OVP: Actress (2005)

OVP: Best Actress (2005)

The Nominees Were...

Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice
Charlize Theron, North Country
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

My Thoughts: There are a lot of years you could claim is the "worst" lineup ever assembled for Best Actress.  1949 comes to mind, so does 1975 & 1994.  But this century, few have been so maligned as 2005, a year where admittedly the choices were slim (we'll get to precursors below).  None of the Best Picture nominees had what we'd consider a proper leading actress in them (the closest we get is Sandra Bullock in Crash, and she was definitely campaigned in supporting).  Sometimes these lineups have hidden gems, other times they truly deserve the stench surrounding them.  Today, we'll delve into this lineup and see if popular opinion is unjustified or well-earned.

We'll start with arguably the actress whose career has most changed since 2005, and that's Charlize Theron.  At the time, Theron was considered someone who had de-glammed to an Oscar, and was either an actress who had basically just tricked the Academy (a one-trick star) or had found an unconventional way to highlight her massive talent.  It turns out that Theron, through action & comedy, would have a great knack for stardom & do well in the next 15 years, but that wasn't evident by her paltry work in North Country.  I found her turn in North Country to be paint-by-numbers, the sort of "bait-y" role that Oscar regularly cites for Best Actress but doesn't have enough depth, and oftentimes feels like she's asked to elevate a film, but a film so devoted to her that it's kind of the lead performance's fault for the film sucking.  Theron's ability to play straight drama is stretched-to-the-limit here, and she doesn't succeed in convincing as an average woman in a unique situation.

Judi Dench, at the very least, could not be accused of playing against type (or her skills) in Mrs. Henderson Presents.  I'd say this was the peak of Dench's time with Hollywood, but she'd get two more nominations after this and even headline her own franchise, so she was just in the midst of her decade of fame.  This is the least of Dench's nominations, for my money, though it's hard to actively dislike the work and of the lesser performances nominated here, it's the most forgivable as it's a fun little movie.  There's just nothing there-this was basically a nomination simply for Dench-being-Dench, and while that's great for a moviegoer, that doesn't necessarily equate to fine acting, which Dench is more than capable of achieving.

If Dench got this nomination as a continued acknowledgement of her power and Theron as a "we were right!" then Keira Knightley's nomination, more than the other first-timers, has the aura of a down-payment on future successes.  Knightley is also a brilliant actress, and has done some truly splendid (and atypical) acting in the years since, but I don't love her Elizabeth Bennett.  This is a part that's hard to screw up (the "rooting for her" is baked into the script), and I don't feel like Knightley elevated her enough.  It's a bit unfair to task Knightley with this because hindsight shows we knew she could be this charming and watchable onscreen (at the time she was known to most simply for the Pirates movies), and that we know she can do better, but this is a "good but meh" piece of work, even if we just take it on its own merits.

Reese Witherspoon's win in a lot of ways felt like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, Oscar giving in to popular opinion about America's sweetheart (Sandra Bullock would bookend this trio four years later for The Blind Side).  That said, this is the one performance here that feels like it belongs in a list of their great work, even for Witherspoon (who between Wild and Big Little Lies has been doing her best work in recent years).  June Carter Cash is a fully-onscreen persona.  There's no need to keep her true to real-life (though Witherspoon does), and she crafts a real character that adapts to the realities of moviedom in a way that even Joaquin Phoenix doesn't in the movie.  This is not Witherspoon's most challenging part, but she rises to it, and gives it her all, and comes out the other end with a better movie because of what she's bringing.

The final nominee is Felicity Huffman.  Huffman's professional reputation has been trampled in the past year with her involvement in the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal (this is her own doing-I don't have sympathy on this one even if I'm willing to forget), but at the time this was the peak of her career, not only winning the Globe but also starring in the biggest show on the planet, Desperate Housewives.  Huffman's a favorite of mine (Desperate Housewives is one of my all-time favorite shows, and one I'm ecstatic to be revisiting this fall), so it pains me to point out that I cannot stand her work in Transamerica.  Putting aside that the entire concept of her taking on this role has soured (a conversation I'm more forgiving on than others, even if I get the point, but that's a conversation for a different day), her Bree is just a series of ticks, low vocal cadences, and feels like she's relying upon "deglam" herself to win this nomination.  There's none of the sturdy demeanor or hard-earned tenderness that are hallmarks of Huffman's best work, and, honestly, the role needs these exact skills to flourish.  A big miss for AMPAS, and a crime considering what Huffman can be capable of that this will surely be her only Oscar nod.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  Best Actress in a Drama gave the top trophy to Huffman, besting Maria Bello (A History of Violence), Gwyneth Paltrow (Proof), Theron, and Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha), while Comedy/Musical obviously crowned Witherspoon, here over Dench, Knightley, Laura Linney (The Squid and the Whale), and Sarah Jessica Parker (The Family Stone).  As a testament to how dire the lead actress race was in 2005, both Bello & Linney would've been considered supporting in a normal year.  SAG went with Witherspoon over the Academy lineup save for Knightley (they picked Zhang instead) and BAFTA subbed Weisz & Zhang in for Knightley & Huffman (Transamerica I don't think had been released in the UK though Huffman wouldn't be nominated the following year) while also picking Reese.  All-in-all, it's kind of a pity even if her performance was middling that Ziyi Zhang didn't get in, as she was obviously in sixth place & would've made history as the first openly Asian actress nominated for Best Actress (something that to-this-day has never occurred).

Actors I Would Have Nominated: In 1975, the Oscars looked to foreign and independent films to fill out a thin field, and they would've been wise to consider that in 2005, which I'm sorry to say does live up to its "underwhelming" reputation.  Juliette Binoche (Cache) and Julia Jentsch (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days) both gave terrific performances, and would've been nice surprises here.  If they'd expanded into genre films, Naomi Watts' silent star glamour in King Kong would've been a better way to go for her than 21 Grams.  And then there's Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger, a movie that all of the precursors ignored for inexplicable reasons (at the time my favorite blog, The Film Experience, was championing her hard), despite it being an accessible comedy with a star they'd nominated three times (and came close a fourth), who was giving a home run of a performance.  This easily could've been a career-capper sort of trophy run for Allen if they'd bought into that argument, similar to Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking or Julianne Moore in Still Alice, but they didn't even give that a shot.

Oscar’s Choice: Witherspoon over Huffman, probably by a medium but not large amount considering Walk the Line missed in Best Picture & Phoenix never took off in Best Actor.

My Choice: Witherspoon by a country mile.  Allen, Binoche, or Watts might have made this race something I'd ponder, but when her chief competition is Knightley (silver) & Dench (bronze), you have to go with the only worthy performance in the lineup.  Theron and then Huffman round out the field.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Is everyone on Team Reese, or is someone backing another candidate (I'm genuinely curious who as this feels open-and-shut for me & I'd love to see a different take)?  Is 2005 the worst Best Actress lineup Oscar ever crafted, and if not, what is?  And why the hell didn't Joan Allen get in for The Upside of Anger?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2005: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005

Past Best Actress Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

Film: A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
Stars: Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Storm Reid, Levi Miller, Deric McCabe, Chris Pine, Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Director: Ava DuVernay
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I think A Wrinkle in Time was the first book ever that I had to read twice in a row not because I loved it so much, but because I didn't really get it.  The book, complicated and scientific in ways that were difficult for me to grasp, was the first novel I read with its own mythology, its own terminology.  It is also, even as an adult, a book that's hard to imagine as an actual film, which is why when Disney decided to tackle the project, I was skeptical.  Even in the hands of someone as accomplished as Ava DuVernay, it felt like a story that would be too cerebral, too introverted and too inward to ever pop on the screen.  Then again, "impossible" novels are made into classic movies all-the-time.  One of my favorite pictures ever is The Hours, and I read that book thinking how preposterous it was that it could ever be made into a movie...except of course it had.  So I went to A Wrinkle in Time with childhood fancy in my eyes but an adult's skepticism about what this book could turn into onscreen.

(Spoilers Ahead) And I left disappointed that my childhood's vision of the book would only be brought to life in a surface-level way, my adult side winning the day on this one.  The film centers around Meg (Reid), a bright young girl haunted by her father's (Pine) disappearance, with many of her fellow classmates thinking that he simply ran away from their family, and mocking her incessantly for it.  She lives with her brother Charles Wallace (McCabe), an unusually bright young boy who seems to have some issues with social cues, and doesn't care for most of the people his age.  One day three magical women (played by Winfrey, Witherspoon, and Kaling) take them across the universe in pursuit of their father, and along the way they find out things about themselves.

This is standard-plate stuff for a children's movie, and if that were simply where we were going, it'd probably work.  We have three talented actresses taking on the main roles, and Witherspoon in particular (on such a role lately!) is a hoot as the Mrs. Whatsit, the newest celestial being who frequently becomes impatient with our chief protagonist Meg.  However, the movie's mythology appers too thick to come across in less than two hours, and as a result DuVernay has to sacrifice something.  The problem is she doesn't simplify the plot as a way of letting us connect with the characters, but instead she diverts away from our child performers, giving us cardboard cutouts of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin (Miller).

It feels hard to pick on younger actors in such a way, but all three struggle onscreen.  We leave the theater with just a razor-thin understanding of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin, with their problems all coming back to relationships with family members, but little insight into who they are as human beings.  Reid, in particular, seems to rely more upon frustrated glances and stilted line readings than actually instilling something into her character.  This is partially the fault of Jennifer Lee & Jeff Stockwell, the screenwriters, who don't give Meg much character aside from hero-in-training.  There's a scene late in the film where Meg's name is listed alongside luminaries like Gandhi & Einstein, but we still don't know how simple Meg should possibly be grouped with such people, even though she supposedly just saved the world (weirdly, this is where DuVernay skimps the most on mythology-building).  Without a connection to the younger characters (whom I really loved as a kid as I read all of L'Engle's Time Quintet once I could understand the books), the film itself is just a disconnected series of shots, a muddled mess that movie star charisma can't even save.  It pains me to give it such a low score, but childhood nostalgia & pretty art direction don't make a movie watchable, and you can't be excused for having the budget to cast Witherspoon, Winfrey, and Kaling to try and liven up a dud.  DuVernay has made great movies before, and she likely will again, but this is a stinker.

Stop Turning Everything Into a Franchise!

I am about at my wit's end when it comes to franchise culture in Hollywood.  I keep seeing sequel after sequel after sequel, followed by reboots and prequels and offshoots.  It feels like certain franchises refuse to die until they have exhausted all outcomes...and it feels terrible.  Even series that I genuinely like (say, Harry Potter) feel exhaustive and not as special as they once were because they cannot let those series die and exist on a shelf.  Part of me wonders if this is just the way it will be-series after series never ending but we're forced to endure until everything we loved about it is gone, and we can't even get a nostalgia high from the product.  I am reminded of this with investigations into two different series that, while seemingly disparate, both have fans calling for them to reinvest their time and energy into one last go-around: Community and Big Little Lies.  However, in my mind, only one of these two series should be allowed to continue.

Big Little Lies is the show that's been far more in the news, so I'll start there (spoiler alerts are coming if you're not caught up yet).  The show captured the Twitter zeitgeist, particularly toward the end, with brilliant pieces of work from Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, and a whodunit that stayed pretty well under-wraps despite being adapted from a popular mystery novel.  The final episode, in a rare circumstance, ended up being the finest of the series in my opinion, and a number of people were hoping that, considering its excellence, it should come back for a second season.

I think this is a moronic idea, and it's indicative of the foolishness of sequel/prequel culture.  The reality is that while a sequel can never really damage the original, a second season of a series can decidedly put a tarnish on the initial one.  Look at the jump in quality between the first and second season of Desperate Housewives.  I love that show, and will defend later seasons (particularly 4 and 7, which were both excellent), but one could make the argument that it was never better than its initial mystery.  The same could be said for Big Little Lies, a show that doesn't have a comedic crutchh (and the disadvantage of not being bound to a book) to lean upon.  Keep in mind that DH ended on a cliffhanger, but Big Little Lies tied up every major mystery on the show.  Yes, there are questions left ("what does Celeste do as a single mom?" "does Ed ever find out about the affair?" "how is it that everyone in Monterey can sing so well?"), but by-and-large the major mysteries had a satisfying resolution, something almost unheard of in modern television, which stretches and stretches in order to hang onto a hit show as long as possible.

We should treasure that, rather than hoping for lightning to continue to strike.  Look at series like The Big Bang Theory or Modern Family or Grey's Anatomy-once deeply relevant, now just hollow shells hoping to cash in with quantity rather than quality on syndication deals.  Have we gotten so bad that we've forgotten that a series can genuinely be good from beginning to end?  That having a vision for the end result of the series is the point of watching art?  Television is episodic in nature, but stories like Big Little Lies are meant to have a finish, just like a movie is meant to have a finish.  That we got a strong one, with solid resolution, is a testament to good writing and should be cherished and left alone-the show wasn't meant to be a series, and we shouldn't force it to be just because we love it.

The same cannot be said for Community, which despite six seasons never really got the ending that it needed.  Putting aside #andamovie for a second (and what that would mean), the show after Season 3 never quite gained its mojo back.  A quirky, smart, funny comedy that nevertheless had peaks and valleys, the show became about the unlikely families we form with strangers in college, and the unhealthy attachments we sometimes form in order to stop maturing or moving on.  The series revisited that briefly in the final moments of Season 6, when Abed and Annie depart for California, leaving Jeff, the Dean, Chang, and Britta all behind at Greendale, passing onto the next chapter.  It would be a fine ending, except that there are major, major plotholes still left unresolved, and the ending felt cheap compared to what you normally get from a series finale.

For starters, it's not appropriate in my mind to end the series without having a significant callback to Troy, Shirley, and Pierce.  I know Pierce "died" and such, and them leaving abruptly shows the harshness of life when people who are essential to your daily existence one day just leave without any connection to you again, but it felt inauthentic that, especially in the day-and-age of social media, these people didn't stay a part of each other's lives in a more meaningful way.  Closure, acknowledging that they would always remain friends even if they weren't always constantly connected, felt like a heartier ending.

Plus, the script is right there to discover-Troy, Abed, Annie, and Shirley return after enjoying success in their own lives, perhaps for a class reunion of sorts, and in the process, they start to notice phantom things happening around the campus, perhaps clues to Pierce, who died so strangely (dehydration?) being still alive.  The show could end with them discovering Pierce, still alive and crazy, and then having them realize that it's okay that they grew apart, but still will always have each other.  A few cameos from fan favorites, and you'd have a polished ending that felt truer to the actual series and its characters (it's hard to imagine Troy or Shirley letting Annie and Abed leave without coming back to say goodbye).  And it would be an ending, not an extension or sucking the faucet dry.

Because that's what we need, and what we need to acknowledge should happen in movies/TV.  Not every show is meant to be The Days of Our Lives, continuing until the end of time in an endless loop-no one wants their favorite shows to become hollow shells, almost insufferable.  We need to start inviting back the art to TV and movies, and only extending products that feel like they can naturally continue without risking alienating the original product.  And that doesn't include Big Little Lies, a wonderful miniseries that will stand up to rewatches if you're missing Renata or Madeline...but shouldn't need a second season for you to continue to adore it.

OVP: Actress (2014)

OVP: Best Actress (2014)

The Nominees Were...

Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

My Thoughts: Like it or not, 2014 is going to be one of those years in this category, much like 1975, 1994, and 2005, where we always raise an eyebrow over the nominations.  I'm not saying that the nominees here are bad (they're better than any of those three, and in the case of one actress, she's doing career-best and decade-best work), but this was a weak-sauce year if you look past the nominations.  The Academy was struggling to come up with contenders, and did that thing they usually do in such a circumstance-went to the foreign language well, honoring an actress with her second foreign-language nomination (only the second woman ever to accomplish such a thing).  Because she was the shock of the acting nominations that morning (I recall gasps), we'll start out with one Marion Cotillard.

Cotillard is arguably the greatest actress working right now, give or take some Blanchetts and Chastains.  Every film feels like an event, something to be celebrated and treasured because we all know streaks like this rarely last.  Two Days, One Night is a strange situation for me here because we've come to expect so much from Marion Cotillard that the performance feels very good, but not the "career-best" that so many were trumpeting.  Her naturalism is impressive, and I love the uncomfortable and occasionally dislikable ways that she treats her Sandra, but the film itself is so much structure, rarely working in some of the more emotional scenes, especially as Sandra is dealing with her mental illness on-top of her quest to win back her job.  This cuts a little bit into Cotillard's work, and I feel like (while she's better here than her first bout with Oscar), AMPAS keeps missing the boat on her most impressive work, particularly something like Rust & Bone which has emerged in my memory as a favorite.

While Cotillard was the surprise inclusion here, the dominant force of the Best Actress race in 2014 was surely Julianne Moore.  Becoming only the second woman ever to win this category while in her 50's, the longtime celebrated actress made her impression as Alice, a brilliant woman dealing with Alzheimer's much earlier than your average person.  Moore is a woman who knows the inner ticks and clicks of a character, and you find that in Alice, particularly the conversations, plans, and mechanisms that she has with herself.  Moore herself is hampered by relatively weak costars (save Kristen Stewart), as she risks, particularly in her scenes with Baldwin, overacting, but as a general rule this is fine stuff, and she truly comes alive toward the middle when she no longer has control over her decisions, but is emotionally aware enough that something is wrong.  It's a staggering performance in a not particularly great film, which is always difficult to judge, but while it's also not career-best stuff (it's worth noting, of course, that the entire point of the OVP is to not judge based on other films in ones career but simply the five performances that Oscar put in front of me and nothing else), it's still very strong work from Moore.  There are select scenes of the film that you find yourself rooting for the character, which is always a feat for an actress this famous to transform into that person on screen.

The same could be said for Reese Witherspoon, whose Cheryl Strayed is a truly unique and splendid creation.  Witherspoon hasn't been this strong since at least Tracy Flick fifteen years previously, possibly ever.  While most films of this nature (that is, in nature) usually show a man struggling with his own personal demons but not being willing to admit that the nature is a metaphor, Witherspoon's film largely drops that metaphor (save the fox scene) and we get simply someone doing something she doesn't understand because she doesn't understand her life.  Witherspoon gets a true gamut of emotions to deal with: grief, lust, shame, revenge, hate, and occasionally even love, but what she most has to deal with and which struck a chord with me ferociously (this is easily my favorite movie of these five pictures) was the way that loneliness sets in as you get older when you either don't follow the traditional spouse/children path or when you do, but you feel empty inside for doing it.  Reese creates something magical on that trail, giving herself wholly over to the character-no vanity, no need to prove herself an actress, but just an authentic, grand gesture of a movie.  Since she's a movie star we don't see it examined as closely, but were this a new actress or in a foreign language (or, let's face it, a man), it would have been hailed as a landmark.  Considering how many terrible movies she's made since her last Best Actress nomination, this is a big way to say "I'm back."

Speaking of relative ingenues, we have Felicity Jones who has been at the outer rings of AMPAS with films like Like Crazy and The Invisible Woman in recent years, but generally I've left those pictures underwhelmed.  Her onscreen beauty (those green eyes are ridiculous) is not to be challenged, and I'm rather intoxicated by her inflection, but her acting ability-ehh.  She always seems to underplay her role, and in particular what the part calls for-she's staid when she should be vivacious, and blase about her romantic entanglements, leaving too much inside without emoting in other ways (or letting the script do that for her).  For the first thirty minutes or so of The Theory of Everything she escapes that, and we get a glimmer of what casting directors clearly have wanted us to see-she's vivacious, and has genuine chemistry with Eddie Redmayne, but as the film progresses to sadder territory, she keeps everything on the inside, giving us an English stiff upper lip but no sense of what's going on inside.  Some may say this is naturalism, as surely Jane Hawking wasn't a particularly expressive person with her feelings, but in a movie that is so reliant on her to be an audience surrogate, it feels lacking, and makes me wonder if I'll ever truly get on-board with a Jones performance.

In the final slot we have the one film that everyone saw of this bunch.  Gone Girl, the only $100 million hit domestically, was a major talking point and a book everyone needed to bring to the beach, and it kept its secrets relatively close to the vest.  Rosamund Pike had a few extremely difficult tasks in the movie, and not just because Amazing Amy has such a specific place in literary minds everywhere.  She has to find a way to make her both believably sane at one point and also a nutcase (but a nutcase with a believable enough case against her husband to not alienate her completely from the audience).  In many ways she borrows from Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs-you find her daunting and occasionally vile, but you can't look away, and you get why people fall for her trick as she's too fascinating to ignore.  The "cool girl" monologue, that fantastic opening narration when her big reveal hits, and the way that you see her deep frustration whenever one of her decisions or plans doesn't happen the way that she hoped-it's all incredible fun.  I know that for some Pike's performance, particularly her deep-throated delivery, wasn't to their liking or imagination, but I was a huge fan.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes started off the uniform train with Best Actress in a Drama, where Cotillard was skipped for Jennifer Aniston (Cake), but the rest of this lineup held, as did Julianne Moore as the victor.  That left a surprisingly weird lineup in Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical of Emily Blunt (Into the Woods-makes sense, even if it's kind of default), Helen Mirren (The Hundred-Foot Journey-they do tend to have a thing for her), Julianne Moore (Maps to the Stars-did this film ever actually get released or was it just randomly on DVD one day?), and Quvenzhane Wallis (Annie-all right, I'm out of ideas here).  It's no wonder Amy Adams pulled it off for Big Eyes-it was the only one remotely looking at an Oscar nomination, even if it's about as funny as a root canal.  SAG smartly stuck to the Best Drama race lineup entirely, favoring Moore for the win while BAFTA couldn't quite bring itself to honor Aniston in the Cotillard spot, instead picking Amy Adams, while giving their trophy to Julianne Moore.  It's quite obvious that Aniston or Adams was the sixth place finisher, and while I predicted Aniston at the time (it being a more traditional drama), I was honestly flummoxed, and that's probably why Cotillard was able to make it in-it was likely a weak, close race for fifth that had enough room for someone with a fervent first-place fanbase.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I know that it's popular to bag on her, but I actually really liked what Jennifer Aniston did in Cake (Amy Adams in Big Eyes-not so much), and was genuinely bummed that in a year like 2014 they didn't decide to give her one of those random rom-com queen nominations for a very watchable performance (even if the film doesn't live up to that adjective).  Even better than Aniston, though, was Scarlett Johansson's other-worldly work in Under the Skin, a performance that showed the great promise she had early on not in Lost in Translation, but Girl with the Pearl Earring.  An alien, difficult piece-of-work that hopefully will develop something of a cult following as the year's progress.

Oscar’s Choice: I think sometime early in the 2014 awards season the public randomly realized that Julianne Moore didn't have an Oscar and they all thought she did, so that needed to be rectified immediately.  It's questionable who would have won had she not been in contention (much like 2009's Supporting Actress race, I wonder if it would have been Adams or Aniston in sixth place gaining a Sandra Bullock-style run or a "six nominations without a win is long enough" plea), but Moore clearly was an overwhelming favorite.

My Choice: Witherspoon, no question.  This is my second favorite performance of this decade, and an absolute triumph from start to finish.  Following her would be Pike, Moore, Cotillard, and Jones in a distant fifth.

And now it's your turn-are you on Team Reese with me or are you clutching the pearls over me skipping out on Julianne Moore?  I've seen most of her work, but is there a Felicity Jones performance that will make me a convert?  And I'd love an impassioned plea over whether it was Aniston or Adams that was the true sixth place finisher in 2014.  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2014: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2014

Past Best Actress Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

Top 10 Films and Performances of the Decade (So Far)

The Film Experience, one of my favorite blogs and a daily part of my routine, recently put out a list of the Top 10 Best Performances of the decade so far.  I decided to take that a step further and actually do both my favorite performances and my favorite films of the 2010's (have we decided what we're going to call this decade yet?),  Weigh in with your own in the comments.  First the movies:

10. Carol (2015)

9. Pride (2014)

8. Gravity (2013)

7. Drive (2011)

6. Brooklyn (2015)

5. Short-Term 12 (2013)

4. Weekend (2011)

3. The Social Network (2010)

2. Boyhood (2014)

1. The Tree of Life (2011)

And now the top ten performances...

10. Viola Davis (The Help)

9. Garrett Hedlund (On the Road)

8. Cate Blanchett (Carol)

7. Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)

6. Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)

5. Brie Larson (Short-Term 12)

4. Charlotte Rampling (45 Years)

3. Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine)

2. Reese Witherspoon (Wild)

1. Brad Pitt (The Tree of Life)

Everybody's Linking for the Week

I had family in town so we're doing the rare "Everybody's Linking for the Week" rather than the weekend.  Still, though, we have a lot to cover here so let's get started!

In Entertainment...

-Obviously the saddest news out of Hollywood this week was the demise of screen legend Maureen O'Hara at the age of 95.  The actress, most noted for her collaborations with director John Ford and actor John Wayne, was a major headliner of the Golden Age of Hollywood and a wonderful actress.  My first interactions with O'Hara were as a kid, particularly in one of my collective family's favorite movies McClintock!, a comedy western with Wayne where she plays a stuck-up woman coming home with her daughter for a divorce.  The sight of O'Hara in that gorgeous dress sliding down into the mud made me uproarious with laughter.  As I got older I got to see some of the other facets of her personality, especially in film classics like Miracle on 34th Street and The Quiet Man.  The Academy Awards thankfully honored O'Hara just last year with an Honorary Oscar after years of fans pleading with them to give her that trophy.  It was a career capper for a career like few others.

-Reese Witherspoon is either A) in need of another $10 million or B) recently suffered amnesia as she is advocating for a Legally Blonde 3 for some inexplicable reason.  For those who may remember, Witherspoon nailed her ditzy blonde legal savant act in 2001, but the followup was an absolute train wreck.  Witherspoon's coming off a truly great performance in Wild, but I really wish she'd continue that line of thought before coming back to this character, as I'm tired of us getting long after-the-fact sequels to films that weren't that good in the first place (see also Men in Black III).

-In time for her latest book as Robert Galbraith (I have my copy of Career of Evil staring at me from a shelf nearby), JK Rowling will be doing her first interview as Galbraith on November 2nd, discussing why she wrote under a pseudonym and discussing the Cormoran Strike novels.

-And in news you might have missed regarding everyone's favorite chanteuse, Adele made history once again with her spellbinding "Hello" video.  Directed by Canadian filmmaker (and master of the world's greatest hair) Xavier Dolan, the video is apparently the first music video ever shot in iMax.  I previewed the song last week on the blog-now that we have the full version, anyone want to give their opinions of the full thing?  Comments are below...

In Politics...

-One of the biggest stories of the week surrounded Canadian heartthrob (and also, the new Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau and his huge win for the liberals in Canada.  The Nation looked at how Hillary Clinton may be able to emulate this, with a focus on taxing the rich, infrastructure investment, and an embrace of diversity.  Clinton has made the diversity angle a key part of her campaign (every stump speech will name-check African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays, the military, and senior citizens with utter abandon), and thanks in part to Bernie Sanders influence, Clinton has gone after a more progressive economic platform.  However, infrastructure, an issue that we do need to address in the country does seem like a major winner, particularly as it's a way to start addressing economic issues in poorer areas of the country and might help Clinton with blue-collar male voters, a group she needs to improve her status with in order to take the White House.

-Easily the most press-shy of the former presidents, George W. Bush was all over the news this past week.  First it was his comments about Sen. Ted Cruz, whom he attacked in a pretty harsh way for a former president who has eschewed political fights constantly since he left the White House six years ago.  This is a bit surprising not only because Cruz is a former Bush employee (he was a domestic policy advisor to the then governor when he ran for president in 2000), but also because Cruz isn't exactly who Jeb Bush has been attacking on the stump.  The Florida governor has been most heartily going after Donald Trump, and most pundits (including yours truly) view Marco Rubio as the candidate that poses the biggest issue between Jeb and the nomination, so it's strange that President Bush decided to attack his home state's junior senator instead, as this was clearly a calculation from the governor's team.  The second thing that came up was the continued attacks on Jeb Bush for his defense of his brother, particularly in regard to how he "kept America safe" while he also attacks Sec. Clinton for her role in Benghazi.  The Atlantic wrote a piece agreeing with Donald Trump that George W. Bush didn't do enough to protect the United States in the months preceding 9/11, something that has become taboo to discuss in most corners of American politics.  Personally I think this may be one of the few advantages Trump's candidacy poses for the GOP-his stances on positions and ability to call out what he considers BS (which occasionally is and occasionally isn't just that) is more valuable than the ludicrous assertions of Ben Carson which just go as hard right as possible without more valuable discussion as a result.

-At the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner this past weekend, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders went after Sec. Hillary Clinton by name about her stances on the big banks.  Sanders attacks on Clinton are the most pointed so far of the campaign, and a surprising change-of-pace for the senator, as #feelthebern has been celebrating his atypical approach to politics.  As a result of this, I wonder how this will do for his campaign, particularly for a man that has been using his bully pulpit to decry negative campaigning.

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

-With the news that Gilmore Girls is back (HOORAY!!!), I want to know why Pushing Daisies isn't next.

YouTube Video of the Week...

-This video is super long, admittedly, but if you wanted to understand everything about the new paid YouTube (or YouTube Red, not to be confused with RedTube which is VERY different and highly NSFW) and why ESPN can't put YouTube videos out any more, please watch Hank Green explain it as only he knows how:

Just One More...

-The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at what scientists are doing to try and save the snow leopard as climate change has resulted in much of their territory being decreased.  This is particularly important considering articles like these, where they list out species that have gone extinct only in the past 15 years.