I agree, anonymous. Ryan actually made my Shouldabeens for this year a couple weeks ago.
This just in: Angelina Jolie was quoted by Spanish newspaper "El Mundo" as stating that she hopes Meryl Streep wins the Oscar next weekend.
Edited By flipp525 on 1234549807
Categories One by One: Best Actress
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anonymous1980
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I have to say I can't believe Amy Ryan didn't more awards buzz for that role. I actually recognized her about a minute into her scene. She was only in 3 scenes but she was dynamite in all of them.Big Magilla wrote:There was an actress in a tiny role as a mental hospital inmate who befriends her that I thought acted her off the screen. When she undergoes shock therapy you really feel for the character. I had no idea who the actress was until I saw the end credits and realized it was Amy Ryan who played the mother of a missing child to much greater effect in Gone Baby Gone.
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Big Magilla
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It's not an abomination at all. It's a good performance, just not a great one, hardly in the same league with Winslet or Leo.
I watched Frozen River and Changeling back to back last night so both were fresh in my memory when I wrote this.
I liked Jolie in the early scenes in the film. All her scenes at the phone company evoke a genuine working atmosphere of the era. Eastwood's direction is excellent. The editing, cinematography, art direction, set design, costumes, makeup, Eastwood's melancholy score are all fine, but never once did I forget that I was watching a famous actress playing a role.
Jeffrey Donovan, Michael Kelly, all the child actors were excellent. There was an actress in a tiny role as a mental hospital inmate who befriends her that I thought acted her off the screen. When she undergoes shock therapy you really feel for the character. I had no idea who the actress was until I saw the end credits and realized it was Amy Ryan who played the mother of a missing child to much greater effect in Gone Baby Gone.
So, does Jolie deserve the nomination over Blanchett and Hawkins? It's pretty much of a toss-up for me. Considering that Blanchett got the nod Jolie should have gotten last year it might be poetic justice.
I watched Frozen River and Changeling back to back last night so both were fresh in my memory when I wrote this.
I liked Jolie in the early scenes in the film. All her scenes at the phone company evoke a genuine working atmosphere of the era. Eastwood's direction is excellent. The editing, cinematography, art direction, set design, costumes, makeup, Eastwood's melancholy score are all fine, but never once did I forget that I was watching a famous actress playing a role.
Jeffrey Donovan, Michael Kelly, all the child actors were excellent. There was an actress in a tiny role as a mental hospital inmate who befriends her that I thought acted her off the screen. When she undergoes shock therapy you really feel for the character. I had no idea who the actress was until I saw the end credits and realized it was Amy Ryan who played the mother of a missing child to much greater effect in Gone Baby Gone.
So, does Jolie deserve the nomination over Blanchett and Hawkins? It's pretty much of a toss-up for me. Considering that Blanchett got the nod Jolie should have gotten last year it might be poetic justice.
Big Magilla wrote:Jolie give a good account of herself in Changeling based on the true story of the Los Angeles mother whose son disappears in 1928. It's a great role but not a great performance. Her big moments tend to shout "I'm acting here!".
I find this a rather reductive synopsis of Jolie's performances. Not to be challenging, but have you actually seen the film?
She definitely has some over-the-top moments, but her portrayal of Christine Collins in the beginning of Changeling is detailed beautifully. She establishes a believable world in several simple and quiet strokes with the boy playing the real Walter Collins. And the scene with the doctor later on where she has to walk the tightrope of not asking too many questions in order to "appear" sane would've fallen flat with a lesser actress.
It might also be noted in your round-up that Jolie plays this year's only real-life person in the lead actress category.
I can think of several actresses I would've liked to have taken her spot this year (Blanchett, Hawkins, etc), but her performance is really not the abomination everyone has decided it is.
Edited By flipp525 on 1234535414
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Big Magilla
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I don't know why people find this year's Oscar race so boring. It may be predictable, but it's not boring.
Having beat the odds in securing a best actress nomination for The Reader despite a push to have that performance nominated in Supporting and her competing performance in Revolutionary Road shut out, Kate Winslet has emerged as the favorite. It also helps that she is the only one whose film is also in the Best Picture race and that this is her sixth nomination. The question becomes could she win on the basis of performance alone? I think she could.
Winslet has said that she doesn't get her character Hanna, a middle-aged German woman in the mid-1950s who can't read or write, who has an affair with a teenage boy and who years earlier was a Nazi concentration guard complicit in the annihilation of hundreds of women and children. The fact the audience gets her, that we can understand her and take some comfort in the small pleasures she get from her confinement in later life is tribute to her acting skills. She makes her the year's most fascinating screen character.
Melissa Leo, a journeyman actor best known for her TV work particularly as a detective in the long running series, Homicide: Life on the Streets, gives Winslet a run for her money in the little seen Frozen River. As a woman who barely gets by raising two sons as a part-time clerk in a convenience store, Leo puts a face on life-long poverty that hard to shake even after the film ends. Like Winslet's Hanna, Leo's Ray is a flawed character who does some mean things, but unlike Hanna does the right thing when it counts. Her performance, like the film, is unrelentingly sad yet life-affirming at the same time. On the basis of performance she should come in second, but will probably bring in fewer votes than any of her more famous competitors except perhaps for Angelina Jolie.
Jolie give a good account of herself in Changeling based on the true story of the Los Angeles mother whose son disappears in 1928. It's a great role but not a great performance. Her big moments tend to shout "I'm acting here!".
Meryl Streep going for the gold for the third time in fifteen nominations in thirty-one years would be the likely winner if it weren't for Winslet's emergence in this category and if The Reader hadn't trumped Doubt in the Best Picture category. It's most fortunate for Streep the way it turned out in the long run. An award for her doubting nun would be largely be seen as a career achievement award rather than deserved recognition for a particular performance. She needs to wait for that third award until she gives a truly deserving performance if it is to mean anything beyond the moment.
The fifth nominee, Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married was an early favorite whose film was expected to do much better than its one nomination, but her film is a love it or hate it work that apparently is more hated in Hollywood than it is loved. A win for Hathaway at this point would be a major shock.
Should win: Winselt or Leo
Will win: Winslet or Streep
Having beat the odds in securing a best actress nomination for The Reader despite a push to have that performance nominated in Supporting and her competing performance in Revolutionary Road shut out, Kate Winslet has emerged as the favorite. It also helps that she is the only one whose film is also in the Best Picture race and that this is her sixth nomination. The question becomes could she win on the basis of performance alone? I think she could.
Winslet has said that she doesn't get her character Hanna, a middle-aged German woman in the mid-1950s who can't read or write, who has an affair with a teenage boy and who years earlier was a Nazi concentration guard complicit in the annihilation of hundreds of women and children. The fact the audience gets her, that we can understand her and take some comfort in the small pleasures she get from her confinement in later life is tribute to her acting skills. She makes her the year's most fascinating screen character.
Melissa Leo, a journeyman actor best known for her TV work particularly as a detective in the long running series, Homicide: Life on the Streets, gives Winslet a run for her money in the little seen Frozen River. As a woman who barely gets by raising two sons as a part-time clerk in a convenience store, Leo puts a face on life-long poverty that hard to shake even after the film ends. Like Winslet's Hanna, Leo's Ray is a flawed character who does some mean things, but unlike Hanna does the right thing when it counts. Her performance, like the film, is unrelentingly sad yet life-affirming at the same time. On the basis of performance she should come in second, but will probably bring in fewer votes than any of her more famous competitors except perhaps for Angelina Jolie.
Jolie give a good account of herself in Changeling based on the true story of the Los Angeles mother whose son disappears in 1928. It's a great role but not a great performance. Her big moments tend to shout "I'm acting here!".
Meryl Streep going for the gold for the third time in fifteen nominations in thirty-one years would be the likely winner if it weren't for Winslet's emergence in this category and if The Reader hadn't trumped Doubt in the Best Picture category. It's most fortunate for Streep the way it turned out in the long run. An award for her doubting nun would be largely be seen as a career achievement award rather than deserved recognition for a particular performance. She needs to wait for that third award until she gives a truly deserving performance if it is to mean anything beyond the moment.
The fifth nominee, Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married was an early favorite whose film was expected to do much better than its one nomination, but her film is a love it or hate it work that apparently is more hated in Hollywood than it is loved. A win for Hathaway at this point would be a major shock.
Should win: Winselt or Leo
Will win: Winslet or Streep