Age & (Best) Actressing

Guess what's the most common age to win Best Actress? 29. Guess who's 29 right now? I'll give you one guess.

If Natalie Portman wins Best Actress in February she'll join the ranks of seven previous movie star beauties who won on the cusp of 30 including the immortal Elizabeth Taylor (who won for BUtterfield 8 at 29, pictured above with Portman's Black Swan turn).

Guess which decade of life has the least amount of best actress winners.

Age ain't nuthin but a number. Except when it comes to the Best Actress category.

Read my latest Oscar article at Tribeca Film

Plentiful Oscar trivia and a case for Academy ageism await you. 

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Spirit Awards. What They Do and Don't Say About Oscar.

Now that I've had a day to think over the Spirit Awards (nominee discussion) and what they reveal and obscure about the Oscar race, here's a deeper look for my Tribeca Film column.

Eligible "Best Feature" Snubs
Blue Valentine, Get Low, Somewhere, Rabbit Hole
Not eligible for "Best Feature" or Acting Prizes
The King's Speech, I Am Love, Another Year, Animal KingdomNot eligible for anything
Toy Story 3, The Social Network, True Grit, The Town, Etc...

Remember last year when Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire swept the Oscars, becoming the first... oh, no, wait, that didn't happen at all. That was the Film Independent Spirit Awards. They take place the day before the Oscars each year. And they take place in a tent. We don't know the square footage, but it’s safe to say that it’s got nothing on the Kodak Theater. 

Generally speaking, the Spirit Awards are a looser, rowdier event. You can even wear jeans. As a group, they’re much more likely to honor African-American abuse dramas (Precious) or intimate character studies of "broken down pieces of meat" (The Wrestler) or teen pregnancy comedies (Juno) than the mainstream Academy is. In fact, in their entire 25-year shared history with the Oscars, the “Best Feature” and “Best Picture” prizes have only gone to the same film once.

...read the rest in my weekly Tribeca Film column.
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Olivia Williams, The Ghost Actress

I was late to the party on The Ghost Writer but as with any good film, the party is still raging once you get there. It's already one of my favorites of 2010. But back in March I should have been out there championing it as a clever, well executed thriller (if that's the genre you'd like to define it as).  I think it was Pierce Brosnan who kept me away. Since when does he make good movies? And since when is he good in them?

Brosnan is in deep doo-doo in The Ghost Writer. Cattrall and Williams are
out-of-focus behind him. Which is just how both their characters like it, thank you.

Finally, it was you (yes you!) that convinced me to see it. It was praised enough in comment threads to make me think I'd missed out... particularly in regards to Olivia Williams. She's an actress I'd never thought much about until the past few years and now, it's getting kind of hard to deny her her due.

I wrote up her terrific work in my "Best in Show" column for Tribeca Film. She really is something (in general and here in particular). She's such a sticky actress; she haunts.

Part 1: Jake Gyllenhaal at "The New Yorker Festival"

I'll share a few more interesting movie-specific quotes I couldn't find room for in this article tomorrow here at the blog. But for now a piece I wrote for Tribeca Film.

He’d be unrecognizable but for those enormous blue eyes. In fact, when Jake Gyllenhaal walked out on stage at the SVA Theater in Chelsea on Saturday night, a full bushy beard covering what seemed like all of his face, film critic David Denby didn’t even introduce him by name. “I don’t know who this guy is,” Denby joked. “He looked a little lost, so we invited him in.”

But who needs a big introduction when they’ve been headlining movies big and small for a full decade? 

Read the rest @ Tribeca Film

...for thoughts on Jake's acting process, his relationship with Maggie Gyllenhaal and a famous actor he would love to emulate.
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NYFF: A Summary

The 48th New York Film Festival screenings begin with a promo reel in which a graphic animated map of the world is formed. Famous director names are paired with their countries of origin in rapid succession until the entire globe is lit up as if powered by the cinema itself! It’s a simple—even subtly clever—way to remind us that cinema is a global artform and that the NYFF in dependably international in breadth and focus.

True to form, NYFF’s 2010 lineup comes from all over the globe, and opinionated movie fans—and what other kind are there in New York City?—are finding plentiful opportunities to rave, kvetch and argue over subject and execution throughout. Quibbling and instantaneous opinion wars are part of the informed collective joy of any film festival experience.

Read the rest @ Tribeca Film

To get a sense of my basic feelings on this year's fest (me likey) and a bit more on The Social Network, Tempest, My Joy, and whatnot... More full length write-ups are coming if I can eke out the time.

Emma Stone Gets an Easy A

Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles. Winona Ryder in Heathers. Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. Reese Witherspoon in Election. Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls. Ellen Page in Juno. You're already smiling reading the list. Is there anything quite as sparkly as a breakthrough actress in a high school comedy? This weekend a shimmering new student transfers in to Movie High.


In Easy A, a new comedy from first time feature screenwriter Bert V. Royal and Fired Up! director Will Gluck, good student Olive (Emma Stone) shares a first person account of how she pretended to be promiscuous for the notoriety and novelty of it. In so doing, she rapidly goes from anonymous loner to the center of a social hurricane...

Read the rest at my Tribeca Film column

I'll try to say more about the actual movie itself tomorrow. [Helpful obvious hint: Emma Stone is way > than the Movie.]
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