Boston Film Critics winners

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Mister Tee
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

Post by Mister Tee »

To go back to dws’s original point: I don’t think we should make too much of Moore’s “failure” with the critics. She finished second in LA and (if we believe reports) NY as well. She won NBR, and also took the first of those local groups I hate so much (DC). I’d expect her to win the lion’s share of those groups, and I’d about bet the house on her taking the Broadcasters’ prize. Of course I’d rather her be endorsed by the upper class of the critics’ groups, but I think the mundane subject matter of her film makes that a tough reach. Many critics – LA, in particular – seem to be in search of what Mark Harris perceptively labelled the “balls” choice: a choice that makes the critic feel cool just for making it. (James Franco last year would be a stellar example.) A movie as simple as Still Alice could never have provided that kick.

I might feel less at ease if someone credible were building up a head of steam – if Rosamund Pike, or even Reese Witherspoon, were taking the prizes in Moore’s stead. Forest Whitaker, after all, upended early favorite Peter O’Toole by dominating the critics. But Cotillard has so many negatives – which film?; foreign language; already won – that I can’t imagine her getting past Moore. Any more than (to go back to my original analogy) I could imagine then-unknown Bob Hoskins winning over Paul Newman in ’86 –even after Hoskins startlingly won the Globe. And the other possibilities, as BJ notes, all have their downsides…plus, Moore is in fact doing BETTER than them at even the critics’ derbies she’s losing. To beat someone with both a narrative and a performance requires everything falling into place, and I don’t see that happening for anyone else.

As for Italiano’s thought that people don’t like Julianne Moore…I would agree that she appears in too many unsettling movies, and gives too many prickly performances (in, for instance, A Single Man or What Maisie Knew) for a mass audience to have embraced her the way they have far lesser lights like Julia Roberts or even Reese Witherspoon. But I think Moore is enormously respected. The best analogy might be Sean Penn, who also triumphed at Cannes before he got seriously close to an Oscar. Penn would never have won prizes on pure affection, the way Tom Hanks did. But he was liked enough he got standing ovations for both his best actor wins. I expect Moore to get much the same reception, as she makes her way through the televised phase of the contest. (And, if you see the movie, I think you’ll find Moore has, without pandering, given a performance for which audiences will feel more empathy than many of her earlier efforts, which will help a lot.)
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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Films featuring/starring Julianne Moore that have made more than $50 million at the box office:
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (probably too early for her to be recognized)
Nine Months (ditto)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Hannibal
The Forgotten
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Non-Stop
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

Films featuring/starring Patricia Arquette that have made more than $50 million at the box office:
Stigmata
Holes

I'd say by that alone Moore is easily better recognized. Even though Medium was on for 7 seasons, the highest it ever ranked was #19 in its first season with 13.9 million viewers (average). Comprare that to Lost World and Hunger Games alone and you still have a dwarfed Arquette.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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Moore is a pretty major movie star. Arquette was a solid B-list film actress who became the star of a mildly successful TV series.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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Big Magilla wrote:If you asked most people who the better actress is, they would probably say Moore, but if you asked the same people who they would like to invite over for dinner, most would say Arquette.
This statement is just odd.
Last edited by flipp525 on Mon Dec 08, 2014 3:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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Roseanna hasn't done anything on screen since Pulp Fiction that very many people have seen although she's done a lot of television in the last twenty years. Besides, I was comparing Patricia's popularity to Julianne Moore's, not her sister's. Although both Moore and Arquette are highly respected, people feel they know Arquette through her appearance in their living rooms through six years of Medium. They don't necessarily feel they know Moore, who is very much a chameleon. If you asked most people who the better actress is, they would probably say Moore, but if you asked the same people who they would like to invite over for dinner, most would say Arquette.

Arquette starred in several high profile films of the 1990s pre-Medium so you could call her big screen re-emergence this year a comeback, which also helps. Her biggest asset this year, though, seems to be that her biggest success to date has been on TV, the same of which can be said for the supporting actor front-runner J.K. Simmons. Simmons, who has been a regular on a number of series, was second billed on The Closer, which ran simultaneously with Medium in its first six years and then added another year for good measure. They compliment each other nicely.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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I take exception to "Arquette is the American icon" comment because other than Medium, most people probably don't know or care who she is. She's definitely not a big screen icon. Rosanna has been in and respected for more films than Patricia ever has.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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Yes, she has that good scene towards the end of the movie. And I didn't know about her work on tv. I know that this is enough to win an Oscar these days - but honestly, I don't think she deserves it.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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ITALIANO wrote:And someone one day will have to explain to me what Patricia Arquette has done in Boyhood which deserves an Oscar. One day, not now - now she's THE American actress of the moment. But moments dont last forever.
There is that "I thought there'd be more" comment she utters when her son is leaving for college that resonates with audiences, but beyond that Arquette is the American icon Julianne Moore just isn't despite her strong resume. Even people who don't watch television on a regular basis tuned in to watch her in Medium, the TV series which ran from 2005-2011 for which she won numerous awards. She is a third generation star of a major show business family and has had two high profile marriages, one to Nicolas Cage and one to Thomas Jane, both of which ended in divorce. People, especially women, identify with her quite strongly and have for years.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

Post by flipp525 »

It's too bad that Olive Kitteridge played on cable and was not released in the theaters because I think Frances McDormand's performance in that is leagues better than anything currently being considered for Best Actress this year (and that includes Julianne Moore - so this might not be dissimilar to the Game Change "phantom nomination" point that was made below).

Cory Michael Smith might've also been able to break into what looks like an anemic Best Supporting Actor race.
Last edited by flipp525 on Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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But, I mean, she isn't an exactly "pleasant" actress - at least by American standards. At her best - and God knows she's been in awful, commercial movies, too - she's probably just too subtle, and this is why she's so beloved here in Europe. She's American cinema's closest equivalent of an Isabelle Huppert - yet she IS a very American actress. I don't know, maybe had she been a man she'd already have an Oscar - usually for actresses like her it's more difficult than for men.

(Sorry, had to split my post because of 403...)
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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OscarGuy wrote:You'd be surprised just how many people like Julianne Moore. I have friends who aren't Oscar enthusiasts at all. They dislike a lot of movies that critics love and love a lot of movies critics hate. Yet, most of them love Julianne Moore. I think the issue with Moore is that her two should-have-won performances had multiple factors working against them. For Boogie Nights, she was up against two actresses thought to be duking it out for the win, one from the behemoth Titanic and one from the critics' favorite LA Confidential. In the end, she was playing a drug-addicted aging porn actress. That's not exactly Oscar material. For Far from Heaven, the film did noticeably poorly with the Oscars (no Picture, Director or even a very deserved Supporting Actor), on top of that, she was up against Nicole Kidman for her lone Oscar winning role and at the time, Kidman was a more bankable, Oscar-friendly name in a "departure" turn. Moore has had bad luck with stiff competition. I doubt it's that no one likes her. She has four Oscar nominations
Well, no one likes her TOO MUCH then.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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You'd be surprised just how many people like Julianne Moore. I have friends who aren't Oscar enthusiasts at all. They dislike a lot of movies that critics love and love a lot of movies critics hate. Yet, most of them love Julianne Moore. I think the issue with Moore is that her two should-have-won performances had multiple factors working against them. For Boogie Nights, she was up against two actresses thought to be duking it out for the win, one from the behemoth Titanic and one from the critics' favorite LA Confidential. In the end, she was playing a drug-addicted aging porn actress. That's not exactly Oscar material. For Far from Heaven, the film did noticeably poorly with the Oscars (no Picture, Director or even a very deserved Supporting Actor), on top of that, she was up against Nicole Kidman for her lone Oscar winning role and at the time, Kidman was a more bankable, Oscar-friendly name in a "departure" turn. Moore has had bad luck with stiff competition. I doubt it's that no one likes her. She has four Oscar nominations
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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Americans don't like Julianne Moore. This is a fact. Don't get me wrong - I know that SOME Americans like her. And I know that most Americans on this board like her (even on this board, though, she's rarely praised by those of us who are into more... "accessible" fare like, say, The Color Purple, and this is interesting I think). What I mean is that, while she is a very American actress, you feel that Americans dont really "get" her. Not only she's not Sally Field, of course - she's not even Hilary Swank or Reese Witherspoon - which means, good-ish but, if the word exists in English, "interchangeable". There's an edginess about her that will never make her a big, popular star. I mean, let's face it - this is one of the very few people in film history who have won awards at the Venice, Cannes AND Berlin festivals. All three of them - an almost unique feat. And yet not only she has never won an Oscar - she has never even won the New York Film Critics award! Yes, she has won other prizes in the US, but - again, you feel that she's not exactly a favorite there. They may respect her, but they obviously don't love her.

Can respect alone lead to an Oscar? Sometimes, yes - but only if the alternatives are really weak - not in terms of talent, but of Academy Award potential. Frances McDormand is a very good actress, for example, but she'd never won her (probably not undeserved) Best Actress award had her competition been different (she's more the Supporting Actress type). And this, of course, could happen this year. The critics seem at the moment to be very confused for this category - many are selecting an (enchanting) actress who not only is foreign and already has an Oscar, but whose two movies are the kind most Academy members have never heard of. The other names seem even less strong. So yes, Julianne Moore can and wil win - by default, or even reluctantly. And yet it will maybe be one of the best choices ever in this category (I say "maybe" only because I haven't seen the movie yet).

And someone one day will have to explain to me what Patricia Arquette has done in Boyhood which deserves an Oscar. One day, not now - now she's THE American actress of the moment. But moments dont last forever.
Last edited by ITALIANO on Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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Like many Julianne Moore fans -- especially those of us who assumed she was the frontrunner at this point in 2002 -- I'm trying not to act like the Best Actress race is sewn up in her favor already. And yet...it's hard for me to imagine a scenario in which someone else wins that Oscar.

Had Reese Witherspoon not already won, I'd say she would be a formidable contender based on the quality of work. But I just don't see voters picking her a second time when she's done virtually nothing of note since her first Oscar win. I think Wild would have to become Million Dollar Baby in order for that to happen, and even though I'm a fan of the movie, I doubt that's in the cards. I see her getting an enthusiastic "welcome back" nomination, but no more.

And the rest of the contenders seem even less likely. Rosamund Pike has her big hit movie, but I doubt it's serious enough to carry her to much more than a breakthrough nomination. Felicity Jones, assuming she makes it, will be nothing more than place-filler. I know some people are putting a lot of faith in Amy Adams, but that's probably because most of them haven't seen Big Eyes yet. Who else is there? A second Oscar for Marion Cotillard for a movie barely anyone will have seen (take your pick which one)? A third Oscar for Hilary Swank, also for a movie barely anyone will have seen?

But in Julianne Moore, voters have an actress with four past nominations who is seen as quite overdue. (And I'd almost want to count Game Change as a phantom fifth nomination -- her sweep of TV prizes for playing Sarah Palin makes it feel like she hasn't been out of the awards race for over a decade. And I also think it makes her feel like one of those actors who wins a bunch of precursors, but not the Oscar, then comes back to win with the Academy shortly thereafter.) And she has a totally baity part with one strong scene after another, culminating in that speech for the Alzheimer's group which is as classic an Oscar clip as any actress has this year. It's possible the winds could change, but the combo of role plus overdue actor plus lack of competition has me unsure of what direction those winds could even go.
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Re: Boston Film Critics winners

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Tee, a late release film that you don't seem to be recognizing that's doing better than both Vice and Sniper is Selma. Selma's placed on several nomination slates and DuVernay seems a very strong candidate in the Best Director race.
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