Oscar Index: Ladyfight!
The Nominees:
1. [tie] Natalie Portman, Black Swan
1. [tie] Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
3. Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
4. Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
5. Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Notes: Another notable absence at last weekend's BAFTA confab was Best Actress winner (and once-prohibitive Oscar favorite) Natalie Portman. I'm not necessarily here to say a pregnant woman should expose herself to the stress and duress of trans-Atlantic flight just to pick up some hardware, but... well, pregnant Natalie Portman maybe should have thought twice about missing the ceremony. Reason being holy crap here comes Annette Bening. After her minor location-location-location coup of the recent Oscar-nominee group photo, it's been all Bening seemingly all the time: She has begun "hitting the campaign trail hard," wrote O'Neil, who later reported:
Last night I was flabbergasted when an Academy member told me who he's picking for lead actress: Annette Bening. [...] He's not just any voter. He's a member of the producers' branch who almost always goes with the winner. He has backed all of the underdogs who ended up winning in recent years -- Crash, Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton -- so, at this point, I've learned to take his ballot very seriously when he tattles ahead of time.
ZOMG! I mean, this guy. On the one hand, the wanker sided with Crash. Yet on the other, I just picture this Oracle of Oscar materializing once a year like Punxsutawney Phil, tucking his fat chin down into his chest and surveying the ground for any available solace, seeing his shadow and thus assuring us two extra weeks of chaos, panic and disorder. And when the O of O "tattles," something else funny happens: The awards punditocracy falls in line. Psychic coincidence? Campaign bulls-eye? You be the judge:
· Tim Appelo, THR: "If Bening's not-blue Monday means she wins the Oscar, it won't really be for the excellent The Kids Are All Right, it will constitute a de facto career Oscar for the still more incandescent films that should've won: The Grifters, American Beauty and Being Julia, whose tale of a stage diva crushing a rival ingenue echoes the Bening-Portman showdown. Irascible gay matron or bi babe psycho in a tutu? Oscar will choose one. At 30, Bening had done superb stage work and John Hughes' $41 million, not-great The Great Outdoors; at 30, Portman's done dozens of films grossing more than $3.8 billion. The shortest book in the world would be My Struggle, by Portman. If Bening wins, it will be for old-school, conservatory-trained stage talent triumphing against all movie odds."
· Anne Thompson, indieWIRE: "Annette Bening is a classy theater actress who came late to movies--she was almost 30 when she took her first lead role in Milos Forman's Valmont. She went on to work for future husband Warren Beatty on Bugsy and Love Affair, and had three Oscar-nominated roles, in Stephen Frears' The Grifters, Sam Mendes' American Beauty and Istvan Szabo's Being Julia before landing a fourth for Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right."
· Paul Sheehan, Gold Derby: "The Kids Are All Right co-star certainly has raised her profile in the last weeks of the campaign, just as the expectant Portman takes a break. Last month, Bening was feted by the Santa Barbara filmfest and dropped by The Tonight Show to joke with Jay Leno about being married to the most promising newcomer of 1962, Warren Beatty. And on Wednesday, she is set to appear on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon."
"Wednesday," i.e. tonight, in case you're keeping track. Meanwhile, what does Portman have to show for herself this week besides a BAFTA win/no-show? How about a new Fox Searchlight featurette reminding everyone how haaaarrrrrd she trained for Black Swan, which has been outviewed (by a 4-to-1 margin!) by this video confirming Portman's affinity for... crying:
Sorry, but with a week of voting remaining, this is a new race. I'm firmly Team Portman and have been for more than five months, but let's be honest: If we're so resigned to a spineless, hive-minded Academy rewarding the capable, competent, classic-by-numbers King's Speech over the colder, more technically accomplished and ultramodern Social Network, are we really ready to say that voters get it when it comes to the acting categories? I say prepare to have your heart shattered anywhere and everywhere it can -- including...
The Nominees:
1. Colin Firth, The King's Speech
2. Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
3. Javier Bardem, Biutiful
4. Jeff Bridges, True Grit
5. James Franco, 127 Hours
Notes: Colin Firth will win this, and life will go on. But Bardem's Goya Award win last weekend only serves to remind his devotees -- including yours truly -- what a missed opportunity his Oscar "campaign" was. Just a slightly earlier release date and some critics' group love, and this could have been his. Anyway.
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Comments
In defense of The King's Speech:
1. Have you ever tried to watch "Around the World in 80 Days?" You will sleep.
2. "Classic-by-numbers?" Sorry - the script is brilliant.
3. You know what the thing is about "The Social Network? Here's the thing: it's the story of the people who invented Facebook. I know Facebook is important and all, and Sorkin is one of my favorite writers and he did a great job, but let's face it: nothing really interesting happened to these guys while they were inventing Facebook.
I liked King's Speech fine! But ultimately this feature isn't about what I like; it's about taking the irregular pulse of Oscar culture. As such, the TKS/TSN descriptions in that passage referred to the reductive terms we always see slapped on each film in their ongoing Oscar dogfight.