7.31.2007

To Dos Day

___ Item 1: CHECK OUT...
...StinkyLulu's contributions to the 20:07 series over at The Film Experience...

___ Item 2: MARVEL...
...at the wit and wisdom of StinkyLulu's major crush. "Dirty dirty porn water!"

___ Item 3: RECITE...
..."O Zephyr Winds" along with StinkyLulu and other children of the 70s. (Have no idea what I'm talking about? Check the video.)... (via Bright Lights After Dark)

___ Item 4: CONSIDER...
...helping a sister out during a time of need. (via ModFab.)

___ Item 5: SIMPSONIZE...
...yourself. You can start from scratch at the Simpson's movie site. Or -- more fun -- you can upload a picture and see what happens at the Burger King tie-in site. (I found the BK site much more entertaining & accurate.) A Simpsonized male StinkyLulu is at left, and the female version's at right (click either image to enlarge). Both are pretty near perfect, I'd say...

___ Item 6: CHECK BACK...
...on Wednesday for the announcement of the Supporting Actress Sunday roster for August (it's a real nailbiter!), the introduction of August's roster of Smackdowners, and the start of voting for August's candidates for "The Overlooked/By Request" profiles. So much Supporting Actressness. Whee!!!
Have at it, lovelies...

7.29.2007

Supporting Actress Smackdown - 1988



The Year is...



And the Smackdowners for the 61st Annual Academy Awards are...

...reigning divas...

KEN of Canadian Ken On...
BRAD of Criticlasm & Fag Yer It

...former starlets on the comeback trail...
NEWLAND of As Bold As Brass

NICK of Nick's Pick Flicks

...an ingenue...
KEITH
of In Which Our Hero

...an old biddy...

yours truly,
STINKYLULU.

...and the evening's special entertainment...
NATHANIEL of The Film Experience
who gifts us with one of his beloved Nominee Montage Videos
click image below to be routed to video


1988's Supporting Actresses are...
(Each Smackdowner's comments are arranged according to ascending levels of love. Click on the nominee's name/film to see StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Sunday review.)
Joan Cusack in Working Girl
Nick - Oscar overlooks and underestimates comedy too often, but sometimes we overestimate comic performances, too. I don’t see anything difficult about Cusack’s serviceable and audience-friendly turn, and she adds no surprising layers to a broad archetype...
Ken - Nothing earth-shaking. But Cusack pulls her weight here – and the role could’ve been just a throwaway. Her real accomplishment’s making us believe she genuinely cares about Tess. So it actually makes sense that Tess values her friendship with the person under all that gung-ho hair and makeup....
Brad - Manages to be realistic and funny – the character we would probably want as a best friend, too. Lightens the proceedings but still manages to ground them as well. Nom-worthy? Still unsure, but I sure like the perf. And that she manages to overcome the clown makeup? Well...
Newland - Cyn is the kind of role and Cusack the kind of actress we should see more often in the supporting category. As a big-haired Jiminy Cricket, she has a couple of great scenes, but the role is too insignificant to deserve more than a nomination....
StinkyLulu - Cusack's Cyn is an architectural marvel of visual artifice, but Cusack wears it well, crafting a brilliantly funny performance that's radiantly human besides. It's a simple, elegant character arc festooned with heart-stopping eyeshadow....
Nathaniel - The first instinct – to label this a nod to a scene stealer – is wrongheaded. It's an ideal supporting performance. Very funny, true, but completely authentic, scene lifting and surprisingly humble in its second banana joking....
Keith - Cyn could have been just a cartoon, but Cusack brings beautifully subtle shadings to the role. When she finally is handed a scene that calls for some emotional oomph, she nails it beautifully, without ever losing the wit or the humor....
TOTAL: (22)

Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist
StinkyLulu - With broad declamatory strokes, Davis easily nails the character’s kooky verve and sweet bravado, but before long the whole project starts to stink of a carefully contrived quirk. By focusing so on the character’s lighter aspects (at the expense of her darker shadows), Davis diminishes Muriel’s true sparkle...
Ken - A perky stalker – with the perkiness even more off-putting than the stalking. Davis goes for cute’n’kooky, smugly launching non-sequiturs from little mini-catapults. But her voice and talent seem uncharacteristically thin here. I’m tempted to call the performance a miscalculation. Unless, of course, what she wanted was an Oscar...
Newland - I can’t believe she won. Davis is not bad per se, but she’s not even the best supporting actress in her film, let alone the best in 1988. A little bit of quirk never hurts in this category, but if quirkiness is the only asset your performance provides, you’re in serious trouble...
Brad - Has "I'm quirky" written all over it, much to the detriment of the character. From the facial quirk, to the oddly unflattering clothing, we're asked to believe that Davis doesn't look like a model, and that Hurt's character is so grief-stricken he's not aware of the obviousness of her goal to get him. Just obvious characterization in an obvious movie. Would've gone for Turner or Amy Wright myself....
Keith - Davis never answers the riddle of Muriel Pritchett -- what the hell does she see in Macon Leary? -- and so despite Davis's immense charm and warmth, Muriel remains merely a lovable mountain of quirks and eccentricities, never becoming a complete human being...
Nathaniel - A triumph of star charisma if not quite great acting. Impossibly Quirky "life force" character is almost made flesh and blood. Not Davis's best performance but effectively fills the movies large demand...
Nick - Very warm and engaging, even when the eccentricity verges on pure mannerism. Davis gets Anne Tyler better than her co-stars do, and she finds the rhythms of Muriel’s distractions and non sequiturs without making her self-involved or obtuse. Coulda gone deeper, but coulda crashed and burned, too...
TOTAL: (15)

Frances McDormand in Mississippi Burning
Keith - My lord, how McDormand works, trying desperately to create something from nothing. There are lovely individual moments, and some impeccable physical choices, but the script simply doesn't provide a character for her to play....
Nick - Kudos to McDormand for rescuing interesting notes from a dire script and meretricious direction. Still, she’s palpably smarter than the movie or the character, and her liveliness with Hackman offers a marked contrast to her underutilization (or is it boredom?) elsewhere....
Ken - The picture? Politically correct. Cinematically conventional. But McDormand approaches her cliched role with the expected commitment and professionalism. And in an early kitchen scene creates (with Hackman) a special space – intimate, palpable. When another voice breaks the spell, McDormand does a triple take – complex, seamless, breath-taking. A momentary triumph of talent, technique and inspiration...
StinkyLulu - Somehow McDormand survives her miscasting in an utterly lame role, with generally idiotic dialogue, to craft a living, breathing characterization – the closest thing there is to a "person" in the whole movie. Yet, it remains more an extraordinary accomplishment than a great performance...
Nathaniel - Her racism monologue is moving if transparently Actorly. Still she's magnetic throughout and easily strongest in her reactive moments, blooming a little like a neglected flower while mundanely washing dishes...
Brad - Does a lot of extratextual work with Hackman and the attraction between the two, but her native intelligence still made it hard for me to believe she's a woman who would've married a man in HS just because he made her laugh. Park Overall, maybe, but she's more like Carson McCullers...
Newland -
This is one of those performances in which the actress conveys much more in what she doesn’t say than with what she actually says. McDormand lets us into the complex psyche of her character through a subtle performance that gives more than the script contemplates...
TOTAL: (21)

Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons
Nick - [In a cowering whisper] Maybe the least effective performance of Pfeiffer’s career, because Frears only wants her as an emblem of beauty and then of gorgeous suffering. Bravo to her impeccable bone structure, but Michelle has no genuine ideas about this perplexing woman. She looks cowed and under-directed...
Keith - A fabulous gift of a role, and Pfeiffer gives us nothing but unconvincing tears and a heaving bosom. Where's the emotional torment, the passion, the grief? It's all hidden behind Pfeiffer's blank beauty. She's out-acted by Uma (who deserved the nom far more) and out-prettied by Keanu...
Ken - The picture constricts Pfeiffer like a corset. She’s competent. But poorly cast co-stars, a hollow smarty-pants script and (who knows?) maybe the actual corsets - all these things impede her. I found myself proceeding to Pfeiffer default mode (ie. idly wondering why nobody ever came up with a daughter-mother gig for her and Barbara Bain)...
StinkyLulu - Pfeiffer’s performance captures Mme. Tourvel’s incandescent guilelessness, which makes her stunning evisceration a heartbreaking spectacle. But... Pfeiffer’s glimmering mélange of terrors gets muddy at the most essential moments. A worthy nomination, but an incomplete performance...
Newland - She’s beautiful, she’s virtuous. She’s the ultimate ice queen, melting under the influence of Valmont. Pfeiffer aptly conveys the emotional roller coaster Mme Tourvel undergoes, but the performance lacks passion. Efficient, but the meltdown is not completely satisfying...
Brad - Servicable and beautiful, but even within this act-y film I am aware of her acting for some reason. I never quite buy her betrayal--I get it's real pain, but not about what it purports to be. It lacks mystery to me, but then again the moment is designed to illuminate his character more than hers...
Nathaniel - Dehumanizingly referred to as "the other one" / "that other matter" – and Pfeiffer's turn also betrays fuzziness of character. Does Tourvel even know herself? She masters the tricky combo of deer caught by predators alarm and heavy lidded surrender...
TOTAL: (16)

Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl
Nathaniel - Works many variations on self-absorbed humor "I am after all, me" . The faux camarederie she suggests with hugs and head tilts is truly repulsive/hilarious. Occassionally inspired but a total cartoon...
Keith - It's a nice performance, strongest in the precisely calibrated ambiguity of the opening scenes and the desperate scramble for a shred of dignity in the closing. But Weaver overplays the ogre in the boardroom scene, and it's a performance that any of a dozen actresses could have given...
StinkyLulu - As a vaguely plausible Big 80s gorgon, Weaver – through a finely calibrated mix of near perfect timing, a couple genius line readings and just enough slapstick – makes her Katherine an utter hoot. With a little high camp, and a lot of high style, Weaver knows exactly what’s she’s doing and she does it very very well...
Nick - I love Weaver’s radiant, we’re-just-two-girls-chatting unctuousness, and she has a great, silent moment of ignoring that enormous ski-boots don’t match her silk blouse and tailored skirt. She makes a big impression with fewer scenes than I remembered, but she’s hesitant about farce (nervous, perhaps, about capitulating to the script’s misogyny?) and, like everyone else in the movie, lacking in crucial energy...
Ken - A wonderfully accomplished take on the big business dragon lady. Expansive but never overstated. And what an entrance! Her benevolent despot act’s pure delight. You’d grin and thank her while she twisted the knife. And I love her crazy/elated high as she tosses Griffith that gorilla in the mist...
Newland - The role of Katharine Parker gives a charismatic Weaver the unique chance to be funny without playing funny. In a mesmerizing turn, she gracefully avoids the sketchy über-bitch role and delivers a winning performance that leaves you craving more...
Brad - A caricature that never goes over the edge. Plays into a strength of Weaver's – stylistic comedy that balances on the razor of parody. We never question how anyone is taken in by her act (which is key), but it's also kind of delicious to watch her squirm when she's exposed as a fraud...
TOTAL: (25)

Oscar chose...
Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist!
But the SMACKDOWN gives it to:
Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl!

So, lovely reader, this Smackdown brought the greatest diversity of opinion of any to date. Add your opinage to the mix & tell the Smackdowners what YOU think!