In Contention

Tag: Capote

  • Weinstein + Garland = Oscar?

    OK, so some actress just won an Oscar. We don’t know who she is yet, or when exactly she’ll receive it, but is there anyone willing to bet against the lucky thesp who winds up getting cast in the Harvey Weinstein-produced biopic of Judy Garland that has just been announced?

    It seems the Brothers Weinstein have just optioned “Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland,” the bestselling, apparently definitive biography by Gerald Clarke (who, incidentally, also wrote the volume from which “Capote” was adapted). No director or cast are attached yet, but this is surely an awards-season gimme.

    A grim childhood, drug and alcohol abuse, multiple unhappy marriages, singing, performing, drastic premature aging, mental instability … Garland’s story is essentially “La Vie en Rose” minus the subtitles, plus the allure of Hollywood legend. It represents everything the Academy swoons over in a performance. If some actress knocks it out the park, backed by Weinstein’s apparently renewed campaigning muscle, woe betide the other four ladies nominated alongside her.

    Some of you may remember that Judy Davis nabbed every TV award going for playing Garland in miniseries form a few years back. It’ll be interesting to see what age range Weinstein looks toward for the casting here. One actress or two? Anne Hathaway seems like a neat fit, but is she too young? Is Cate Blanchett too old? If Kate Winslet loses again this year, I suggest she gets on the phone with Weinstein immediately.

  • 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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  • Pitt finally going to get some Oscar love?

    Over the course of his impressive career, Brad Pitt has not always been appreciated for the fine actor he is. This is an actor who could easily take the cheap way out and do one goofy romantic comedy or silly film after another, but who instead takes bold risks with his career, always challenging himself, and though sometimes falling flat on his face, growing as an actor.

    Pitt is not the first actor to grow in maturity through the years; look at John Wayne, badly under appreciated for much of his career, though his work in “The Quiet Man”, “Rio Bravo” and especially “The Searchers” was astounding. His last performance, as the gunfighter dying of cancer in “The Shootist,” richly deserved Oscar attention which sadly never came.

    Actors, the great ones, live to challenge themselves, never content to continue doing what they have done before, they need change, they live for challenge.

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