If StinkyLulu were the Oscar Fairy... (79th Academy Awards)

If StinkyLulu were the Oscar Fairy for the 79th Academy Awards, the following scenario might well occur:

click links below for visual fun

• For Best Actor/Actress, instead of showing excerpts from nominated performances, nominees would be honored with clips from some of their most extraordinary work (ie. Leo; Forest;Peter; Ryan; Will; Helen; Judi; Kate; Meryl; Penelope).
  
• The cast of Little Miss Sunshine would dance back-up during all performances of "Best Song" nominees. Host Ellen would, of course, dance lead.
• A new video montage (perhaps instead of the death march by applause-o-meter, possibly in addition to it) would be added featuring all the performances that should have been nominated. O'course, StinkyLulu and you, lovely reader, would get to decide who would be included.
  
• Ryan Seacrest would present "Best Supporting Actress" using AI's patented slow-mination, cutting the losers one by one - cutting to Coke commercials every other minute - thereby adding an additional 19 minutes to the broadcast.
  
• Instead of a rapidly swelling orchestra cuing the winner that their designated time was up, The Debbie Allen Dancers would swarm around the recipient, inspiring and/or forcing the winner to shake their respective groove thing/s off the stage.
• Patrick Wilson gets this year's Special "Thanks for the Nekkid" Award (NSFW 1 & 2).
• LOTS of surprises to "Spoil the Pool" at Oscar parties everywhere.
• Abigail Breslin gets to wear StinkyLulu's special "Princess of the Party" tiara.
• Philip Seymour Hoffman would just go away.
• The accountants from Price-Waterhouse would interrupt the presentation of "Best Picture" with an announcement that, in an unprecedented groudswell of a write-in vote, Children of Men actually received the majority of votes for Best Picture. Chaos -- and madcap hilarity -- would then ensue...

All told, it would certainly be a Lulu of a time.
That is, if StinkyLulu were the Oscar Fairy...

Adriana Barraza in Babel (2006) - Supporting Actress Sundays: Special Wednesday Edition

Babel -- an international tale of intercultural confusion -- entwines four intricate mini-narratives (plus at least five languages and three continents) through the shared connection of a single shot from an antique rifle. Though the wags have long called Babel "Crash with subtitles" or "international Crash," StinkyLulu -- after rescreening the film -- is inclined to think such comparisons to last year's Oscar winner a touch insulting...to Crash. In terms of narrative sophistication, clarity and plausibility, a better point of comparison might be The Butterfly Effect, the 2004 Ashton Kutcher epic of freaky interconnection. Like Babel, The Butterfly Effect presents a harrowing connect-the-dots tale with a similarly blithe disregard for basic narrative plausibility. The whole proceeding is mostly a twisty adolescent stunt, the kind of simplistic cleverness that sounds really profound at 3AM in the dorms when everyone's had a few. But like the much more entertaining Kutcher vehicle, the "International Butterfly Effect with Subtitles" does boast a handful of luminous performances (some from kid actors), the most effective of which is delivered by Hollywood newcomer...

...Adriana Barraza in Babel (2006).

approximately 20 minutes and 43 seconds on-screen
20 scenes
roughly 10% of film's total screen time

Adriana Barraza -- one of Mexico's most revered acting teachers -- plays Amelia, the longtime housekeeper for a San Diego family and primary caregiver for two tow-headed moppets, Debbie and Mike (Elle Fanning and Nathan Gamble). Their blithely wealthy parents (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) are on a jaunt to North Africa, ostensibly to heal a rift in their marriage. (Hints of a third dead child decorate early scenes.) When a "stray" bullet from a young shepherd's rifle punctures Blanchett's shoulder, "The Butterfly Effect of Gun Violence" begins to unspool.

For Barraza's Amelia, the anchor of one of Babel's four main narrative strands, the implications of this bullet are simple. Their parents' return thus delayed, Barraza's Amelia must remain in charge of little Debbie and Mike. The problem? Amelia's adult son is getting married that same afternoon just across the border in Mexico and Amelia really wants to be there. After trying unsuccessfully to farm the kids out to neighboring housekeepers (don't these rich white folks have friends? associates? ancillary staff?), Amelia makes the fateful decision to take little Debbie and Mike along with her to Mexico.

At first the trip seems fun. Crossing the border into Mexico is bright, colorful, exotic, exciting. Fanning's Debbie enjoys the adventure; Gamble's Mike finds the whole thing thrilling but terrifying. Both -- rightly -- seem a touch scared of Amelia's sketchy nephew Santiago (Gael García Bernal, in an impressive, understated and accurate performance). The wedding's wonderful; everyone (even Mike) seems to have a good time. And then, in the middle of the night, Barraza's Amelia insists on returning the kids home ("They have soccer in the morning.") Here, the sense of dread that has hovered over Amelia's decision to take the kids into Mexico begins to descend as a caul of doom. Bernal's Santiago, whose actions during the wedding have shown him to be something of a hotshot roughneck, is a little drunk and, after being stopped by officers at the border, decides to make a run for it, crashing his car through the checkpoint (thus crossing the border really illegally) before ultimately dumping Amelia and the kids in the Sonoran desert in the middle of the night. And thus begins the bulk of Barraza's performance as Amelia trudges and tromps through the desert, first carrying the seemingly comatose Debbie, and then leaving both kids under a shrub to seek help on her own.

Barraza deftly negotiates this reductive arc (take kids to Mexico - take kids home - leave kids in desert - suffer consequences) to create a fully characterized Amelia. Though the scenes presented in the film are certainly among the character's most traumatic and life-changing experiences, Barraza's performance also permits an awareness of Amelia's life beyond these scenes through simple, undistracting detail. For example, note how Barraza calibrates Amelia's negotiation of authority. Lovingly in charge with the kids, she seems to shrink an inch or two into a posture of averted-eyes humility when speaking to their father on the phone. Her casual authority as Santiago's elder comadre on the trip to the wedding transforms into palpable fear as he becomes the macho and she the mujer. And, perhaps most heartbreakingly, her various attempts to maneuver the cruelties of her FBI interrogator: in a brilliantly performed two minute quick-change aria of a scene, Barraza's Amelia attempts each of the strategies we've already seen her use -- scraping deference, quick hustle resourcefulness, maternal love, strategic acquiescence, quiet independence, dogged determination -- before experimenting one with we've not yet seen (one, perhaps, she's never tried) American entitlement. Of course, Amelia suffers a casual but brutal smackdown for being so uppity and her subsequent humiliating criminalization resonates with the anguish of a lifetime's humility and hardwork so transformed.

In Barraza's Amelia, we can perhaps glimpse what Babel aspired to be: a bravura performance of human experience that both transcends and calls attention to the cruel superficiality of social, cultural and national distinctions. Unfortunately, though, not even an actor of Barraza's formidable skill can carry this turkey through the vast desert of directorial self-aggrandizement.

Previously:
Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls

See also:
"Spoil the Pool" Party with StinkyLulu

Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal (2006) - Supporting Actress Sundays

In this week's Entertainment Weekly, one of their "secret Academy voters" described Oscar favorite The Departed as "a good tv movie with a great cast." 'Twas a funny observation, as 'twas precisely the quip StinkyLulu'd been using to jag against another of this year's Oscar faves. Indeed, Lulu's been giggling for weeks at the mere thought of this curious stalker tale of female intimacy gone horribly awry remade for the Lifetime Movie Channel -- with, say, Doris Roberts and, oh, Tori Spelling in the two principal roles? It's not too much of a stretch, really, given the source material. And, truth be told, the version in theatres now is just tuh-rashy as all get out as it is, although the pulpy essence of the piece is certainly elevated by the acerbic hilarity of Judi Dench's performance (dexterous work, at once genius and ingenious) and the raw deluded vulnerability of...

...Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal (2006).

approximately 57 minutes and 49 seconds on-screen
49 scenes
roughly 63% of film's total screen time

Blanchett plays Sheba, a new Art teacher at the rough-scrabble London secondary school where Dench's Barbara has taught for years. Her arrival to the dingy environs seems to brighten the place, energizing students and staff both, though Sheba herself remains blithely unaware of this impact.

Instead, Blanchett's Sheba struggles miserably to find her footing amidst the chaos. Early scenes show Blanchett's Sheba trying to maintain discipline on the playground and in the classroom, every gesture a stutter and every attempt a dismal failure. Sheba's lack of authority seems, at least on first glance, to derive from inexperience and underconfidence. Sheba's a new teacher, after all, and teenagers are freaky entities. But as things unspool, it becomes clearer: Blanchett's Sheba is lost on the playground because no one's paying attention to her. It's not just self-consciousness; it's self-absorption at its most abject. And soon Blanchett's Sheba will feel the consequences of this neediness and just how keenly her unsteadiness has been observed.

But Blanchett's Sheba is no obvious gaping maw of need. No. Blanchett's Sheba is a charismatic and versatile charmer, capable of making almost any man, woman or child feel a little more wonderful for having caught her eye. This incongruity -- the brilliant scintillating person who's also a desperate people pleaser with rock-bottom self-esteem -- is not only the lynchpin of the character (as it's what makes Sheba such an easy mark for erotic predators of all stripes) but it's what Blanchett just nails in her performance: Blanchett's Sheba is just lost unless she can see herself reflected in the eyes of another.

In essential ways, Blanchett's Sheba is the center of this film. Predators can smell Sheba's kind of need a mile away and so they begin to circle around her. And it's the voracious hunger that Blanchett's Sheba inspires in diverse predators -- randy schoolboys, crafty schoolmarms, flashing paparazzi -- that focuses the film. The film plays this shellgame of "Who's The Predator Now" smart, glibly pacing itself and deftly using Dench's delicious voice-overs -- ruminations from Barbara's diary -- to paste over the narrative potholes swiftly.

And Blanchett's casting is no less essential than Dench's in making this pap work so well. Indeed, Blanchett's at her best in this kind of character -- someone who's outward affect is shockingly estranged from her inner life. Here, Blanchett's able to make sense of Sheba's emotional reality while also making it clear that Sheba's entirely divorced from real implications of her actions. Sheba doesn't mean to make a mess, really she doesn't. And, somehow, Blanchett's able to maintain the emotional sincerity of her character's idiocy. Consider a brief scene, occuring just a day or so after Blanchett's Sheba has sworn to Dench's Barbara that she will break off her illicit affair with a student, Steven (the perfectly cast newcomer Andrew Simpson). Steven surprises Sheba outside her home on Christmas day and gives her a gift; the two hide under a porch as Sheba's husband (the surprising and effective Bill Nighy) calls for her. Steven asks, "Is that your dad?" Sheba emphatically shakes her head, "No," before adding -- in a lie that seems to surprise even her -- "No, my uncle" -- as she mentally tallies her obligations to her lover, her husband, her confidante, etcetera, etcetera... And here it becomes clear -- Blanchett's Sheba is negotiating her way to her next "fix." Blanchett's Sheba emerges as a powerful, effective portrait of the devastation of addiction and compulsion. Few actresses of any era could inhabit Sheba as efficiently and as completely as Blanchett does in this quick sequence and it's a reminder of why Blanchett has emerged as one of the go-to actresses in contemporary gourmet film.

But is Blanchett's Sheba rightly considered a "supporting" actress in Notes on a Scandal. Blanchett's on camera for nearly two-thirds of the film and, even in most of the scenes where Blanchett does not appear, the character of Sheba remains the focus of attention or discussion. It's a curious conundrum of category. What makes a supporting actress after all?

Previously:
Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls

See also:
"Spoil the Pool" Party with StinkyLulu

"Spoil The Pool" Party With StinkyLulu

This year’s Oscars are among the most depressingly predictable in years. For fans of the big night, especially aficionados of the traditional pool parties that go along with it, the proceedings seem to hold a touch less excitement than they should. So, to mix things up just a smidge, StinkyLulu’s decided to hostess a special, virtual “Spoil the Pool" Party. In this contrarian fandango, participants are asked pick the one nominee they think most likely – or the one they just want – to cause an “upset” by winning in their respective category. (If you are so inclined to join the fun, lovely reader, just email StinkyLulu & I'll send you a“ballot” listing the 10 most “locked” races as well as instructions for donating to the “pool maintenance” fund.)

Maybe this’ll keep a little bit of excitement in this year’s pool party...

Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls (2006) - Supporting Actress Sundays - Special Wednesday Edition

Few showbiz tropes thrill as reliably as the "star is born" narrative, with set-pieces so beyond cliché that it's a wonder they still fly at all. But, boy howdy, do they ever... From the national casting search for the perfect girl...to the "overnight" success of a trouper from the trenches...to the big second shot for the sweet kid who seemed to have missed out on her first chance at stardom...to the novice performer finding it within themselves to offer the showstopping, starmaking performance of a lifetime. Any one of these bits is usually enough to sucker StinkyLulu all on its own, but rarely do all these narrative threads weave so powerfully through a single performance as they do for...

...Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls (2006).

approximately 59 minutes and 51 seconds on-screen
30 scenes
roughly 46% of film's total screen time

Jennifer Hudson's casting in the pivotal role of Effie seemed to StinkyLulu at once totally right and incredibly risky. The curvy cast-aside American Idol belter with pipes of steel who survived cruel Cowell cracks about her weight? Who better for the part of Effie, whose big voice, big body and bigger personality must be cast aside to allow the starry Dreams of others to rise? Hadn't Jennifer Hudson in some ways already lived the part? And hadn't Jennifer Hudson actually been singing Effie's anthem since the girl was like 10 years old? The choice seemed almost too perfect.

Almost. It's a surprisingly tricky acting task to make such a declamatory character as Effie work on screen. Effie is — to a fault — impetuous and direct. In her music and her dialogue, she's brash and sassy, unburdened with much in the way of humility or subtlety until it’s almost too late. Effie's songs are roof-raising epics, tent-poles for the emotional narrative of the entire piece, while the bulk of her character development (from naïve arrogance to abject humiliation to soulful redemption) happens mostly at the edges of scenes or off-stage entirely. But, while the songs are some of the best showcases for singer-actors written in the last few decades, the task of stringing those gems together comprises the work of characterization for Effie, and StinkyLulu wondered at the outset whether an inexperienced actor (like Hudson) could maneuver Effie's "in betweens" with the same clarity and passion as her "center stages." Would Hudson — in her acting debut — be able to craft the necessary emotional architecture to bridge Effie's big moments?

Upon first screening Dreamgirls, all of StinkyLulu's greatest hopes and biggest fears were realized in Jennifer Hudson's Effie. When at center stage, Hudson's Effie brings down the house again and again and again (the late afternoon ABQ audience of StinkyLulu's first screening burst into spontaneous applause for Hudson's Effie no fewer than three times) and yet...in the in-betweens? Hudson's Effie becomes a distressingly incomplete performance. Within the focal moments of the narrative and score, Hudson's Effie is captivating and often thrilling. In the in-betweens, it's mostly Hudson just standing there or awkwardly shoopadooping while wearing Effie's costume. It's a strangely discordant thing: Hudson's performance contributes some of the year's best screen moments while punctuating most of them with some of the most shockingly flat-footed acting StinkyLulu's seen in some time.

And for Lulu, the gaps in Hudson's Effie underscore one of the essential elements of actressing at the edges: working your character-ass off whether the camera's "on" you or not. Such actressing at the edges — little throwaway bits that sculpt the character's contours even (or especially) when such details are not the focus of the scene — are sadly absent in Hudson's performance. Such gaps become most evident when Hudson's Effie sings back-up and, here, the difference between stealing focus and being legibly "in character" becomes painfully clear. Hudson's Effie knows how to grab attention, but Hudson fails to convey Effie's discomfort, compromise and fury at being "put in back," especially when she's actually performing back-up.

As a quick example, consider Hudson's clarity in the recording studio scene for "Heavy" and compare it to her muddiness moments later when walking off the set during filming of the same song for tv. When she's got her own vocal line, Hudson shakes the foundation; when she must convey character in the midst or at the edges of other action, Hudson hits her marks but the character of Effie is less than legible. Compare this, then, to the luminous Sharon Leal, in a moment of a similar sort right after Jimmy (Eddie Murphy) has burned all his bridges and Lorell (Anika Noni Rose) has finally broken their relationship. As Lorell rushes to her position on stage, Leal's Michelle gives her friend a simple look of reassurance and strength as she also strikes a pose wearing her best glamor-back-up-girl smile — neither distracting nor disrupting the scene, but definitely illuminating Leal's characterization of the thankless role of Michelle. Hudson's performance hits Effie's heights with palpable power, but it's in these — the essential in-betweens of actressing at the edges — that Hudson's Effie stumbles and, not infrequently, falls.

But please, lovely reader, do not misunderstand: Jennifer Hudson's nomination is certainly worthy and, if Miss Hudson takes home the trophy as she's perhaps likely to, StinkyLulu will not be blogging and moaning about the injustice of it all. Indeed, StinkyLulu is of two minds about whether Jennifer Hudson's performance warrants this year's Supporting Actress prize. On the one hand, Hudson's Effie provided a handful of the year's most thrilling actressexual pleasures. On the other, it does pain Lu (and not a little bit) to have such a singularly starmaking performance just skip over the actressing at the edges that brings Lulu to this category with such single-minded devotion. Because, after all, Lulu does love it when the girls "put in back" seize their chance to shine without the benefit of a spotlight...

Previously:
Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine

Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) - Supporting Actress Sundays

Sometime, about midsummer 2006, StinkyLulu started to think about kid actors, contemplating the difference between a "kid actor" and a "child star." Or, put another way, meditating upon the lines of distinction separating the Keirans from the Macauleys. 'Twas a simple combination of things really (the crop of interesting kid actresses working today + recent rescreenings of William Wyler's two versions of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour [1936, 1961]) that got Lulu to thinking about how right about now would be a perfect historical moment to mount a top-notch remake of The Children's Hour. (For example, Keke Palmer as Mary would just rock.) But more than the cultural relevance of the narrative (righteousness + rumor + queerness + children = scandal) 'twas truly the fancy of a certain kid actress playing the pivotal role of Rosalie (done brilliantly in 1936 by Marcia Mae Jones and again in 1962 by Veronica Cartwright) that got Lulu most excited. Of course, as it turned out, this very astute kid actress wouldn't need a Children's Hour to prove she had the top chops, because the kid actor in Lulu's fantasy cast of Children's Hour '07 just happened also to be...

...Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

approximately 32 minutes and 59 seconds on-screen
31 scenes
roughly 29% of film's total screen time

Quite simply, Abigail Breslin's Olive is Little Miss Sunshine - the narrative and emotional glue that holds the complexities of this simple little film together.
The film is built algebraically: six characters, ostensibly blood related, on a dubious roadtrip, in comically close quarters, with requisite madcap hilarity scheduled to ensue, and culminating in a climactic musical number. The characters, too, are built with formulaic specificity. The marrieds are having financial and other troubles. The teenager has taken a vow of silence which does little to quiet his raging hatred for his stepfather. The morbidly depressed gay uncle doesn't want to have to crash with his sister's low rent family, but his recent suicide attempt makes it a "doctor's orders" kinda thing. The grandfather got kicked out of the geriatric erotic wonderland of his retirement village because of his heroin habit, so he's stuck. In short, this "family" has little in common. Except for Olive. And this (along with the gourmet cast) proves to be Little Miss Sunshine's redemptive hook: each character - to a one - adores (in his or her own way) the 7-year-old aspiring beauty queen played by Abigail Breslin. And it's to her credit that Little Miss Breslin bears this burden with untroubled ease.

Breslin plays Olive with a radiant, elastic sweetness. But she's no prop of pure cuteness. Yes, Breslin's Olive is just darling BUT there's always something going on in that little noggin. The filmmakers establish Olive's preternatural independence in the film's opening scenes, as Breslin's Olive performs a stylized reenactment of a Miss America coronation she's got on tape. The visual discordance between Breslin's bespectacled, baby-bellied Olive and the blowdried Barbies on the teevee is initially startling, but it's Olive's reverie - which Breslin imbues with breathless exuberance - that anchors the scene. As Breslin's Olive plays pretend, she embodies the thrilling vulnerability of hope. And when a suprise phone call makes it all seem truly possible and Breslin's Olive screeches her glee as she packs for the trip of her dreams? Well, it's from this moment that the project of realizing such hope thereafter "drives" the narrative of the film...especially for the more adult characters, each of whom is stuck in the woundedness of various disappointments and thwarted dreams.

It's again a potentially banal "I Believe Children Are the Future" kind of symbolism. And in the hands of a lesser kid actor, 'twould have certainly been tripe. But here's where Breslin's performance elevates the film in subtle but essential ways. Breslin's Olive is pure hope and trust and aspiration, but she's also got her share of existential dilemmas. Breslin's Olive worries about her brother and her uncle and her grampa. She fears that she might be the kind of "loser" her father so loudly loathes. She's concerned that her father might be right about ice cream. And yet Breslin is able to shade the darker hints of these many fears, worries and concerns into her sweet brightness without compromising the clarity of her characterization. And as Breslin holds her own among the antics of her formidable adult co-stars, it becomes clear that Breslin's performance as Olive is an essentially active - rather than reactive - one. (Note that Breslin's only crying scene comes when she's worried if she's pretty, not when she's left behind at the convenience store. Count the number of important kid roles where this is true - where the kid's big moments come from their own thoughts & feelings and not their circumstances & environments - and you'll see what I mean.)

In Olive, Breslin gives an uncommonly faceted performance of a particular child's hopes and dreams, one essential to the narrative and emotional impact of the film. Hers is a worthy nomination and proof positive that Breslin's an important contemporary actor who just happens to be a kid.