61
Number of Nominations Achieved at Third Oscar: 11 (spread out over four decades)
Number of Nominations Achieved After Third Oscar: 1 (On Golden Pond, for which she won)
Life After Third Oscar: Hepburn should serve as both inspiration and as a cautionary tale to Streep and Day-Lewis.  Hepburn continued to work rather heavily in the 1970's, but after her third Oscar couldn't seem to get nominated for any awards, especially an Oscar.  She had far more success in other mediums, and regularly found herself on the side of bad reviews and occasionally poor box office.  While the Emmy nominations came pouring in, only On Golden Pond got her remotely close to an Oscar, and of course she went on to win it.

Ingrid Bergman
Her First Three Oscars: Gaslight, Anastasia, and Murder on the Orient Express
Age at Third Oscar: 59
Number of Nominations Achieved at Third Oscar: 6
Number of Nominations Achieved after Third Oscar: 1 (for 1978's Autumn Sonata)
Life After Third Oscar: Bergman was already in the twilight of her career when she won a surprise third Oscar for her work in Murder on the Orient Express.  She in fact would be making only two more feature films and one television film, and two of these films would be huge awards successes for Bergman.  One, Autumn Sonata, won her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations (she lost both to Jane Fonda in Coming Home) and the other, A Woman Called Golda won her an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

Jack Nicholson
His First Three Oscars: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Terms of Endearment, and As Good As It Gets
Age at Third Oscar: 70
Number of Nominations Achieved at Third Oscar: 11
Number of Nominations after Third Oscar: 1 (for 2002's About Schmidt)
Life After Third Oscar: Nicholson, though considerably older than Streep or Day-Lewis, may serve as the most likely mirror to how their careers will turn out after their third trophies.  Jack was a major box office star in 1997, and went on to make a number of major hit or critically-acclaimed films, including About Schmidt, Something's Gotta Give, and The Departed.  Jack, however, found it much harder to get nominated for an Oscar after As Good As It Gets.  Both Something's Gotta Give and The Departed gained Nicholson Globe nominations, but he couldn't translate that with the Academy (especially odd considering that The Departed was a Best Picture winner and Nicholson was the chief villain).  He was also a frontrunner (possibly the frontrunner, depending on how you swung with the Day-Lewis predictors at the time) for his fourth Oscar in 2002, but couldn't seal the deal and Adrien Brody became the surprise winner for The Pianist.

And that's it-not a large enough sample size to say anything definitive for Streep and Day-Lewis (though that one nomination only after a third win thing sure has to make them feel a bit nervous), but it certainly shows that it won't be easy for either actor to pick up their fourth trophy, despite decades of critical acclaim preceding their victories for The Iron Lady and Lincoln.

OVP: Lead Actor (2012)

OVP: Best Lead Actor (2012)

The Nominees Were...

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Denzel Washington, Flight

My Thoughts: We are in the home stretch, and are now onto the leading men of the 2012 Oscar race.  The men in this category include two first-timers, one man who is enjoying his third nomination, and two men who had already won a pair of Oscars (the amount of two-time Oscar winners who won nominations last year was insane).  Let's dive in with the man in the middle, Joaquin Phoenix.

Joaquin Phoenix has always been compared to his older brother River, the perfect, tragically youthful young man who brought us everything from Stand by Me to Running on Empty to My Own Private Idaho.  Being the younger brother of the icon of his generation, he gained unfair comparisons earlier on in his career, and I remember seeing Gladiator and not being remotely impressed by this other Phoenix.

Since then, though, Phoenix has carved out a strong reputation as an actor, and also a heckuva reputation as a crazy celebrity.  His I'm Still Here stunt may have burned itself into the public consciousness that he's not an actor for mainstream audiences, but my tastes rarely run in the way of mainstream audiences, so I'm all over the new and slightly insane Phoenix.

That newfound love, though, is most driven by his astounding work in The Master.  Here, we are given a man who mumbles his way through part of his character, while still giving us a deviant with a soul.  The film is all about Freddie, and though Amy Adams, Laura Dern, and Philip Seymour Hoffman are all excellent in their respective roles, it's Phoenix, and his Freddie that make the film.  Think of how he progresses, how, through Lancaster Dodd, he is one of the rare people who actually makes breakthroughs, and how devastated and broken he ends up in the end of the film, when he has reverted back after being abandoned by the teachings.  Phoenix's performance is a true marvel-the sort of work that actors of younger generations will cite for years as a piece that changed their perspective on acting, that inspired them to enter the business.  Joaquin is in no one's shadow after this.

Daniel Day-Lewis also turned in an excellent piece of work in Lincoln, a performance that other actors will cite as inspiring them, though probably not in the same bold way that Phoenix does.  Day-Lewis is such a great actor so very often that it's hard to not compare this to, say, the excellence of Bill the Bucher or Daniel Plainview (his best performance) instead of just his fellow nominees.  Day-Lewis's work as Lincoln is stoic, humorous-he gets that the man was not a politician at his core, but a man who wanted change.  He finds the backwoods charm of Lincoln (the occasional bits of humor play so well, the way that he, though a consummate politician, found time to spout stories and anecdotes to men of much lower ranks-I love the Adam Driver scene).  He also delivers all of his speeches with a brilliant gravitas.  I had my qualms about a couple of directions they took the character (I'm always leery of a saint in a movie, and I'm afraid that this crossed the line from flesh-and-bone to saint on occasion), but as a whole, this is a great piece of work from a truly great actor, and that third trophy seems highly justified.

Bradley Cooper is not the actor that either Day-Lewis or Phoenix is, though that is perhaps more out of a lack of opportunity than out of a lack of skill, as his work in Silver Linings Playbook shows there's more than just a pretty face and a sextet of abs to recommend Cooper.  I particularly loved Cooper in the first half of the film (I loved everything more in the first half of the film, admittedly, but particularly Bradley).  His uncomfortable interactions with his father, mother, and Tiffany really showed the tic's of mental illness and the heartbreaking nature of his disease (and the stigma that surrounds it).  It all climaxes with that terrific scene with "Girl from the North Country," where Cooper finally gets some happiness.  I can't really blame Cooper for what happens next, but his performance takes a hit due to the script not giving him as much to do in the second half, and so there's something that he loses in that final half that takes him away from gold medal contention against Day-Lewis and Phoenix.

Denzel Washington has been coasting off of the wisecracking-older-guy-who-schools-the-younger-guy persona for so long, I kind of wondered if we'd ever be out of the wilderness with him using a decade of remarkable work to make up for a decade of interchangeable, almost identical thrillers and small-scale action films (he's never made a sequel, but he's made at least two films about out-of-control trains, so perhaps he has).

His work in Flight, I've said before, does have its moments.  He definitely understands the nature of addiction, the way that it sucks up your will to succeed and your confidence and your instinct to fight.  But Washington's story arch never seems believable, and that's on him as much as it is on the director.  The film takes him too far down to see him come so close to succeeding and then give it up-the lying and recklessness that he exhibits as an addict never compromises with the character's late-in-the-film revelation that he was drinking when he flew the plane, and that he must pay for his mistakes.  Washington is always a very watchable actor, but his character is too inconsistent, his performance too all-over-the-place to warrant inclusion here, despite happiness from us all that he's back in the "acting" game instead of just the "making movies" game.

Finally, we have Hugh Jackman.  I remembered feeling bad when I was writing the Jacki Weaver and Alan Arkin write-ups, as these are actors that I have enjoyed in the past and was giving them a tough time, but then I thought, "they'll at least have it better than Hugh Jackman."

I feel mean to say this about an actor who is clearly a very nice man in real-life, especially one getting their first nomination, but I did not enjoy Jackman's performance at all.  His performance is so hollow to me-it relies so heavily on his emotional connection to Fantine (how brief it is), which never connects (I'm not sure if I entirely need to blame this on Jackman over Hathaway, but it falls more so on him as his story is far more reliant on her than hers is on his).  His eyes are too dramatic, and he overplays almost every scene.  Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, and Samantha Barks all get that the film is not on Broadway, it's cinema, and so it's important to tone things down and calm the theatrics, but Jackman never succeeds in doing that, and his performance seems a bit cartoonish and out of reach for the audience.  And, I've said it before and I'll say it again here-he's not a strong enough singer to pull this performance off.  Everyone focuses on Crowe, but Jackman's voice is too tinny, too Ethel Merman to pull off the operatic Jean Valjean.  This is particularly noticeable in the talking/singing portions, where he's frequently out-of-pitch (the live singing did not help him at all) and it takes entirely away from his character. 

Other Precursor Contenders: As we all know, the Globes separate their Comedy and Drama races for Lead Actor, and thanks to Cooper and Jackman, we have an oddly nice spread this year between Comedy/Musical and Drama.  All five Oscar nominees made the cut (Day-Lewis and Jackman taking the trophies), with Drama also featuring John Hawkes in The Sessions and Richard Gere in Arbitrage, and the comedic actors being Bill Murray in Hyde Park on Hudson, Jack Black in Bernie, and Ewan McGregor in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (with the exception of The Sessions, I have seen none of these movies-if you've seen them, say what you'd recommend in the comments!).  The SAG Awards also went with Day-Lewis for their trophy, and cut Joaquin Phoenix in favor of John Hawkes again (Hawkes, a previous nominee for Winter's Bone, was clearly in sixth place for the Oscars).  Finally, the BAFTA Awards decided to skip Washington in favor of Ben Affleck's starring role in Argo (BAFTA was a big fan of Argo, giving it both Best Picture and Best Director, though Day-Lewis bested Affleck for Best Actor).

Films I Would Have Nominated: Though all three may not have necessarily made my list, Cooper, Day-Lewis, and Phoenix are all worthy nominees and so I'm only going to pick two actors to complain about here.  The first would be Logan Lerman in Perks of Being a Wallflower, a performance that also finds the harshness of mental illness and shows the hardships of an introvert in high school (name me a film that does this better-I dare you).  He's way younger than Oscar would ever go for in this category, but he deserved the nomination.  And Channing Tatum is probably too beautiful for what Oscar goes for in this category, particularly in a performance that celebrates that beauty frequently and with gusto, but his charming, laid-back stripper is a movie star turn of the highest order, and not to throw the sexism angle around too much, but something tells me if this were a woman rather than a man, we would have seen more awards talk for such excellent acting.

Oscar’s Choice: There was no stopping Daniel Day-Lewis, who, like Hathaway, probably got a good 70-80% of the vote.  My gut for second place tells me that we were looking at either Phoenix (too good to ignore) or Jackman (nice guy breaks through).

My Choice: Joaquin Phoenix.  He's superb in this movie, just otherworldly.  In most other years, Day-Lewis would have been too good to ignore, but Phoenix is just better, and so I'll give Daniel the silver, Cooper the bronze, and finish out with Washington and then Jackman.

And those are our Best Actors.  Was I the only person on the planet that preferred someone over Day-Lewis (it sure felt that way with all of the precursor and AMPAS trophies going to Lincoln)?  Or is there someone else out there that wanted Cooper, Washington, or Jackman as the winner?  And who, out of everyone, gave the best leading actor performance in 2012?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2012: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2012

Past Best Actor Contests: 2010, 2011