I didn’t watch season #4 of The Crown (the one with Emma Corrin as Lady Diana Spencer) until last summer, but once I’d gotten through it I felt sated and satisfied. My basic attitude was “that was pretty good…actually very good, but I think that’ll do.”
But then I was obliged to sit through the big Spencer screening at Telluride and endure all the subsequent hype and hoopla (Kristen Stewart for Best Actress). And then came the Diana doc, “The Princess,” at Sundance ’22.
And it’s still not over. Sometime later this year we’ll have to sink into The Crown‘s fifth and sixth season with Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic west as Diana and Prince Charles.
Debicki is 6’3″, of course, and West is six feet even. That means he had to adopt an Alan Ladd approach — i.e., stand on boxes or wear lifts when sharing close-ups.
…for saying that it’s “actively hard to watch” Lady Gaga talk about her acting process, etc. It’s also actively hard, no offense, to listen to this. Look at poor Kristen Stewart. I can’t tell if she’s nodding out or enduring quiet convulsions.
What is this strange urgent compulsion that some people have to keep Kristen Stewart in contention for the Best Actress Oscar, at least in their own minds? Whatever the root of it, Variety Oscar handicapper Clayton Davis seems to be singing from the same hymn book as Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman (i.e., “she might pull through because now she’s an underdog…go, Kristen…we’re rooting for you!”).
…and is therefore wrong, wrong and terribly wrong for having stated that Spider-Man: No Way Home is one of the six Best Picture “longer shots” (right behind the list of six “possibilities“) on his THR checklist.
In strictly numerical terms, Feinberg has Spider-Man: No Way Home in 19th place. Let me explain something right here and now — that movie is not in 19th place!! It’s in sixth or seventh place among ten. Maybe even in fifth! Because it’s the Sony savior movie…the jackpot movie…the film that has lifted all spirits and raised all boats. And Feinberg cannot shit on this film….he can’t!
To my way of thinking Feinberg’s spitball picks are directly a result of listening to too many elite snooties, and we know who and what I’m talking about.
At times I’m persuaded that snooties are sworn enemies of emotional fulfillment and satisfaction (and I’m including the kind of spiritual payoff movie that Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed was) and too many are supporters of status-quo kowtowing and path-of-least-resistance wokeness, and right now they’re all striding around with big Power of the Dog and Drive My Car buttons on their chest.
This is fine and good except for the fact that both of these films are (a) homework, (b) depression pills and/or (c) detention class films that you need to endure because they’re well crafted and their directors (Jane Campion and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, respectively) are justifiably respected.
Bottom line: Snootie favorites are to be regarded askance unless HE agrees with them. The snooties often convey excellent taste but they also have a way of bringing everyone down or at least boring us to tears. The snooties are an across-the-board problem now…they’re knowledgable and sophisticated and a pain in the ass. I’ve said this many times but we all need to recognize that the snooties live in their own cloistered little realm, which is a polite way of saying Camp Rectum.
And as far as Spider-Man: No Way Home is concerned they’re too snobby and haughty to acknowledge the obvious, which is that the second hour of that recent Sony release delivers something emotionally extraordinary, and in so doing has generated the kind of once-in-a-decade response that is already the stuff of box-office legend. The snooties deserve community condemnation for looking down their noses at this film.
As far as the Best Actress race is concerned, the snooties (in this case the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association) have been correct in declaring that Penelope Cruz‘s performance in Parallel Mothers is the year’s best. And so in this respect Feinberg is once again dead wrong in stating that Cruz is a Best Actress “possibility”, and behind CODA‘s Emilia Jones yet…c’mon!
One of Feinberg’s Best Actress “frontrunners” is completely erroneous, and I’m speaking, of course, of Spencer‘s Kristen Stewart. In the wake of the SAG nomination blowout she’s totally and completely finished…just ask Clayton Davis! C’mon, Scott…put Cruz into KStew’s slot!
The other four frontrunners are Being the Ricardos‘ Nicole Kidman, The Lost Daughter‘s Olivia Colman, House of Gucci‘s Lady Gaga and The Eyes of Tammy Faye‘s Jessica Chastain. I find it deeply, horribly depressing that Gaga might win, but the lowlifes (i.e., SAG-AFTRA) love her to death. The most likely winner, I suppose, is Kidman, who was pretty good as Lucille Ball, the only problem being that her features look like carved porcelain soap.
Not only was Penelope Cruz's Parallel Mothers performance ignored in the SAG nominations for Best Actress, but also by the BAFTA's longlist of Best Actress contenders.
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I’m sorry…okay, not that sorry but the heavily-funded, once-seemingly-favored Best Actress campaign behind Kristen Stewart’s performance in Pablo Larrain’s Spencer collapsed this morning.
KStew was killed by SAG members who failed to nominate her, and at the same time nominated Respect’s Jennifer Hudson, probably due to identity politics as noone was predicting she’d be among the top five. She’s fine but the movie isn’t.
The SAG nominators, by the way, were completely clueless and dead wrong to ignore Parallel Mothers’ Penelope Cruz, whogave 2021’s best female lead performance — handsdown, nodebate.
Due respect and congratulations to the six women who earlier today were nominated for Best Actress by the Critics Choice Association — The Eyes of Tammy Faye‘s Jessica Chastain, The Lost Daughter‘s Olivia Colman, House of Gucci‘s Lady Gaga, Licorice Pizza‘s Alana Haim, Being The Ricardo‘s Nicole Kidman and Spencer‘s Kristen Stewart.
Five of the above were also nominated for the Golden Globe Best Actress award (i.e., Alana Haim didn’t make the cut).
The CCA nominated Haim for having tapped into something genuine and grounded and non-actressy, but CCA voters can’t tell me with a straight face that Haim gave a more affecting and relatable performance than Cruz did. C’mon…
All of the above connected (Gaga especially with paying audiences), but HE and the Movie Godz are again declaring that elbowing aside Penelope Cruz‘s just-right turn in Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers was a wrongo — it really was. There’s no question in my mind that Cruz gave the year’s finest female lead performance — none whatsoever.
In an interactive N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine piece, critic A.O. Scott celebrates 11 actors whom he believes delivered the creme de la creme of 2021 screen performances. Spencer‘s Kristen Stewart, Passing‘s Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, King Richard‘s Will Smith, The Tragedy of Macbeth‘s Denzel Washington, Drive My Car‘s Hidetoshi Nishijima, et. al.
One presumes that if one of Scott’s favorites somehow couldn’t make himself or herself available for a special N.Y. Times photo session with Ruven Afanador, they were replaced by another favorite. So let’s be liberal and hypothesize that the two finest female performances of the year — Penelope Cruz as a woman with child in Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers and RenateReinsve as a young woman of solitude in Joachim Trier‘s TheWorstPersonintheWorld — were on Scott’s initial list but couldn’t fit Afanador into their schedule.
In a 14-paragraph discussion about various pluses and handicaps affecting the 2021 Best Actress Oscar race, Vanity Fair ‘s David Canfield and Rebecca Fordacknowledge (a) the worthiness of Lady Gaga, Kristen Stewart and Nicole Kidman’s respective performances in House of Gucci, Spencer and BeingTheRicardos, and at the same time (b) note that buzz for the films themselves has beensettlingdown. Andtheysalute West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler, of course.
Then theyactuallymanage tomention(in paragraphs #10 and #14) theyear’sfinestleadfemaleperformances, handsdown — Parallel Mothers’ Penelope Cruz and TheWorstPersonintheWorld’s RenateReinsve. Whichstruck me as obligingand accommodating.
It’s not just Film Twitter that resides in a bubble; it’s a healthy majority of film critics. That aside, I respect Kristen Stewart‘s performance. She gave it her all.