dws1982 wrote
The Usual Suspects has too much ick factor for me to revisit, so I will not contribute to that one. Have not seen it in 20+ years. The guy who does the screen time stuff and then did a Twitter thread on category fraud makes a good case for Spacey as Lead. Doubt he would've been nominated there.
Yeah, I haven't seen it in years either. The argument for The Usual Suspects featuring him as a lead is backed up by the number of clearer supporting performances in the film as well. Spacey wouldn't have made the cut if he was pushed for lead but I don't think it's entirely a lost cause. The 1995 Best Actor race was a very strange one. It was full of a ton of high profile contenders who in hindsight never really had a chance like Tom Hanks (Apollo 13) and John Travolta (Get Shorty). It's hard to look at a nomination for Massimo Troisi (The Postman) as a fixed point in time.
Sharon Stone made a big mistake by not going supporting. I think she could have won. Sharon Stone’s career honestly went into freefall after Casino so it’s hard to say what an Oscar might have done for her but it literally couldn’t have been worse. Maybe ditching her leading lady mentality would’ve been a good thing.
dws1982 wrote:Sharon Stone news stories have been in my social media feeds a lot this week for some reason. It may be that I clicked on one and now I am being targeted for more.
Could be because you clicked on a news story but March 10 was her birthday so that could also be another reason your social media feeds were flooded with her.
Sharon Stone news stories have been in my social media feeds a lot this week for some reason. It may be that I clicked on one and now I am being targeted for more. But in one of them she claims that Universal wanted to promote her in Support for Casino but she refused, mainly because she was the "leading lady" and she worked on the film as long as DeNiro and Pesci. All of which may be true, but her character, as she exists in the film, serves the purpose that Tee described Billy Bob Thornton in A Simple Plan as serving, which is to make the protagonist's life harder. (Joe Pesci exists in the film for much the same reason.) I think she probably would've won Support handily. Stone is working in a very specific register in Casino as someone who is drug addicted and mentally ill that requires her to march right up to the line of being too much; if she goes over it, the character can easily lose the audience's sympathy, but you still have to see how that character can be unbearable to the people in her life, so she has to stay close to the line. Really good work in my opinion, one of Scorsese's under appreciated films, and since Joan Allen would've never won for Nixon, I would've supported her down in Support.
The Usual Suspects has too much ick factor for me to revisit, so I will not contribute to that one. Have not seen it in 20+ years. The guy who does the screen time stuff and then did a Twitter thread on category fraud makes a good case for Spacey as Lead. Doubt he would've been nominated there.
Winslet is Lead I think. Other than age and the fact that Winsleet was kind of unknown at the time, I don't see any real reason to separate Winslet and Thompson. I don't think she would've been nominated, because that Actress lineup was all killer, unless Sony had decided to focus its efforts on Thompson's Screenplay campaign and Winslet's Best Actress campaign.
Adding to the most interesting part of this (for me):
I'm going to predict that the likeliest shift from one category to another would be Sharon Stone moved to supporting from lead. Had this happened, she probably would have replaced either Mare Winningham for Georgia or Kathleen Quinlan for Apollo 13. My guess is Winningham because Georgia was such an obscure film. A quick aside, I have no idea who might have been the sixth-in-line in the existing Best Supporting Actress race. Contenders like Kyra Sedgwick (Something to Talk About), Anjelica Huston (The Crossing Guard), and Stockard Channing (Smoke) are all generally the consensus picks and all feel like outliers. Anyway, Stone would probably make it in and I wonder if she might have won. On the one hand, I think she would've won the Golden Globe in this category as well. Mira Sorvino probably won for how comparatively lightweight her role was to the rest of the category so it's possible Sorvino still pulls it off.
For Best Actress, I'd imagine the fifth slot would be either Nicole Kidman or Jennifer Jason Leigh. Annette Bening was wonderful in The American President but that film was dead in the water. Leigh won the NYFCC and was runner-up at LAFCA and NSFC, but my sense is that her film was too small and depressing in a lineup that was already pretty depressing. I think Kidman makes it in. The race probably still goes to Sarandon.
Big Magilla wrote
Fixed poll to allow 3 votes instead of 1.
Thank you.
Big Magilla wrote
Sovino could be considered the female lead in Mighty Aphrodite more so than Helena Bonham Carter who plays Woody Allen's wife but no one at the time, not even SAG who considered Joan Allen a lead in Nixon, thought of her as such. I dont see any reason to rewrite history on this one.
Sigh... I probably should've listed her, I just got tired of writing.
Stone is larger than life, but the size and importance of her role are secondary to De Niro.
Sovino could be considered the female lead in Mighty Aphrodite more so than Helena Bonham Carter who plays Woody Allen's wife but no one at the time, not even SAG who considered Joan Allen a lead in Nixon, thought of her as such. I dont see any reason to rewrite history on this one.
Winslet was one of four co-leads in Sense and Sensbility which I rewatched the other day. Having slept through most of it, I can't say how much more important Thompso's role was than those of Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, and Winslet, but the story was told from her perspective as much as Howards End was. I am comfortable with Winslet in this category.
A couple of interesting conversations about this year, starting with Sharon Stone in Casino. Very good, competitive race in general. It's ironic then that Sharon Stone was probably the only Best Actress-Drama winner of the decade who went from her award to the back of the pack. She was in Casino for 29.17% of the screen-time, about 20% less than her competition. I think it's helpful to compare this film to Goodfellas. To contrast, Lorraine Bracco was in Goodfellas for 22.83%. It's been ages since I've seen Casino. Totally possible I never see it again. The best case I can make for Stone as a lead in the film is that Goodfellas is clearly a story about Ray Liotta with Bracco as a window into their personal life. The protagonist of Casino may be Robert De Niro but one could make a better case that Casino is about the world of Las Vegas rather than Goodfellas being about the mob. That gives room for Stone to be a lead, but I don't really recall that she functions as one. On the one hand, there are clearer supporting performances in the film and Sharon Stone has a real movie star gusto that she brings to the film. It's my understanding that Jennifer Jason Leigh was in the running for the role and I have no doubt she'd be pushed for supporting. But on the other hand, I think she's the one person in Casino who doesn't have a voice-over track, she has less screen-time than Joe Pesci, and while her character has a fair amount of backstory and characters in her orbit (James Woods) my remembrance of her character is that she spends a fair amount of the film bouncing from De Niro to Woods and back.
I think Stone is a borderline case but I'm leaning more towards supporting, where honestly she would probably win.
Keeping up in Best Supporting Actress are a handful of contenders that I'm not going to dive into. Joan Allen was nominated for Best Actress at SAG for Nixon but I don't think anyone would make the case that she's a lead in that film. Mira Sorvino has a very colorful role in Mighty Aphrodite (37.03%) and I thought about including her because she really *IS* the movie but Mighty Aphrodite is a very modest 90 minute and she's only in it for a half hour and serves as part of Woody Allen's journey. Haven't seen that film in ages. Anyone want to make the case that she is a lead is more than welcome. I'm also not going to include Mare Winningham for Georgia. I haven't seen that film in ages but my memory is that despite the fact that Winningham is the titular character she's only in the film for 34.2% of the film's running time and she's a very subdued presence.
But I am going to include Kate Winslet for Sense and Sensibility. She has the biggest role in the category in term of minutes and percentage (43.73%). To contrast, Emma Thompson is in the film for 54.70% of the screen-time. Obviously, nobody would want Kate Winslet to miss out on a nomination but couldn't a case be made that she's the film's second lead? The film is about the two world-views embodied by Elinor and Marianne with everyone else serving as the film's supporting players. She has plenty of inner-life, wants, and desires. The best argument I can make against it is that she's undeniably the film's deuteragonist, I'm not sure that she has any scenes alone apart from Thompson (please correct), and that the film is very much through Thompson's POV.
This is one area where I'm going to hold back. I'm mostly interested in what others have to say but I'm more than a little sure that she wouldn't receive a nomination had she been pushed for lead.
Finally, we come to Kevin Spacey for The Usual Suspects, at the time a very popular winner. In retrospect, I'm a bit surprised that The Usual Suspects didn't do a bit better at the Oscars. It was the type of film that was very much in fashion at the time. I misremembered that it was a Miramax film but it's Gramercy. Had it been a Miramax film, maybe they would've tossed The Postman to the side. Anyway, Kevin Spacey is in The Usual Suspects for 34.84% of the screen-time. The film is one of those movies where the question of "Does it even have a lead?" comes into play. This film doesn't quite strike me as one of those films without a lead, like Crash. I think we're meant to think it's Gabriel Byrne for a good stretch of time (y'know, until the last scene) but it's just been ages since I've seen the film so I'm not sure. Kevin Spacey's role is sizable enough throughout and I'm a bit surprised to learn that he's only on-screen for 34.84% of the film's run time.
