In Contention

Tag: Ray

  • Kidman takes on Dusty: could Oscar beckon?

    Unwritten rule of Oscar strategy #476: playing a troubled popular music icon will probably net you at least a nomination. Just ask Marion Cotillard, Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix, Jamie Foxx, Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Gary Busey, Diana Ross, Susan Hayward… the list goes on.

    It’s not hard to figure out why. Academy voters have long had a bias towards biopics, somehow believing that interpreting a real-life figure, whose physicality, voice and mannerisms are already established, is more of a challenge than creating a fictitious character from scratch. Playing a real-life entertainer only ups the ante, allowing the actor to build multiple performance personae within the character, as well to show off any singing/dancing/playing skills we didn’t know they possessed. (Singing being optional, of course, as Cotillard and Foxx can attest.) Throw in the mental breakdowns and substance abuse problems that generally go with the territory, and you have Academy Award bait of the highest order.

    So the news that Nicole Kidman, arguably the foremost leading lady of her generation, is set to produce and play in a biopic of the late Dusty Springfield, inarguably the greatest white soul singer of all time, can’t fail to prompt early Oscar speculation.

    Even laying aside Springfield’s astonishing musical legacy for a moment, the woman is a fascinating character: born and raised in London, she overcame crippling self-confidence issues to top the U.S. charts in the 1960s, confusing the barriers between what was perceived as “white” and “black” music. As her hold on the charts loosened, however, she descended into a reclusive lifestyle of alcoholism, drug abuse and self-harm, all the while conflicted between her emerging bisexuality and her Catholic faith. Finally clean, she made something of a comeback in the late 80s, before being diagnosed with breast cancer, finally losing the battle in 1999. All this, and with a British accent to boot. Like I said, baity stuff.

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  • Best actor contenders join an eclectic list of recent winners

    Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Frank Langella seem to be the names bandied about for Oscar consideration this year, which would place them in some impressive company of nominees and winners these last 20 years. Of course, that said, there have also been some bizarre choices for the Best Actor award, which has often left me shaking my head in disgust and wondering what these voters were actually seeing.

    Since 1988, there have been 10 winners that perhaps should not have been, the award arguably deserved by another of the nominees, or worse, an actor not nominated! Consider Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” a widely acclaimed performance that asked that he not connect with anyone in the film, never make eye contact, rock back and forth and speak in a nasally voice.

    Stop what you are doing right now and try what he did in the film, and trust me it is very easy to do. Now do you deserve an Oscar for doing what Hoffman did in that film? The real perfortmance in “Rain Man” was that of Tom Cruise, who we watched evolve over the course of the film, and of course the best performance of that year was Gene Hackman as the tough investigator in “Mississippi Burning.” Hackman was nominated, but he stood no chance in the wake of the juggernaut of support for Hoffman, who in fact should have won years before for his miraculous work in “Tootsie!”

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