OVP: Actress (2000)

OVP: Best Actress (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Joan Allen, The Contender

Juliette Binoche, Chocolat

Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream

Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me

Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich

My Thoughts: Every time we tackle one of the Oscar Viewing Project seasons, there's always 1-2 contests where I can't quite figure out what I'm going to do with the wins at the top of the season.  Sometimes, like 2001 Score or 2004 Actress, that is something I end up deciding in the moment, and still am not entirely sure I made the right decision.  Today, I feel more confident in where I'm headed, but I do think it's one of those races where I don't entirely know that I want to be on record as picking one of these performances, with three much-lauded pieces of work, above the others.

By sheer accident, we've started all of our 2000 acting races with the winner, and since this will never happen again, we'll finish that trend today by beginning with Julia Roberts.  Roberts' victory is considered by many to be about as perfect as you can get-the best combination of right actress, right time, and right role.  It's hard to argue with the logic there.  Roberts is sensational, giving a movie-star turn as the titular Erin, totally playing this for both the cheering crowds and for the discerning critics, making Erin prickly-but-lovable.  I admire the way that some of the speeches feel both off-the-cuff but rehearsed, as if Erin (and Julia) knew that this moment was coming, and have wanted to say them all of their lives.  There's a lived-in quality here that is undeniable.

The problem for Roberts is that she's also against some other great pieces-of-work.  Ellen Burstyn is giving maybe her most-celebrated (give or take The Exorcist) performance in Requiem, and it is truly something to behold.  The 1970's feminist archetype here plays a housewife with a drug addiction, and it's scary how well she incorporates failed dreams, inner-doubt, and abject loneliness into one performance.  I am not always on Darren Aronofsky's side (I think his films are difficult to watch, and sometimes head into Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-levels of despair that feel more about torturing than challenging the audience), but while Requiem is a tough sit, it's a good one, and that's due in large part to Burstyn.

While Burstyn was a comeback and Roberts a coronation, Laura Linney was an ascendance, though not to stardom (more to "elevated character actress").  Her work in You Can Count on Me is so strong.  I love the scenes where she's in the car, and she's laughing (or crying), and you just feel her Sammy as a person.  It's undeniable that much of her performance's strength comes from this authentic, marvelous chemistry she has with costar Mark Ruffalo.  It is rare to see a movie that has two actors playing siblings that feels so real, like you can't honestly believe these two haven't known each other their whole lives.  The best performances either actor have given to date.

Joan Allen in 2000 was on something of a streak, one that was about to end.  In six years, she'd amassed not only three Oscar nominations, but much-lauded work in The Ice Storm & Pleasantville that easily could've gotten her to five nods in six years.  Her work in The Contender isn't as impressive as some of the rest of that run, though.  I think this is strong stuff, but it's a lot of "girlboss" rah rah before that would become a thing.  We see her play a woman of honor in a town that wrings that from you, and her speech toward the end felt like an active play to liberal Oscar voters (or me...I'd vote for her senator too!).  But it doesn't feel like we really get to know her character-we just get to know her as an idea.

It always feels a little silly to me that Juliette Binoche, maybe our finest working actor, not only has just two Oscar nominations, but she has the latter one for a little trifle that most people mock.  That doesn't feel totally fair.  Binoche is good in Chocolat, and gives exactly what this little confection (pun intended) is meant to taste like, but it's just not a performance that deserves to be in the conversation for an Oscar.  Not every movie is supposed to be an Oscar nominee, and she lands all of her jokes, plays her character as unknowable (but still fascinating), but it's...this is not the sort of Grade A bubble gum that we complain about missing out at Oscar...one of the few times he nominates this, and it's not something totally refreshing like Clueless or When Harry Met Sally.  Still, on some level I'm glad that Binoche got a nomination since she's deserved this at least four times since (and multiple times before).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  For Drama, Roberts won, beating out Allen, Burstyn, Linney, and Bjork (Dancer in the Dark), while for Comedy/Musical Binoche actually lost to Renee Zellweger (Nurse Betty), the rare time the Globe winner bested an Oscar nominee; also in contention were Brenda Blethyn (Saving Grace), Sandra Bullock (Miss Congeniality), and Tracey Ullman (Small Time Crooks).  SAG went with the exact same lineup (and winner) as Oscar, while BAFTA got crazy, giving their statue to Roberts, but she beat Binoche, Kate Hudson (Almost Famous), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), & Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry)...a year after Swank won the Oscar.  In sixth place, it's surely Zellweger, but I'll be honest-this was one of those "locked up tight" Best Actress lineups that no one was going to break.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: The Oscars have been criticized, frequently correctly, for ignoring the achievements of Asian actors.  22 years before she won an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, Michelle Yeoh would become the textbook example of this when she couldn't get a nomination for Best Picture nominee Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a nomination she more-than-earned.

Oscar’s Choice: The internet will occasionally convince itself that Burstyn was a threat here, but she was not.  This was Julia's time-one of the biggest locks this category has ever seen.

My Choice: This is a good moment to remind readers that the Oscar Viewing Project is a multi-decade experiment I'm doing, where I pick only the winner in a vacuum, meaning that I don't think about outside factors (like if they've already won) to see if I make the same mistakes as the Academy, even if that means an actor I like (and a performance I'd be proud to see win a statue) never takes home the gold.  In real life, I probably would've voted for Julia too, because I am not immune to a narrative.  But if we're talking the best performance in this lineup, it's Laura Linney, and she's going to get my statue atop Roberts and then Burstyn (all three are showing up in my My Ballot next week), even if that means Roberts, the biggest actress of her era, will probably never win an OVP.  Behind them are Binoche, and finally Joan Allen.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Do you think that Roberts is genuinely the best of this lineup, or (in a vacuum) do you want to stand with Linney (or Burstyn)?  Do you think considering previous wins or career longevity is a good or bad way to handle close Oscar races with a lot of worthy contenders (like this year)?  And does it tick you off as well that Michelle Yeoh had to wait so long for her Oscar nomination?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2000: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000

Past Best Actress Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

Film: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

Stars: Ellen Burstyn, Alfred Lutter, Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel, Diane Ladd, Valerie Curtin, Jodie Foster

Director: Martin Scorsese

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Actress-Ellen Burstyn*, Supporting Actress-Diane Ladd, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Kris Kristofferson: click here to learn more about Mr. Kristofferson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked a little bit about Kris Kristofferson's very successful early career in music, but during the 1970's you'd be forgiven for thinking of him as a movie star in the same breath as thinking of him as a country music titan.  Kristofferson's career in movies is unusual because two of his biggest films of that era are movies that, while he got top-billing, he was totally overshadowed in terms of press coverage (and eventual recognition) in favor of his female costars.  That's certainly the case for today's movie, which is a pretty major crossover into the Oscar Viewing Project, as I watch my final (to date) Ellen Burstyn Oscar-nominated performance, and the only movie Burstyn ever won an Academy Award for.  The movie also happens to be the first studio movie that Martin Scorsese (who, like Burstyn, is still working) ever made, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is something of a road trip film, at least in the first half, with Alice (Burstyn) a former singer who has recently been widowed by her neglectful husband, taking her son Tommy (Lutter) across the country.  She wants to go to Monterey, her childhood home, where she dreams of picking up her singing career again, but along the way things get messy for her.  First, she meets a younger man named Ben (Keitel), who seems charming, but is actually an abusive married man whom she ends up fleeing town with after he threatens Alice.  At that point, in Tuscon, she gives up (temporarily) on her dream of becoming a singer for the more realistic life of a waitress in Mel's Diner, a local, fast-paced watering hole, where she befriends the outspoken Flo (Ladd), and starts romancing a regular named David (Kristofferson).  But her relationship with David is complicated by her increasingly unruly son, and eventually things come to a head when David physically disciplines Tommy.  The movie ends with them moving past this, and forming an unlikely family, with Alice giving up on her dream of being a singer, but finding a different kind of happiness with David instead.

I'll be totally honest-the ending of the movie doesn't work.  The movie's naturalism is its key asset, and that assists in a lot of the performances, but not in the ending.  The only logical reasons that David & Alice end up together are that it makes a cleaner ending than her pursuing a dream the audience knows won't happen, and that Kris Kristofferson circa 1974 is so hot you kind of look past the obvious, toxic masculinity flaws.  But it's not earned.  It's also hard to totally look at this from a modern lens without realizing that there is something seriously wrong with Tommy, who is a truly spoiled brat, and one who exhibits a lot of the same cruel tendencies that his father also exhibited at the beginning of the picture, which is going to be a problem for Alice in the years that follow (writing children in the 1970's was a nightmare unless you cast Tatum O'Neal or Jodie Foster, the latter of whom has a small role in this).

But the acting is good.  Burstyn brings a naturalism to her Alice, a modern woman who doesn't understand that it's not her gender, but her age, that will hold her back with the dreams she gave up to start a family.  There's an interesting commentary there about how the women's liberation movement came too late for a lot of women who now had the opening to make their dreams come true, but not the time.  Coupled with Ladd, who is superb in a side role as Alice's rival-turned-friend where she continually steals scenes, it's a great pairing and proof that Scorsese is capable of getting strong performances from women when he tries.  Kristofferson doesn't have a lot to do here but look pretty and then bounce off of Burstyn's monologues (this is very much an actress showcase film), but he does that well.

No Globes? No SAG? No Problem!

Doesn't that feel good?  After the longest awards season drought in recent memory, we officially received the nominations for the Golden Globes & SAG Awards this week.  I know there was a lot of confusion (Jared Leto? Corden but no Streep?), and always some anger (no one is ever happy with awards, but with someone whose personal Top 5 matched with 80% of the Best Drama category at the Globes, I am pretty pumped about HFPA this year), but in general it's nice to have some normalcy & to have awards season raging while winter gets colder & my ability to get vaccinated continues to be a shifting goalpost.

One of our favorite traditions on the blog is every year we do our annual "No Globe/No SAG/No Problem" article.  While the Globes & SAG Awards are a good barometer for the Oscars, they are not always right-on if you use them solely as a predictions tool (it'd be more interesting for all of us if we just used them as an award but since we don't I'm going to keep writing this article).  Every year since 2006, the Academy has chosen at least one name that was not nominated at the Globes/SAG.  Below are the lucky ones from the last decade:

2019: Florence Pugh

2018: Marina de Tavira & Yalitza Aparicio

2017: Lesley Manville

2016: Michael Shannon

2015: Charlotte Rampling, Tom Hardy, & Mark Ruffalo

2014: Bradley Cooper, Marion Cotillard, & Laura Dern

2013: Jonah Hill

2012: Quvenzhane Wallis, Emmanuelle Riva, & Jacki Weaver

2011: Gary Oldman & Max von Sydow

2010: Javier Bardem

As you can see, a few trends emerge.  Oscar likes to over-reward its Best Picture nominees, or at least films that are already a lock for another acting nomination (movies voters are already watching anyway).  They tend to gravitate in recent years toward actors who are well-liked and "Oscar-bound" in terms of their career trajectory, but haven't been nominated yet (Rampling, Manville, Hardy, Oldman).  And they generally don't invite films that are getting their sole nomination (Rampling being the exception on that front).

This year, I have slightly more names than usual, though ultimately I don't think we'll have more than 1-2 contenders emerge.  There are three reasons for that.  The first is trying to understand the gap-the Oscar nominations aren't for another month, so if a film does catch on in that time frame, we won't know it.  In a normal year most of the narratives would be baked even for films that hadn't been released yet, but trying to gage what's factoring into the awards is tough because of box office (our second reason).  Box office isn't really a component this year (even a film like The Croods: A New Age which has done surprisingly well at the box office given the pandemic are not making headlines for their grosses), so movies that might have been helped by being well-loved by audiences (such as News of the World) don't have that luxury, and can't use that as a way to be the "crowdpleaser" nomination this year. The problem is I can't really feel out what's replacing "box office" as a normal Oscar factor (if anything is at all), and so I find the race is looser as a result.

The third is that I haven't seen all of these movies.  The 2021 releases are difficult to track down (though I was lucky to catch The Father at a festival screening), and most came out during the last week (when I had a busy work week).  For example, I'm not listing someone like Denzel Washington in The Little Things because he seems to have no buzz (and it might not be that kind of a performance), even though the enthusiasm for Jared Leto's work combined with Oscar's longtime love of Washington makes him an "on-paper" kind of person who could show up here.  I am listing, however, 15 actors below that I do think should keep their dance cards open, and like I said, at least one or two of them are going to join a select group who skipped the whole awards season...and still ended up with an Oscar nomination on their shelf.

Honorable Mention: A couple of names I want to throw out here.  Zendaya (Malcolm & Marie) and Stanley Tucci (Supernova) both have buzzy projects that went nowhere with HFPA/SAG.  It's possible these were too late-breaking & Oscar will catch the buzz, or it's also possible their studios botched the releases and they go home empty-handed.  LaKeith Stanfield is the lead role in Judas the Black Messiah, and if that's a Best Picture nominee he could make it (he's the sort of actor who is going to get a nomination at some point), but all of the buzz is on Daniel Kaluuya so I'm not feeling it too big this year.  And finally, while she somehow missed at the Globes (the biggest shock of the week for me, even over the Leto citation) and the SAG Awards, Meryl Streep should never be entirely counted out for an Oscar nomination.  She has (just once) gotten into the Oscars without a citation for either (1987's Ironweed), and the fifth slot in Best Actress is a true free-for-all...I would be stunned if she got it at this point, but to dismiss her chances even after all of this would be foolishness.

10. Tom Hanks (News of the World)

For Him: Hanks is a beloved star, one whom the Academy finally welcomed back last year.  I said up-top that films that are in the hunt for Best Picture or another acting prize tend to do well here, and with Helena Zengal nominated twice, and this being the kind of classy (but accessible) movie that AMPAS likes to fill up its Best Picture field with (even if they don't nominate it for Best Director), I wouldn't count him out.  All of the fields have roughly 4 nominees that feel locked, and one truly open fifth slot, so there's room.

Against Him: No film, in my opinion, is hurt more by a lack of box office than News of the World.  In a dour year, its message of hope & unlikely families would have been a surprise hit at the box office (for my money), and as a result there would've been more demand for the movie to get nominated here.  Without it, I don't know if Hanks (in a role he could do in his sleep, even if he's watchable as ever) really needs a nomination over someone like a Steven Yeun or Gary Oldman, who are in movies that are likely to be bigger deals with Oscar.  Plus, Hanks has a weirdly long history of being in prestige projects where other actors got nominated but he didn't (this would be the tenth such instance of this happening).

9. Charles Dance (Mank)

For Him: Like I said up-top, when we see someone sneak in last minute, they're doing so for a film that A) is a Best Picture contender & likely looking at additional acting nominations and B) is a veteran actor whom the Academy has never gotten around to nominating.  Charles Dance fits both those descriptions like a glove.  He's playing a real-life figure in a key role in his film, and in a movie full of supporting actor turns, he's the one that's clearly meant to stand out (if you watch the trailers or pay attention to star billing).

Against Him: It's a smaller part, and probably needs 1-2 more scenes to make it an easy sell for Oscar. It's also hard to tell how wild the industry is about Mank.  The Globes loved it, SAG nearly forgot about it, and audiences have been mixed on its cold approach.  Oscar is going to have to love it for something like this to happen (though I can't quite shake Alan Alda in The Aviator, the most similar doppelganger for Dance to cling toward).

8. Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Night in Miami)

For Him: Like Dance, Ben-Adir's biggest asset is that he's in a big-deal movie.  If One Night in Miami is a hit with AMPAS (and it could well be), they may be finding a way to nominate it outside of Leslie Odom, Jr.  Ben-Adir got plaudits from people who saw the movie, and many considered him the best-in-show of the film.  Plus playing a real-life figure never hurt any actor.

Against Him: It's an introverted part, and Ben-Adir might suffer from reverse category fraud a bit.  He's not as famous as Odom is, but he's still "the lead" while the two have roughly commensurate runtimes...will Oscar voters really put him here while they're putting Odom in supporting?  Part of me thinks they should have tried to convince us that all four actors were supporting, though that could have led to category splitting...I think this isn't showy enough to land in a lead category, but if they like the movie I could be wrong (hence him on this list).

7. David Strathairn (Nomadland)

For Him: We continue with another actor from a major Best Picture contender whom so far has been ignored by the televised awards.  I put David Strathairn higher than the other two for a pair of reasons.  First, he's been nominated before, so I know Oscar likes him.  Second, and more important, he has no internal competition (he does, but no one famous enough to get in here).  If you want to honor Nomadland beyond Zhao & McDormand, he's your best bet, and the film has many acolytes (it's the kind that's going to get a lot of #1 placements on nominations ballots for Best Picture).

Against Him: It's a small role, smaller in stature to the film than even Dance's, and it's not showy at all. It's good (he's always good), but Oscar rarely goes for this kind of small-arch, inward role, particularly if others haven't noticed it first.  While Supporting Actor has a lot of directions it could go, this would be an unusual fifth slot nomination.

6. Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round)

For Him: Occasionally (Cotillard, Riva, Bardem) in the past decade we've seen a performer from a major foreign-language film get into this race without any precursors, and I do think that's possible here.  Mikkelsen is well-known to Hollywood, and has been in English-language productions for the past decade.  This is a big, plum part, and it's a surprisingly smart movie; even if you see it without a lot of expectations, it's going to surprise you & you'll enjoy it.  I can't shake the idea that this is the sort of performance that if enough Academy members see it, he gets in.

Against Him: Will enough see it?  Again, box office plays a part here-will the Academy reach for the foreign-language drinking drama as they're trapped in their house with their families?  Mikkelsen is not a previous nominee like Cotillard or Bardem, so while he's well-known he's not an Academy favorite.

5. Delroy Lindo (Da 5 Bloods)

For Him: He won the NYFCC award (always a good indicator for the Oscar), and is getting best-in-career style nominations for the film.  Oscar likes to honor long-working character actors when they get their moment-in-the-sun, and Best Actor is fluid enough (only Hopkins, Boseman, & Ahmed feel truly safe) that a new name or two sneaking in isn't without question.  The Academy went all-in for the last Spike Lee movie.

Against Him: The SAG snub is baffling.  HFPA might've just not liked the movie, but SAG nominated it for Cast and Boseman, yet they snubbed Lindo (who has the best performance in the film).  I don't really know what's happening here, but the consensus seems to be that the industry isn't feeling Da 5 Bloods, and if that's the case Boseman might be the only contender from the film other than Lee in writing...leaving Lindo out of the running for someone like Steven Yeun (in a movie they seem more inclined toward).

4. Mark Rylance or Frank Langella (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

For Him: I'm aware the tie is a cheat here, but mostly I can't figure out quite how to read Chicago 7, which seems like the early frontrunner to take Best Picture at the Oscars this year.  If that's the case, it's possible someone other than Sacha Baron Cohen will get into this field, but I don't know who as the cast is massive (Eddie Redmayne or Jeremy Strong aren't crazy suggestions either).  Rylance & Langella are previous Oscar nominees in big, intense parts in the movie, and if they want to give the movie a dual nomination they're the two most-likely to benefit from such a move from Oscar.

Against Him: Dual nominations in the same category aren't as popular as they were a few decades ago, and it's possible that these two both split their votes with each other or that Academy voters feel that honoring Baron Cohen is enough of a nod to the movie as they need to give.

3. Paul Raci (Sound of Metal)

For Him: He won every critical prize known to man, and he's in a film that is getting attention for Best Actor (and honestly feels like an outside shot at Best Picture).  His role isn't a co-lead, but it is sizable, and he gets his Oscar-bait clip (his final moments onscreen).  Plus, this is the kind of role Oscar has gone for in the past with a character actor who has his moment in the sun.

Against Him: The lack of a SAG nomination hurts (a lot).  Raci was never going to be famous enough for the Globes, but the SAG Awards will honor actors who haven't been favorites before with the Academy.  That he missed there makes me wonder if televised awards bodies aren't sold on the film beyond Ahmed, or if they are capable of noticing a relatively obscure character actor (who isn't as famous or ubiquitous as Laurie Metcalf or JK Simmons who went this route in recent years).

2. Ellen Burstyn (Pieces of a Woman)

For Her: She's an Oscars icon, and she's in a film that's getting attention (albeit not for her).  She'd also be the oldest nominee ever (a hook!), and she has one scene late in the movie that is such a "nominate this!" moment that it's difficult to see Oscar voters watching it & not suddenly taking notice of what she's doing.  Supporting Actress, especially for the final nomination, is very influx.

Against Her: Her big scene in the movie comes quite late in an intense movie (how many AMPAS voters skip the rest of the film after the first twenty minutes?), and while it's not a small part historically (there have been smaller ones cited in recent years), one wonders if we've entered a world where a performance this short can compete with co-leads like Maria Bakalova or Helena Zengal.

1. Sophia Loren (The Life Ahead)

For Her: She's an Oscar-winning legend who came out of retirement to do this part.  While it isn't in contention in other categories like many above this, Loren doesn't really need that-she's the attraction here.  And while McDormand/Davis/Mulligan have locked down the first three slots, Vanessa Kirby doesn't feel "solid" to me considering the nature of her film (and the Burstyn snubs), and Best Actress has arguably the loosest fifth slot of the acting fields: Amy Adams, Michelle Pfeiffer, & Andra Day all could get into this field as the last nominee, but none of them feel like sure, or even solid bets based on super-late release dates (no buzz) or questionable reviews (Adams).  All of this is to say that I'd probably still predict Loren (at least as of today) for that final nomination slot as she could surprise.

Against Her: The SAG Awards snub stings, as they tend to favor their legends a bit more than others.  Loren is hurt this year by not being able to show up at red carpets...that Old Hollywood glamour would've made her not just a surefire nominee (we want her to come!) but a threat for the win, in my opinion.  Without that top-of-mind, I wonder if she's become out-of-sight for Oscar voters.

OVP: Pieces of a Woman (2020)

Film: Pieces of a Woman (2020)

Stars: Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker, Sarah Snook

Director: Kornel Mundruczo

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Vanessa Kirby)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We will announce my annual Top 10 lists on January 24th, and so for the next two weeks we'll basically be doing a 2020 release every single day as I begin to put the finishing touches on this year.  In normal years, this would be accompanied with a lot of Oscar predictions, but due to the Academy's ill-advised decision to move the date of the Oscars (and thus have a number of films in the coming weeks eligible, breaking with a nearly 90-year streak of confining themselves to the current calendar year), we are kind of riding blind when it comes to Oscar & the end-of-the-year titles.  That being said, one of the final films to sneak into 2020, which is now playing on Netflix, is definitely in the hunt for the acting categories: Pieces of a Woman, a harrowing mediation on grief, love, & loss when the unspeakable happens.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around three characters, and a fourth on the sidelines of their lives.  The movie opens with an extended sequence where Martha (Kirby) is giving birth in her home, with her construction worker husband Sean (LaBeouf) by her side.  Martha is having a home birth, and her substitute midwife Eva (Parker) is there to assist.  As the birth continues, it's clear that there is wrong with the child, and Eva gently asks Martha if she wants to go to the hospital.  Martha says "no," and the baby is born, but immediately after the child turns blue, going into cardiac arrest, and then dies.

The opening scene of this film is brutal, like watching horror movie, and surely what the movie will be most noted for due to its uninterrupted camera & the way that it unfolds.  You understand pretty quickly that this will not go well, but the suspense is still there as to how it won't go well, and all of the actors, particularly Parker, play their parts well.  The problem for the movie is that it never really understands the moment correctly for the rest of the film, that these figures who are strangers to us remain strangers the rest of the picture.

Kirby is a very good actress (anyone who saw her on The Crown can attest to such), but like a lot of performers who excel at playing outward, extroverted figures, her attempts at making Martha small result in making her unknowable.  We know she's a wealthy woman, but we get no idea of why she has a thing for Sean (is the sex just that good, because they have nothing in common?), or what her ambitions were to be a mother or in her job...she is basically an empty vessel, and that doesn't work for the film's beats.  We need to know what the "pieces" of this woman are so we can marvel when they're put back together.  Kirby could get a nomination, as could Ellen Burstyn (who gets one killer monologue that screams "nominate me!") but without Martha as a holistic center, the film itself becomes shallow, and aided by an overbearing Howard Shore score, it never lives up to the promise of that opening scene.

OVP: When Marnie Was There (2015)

Film: When Marnie Was There (2015)
Stars: Hailee Steinfeld, Kiernan Shipka, Vanessa Williams, Catherine O'Hara, John C. Reilly, Geena Davis, Ellen Burstyn, Kathy Bates
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's bizarre welcoming in what may well be the final Studio Ghibli film (I'm still stumped as to why the studio feels it can't function any longer without Hayao Miyazaki at the helm, but that's a discussion for a different day), and I suspect that the nostalgia for decades of quality entertainment made this an easy nomination that a lot of Oscar pundits failed to anticipate this past season.  The film's narrative is classic Ghibli, with enough magical realism thrown in amidst a story of a struggling young girl who can't find a way to fit in or acknowledge her status as a child of foster parents.  The movie's artistry is on clear display, even if its plotting is a bit off and not quite to the caliber I would have expected for a film that displaced the blockbuster likes of The Peanuts Movie and The Good Dinosaur.

(Spoilers Ahead) The problems here lie in the hopeless predictability of the main character, Anna (Steinfeld, and yes I got the English-dubbed version rather than the Japanese even though I always prefer the original-it's so difficult to find in the United States though!).  Anna is a girl who is raised by loving foster parents, though they receive money as a result of their status as foster parents from the government, which makes Anna distant and aloof.  They send her, as she suffers from asthma, to the country to live with relatives, and while there she comes across an abandoned mansion which feels deeply familiar to her and which occasionally is well-lit and restored to its former glory.  Eventually we learn that a girl lives there that only Anna can see named Marnie (Shipka), and along the way we find out that the girl is in fact the ghost of her grandmother, who is haunted by the fact that she cannot disconnect from the past, and in particular her horrible relationship with Anna's mother.  As the film progresses, everyone finds absolution, including Anna and Marnie, and the film ends happily with Anna moving on with her loving foster parents, realizing that there is family there.

The film's plot, though, is apparent from the outset.  It's pretty obvious, especially since the film underlines with a bold pen that Anna is biracial, that this girl is in some way her relative and likely her grandmother, and so a lot of the mystery, which is a big part of the story, feels taxing and starts to drag because you've already filled in all of the gaps.  When it finally comes time for the big reveal it felt a little like the finales on every season of Desperate Housewives-we'd already pieced together every angle so what was the point in replaying it like a recap?  The characters also get lost in translation a little bit, as it's not apparent why Anna suddenly realizes that her parents had received money from the government (do these children not understand such things?), and why she has such violent, cruel outbursts to those around her but not to Marnie.  The main character doesn't have the 3-dimensional appeal that I've come to expect from Studio Ghibli, which is disappointing.

The artistry on-display is, of course, divine, but even here it's questionable whether we're hitting new heights.  The film exhibits none of the inventiveness of Inside Out, the beauty of The Good Dinosaur, nor the perfect nostalgia of The Peanuts Movie.  The film plays with yellow and blue in some fun ways, particularly in the way the lake looks at night, but the movie's painting is just so-so and never comes close to, say, The Wind Rises which was so sensational a few years ago.  Overall I feel like any pangs of love I had for the film were tinged by memories of the movies that came before it, and sadness that this might be my last trip with such an important artistic force.

Those are my thoughts on When Marnie Was There-how about yours?  Where does it rank in your personal Studio Ghibli lineup?  Do you think they'll ever reopen?  And how do you think this beat out Peanuts and Dinosaur for a coveted Oscar slot?  Share your theories in the comments!

OVP: The Last Picture Show (1971)

Film: The Last Picture Show (1971)
Stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Oscar History: 8 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor-Jeff Bridges, Supporting Actor-Ben Johnson*, Supporting Actress-Cloris Leachman*, Supporting Actress-Ellen Burstyn, Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I will admit that American Graffiti is not a film that wears well in the old memory.  It's one of those movies I saw in my youth and might admittedly gain a new perspective on being older, but as a result of my apathy when The Last Picture Show started out, I was a little nervous as those opening scenes, with Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges both struggling to "get some" off of their girlfriends both recalled that George Lucas coming-of-age landmark.  However, as the film progressed I saw other things start to pop up, namely legitimate adults, and we got to see how the inconsequential started to overtake people's lives in a lonely, dusty town.  It's the sort of tale that feels authentic not only in its time, but in my experience to small towns and the way that slower-moving attitudes shift the way you run your life and expect things out of it, and it's a melancholy look at America's past, but also very uncomfortably at its present.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in the 1950's, 1951/52 to be exact, in a desolate small town in Texas.  Here we see three young people: Sonny (Bottoms), Duane (Bridges), and Jacy (Shepherd) exploring the town, the latter two in a lusty but unconsummated relationship, while the former has just broken up with his girlfriend of a year for not having sex with him.  The film unfolds with Sonny as our lead protagonist, slipping throughout the town and exposing new layers of every character in the movie.  The film rarely leaves his or Jacy's purview, and a result we get only snippets of the remaining characters, but they are almost all powerful.  The film continues in this way, with very few things of meaning or consequence coming about, resulting in the few actions that do matter (Jacy and Duane breaking up, Ben Johnson's Sam the Lion dying, Sonny starting an affair with the older-and-married Ruth Popper, played by Cloris Leachman) really sink in for the audience.  It's a sharp metaphor of how there are only a few things over time that tend to sink in and make an impression in all walks of life, but particularly in a small town, where all activities and actions remain on a loop, perpetually the same.

The film received four Oscar nominations for acting, an incredible feat duplicated by very few films, and all of them were in supporting roles (the only time in AMPAS history where a film got four acting nominations and none of them were in the lead roles).  It's sort of a weird hodgepodge of nominated performances in it.  The most significant role of the bunch is Jeff Bridges, who is in most of the movie, and actually could have been marketed as a lead without too much trouble.  Bridges was incredibly young when this film was made (a mere 21), and does a great job of making Duane seem likable when his actions aren't.  There's a weird juxtaposition with Jacy, whom Cybill Shepherd makes almost unbearably cruel and vain, and Duane, who is in reality many of these things.  He knows he's handsome, he knows he got the best girl, and he acts like a child whenever he doesn't get his way.  Bridges could have been far more curt, but he has such an amiable demeanor you are caught off-guard when Duane is cruel to Sonny late in the film, even though he's always been like this.

The remaining actors are helped by three powerhouse scenes that carry them, since they are all supporting in the truest sense of the word.  Bridges lost his first Oscar bid to legendary Western star Ben Johnson, who at just under ten minutes, gives the shortest performance ever to win Best Supporting Actor.  The character gets one memorable soliloquy right before his untimely death, where he opines for the plains of his youth and the girl that got away (whom we later learn, in her big scene, is Ellen Burstyn's Lois), and he indeed sells the hell out of this scene, though one wonders if he wasn't a legendary character actor if he would have actually taken the trophy.  Less wondering can be said for Cloris Leachman, most famous now for her work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and her erratic appearances on Dancing with the Stars, but she nails her short turn as the neglected wife of a gay gym teacher (I love how Bogdanovich got that across in one very quick scene while skirting around the censors of that time), having so many crying fits about her love affair with young Sonny and selling her breakdown scene toward the end of the film to the rafters.  Compared with Leachman Ellen Burstyn can't really compete, frequently staying surface-level and not giving much more than the appearance of someone who is still beautiful, and is knowing of her daughter's ways.  I am kind of surprised that she and Eileen Brennan (who have weirdly similar names-perhaps the Academy confused them?) didn't switch places in terms of nominations, as Brennan is better at doing more with less and is more memorable as a waitress whose life will always be behind a lunch counter.

The film is at its best when it gives something harsh and bitter, like Jacy's destruction of almost everything she touches (first Duane's life, then Sonny's), showing that actions have consequences, and few of them are great.  We see how Sam the Lion spends his life wishing he'd made a different decision with the love of his life, or the permanence of a bad decision in Ruth's marriage to a man who has no sexual interest in her.  The film becomes a bit dry when it focuses too much on the inner-workings of children and trying to grow up-it's far more fascinating when it shows how society and the world end up treating teenagers as adults far earlier than it should, watching as Duane, Jacy, and Sonny put permanent scars on their happiness and futures before they are mature enough to handle these circumstances.  This harshness is helped by the cinematography, which was also nominated (and thankfully put in black-and-white, which helps with the nostalgic pull), as the film is obsessed with eye-level camera work and that makes the few vast expanse scenes all the more impactful.

All-in-all, I have to say I was impressed though the masterpiece that I was expecting was maybe not quite there.  The movie is one of the strongest depictions of young life I have seen, but it would have been even better if it had found slightly more compelling leads and focused more on the permanent ennui of everyone in this town, just sort of being there and not really living.  It's a very strong film though, and I highly recommend seeing it if it's one of those classics that (like me) you have been putting off catching.

The Age of Adaline (2015)

Film: The Age of Adaline (2015)
Stars: Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford, Ellen Burstyn, Kathy Baker
Director: Lee Toland Krieger
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I initially thought while going into The Age of Adaline that I had never actually seen Blake Lively act before.  This proved incorrect when I left the theater and double-checked on IMDB (I have seen The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Town, and The Green Lantern), so clearly she had not made much of an impression on me.  I was never drawn into Gossip Girl, her signature part, and really just knew her from her constant presence on the red carpet and celebrity marriage to Ryan Reynolds.  Not always a great place to be for an actress I'm about to review in what is her first leading role.

(Spoilers Ahead) But it's not the worst spot, as occasionally actresses surprise me, and not everything is bad in what looks like a potboiler-style film.  The movie is about Adaline Bowman (Lively), a woman who due to some freak accident with a car, some lightening, and some water (in science that even my Biology-befuddled-mind I knew sounded a bit silly), never ages.  She remains for the rest of her life the same youthful 29, eternally bound to being young and beautiful (I mean, if you're going to not age for the rest of your life there are worse places to be than Blake Lively), causing her to live a shadow-y non-existence, floating from one menial job to the other.  She seems happy enough, though always on auto-pilot, and still has a relationship with her daughter (the only person who knows her secret), who, by the time we hit the present day, has become Ellen Burstyn.

The film takes a turn when she falls in love with a handsome stranger named Ellis (Huisman, that hot guy from Game of Thrones, though really that doesn't corner things down much) and decides to take a brief turn into maybe having a real life, eventually meeting his parents, one of whom is a man she loved some forty years earlier named William (Ford).  The movie gets badly off-track from interesting melodrama to heavy-handed in the last thirty minutes with this relationship, with William discovering the secret and claiming that she needs to stay for Ellis, even though he seems to have become unhinged and is definitely wanting Adaline to stay for himself.  Actually, this borders from unhinged and into a bit demented-I'm not sure if Ford was trying something new here, but the entire performance that he was giving in the film was decidedly creepy and really made him look like a jerk; he's been married to Kathy Baker for forty years, and yet he still pines after this girl he randomly met in his youth?  It's disturbing, and the way that he imprints on his son his own feelings, trying to live vicariously-it's a bit sickening.  The film doesn't really have the parameters to go there (this is basically a Nicholas Sparks movie without the Nicholas Sparks), but this is something that I wish was either fully-explored or not discovered at all, because in this precarious situation I felt very uncomfortable for Adaline.

The film itself probably could have used a little bit more Adaline, which is odd since she's in almost every scene, but really the movie is all about her being passive, which doesn't really jive with the woman we meet in her 20's.  I would have loved to have seen a more ordinary look at how she ended up being this quiet, nonchalant woman, living a life of books and dogs and occasional visits from her daughter.  Maybe discover what her purpose has been the past forty years, because she seems so grounded, it's hard to imagine she didn't develop one after a while.  This would have helped give us some juxtaposition to the ending, which essentially sees her life only having a meaning when she gets a hot guy in it.  Lively's performance is occasionally quite masterful in this way-she knows how to have modulated fun in her role as Adaline, and unlike Ford, doesn't take melodrama as a reason to overact.  I would have liked to have seen a little bit more life in some of the lighter moments (the Trivial Pursuit scene seemed like a wasted opportunity), but overall this is the best I've seen Lively.  That's not necessarily a compliment (she's not giving greatness here), but it does have some promise and that's a start for an actress that, depending on the long-term success of this movie, could be around for a while longer at the cinema.

Those were my thoughts on this sudser, a film that feels very out-of-place in the cinemas of today, all wise and not willing to dream a bit, so I can't say I didn't like the movie, though I wouldn't recommend it at the same time (if you like 40's/50's melodramas, which generally I do, this is certainly for you).  What were your thoughts?  Has anyone seen The Age of Adaline?  Where do you weigh in?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Interstellar (2014)

Film: Interstellar (2014)
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Bill Irwin, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, and one more major star that is a huge surprise cameo, so we'll only mention him after the spoilers
Director: Christopher Nolan
Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Best Original Score, Production Design, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Oh Christopher Nolan, he of the fanboy films and the larger-than-life productions.  There's really no other director working today who can rival Nolan in terms of gargantuan scale and divisiveness across the entire internet.  Spielberg makes too many historical epics to be included anymore, Scorsese generally gets too many films like Hugo to interrupt the random and controversial Wolf of Wall Streets, and J.J. Abrams always seems to be a producer, not a director.  Nolan combines incredible budget frequently with something interesting to say, and as a result, we get something truly worthy of our discussion.  And love it or hate it, and I managed to do both, Interstellar is definitely worthy of our discussion.

(Spoilers Ahead-and I'm not kidding here, I go into everything so see the movie beforehand if you're hoping to) The film starts in a similar fashion to where you expected in the trailers.  The movie, taking place in the not-so-distant-future (you get the sense that it's roughly 2050-that John Lithgow is a member of the Millennial generation, and you can do the math from there), shows Earth in the wreckage of a horrifying reaction to climate change.  We live in a world covered in dust, where crops are failing and the countries have largely depleted in size and the military and science no longer exist in a proper form, but instead we just focus on food production and...that's about it.  The first third of the film is pretty amazing in its politics-frequently when we get climate change style films, we see the world destroyed and suddenly everyone is rather wise about what to do with their lives, but here we see the opposite-we continue to focus exclusively on the short-term (surviving as of that day) rather than the long-term (funding more science and medical research so that we can move into the future).

For a society that relies lightly on science, Christopher Nolan relies heavily on it for his script, and we soon learn that a "ghost" is haunting our main character Cooper (McConaughey) and his daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy as a child, later Jessica Chastain and finally Ellen Burstyn), and thanks to an odd combination of Morse Code that is not initially questioned fully enough, in this author's humbled opinion, leads them to go to the NASA space station, where all hell is about to break loose.  Cooper meets an old mentor Dr. Brand (Michael Caine, making his requisite appearance, marking this as a Nolan picture), as well as his attractive daughter Amelia (Hathaway), and finds that this is kismet-they are in desperate need of a pilot (random plothole, amongst many of them-what would they have done if Cooper hadn't shown up?), and Cooper fits the bill better than any other options.  Cooper is then persuaded that there is a black hole near Saturn that is passable by human beings, and through which we can venture into another galaxy, where there are three theoretically viable planets for humanity to live in, thus saving the human species.  Cooper must abandon his family to try and save the human race, and of course his children, and so he goes where no man has gone before, along with Amelia, two ancillary astronauts that you know are just there to help the body count, and a wise-cracking robot named TARS (Irwin).

The following sequences are easily the best in the film, and are perhaps the only time in the movie that doesn't seem bogged down by Nolan's insistence to put in convoluted theories and/or emotional moments that ring more and more hollow as the film continues.  This period of the picture gives you some serious unrest, and you wonder what will happen on these planets, and whether or not we'll ever get back to Earth (for the record, we never really do), or whether any of these three planets are actually viable in terms of the human species' survival.  In particular, when they land on the first planet we get some of the most terrifying and spectacular effects of the film.  We land on a planet, seemingly in the middle of a shallow plane of water, with mountains in the distance, and are soon left to assume that this is a wasteland of only water, with all life constantly upheaved by gigantic, skyscraper-style tsunamis (if only this were a tuna expedition, they'd be set!).  The way that Nolan sounds out this period of the movie makes sense-we slowly realize that the idea of transporting an entire species, billions of people, into another part of the galaxy is utterly hopeless, particularly with a ticking clock back on Earth (the final crop, corn, will soon succumb to the blight that has destroyed wheat and okra as viable food sources), and we learn that really, the only option for these astronauts is the obvious-they will be charged with rebuilding civilization in the wilderness, using frozen embryos to continue the species on some distant rock.

However, Nolan insists on going back to the love of a father for his daughter (you have to feel bad for the son, who doesn't actually abandon his father when creating these videos, since he's largely forgotten by his dad), and then we go into a series of ludicrous, Contact-style plots where Cooper in the present communicates with Murphy in his past, protected by future generations of human beings who somehow can bend into the fifth dimension (never mind the serious temporal paradox problems going on there), and honestly, the last half hour is a major snore.  We have Dr. Mann, who has been brought up as the "best amongst us" so many times that you know he's going to be evil and played by a major Hollywood superstar (though even I was surprised that the Matt Damon cameo was kept so far under wraps-bravo to his team and the marketing team for not tipping their hand there), essentially blowing up the crew's principle way to get home, with Cooper floating around a random tesseract without getting torn to bits, and then suddenly finding himself greeting his 95-year-old daughter (now, finally Ellen Burstyn) and having her, after a two-minute reunion, dismissing him to go and save Amelia on her lonely planet.

Honestly, there is so much to like about this film, and we're going to get into that first before I continue to tear the film to shreds.  The movie is beautiful-it's a nice change of pace for Nolan fans to have Hoyte van Hoytema rather than Wally Pfister, so we get an almost dreamlike wonder in the way he plays with different focus levels in the screen, occasionally mimicking the videos of the actual Apollo astronauts more than crystal-clear work that Pfister frequently favors.  The film's visual effects seem to be pretty heavily in the shadow of a film like last year's Gravity (there is never a moment that quite reaches what the Cuaron film does, though the wall of water sure comes close), but really, it's just inside the lines of that film's gargantuan leaps in technology, and I was left breathless multiple times.  And the cast is game, even if many of their parts are left underwritten-McConaughey, Hathaway, and Chastain are such wonderful movie stars that they can sell the big emotional moments, and hold us through when the film is a bit sketchy in its plot (I always chuckle though when three of our most beautiful citizens are the ones who have to save all of humanity-supermodels to the rescue!).

And there's something so sure about Nolan when he's got a particular vision in mind for his film.  The three planets seem distinctly beautiful, just south of hospitable for the first two and just north of hospitable for the third.  He's a very strong director, frequently finding new ways to shock the audience, but always in a popcorn-style way.  Think of the way that he bends Paris in Inception or the collapsing football field in The Dark Knight Rises, or best of all, the tick-tick-tick of the Joker robbing Gotham.  These are great, steady-handed moments from a director who knows how to build suspense, and we get them with Miller's watery planet here and the shifting through Saturn's blackhole-he knows how to create cinema as a director.

Unfortunately, he never manages to do this as a writer, and he is desperately in need of not writing his own scripts.  We saw this in the continued unraveling of the beautifully-shot Inception or the giant, continual plot holes that mar The Dark Knight Rises.  It's actually become a bit of a game when it comes to Nolan's films to discuss plot holes, but this film actually enters an M. Night Shyamalan-style level of absurdity (the Captain and Tennille were right-love is what is keeping us together!).  You feel like realism has slowly been peeled away by the end of the film, with McConaughey floating through a black hole, communicating with his past self.  It's absolutely absurd, and even if you try to make sense of the science, it never really holds water.  Nolan is the sort of writer who puts something spectacular on-screen to distract you (that kaleidoscope image of bookshelves is mesmerizing), but his films completely fall apart the minute you start to think about them.  About the only way that the film makes sense is if you borrow a page from Minority Report or Laura and assume Cooper dies the second he ejects from his ship.  And yet, there's not enough hints as to that this happened like there are in films like Minority Report and Laura (the clear shifts in tone in those films give more credence to the theory, and to be fair, those are two of the best films ever made in this writer's opinion).

There's also the sincere troubles of the character's motives.  It's hard to fathom that Chastain's Murphy in particular would spend a lifetime trying to track down her father, light years away in the cosmos, and that she took until her mid-thirties to actually forgive him despite working on a project related to his life essentially since he left.  The reality is that for a film that focuses on time, we never really get a proper crash course in such a thing-it makes sense for Cooper to still pine after his long-lost children, but Murphy was only ten when her father left-it's likely that her bitterness would have led to a cold, crystalized love for her long lost dad rather than something that consumed her every day.

We also get the problem that every character other than Cooper and Murphy is horribly underwritten.  Anne Hathaway's Amelia is at the top of this list.  Hathaway is an actress that knows how to dominate a screen, and she's very good at what she does here (this was the perfect film role for her to choose following Les Miz and the random Hathahate that followed), but this character is completely ancillary, and it's pretty condescending by the writers of the film that her romantic love for Edmunds is deemed less than the paternal love that Cooper experiences for Murphy.  Her character is entirely there to reflect Cooper's journey, as well (as is Murphy's), and quite frankly both are added to the long list of ways that Christopher Nolan cannot write women.

And we're going to leave it there, though with nearly three hours of cinema there's surely more to tackle in the comments if you're feeling like it.  What were your thoughts on Nolan's latest?  Do you think he'll finally score that Best Director nomination the entire internet is clamoring for him to have?  Do you agree with me that he is in desperate need of a better screenwriter?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Emmy Predictions: The Miniseries

This Thursday the Emmy nominations will be announced, and all of the internet will be abuzz over a series of snubs and "how did that get nominated agains?"  More than all other awards shows, the Emmy awards bring out something collectively in the internet that is both exciting (I love when people get into awards shows) and infuriating.  Entertainment Weekly, for example, is at its most annoying during the Emmys, as they will somehow celebrate every single nomination that's just been announced and yet list another thirty people that should have been nominated.  A dirty little secret of awards shows?  Not everyone can get nominated, because there is a finite number of slots available.  That's what makes it an honor just to be nominated.

Anyway, that's my annual diatribe against the Emmy awards.  Since the nominations are this Thursday, I figured now was the perfect time to start predicting, and I wanted to start with the Miniseries/TV Move nominations not because I get a chance to see all of them, but because they feature movie stars, and potential future EGOT winners.  These are always my favorite parts of the telecast because you get to see cinematic stars whom Oscar hasn't courted in a while come forward and get some rewards.  Without further adieu, then, let's start discussing them.  Below I'll number the predictions from most to least likely to score a nomination.

Miniseries

1. Fargo
2. American Horror Story: Coven
3. Luther
4. The White Queen
5. Dancing on the Edge

The Lowdown: The really stunning thing about this category (aside from the fact that it exists again-miniseries and TV movie no longer are competing against each other) is that HBO has absolutely no horse in this race.  With True Detective competing in the Best Drama Series category, HBO has no candidates to run, so instead this is a PBS/BBC and FX dominated field.  I still don't 100% get how Luther gets to qualify here since by all normal accounts it's an actual, regular TV series, but it seems it's eligible so I say it's in.  The only real names that could show up that aren't on this list are The Hollow Crown (which seems old hat and doesn't seem to have garnered a lot of goodwill...plus it's pretty old, even by Emmy standards) and Bonnie and Clyde (which came and went with little fanfare).
The Winner?: Predicting winners before you even have the nominees is a fool's errand, and I normally don't do it, but I figured that in the miniseries/movie categories, at least, you can make some solid guesses.  Fargo seems to have sucked up most of the buzz in this field, and without an HBO juggernaut to stop it, should be the victor, giving the Coen Brothers a great chance to add an E to their EGOT chances.

TV Movie

1. The Normal Heart
2. The Trip to Bountiful
3. Sherlock: His Last Vow
4. Killing Kennedy
5. Clear History

The Lowdown: The top three seem near certain-they have that right mix of prestige, star quality, and press that the Emmys require in a category like this.  However, this isn't a three-wide field, and so I have to dig a little deeper.  There is no part of my body that doesn't hate myself for predicting an adaptation of a Bill O'Reilly book in this category, but Killing Kennedy has enough press and this isn't a particularly robust field for TV Movie category.  The final nomination could go to Lifetime's A Day Late and a Dollar Short or yet another BBC adaptation with Burton and Taylor, but both of those films seem more likely to land their lead actresses nominations than get in the top prize.  Instead I am guessing that HBO, with no pony in Miniseries, doubles down here and gets the final nomination with Clear History.
The Winner?: A closer field than Miniseries, the top three on this list all have arguments to lend toward themselves.  The Normal Heart is HBO and will almost certainly lead the nominations, though it's reviews were hardly universally positive and Ryan Murphy doesn't usually sail at the Emmys.  The Trip to Bountiful is a very tiny production and essentially just a filmed play.  And Sherlock: His Last Vow is one of a series (and Cumberbatch is coming back for another film, as was just announced).  At this point The Normal Heart seems the victor, but that could change if it gets a frostier than anticipated reception from the Emmys, or if one of these other films over-performs.

Actor (TV Movie/Miniseries)

1. Billy Bob Thornton (Fargo)
2. Mark Ruffalo (The Normal Heart)
3. Martin Freeman (Fargo)
4. Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes: His Last Vow)
5. Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dancing on the Edge)

The Lowdown: This is essentially a six-man race for five slots.  With the exception of Ruffalo and Thornton, any of the remaining three could fall to Idris Elba in Luther, but I just can't quite pin whom it would be.  Freeman is the main lead in the biggest contender of the year, Cumberbatch is a burgeoning movie star who is probably not long for television, and Ejiofor was just the lead in the Oscar Best Picture nominee.  Ejiofor's film is the smallest of the bunch, arguably smaller than Luther, and is probably the most vulnerable, but I think Elba is going to be one of those snubs everyone complains about.
The Winner?: I cannot help but think that, after years in the cinematic wilderness, Billy Bob will be welcomed back with open arms and not only an Emmy, but a Golden Globe and SAG Award later this year for his critically-acclaimed work in Fargo.  He seems more Emmy's speed than Ruffalo, and Fargo has to win an acting trophy somewhere.

Actress (TV Movie/Miniseries)

1. Cicely Tyson (The Trip to Bountiful)
2. Jessica Lange (American Horror Story: Coven)
3. Helena Bonham Carter (Burton and Taylor)
4. Rebecca Ferguson (The White Queen)
5. Whoopi Goldberg (A Day Late and a Dollar Short)

The Lowdown: Of all six races, this one certainly seems to be the most competitive.  In addition to the five women above, you could easily make a case for Sarah Paulson (coming off of both a major role in the Best Picture winner and back-to-back Emmy nominations) and Minnie Driver (it may be Lifetime, but the Emmys could want to celebrate her recent success on About a Boy as well).  I am skipping them both in favor of Ferguson (who is the title character in her film) and Goldberg (who is a much bigger star than either of these two), but honestly any combination of these four women for those final two slots would make sense.
The Winner?: None of these women have that obvious contender vibe that usually comes with a winner here.  Claire Danes, Kate Winslet, and Julianne Moore all had a stampede through the awards shows aura to them, but that's not the case here.  I sort of wonder if they'll go repeat (Lange again?) or prestige (Tyson winning for the role that won her a Tony).  This is one of those categories I'm going to wait and see which of the final four women get in (Ferguson could theoretically pull a Kelly MacDonald and win here).

Supporting Actor (TV Movie/Miniseries)

1. Matt Bomer (The Normal Heart)
2. Martin Freeman (Sherlock: His Last Vow)
3. Jim Parsons (The Normal Heart)
4. John Goodman (Dancing on the Edge)
5. Frank Langella (Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight)

The Lowdown: The biggest question with TV Movie and Miniseries acting categories is usually whether the Emmys are going to favor their big stars or over-nominate their favorite films.  This can lead to a situation like Mildred Pierce where EVERYBODY gets nominated or one where we see favorite names like Goodman and Langella.  At the moment I'm favoring the big name theory (with Alfred Molina in Return to Zero just out of reach), but if they go the smaller name route, you could see Denis O'Hare in American Horror Story or especially Colin Hanks in Fargo get nominations.  Colin's father Tom has won five Emmy Awards in his career, but has never even been nominated for acting on television, so this could be the place where he actually one-ups his pops on the awards circuit.
The Winner?: It feels like Bomer will be the victor here-he's got a showy role, and more importantly, is a television staple that hasn't received much awards-love throughout his long career on cable.  This would be a great way to reward a solid TV player, and a gay actor playing a gay part (classy!).

Supporting Actress (TV Movie/Miniseries)

1. Julia Roberts (The Normal Heart)
2. Kathy Bates (American Horror Story: Coven)
3. Ellen Burstyn (Flowers in the Attic)
4. Alison Tolman (Fargo)
5. Jacqueline Bisset (Dancing on the Edge)

The Lowdown: Acceptance speeches matter more than you would expect during the run-up of an awards season, and Bisset's famously awful one at the Globes makes me wonder if she'll get skipped entirely at the Emmy Awards (she's near certain to lose, even though she's an icon who has never won an Emmy).  I'm keeping her in for now, though, because that Globe win was still a win, and she is very famous.  Most of her competition is set in stone: Roberts "slumming it" in television is a guarantee for a nomination (and likely a win), and the Emmys can never get enough of Kathy Bates or Ellen Burstyn so they're also nominated.  Tolman's role is integral to Fargo and though she's not as famous as her potential competitors I think that should be enough.  Other names that could take out either Tolman or Bisset include Angela Bassett in Coven or Janet McTeer in The White Queen, though I'm intrigued to see if the push to get Audra McDonald nominated for The Sound of Music will pay off. McDonald was easily voted best-in-show in her film and the movie itself was a HUGE ratings hit, even if it was critically-lambasted.  Will Emmy want to acknowledge one of the biggest events of the television year, particularly since it was on network television?  We'll see, but this is its only shot at a high-profile nomination.
The Winner?: At this point Roberts is the clear on-paper frontrunner, though part of me feels a little bit like this is a leader who could get toppled.  If Alison Tolman manages a nomination (not even close to a certainty), she feels like the sort of supporting player who would get enough "Should Wins" from the press to actually translate into a surprise win.  Emmy skipped Roberts once before for Guest Actress at the peak of her fame to go with a character actress (Debra Monk)-could history be repeating?

And those are my Miniseries/TV Movie predictions.  We'll hit Drama and Comedy later this week before the Thursday announcement, but in the meantime-what do you think will be nominated for Miniseries/TV Movie?  Who are you rooting for?  Share in the comments!