Sony Pictures Classics has two and arguably three of the top Best Actress contenders under its roof right now — Kristin Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You So Long, Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married and Melissa Leo in Frozen River. They have, it can be argued, a special heat in that their performances are urgent and hurting — each telling the story of a hard-luck underdog coming from a place of desperation — and are not highly toned, massively-funded Oscar turns with expensive key-light halos around their heads.
And with this comes a very delicate political dance in which SPC can’t be seen as pushing one actress over another, even slightly. Which Sony Classics co-president Michael Barker says is absolutely not an issue. “There’s no such thing as divided loyalties in a situation like this,” he says. “It s incumbent upon us to pursue anyone whom we feel has a shot, and these three do, and we’re very proud of each one.”
Barker is also cranked about potential Best Supporting Actress nominations for Rachel Getting Married‘s Rosemarie DeWitt and I’ve Loved You So Long‘s Elsa Zylberstein. Other contenders in this category are Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler).
A week ago The Envelope‘s Pete Hammond called the ’08 Best Actress race the hottest in years. In addition to the SPC contenders Hammond has added Meryl Streep‘s performance in Doubt (likely), Kate Winslet‘s in Revolutionary Road (yet to be determined) and The Reader, Angelina Jolie‘s in Changeling (possibly), and Cate Blanchett‘s in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.

“If the elections were held today, Barack Obama would receive support from 53 percent of voters, against John McCain‘s 39 percent, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found.”

A. O. Scott takes a look back at the 1987 Oliver Stone film “through the prism of today’s financial crisis,” as the copy says. But the line that stands out is Scott acknowledging that while Wall Street was intended as a cautionary tale, it has since turned into — i.e., become regarded as — “one of the most enjoyable and effective advertisements for capitalism ever made.”

I didn’t sense the least amount of coolness from Kristin Scott Thomas during our interview yesterday afternoon at the Four Seasons hotel. She has a bit of that chilly rep with some journalists, in part, I suppose, because of her having played a few bright and particular women in films, but I felt mostly openness and vulnerability. Really.

Along with some excitement and fatigue, of course, as she’d flown out from Manhattan (where she’s currently starring in a hot-ticket stage version of The Seagull) to be here only one day. She didn’t throw any pre-recorded or pre-thought out conversation. (Or none that I detected.) She’s obviously very quick, alert and attuned to whatever ‘s happening or coming. Here‘s the mp3.
It seems obvious to me — certainly apparent — that Thomas is in the throes of a second career surge right now. It’s one of those special coagulations that comes from two very hot, deeply admired performances happening at the same time — her Oscar-calibre work in Phillipe Claudel‘s I’ve Loved You So Long (Sony Classics, 10.24) and her highly-praised performance as Arkadina in the Broadway presentation of Anton Chekhov‘s play, which opened on 10.2.
On top of which she’s easily the most admired Best Actress contender among the handicapper crowd at this moment. (Am I wrong? Explain why.) She seems a notch or two ahead of Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married and Melissa Leo‘s widely-praised performance in Frozen River. Nobody’s seen Meryl Streep in Doubt or Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road, but no matter what happens Scott is in, trust me.

Kristin Scott Thomas — Monday, 10.13.08, 4:25 pm

Playing a haunted middle-aged woman just out of prison and struggling to live with the crime that put her there, her ILYSL performance is quiet and subtle and enormously powerful for that. Her work, in fact, reminds me of two of my all-time favorite quiet performances — Steve McQueen‘s in The Sand Pebbles (easily his career best) and Al Pacino in The Godfather, Part II. The kind of performance that draws you in for its lack of flamboyance and modest brushstrokes and delicate indications.
KST’s surge comes seven years after the end of her first streak (’94 to ’01) which began with Four Weddings and a Funeral and eventually included Richard III, The English Patient (her absolute romantic mainstream peak), The Horse Whisperer, Mission Impossible, Random Hearts (an unfortunate momentum stopper for everyone involved) and finally Robert Altman‘s Gosford Park.
Here, again, is the mp3. And here’s a fairly blunt interview-profile (dated June 2007) from the Daily Mail‘s Mark Anstead, and another from the Observer‘s Louise France.

Is there a bigger Hollywood pretzel-contortionist than Dennis Hopper? He starts out in the ’50s as the moody, intense young actor who’s influenced by James Dean and that whole alienated, tortured, wandering-in-pain thing. Then he becomes lysergic Dennis of the ’60s and ’70s — the visionary director of Easy Rider and The Last Movie, brazen and wild-maned, a “lesbian chick” rollicking in Taos, beset by increasing drug use.
And then he shifts into sobriety and the older, cleaned-up, more clear-headed version that emerged in the mid ’80s. And then into being a Bush-supporting Republican over the last 20 years (having voted for Bush ’41 and Bush ’43 twice). Ad recently having played a supporting role (for reasons that were at least partly ideological, one presumes) in David Zucker ‘s An American Tale. And then suddenly lurching into being an Obama supporter at the last minute.
How exactly do you do that? How does that work? I’m cool with Obamacans but how do you go from being on the Zucker team to saying “I pray to God Barack Obama [will be] elected” and making mention of the Bush administration’s “lies,” etc.?

David Alan Grier, host of Comedy Central’s new Chocolate News (which debuts tomorrow night), has fun with the old “Obama isn’t black enough” routine and says older whiteys need to chill.

Weather Underground co-director Sam Green has posted a short statement about William Ayers, his friend, on A.J. Schnack‘s All These Wonderful Things site. Reading it reminded me how infuriating the sentiments of the Sarah Palin flock about Ayers’ radical past have been. Would they condemn the sometimes violent acts that came out of the anti-abortion movement of the ’90s with the same outrage, the same certainty? It appears likely, in any event, that McCain will bring up Ayers at Wednesday night’s debate, so it’s worth reviewing.
No society can or should tolerate terrorism, but political hot-heads determined to strike back at the perceived evils of industrialism, capitalism and corporatism have been popping through since the late 1800s, and the culture of rebellion and turnover and transformation in the ’60s and early ’70s produced a torrent of this. And then life happened. People got older, eased their attitudes, moved on, calmed down, felt the fatigue, had kids and said “that was then and this is now.”
The people who went the way of the Weathermen in the late ’60s and ’70s — who veered away from anti-Vietnam War organizing and SDS membership and into domestic terrorism — jumped off a very high cliff without a chute. An unwise and reckless decision in hindsight, yes, but one that first of all demanded the kind of passion, commitment and courage that most people don’t even read or hear about, much less develop a slight or glancing acquaintance with. “To live outside the law you must be honest” (i.e., the Bob Dylan line) isn’t the half of it. Read Ayers’ Wikipedia page — it’s all there.
Here‘s Green’s statement:
“Like most Obama supporters, I have watched with a mixture of apprehension and revulsion as McCain and his VP-pick have ratcheted up their efforts to smear Obama with his tenuous link to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground. Me and my pal Bill Siegel made a documentary about the Weather Underground a couple of years ago, and we filmed a number of interviews with Bill Ayers. Since that time, he’s become a good friend of ours. We took him and Bernardine Dohrn, his wife, with us to the Academy Awards in 2004 when our film was nominated for an Oscar.
“So it’s hard to see this brouhaha and not feel terrible for the person at the center of it. After his long-ago association with the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers has gone to become a widely known and respected education expert. He’s a Distinguished Professor (really, that’s his title!) at the University of Illinois and has written more than 10 books. To have all of his work, and what he’s about, so publicly misrepresented must be extremely painful. Not to mention the fact that he’s received such a torrent of death threats that the University has had to provide him with a bodyguard.
“All of this is compounded by the fact that Bill Ayers has had to remain silent. He’s made the intelligent decision that there’s no way to engage with the media in a case like this and win. Anything he might say publicly will only add fuel to the fire, and give the ‘issue’ more of a life. There really is nothing, or at least nothing significant, at the heart of the Ayers-Obama connection, so it’s gotta run out of steam at some point. There’s nothing more to be said about it.
“Bill Siegel and I have taken the same approach. Starting when this’issue’ first surfaced in the MSM during one of the Democratic debates, we have been bombarded by media requests (no pun intended), but have felt that for strategic and political reasons, it’s been best to stay silent. (It’s not been an easy decision — any filmmaker wants their work out there, and this in some ways would be a great opportunity to promote the movie).
“As depressing as this whole Bill Ayers thing has been, I am hopeful about one thing, and that is that I don’t think that it will work. It was pathetic enough when Hillary trotted this shit out, but today, with the financial meltdown and all the other real issues that we’re facing, I just can’t see how this desperate, bankrupt ploy by McCain and his VP-pick will turn things around.
“The Weather Underground is available for download at iTunes and DVDs can be ordered directly from Green’s website. If you order a DVD from the website before the election, Green will include a free 8×10 Bill Ayers mugshot.”

“Oliver Stone gets points for speed and efficiency — he shot the picture over 46 days this spring and summer on a tiny $30 million budget and gave it a rich, polished look — but not for the scope of his vision,” writes Time‘s Richard Corliss. “W. isn’t tragedy or farce; it’s illustrated journalism, based mostly on extant Bush biographies and memoirs of early Bush appointees. All the incidents are there but not the insight. What’s missing is the one thing Stone films have never lacked: a point of view.”
W. says Bush is a mediocre Oedipal figure (i.e., driven by father issues) and therefore, as repugnant as he may be in straight-up political terms, to be finally pitied. This isn’t a point of view? Sure seems like one. It never really sank in before I saw W. that George W. Bush is a fundamentally sad and trapped fellow. However accurate this view may be, it’s now with me and that’s the doing of Oliver Stone. The certainty of mind I’ve had all these years in simply despising Bush is, for better or worse, no more.

“We (and you) were none too pleased when Ben Lyons joined Ben Mankiewicz as the host for At the Movies earlier this year, particularly when we considered Lyons’ track record as something of a half-wit Richard Roeper to Mankiewicz’s low-rent Roger Ebert. And while Mankiewicz has settled in relatively well in the last six weeks, we continue to cringe at the sight and sound of Lyons fluffing away at Hollywood loins in his blurb-fertile reviews.

“Still, we knew he was a hack; what we didn’t know (at least to the extent we do today) was the garish, staggering extent of his starfucking.” — from Stu Van Airsdale‘s completely justified slice-and-dice of a posturing showbiz toady.

Early Monday afternoon Defamer‘s Kyle Buchanan rapped the knuckles of Owen Gleiberman, Anthony Lane and yours truly for bringing up — mentioning! — the racially-diverse-couple aspect of Rachel Getting Married. The piece is/was called “How Older, White Critics Have Missed the Boat on Rachel Getting Married.”
Buchanan’s view is that the only acceptably enlightened way to approach the above-described aspect of Jonathan Demme‘s latest is to ignore the undercurrents, as the film pretty much does. Right!
But how come Buchanan waited nine days to get into this? I ran my original Rachel piece on 10.4. Shouldn’t counterpunch pieces run within 72 hours of the original post? That’s my rule, at least. And why does it take up to a day for a reader comment to pop up on a Defamer post? That doesn’t happen on this site. You can be Count Vronsky writing from an internet cafe in Albania and your reply to one of my posts will show up like that.