LISTFUL THINKING: 10 Performers Who Will Win Oscars in the Next 10 Years

26 02 2013

Before it’s too late and no longer topical, I wanted to share a list that has been floating in my mind for a while.  On Sunday night, the Academy welcomed Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway into their club.  Now, they can join Daniel Day-Lewis and Christoph Waltz in adding the phrase “Oscar Winner” before their name is mentioned.

But within the next 10 years, who will join them in the pantheon of acting?  I have a few suggestions…

Male

Gatsby

Leonardo DiCaprio
3 Oscar nominations
9 Golden Globe nominations, 1 win
8 SAG Award nominations

COMMENTARY:  The question isn’t “if.”  It’s “when.”  And that could be as early as this year.

JGL

Joseph Gordon-Levitt
2 Golden Globe nominations
4 SAG Award nominations

COMMENTARY:  With the boy-next-door turning into a renaissance man as he heads behind the director’s chair, JGL is headed towards golden child status.  Now it’s just time for the Oscars to catch up.

Ryan Gosling in The Ides of March

Ryan Gosling
1 Oscar nomination
4 Golden Globe nominations
2 SAG Award nominations

COMMENTARY:  I don’t really think I need to elaborate here as Gosling is one of the emerging Hollywood leading men.  The only thing keeping him from an Oscar, in my mind, is his eclectic role selection.

Brad Pitt in Moneyball

Brad Pitt
4 Oscar nominations (3 as actor)
5 Golden Globe nominations, 1 win
5 SAG Award nominations, 1 win

COMMENTARY:  As one of the highest-wattage stars of the past decade moves into a slower, more retrospective phase of his career, the role that will land Brad Pitt his Oscar should materialize.

George Clooney

George Clooney
8 Oscar nominations (4 for acting), 2 wins (1 for acting)
12 Golden Globe nominations (8 for acting), 3 wins
13 SAG Award nominations, 4 wins

COMMENTARY:  Yes, Clooney has already won his Oscar(s).  But I am convinced he will win his trophy for a leading role as he is such a prominent leading man in Hollywood.

Female

Amy Adams

Amy Adams
4 Oscar nominations
4 Golden Globe nominations
5 SAG Award nominations

COMMENTARY: 4 nominations in 7 years.  That’s impressive.  It’s going to happen, soon.  Perhaps the first time she gets a big leading role?

Linney

Laura Linney
3 Oscar nominations
6 Golden Globe nominations, 2 wins
4 SAG Award nominations, 1 win
4 Primetime Emmy nominations, 3 wins

COMMENTARY:  Though as of late Linney has been more television oriented, I still don’t think the cinematic community is done paying its dues to this talented actress.

Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right

Julianne Moore
4 Oscar nominations
7 Golden Globe nominations, 1 win
10 SAG Award nominations, 1 win
1 Primetime Emmy win

COMMENTARY: If “Game Change” had been released in theaters and not on HBO, Moore would have her Oscar.  It’s been over a decade now since her last nomination, but I don’t think that means the impetus to give her award has disappeared.

10 for '10: Best Movies (The Challenge)

Emma Stone
1 Golden Globe nomination
1 SAG Award win

COMMENTARY: She’s a new Hollywood “It” girl.  Once she lands the big and flashy role, she will get an Oscar.  (Heck, they had her announce the nominations this year, something usually reserved for prior winners/nominees.)  She’s a beloved figure with all the charm and accessibility of Jennifer Lawrence with a little more polish and refinement.

Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams
3 Oscar nominations
3 Golden Globe nominations, 1 win
4 SAG Award nominations

COMMENTARY: Williams showed she had some serious range in “My Week with Marilyn.”  Not that her mopey characters weren’t good, but now we know she’s the real deal.

What do YOU think?  Who else is destined for Oscar glory in the next decade?


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Categories : Features, Listful Thinking

REVIEW: Gangster Squad

7 01 2013

Gangster SquadThere were two clear paths to success for “Gangster Squad.”  The first would be to follow the “L.A. Confidential” pattern and take a hardboiled approach to period criminality.  Writer Will Beale crafts his screenplay with various neo-noir elements: the post-war moodiness and shadiness, a little bit of moral ambiguity, and of course, the femme fatale (Emma Stone’s red-haired dynamo Grace Faraday).

The second, and perhaps more reasonable, template would have been Brian DePalma’s 1987 “The Untouchables,” a movie that shares quite a few similarities with Ruben Fleischer’s “Gangster Squad.”  There’s the borderline insane crime lord of a major city who just happens to be played by a two-time Oscar winner (Sean Penn now, Robert DeNiro then).  Because of that de facto tyrant’s chokehold on that city, a team of top law enforcement officials is tasked with bringing him to his knees.

The only difference is Eliot Ness and the Untouchables stayed within the boundaries of the law.  Josh Brolin’s John O’Mara, Ryan Gosling’s Jerry Wooters, and the rest of the titular merry band of extralegal avengers have no such regard for the rules.  They go outside the law to stop a man who is above the law.  But in such a drastically different detail, little new conclusions are ultimately reached.

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REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man

29 12 2012

The Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies have sure taken a dip in public opinion in the last five years, no doubt due in large part to the ill-received “Spider-Man 3.”  I’ll grant that the 2007 series entry had far too many villains, and the black suit of revenge came off a little creepier than intended.

Yet I’d still rank Raimi’s three films as the finest superhero movies of the new millenium after Christopher Nolan’s Batman films.  Their thematic depth is impressive given that the series was far more prone to let fancy CGI or long action sequences rule the day.  Revenge, responsibility, and duty were all explored to very great effect by Raimi, who did a great job in advancing what a comic book movie could be.  Unfortunately, his legacy has become leaving the franchise on a bit of a sour note with the public.

Marc Webb’s “The Amazing Spider-Man,” rather than reversing that decline merely accelerates it.  Like fellow summer action flick “The Bourne Legacy,” it fails to make a clean enough break with its predecessors and thus gets forced to live with its specter looming overhead.  James Vanderbilt’s story, adapted with the help of “Harry Potter” screenwriter Steve Kloves and original trilogy architect Alvin Sargent, feels like only a minor variation on the 2002 “Spider-Man” origins tale.

Perhaps I’m a little sensitive because the Raimi “Spider-Man” movies were some of the highlights of my middle school years, but a mere decade seems like far too short a window to reboot a series.  Especially given that “Spider-Man” film was released just five years before “The Amazing Spider-Man,” people have not had nearly enough time to forget the particulars of the series.  It’s that very painful awareness that dooms Webb’s update from the beginning.

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REVIEW: The Help

9 08 2011

Cynics would say a movie like “The Help” is just a slightly high-brow appeal to white paternalism and guilt, an ex post facto vindication of prevalent attitudes thanks to some mettlesome few (an appeal that “To Kill A Mockingbird” may or may not have ridden to classic status).  But I challenge the cynics to sit through the movie and not be moved.  Because whether it’s set in the past, present, or future, a movie about courage that is well-written, pristinely directed, and impressively acted can be nothing but moving and inspiring.

The movie is being in a time frame usually reserved for light chick lit, and while “The Help” will definitely appeal to women, it’s hardly flippant or breezy.  The movie tackles prejudice, both beyond and within the realm of race, and other issues that still affect women to this day.  Director Tate Taylor, a childhood friend of author Kathryn Stockett, gives them the treatment they deserve while also retaining that page-turner bliss that comes only from reading a great novel, a rarity in adaptations nowadays.  He captures not just a moment in time but larger, universal truths about human reactions to injustice, be they from the side of they oppressed or the oppressors.

Had he not appreciated how each self-contained storyline affected the work as a whole, “The Help” would be a bloated, convoluted haul of a film.  Taylor flows seamlessly between the stories of Aibileen (Viola Davis) and her nearly surrogate mothering of young Mae Mobley while her real parents neglect her, Minnie (Octavia Spencer) and her new job cleaning and practically nannying the air-headed but goodhearted Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), Skeeter (Emma Stone) and her rebellious challenging of social and cultural norms for young white women, and Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard), the scared white woman pushing “separate but equal” nearly a decade after it was ruled unconstitutional.  With some help from a fabulous ensemble of dedicated actresses, all the stories feel complete by the end, and none shines excessively brighter than the others.

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REVIEW: Crazy Stupid Love

29 07 2011

I sit through way too many romantic comedies each year hoping that one of them will wind up being something like ”Crazy Stupid Love.”  Coming at the tail end of summer 2011, this genre-pic manna tastes way too sweet.  But it’s not worthy of exaltation just due to the sea of flops surrounding it or praise just because it wasn’t bad, it’s actually just a good movie, one with heart, humor, and insight.

Take away the Christmas setting and it’s actually reminiscent of a small-scale “Love Actually.”  The movie provides perspectives on love from Generations X, Y, and Z, stories that are told with an uncanny sincerity that overpowers their slightly hackneyed development.  Written by Dan Fogelman, who had previously only dabbled in light kiddie fare like “Tangled” and “Cars 2,” delivers a work full of maturity and scope, one that winds up being surprisingly clever.  The movie has a few tricks up its sleeves, and it makes the movie a great deal more engaging than any other movie dealing with this subject matter.

Fogelman’s best maneuver, however, may be reminding us to expect the unexpected when it comes to something as complicated (or crazy and stupid) as love.  While Hollywood may require a certain ending point, the journey to get there doesn’t have to be formulaic or predictable.  The characters of “Crazy Stupid Love” make that voyage fun because they are hardly conventional romantic comedy archetypes, save perhaps Emma Stone’s insecure burgeoning career woman.

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“Easy A” Poll Results

27 01 2011

Well, Emma Stone didn’t get an Oscar nomination.  Shocker.  It’s unfortunate because – get this – I think she gave a better performance than Annette Bening AND Jennifer Lawrence, both nominated actresses this year.

It’s just another tough year for comedic actresses, who fare only slightly better than Christopher Nolan nowadays.  A truly comedic performance is rarely nominated, probably around once or twice a decade.  We technically classify some performance as comedic – Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada,” Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Alan Arkin in “Little Miss Sunshine,” Keira Knightley in “Pride and Prejudice,” Kate Winslet in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” to name a bunch – but these are really just light-hearted dramatic acting in movies with some laugh.

There were only a few that charted with the Academy over the last decade: Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder,” Ellen Page in “Juno,” Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and Renee Zellweger in “Bridget Jones’ Diary” are the only nominated performances of the last decade that I consider to be truly comedic actor.  I’m willing to debate a few others, but all of those are heavily tinted with dramatic shades.  These comedic actors get, in the words of Rodney Dangerfield, “no respect.”

In my Oscar Moment about “Easy A,” I didn’t offer any hope that Emma Stone would be nominated; in fact, I didn’t even ask the question in my poll.  I defended the award-worthiness of comedic actors and actresses, saying that they excel in a very different kind of acting that requires a different but still challenging set of skills.  My poll asked voters whether they thought comedic actors deserved to receive Academy Award nominations.

The results were overwhelmingly in favor of actors like Stone receiving nominations.  Nearly 90% of voters replied that they think that comedic actors ARE deserving.  I don’t think that Emma stone’s snub represent a sort of “last straw” for audiences in the consistent overlooking of comedic actors, but I do hope that the unofficial policy gets some serious thought soon.


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Oscar Moment: “Easy A”

21 12 2010

In honor of “Easy A” hitting video today, I’m writing this Oscar Moment specifically in regards to Emma Stone’s performance.  As Olive Penderghast, the 2010 model of Hester Prynne from “The Scarlet Letter,” she got some very deserved attention for her breakout role.  Here’s what I wrote back in September:

“Emma Stone is hardly a new sight for anyone that’s been seeing good movies recently; she has been scene-stealing as the heartbreaking Jules in ‘Superbad’ and the zombie-killing Wichita in ‘Zombieland.’  This, however, is the movie that will bring her into the mainstream consciousness.  ’Easy A’ gives her all the material for a breakout role, and Stone seizes every moment to create a character that will shoot her into stardom.”

The movie was very well received by critics upon release (an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) yet still somehow managed to miss a Best Picture (Musical/Comedy) nomination from the Golden Globes.  In its place: “Alice in Wonderland.”  Big mistake.  Huge.  However, Stone did get her recognition in the form of a Best Actress nomination.  There’s hardly a chance for a win against the two “The Kids Are All Right” actresses and an even further shot at an Oscar nomination thanks to an impressive dramatic faction headlined by Natalie Portman.  But what’s with our bias against comedic actresses?  Why does the Academy only feel the need to honor actors dealing strictly in serious fare, perhaps dabbling in comedy but keeping their heart in drama?

A lot of Stone’s fans have raised this concern for months now.  Why not Emma Stone?  She’s as deserving as most of the actresses in the predicted five at the moment.  While she may not have an illustrious career under her belt or have undergone a massive physical transformation, Stone goes above and beyond what a movie like “Easy A” requires from its leading lady.

Castor over at Anomalous Material elaborated on Guy Lodge’s article at In Contention making a case for Stone, listing five reasons he came up with that might be the reason why comedy is so constantly overlooked by the Academy.

  1. Western audiences are conditioned to enjoy flashy and bombastic dramatic performances, such as Daniel Day Lewis’ in There Will Be Blood, over more subtle or seemingly “effortless” portrayals.
  2. Giving a good performance in a great movie is harder and hence more deserving of recognition than shining in a mediocre/good movie.
  3. Comedic actors are generally less talented than dramatic actors.
  4. Comedies are generally not as good, serious and important as dramas.
  5. Drama is harder than comedy.

As an actor myself, I’ll argue that comedy is every bit as hard as drama – there are just those for whom comedy comes naturally.  You can’t fake comedy because it takes total commitment.  Drama can be passably done with half a heart, and a well-liked actor can often do this to great acclaim.

For my money, Emma Stone gave one of the best performances of the year.  But according to Academy standards, her Golden Globe nomination is her highest reward.  Is this right?  Should comedic actresses get their due?  Is a performance like Stone’s deserving to stand next to Natalie Portman’s come Oscar night?

BEST BET FOR NOMINATION: Best Actress


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Categories : 2010 - Oscar Moment, Oscar Moment

REVIEW: Easy A

20 09 2010

Finally, I get a high school movie for my time in high school!

For the past three years, we’ve been left quoting “Mean Girls” left and right, yelling out “She doesn’t even go here!” in situations when it doesn’t even make sense and putting on the strict face of authority to say, “If you have sex, you will get chlamydia – and die” whenever the practically taboo topic is brought up.  We get all the jokes now, but in 2004, high school was as foreign a place as Afghanistan.  Even in the six years since Tina Fey’s first big splash (and Lindsay Lohan’s last big splash), high school has changed, and we can thank Facebook, YouTube, and iPhones for that.

I was afraid that I might graduate high school with only a dated high school movie to show my kids what it was like to be my age in 2010.  Thanks to “Easy A,” such concerns are no more.  It’s a near perfect reflection of the realities of living in a sphere where gossip travels as quickly as text messages can be sent over a 3G connection and reputations can be ruined in the split-second it takes to update a Facebook status.

It’s also remarkable that while the movie is very current, it isn’t entirely grounded in 2010.  It takes a page from one of American literature’s finest, “The Scarlet Letter,” and plops it down in front of a webcam.  And darned if we aren’t convinced that Nathaniel Hawthorne would have vodcasted his classic story through YouTube had it existed back in the nineteenth century.  The movie is a testament not just to the creativity of the writers of “Easy A,” but also to Hawthorne for spawning a story that is still relevant centuries after publication.

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REVIEW: Marmaduke

13 06 2010

You don’t have to read my whole review as long as you take this away from it: “Marmaduke” is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and you are truly stupid if you choose to waste a perfectly good 90 minutes of your life watching it.

Now that I have that very strong statement out of the way, you can either spend your time listening to me malign every big name involved in this movie or simply take my word for it.  I will be brutal and unsparing; this is the movie that will really bring out the critic in me.  I’ve been waiting to unleash my wrath on something terrible enough to deserve it.  So here it goes.

I have to admire the boldness of Lee Pace, Judy Greer, and William H. Macy who had the guts to show their faces in this movie.  They didn’t hide in the recording studio or inside the potentially lovable body of an animal.  They actually dared to be the human face of the movie, risking association with the movie for the rest of their careers.  These three ought to be sending the marketing people at Fox some very large gift baskets for not advertising “Marmaduke” very much, because the fact that it was such a low-key campaign may save their reputations from being forever tarnished.

You would think that Owen Wilson has enough sense to choose a movie that has some kind of substance.  But even if you don’t have much respect for Owen Wilson, you might think Keifer Sutherland does.  Or Emma Stone (Jules from “Superbad”).  Or George Lopez.  Or Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin).  Or Steve Coogan.  Or Fergie.  Or Marlon Wayans.  Or Sam Elliott.

Like this cavalcade of stars?  Guess what, each and every one of them chose a movie that doesn’t deserve to take a poop in their yards.  Honestly, if any of these big names had shown their faces in “Marmaduke,” they would be firing their agents and calling their real estate agent to find the coziest cave in Beverly Hills.  It’s always a shame to see actors take on material that doesn’t deserve them, and “Marmaduke” is like a tragedy for each of these stars.  None of them put any effort into making this giant heap of poop any better, as if the subtext of every line is, “We feel you; we know this movie sucks.”

And don’t even get me started on the non-existent plot.  My theory is that the director scrounged a bargain bin of kids movies and came to shooting with the idea to rip off any one of them that might have worked.  So for every groan and eye roll you get in “Marmaduke,” you get to say to yourself, “Oh, I liked that better when I saw it in (INSERT ANY KIDS MOVIE TITLE HERE).”  So, by all means, if you want to feel immeasurable frustration with the endless banality Hollywood feeds to children, go right ahead and waste your life watching “Marmaduke.”  As the late Gene Siskel used to say, “It’s your life, and you can’t get that time back.”  D- /


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REVIEW: Zombieland

15 02 2010

It seems particularly fitting that the riotous climactic battle of “Zombieland” should take place in an amusement park.  Really, the whole movie itself is like a carnival ride.  Designed for maximum entertainment, it’s a high-speed tour through the zombie apocalypse told with irreverence instead of the usual sympathy.  The filmmakers understand that the people that watch movies like “Zombieland” get a kick out seeing some comical carnage, and they give it to us gratuitously.

The humor never gets old or boring though, and not just because watching a zombie get owned is one of the funniest things ever.  Much to my surprise, “Zombieland” is also an incredibly witty movie, drawing a great deal of laughs from some uproarious one-liners.  It has the pop culture sting of a Quentin Tarantino script, which is one of the biggest compliments I would give a movie.

In fact, this is one of the rare movies where I wanted to see more.  Clocking in at under an hour and a half, it doesn’t end too soon so much as it ends too quickly for us.  As long as you don’t mind the blood and gore, watching zombies die in as many ways as the screenwriters could think of is enough to satisfy for well over the time they gave us.

The actors are all good, in particular Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee, the outrageous zombie hunter with an unnatural affinity for Twinkies.  But let’s be honest, who watches this for Jesse Eisenberg?  Or for Emma Stone?  If you’re going to watch this, it’s because you want to see some zombie horror that doesn’t take itself seriously in the slightest.  Horror comedy has generally been a cult genre, but “Zombieland” is a movie that definitely has the power to make it mainstream in a big way.  This is one kickass horror comedy that will have you busting a gut.  B+ / 


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