Per Slate, only three Oscar-winning actors from the past ten years have thanked God in their acceptance speeches, while four have thanked Meryl Streep. All this and more in an obscenely detailed infographic tallying who has thanked whom, and in what position (first and last are most valuable, it would seem.) The biggest thing Read More
The Academy Awards are this Sunday–and we’ll be liveblogging away at observer.com. So as to be optimally prepared for these mythical “Oscar pools” that exist only in the minds of entertainment writers, or at least to shout the winner a second before it happens, we’ve held the hive-mind of the Internet to our ear so Read More
Last night’s Screen Actors Guild Awards shook up the Oscar race insofar as it was able to be shaken up. Sure bets in the supporting categories Octavia Spencer (The Help) and Christopher Plummer (Beginners) cleaned up again, while frontrunning lead actors George Clooney (The Descendants) and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) were dethroned.
The beneficiaries Read More
We’ve already mentioned during the Golden Globes this year that Hollywood seems to be in retrograde. Giving awards to Madonna, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Jessica Lange is just so 2002. But we also noted that the actors themselves seem to be going into a kind of time-warp, none of which was more apparent than at last night’s Screen Actors Guild Awards: Read More
Best Actress
In the past few weeks, this race–long led by Viola Davis–got a lot more interesting with Golden Globe wins for Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams. Ms. Williams’s film may feel too slight, but she’s gone on the PR offensive with an in-character GQ cover; Ms. Streep’s film has its detractors, and Read More
This morning, thousands upon tens of New Yorkers are realizing they have to go see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, as that film was announced as one of nine Oscar Best Picture nominees.
Big surprises of the morning included that film’s nomination for Best Picture, the inclusion of Best Actor nominees Demian Bichir and Gary Read More
Tomorrow morning will bring that early-morning announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees–with the attention-desperate wrinkle that no one knows how many nominees there will be. Herewith, our predictions, for last-minute entries into your office pool (if yours is the sort of office at which Oscar nominations are the subject of a pool. Ours is not, Read More
The most likely, of last night’s awards, to an awards-show junkie in 2002 imagining the hazy future:
1. Meryl Streep. Sure! Bet the speech was great.
2. Christopher Plummer. Glad he’s still around!
3. Martin Scorsese. He deserves some recognition!
4. George Clooney. Did he win for playing Cary Grant?
Middling likelihood–not impossible to imagine, Read More
Last night’s Golden Globes—which we covered live!—were notable for yet more star worship than even the perpetually star-worshipping Globes usually get up to, and most of the stars were of a somewhat aging vintage. Awards went to practically anyone who might have been on People’s Most Intriguing People of 1998 list: Steven Spielberg for Read More
Like prepping for a doctorate dissertation on historic genetics impersonation, another exhausting Meryl Streep research job with new facial prostheses, liver spots, dewlaps, wigs and lockjaw elocution lessons, makes her imitation of England’s longest-running prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, the only thing about The Iron Lady worth recommending. Critics are tossing around words like astonishing and incredible, and she stands a strong chance of winning another Oscar, but what’s so unusual about that? We’ve come to expect nothing less from the unimpeachable talents of a leading lady who only yesterday was doing such a spot-on (and, in my opinion, vastly superior) job of mimicking Julia Child. Otherwise, The Iron Lady is something of a bore. I found it dreary and pedestrian, her performance polished but predictable and almost two hours of Margaret Thatcher more than I could stand with my eyes open. There’s nothing even Ms. Streep’s craft and resourcefulness can do to make this cold, humorless woman of iron likeable, and the whole thing is too dry to sustain so much screen time.
From where I sit, The Iron Lady almost seems like an apology by director Phyllida Lloyd for making a fool of Majestic Meryl in their previous collaboration, the dismal Mamma Mia! Read More
