David Poland is calling yours truly, “The Envelope’s” Tom O’Neil and and Fox 411’s Roger Friedman a team of “walking orifices” and “Butt Monkeys”. It has to do with my having praised Sienna Miller‘s performance in Factory Girl and then having put her on my “Envelope” Best Actress list, and O’Neil having written a piece about Harvey Weinstein intending to launch a Best Actress campaign for her, etc. I don’t know if Friedman has written anything about this, but Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers has put Miller on his Best Actress list also.
The only substantial bottom line on this matter is that I’ve seen Factory Girl and Poland hasn’t.
Harvey depends on certain journalists to push his agenda, yes, but Poland has himself turned the organ handle like a well-lubed Butt Monkey on behalf of certain films and filmmakers in the past, so let’s not play this tune too loudly. Poland’s point seems to be that Harvey has no other serious Oscar card to play with the Bobby steam depleting — maybe — and that Miller’s only chance is to nab a #5 slot due to Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren and Penelope Cruz being already well planted. I see Bening and possibly Winslet possibly taking a hit if their respective films, Running with Scissors and Little Children, don’t play sufficiently well with the public…we’ll see.
The only rock-solid Best Actress locks at this stage are Streep, Mirren and Cruz — and I think calling Streep’s Miranda Priestley a Best Actress performance in The Devil Wears Prada is a stretch. She’s a “lead” in the same way Anthony Hopkins was a lead in Silence of the Lambs — a lead by force of presence and magnetism. But the only one lead in that film, obviously, is Anne Hathaway.