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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 6, 2019 21:38:39 GMT
Patricia Neal's post-stroke Oscar nod was for The Subject Was Roses which won an Oscar and a Tony for the next person a Triple Crown winner - Jack Albertson. I made fun of Albertson a bit in this thread - he came up earlier in talk about Supporting wins vs. Lead wins but he was a very professional and beloved character actor - the kind that sometimes does very well with awards. His Emmy for Chico and The Man was a small but warm and loving sitcom turn as well. He's also an odd bird - like Paul Scofield he has a Tony and Oscar for the same role for his Triple Crown. Scofield in lead, Albertson is support - although Albertson won another Emmy too for Cher's variety show as a guest in sketches. From his Emmy winning role in - Chico and The Man - he's The Man
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 21:42:57 GMT
Someone to watch out for in 2019 : Annette BeningAn early front runner for BSA already and of course a multiple nominee and the female Lead in a Broadway revival opposite Tracey Letts on Broadway next month. A Triple Crown nominee with a stage background but 0 wins she could be 2/3rds in, in one year. She, Ed Harris, Mark Ruffalo, and Sigourney Weaver are the only actors to have nominations across all three awards bodies (Oscar, Emmy, Tony) without any wins. Do you guys think Michelle Williams will join this group come September? I hope not, but Arquette steamrolled the competition earlier...
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 6, 2019 22:58:43 GMT
I think it's possible Williams walks away with nothing for that tour de force although Arquette has an Emmy already and could get the Supporting win with her 2 nods this year. The Emmy's are by far the most unpredictable and batsh it crazy awards bodies in nominations and wins so I dunno - and I say that knowing that the Tony's are seriously flawed and the Oscars can be bought.
It's possible Amy Adams wins that too even though I don't think she's equal to them - HBO carries a lot of weight.
As for my beloved Michelle Williams - in the last 4 years she has a lead Tony nod, Lead Emmy Nod and BSA Oscar nod - her 4th, she could have like 7 or 8 nods too and she's got to be wondering what she has to do to win. Although a lot of her pre-production stuff has a high upside (Christa McAuliffe for one) if they ever get made that is.
Grrrrrrrr
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 7, 2019 10:37:29 GMT
Yet another variation of the "running out of time" theme - when the career diverts you and today's person Sean Penn. Two time Oscar winner he started out dedicated to the theater - in Slab Boys on Broadway in the early 80 the cast included Val Kilmer and Kevin Bacon and what followed was a big film career and marriage to a pop star (more on that to come in other posts). But the media spotlight on Penn took him away from movies for a bit until his Carlito's Way return and eventually that detour took him away from theater - and mostly into directing. Penn didn't return to theater much - Hurlyburly in LA was a big one but he was preoccupied with filming it - which he did to so-so effect - and movies remained his concentration. Penn also branched out into TV now in the recent years and I think it's likely he may find his way there again in front of the camera. Penn from the 1st stage version of Hurlyburly :
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 7, 2019 14:23:52 GMT
@tyler , evilbliss - fans of hers I know (evilbliss at least - Tyler?) and may want to touch on her intersection of music, film, fashion, pop culture if you like. We'll dive into spouses or significant others in a bit - but Sean Penn's wife also fits here and you wouldn't think it necessarily - MadonnaMadonna could be viewed negatively here - certainly some of the spouses we'll cover will be - and the dissolution of this marriage both drove Penn to more work and eventually less. But Madonna herself seemed poise for a breakthrough across media and in some ways got it - a very high profile Mamet Broadway debut, some success in early film (and later dabbling on TV) - she in some ways falls into the mid-range performer someone who by being in the Arts is herself the very medium she dabbles in. Even in music videos - she "acted" in ways the fits songs and also ......were like high profile audition tapes for other acting roles too. Madonna, from Alan Parker's Evita:
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2019 14:45:45 GMT
@tyler , evilbliss - fans of hers I know (evilbliss at least - Tyler?) and may want to touch on her intersection of music, film, fashion, pop culture if you like. We'll dive into spouses or significant others in a bit - but Sean Penn's wife also fits here and you wouldn't think it necessarily - MadonnaMadonna could be viewed negatively here - certainly some of the spouses we'll cover will be - and the dissolution of this marriage both drove Penn to more work and eventually less. But Madonna herself seemed poise for a breakthrough across media and in some ways got it - a very high profile Mamet Broadway debut, some success in early film (and later dabbling on TV) - she in some ways falls into the mid-range performer someone who by being in the Arts is herself the very medium she dabbles in. Even in music videos - she "acted" in ways the fits songs and also ......were like high profile audition tapes for other acting roles too. Madonna, from Alan Parker's Evita: Um, no. Lol. I admire her support of the LGBTQ community long before it was fashionable (seriously, she was risking her career), but that's about it.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 7, 2019 15:43:42 GMT
Who knew?!? One thing I will say for Madonna is she almost by herself created the "branding" (haaaaaaaaaaaaaate that term) that is now in our culture with every celebrity and how they are promoted. Singing Sondheim in Dick Tracy, acting with Penn in Shanghai Surprise (shudder), have the closing credits song for At Closes Range - Live To Tell. That level of cross connecting doesnt even scratch the surface of her pop culture influence certainly no one in her own era had it - and in fashion in film and cultural fashion (ie making theater cool?) she was somewhat unique because of the place she occupied. I know you're a fan of fashion and that will come up a bit more I hope - heck when I do Garbo it might be 50 posts just on Fedoras (kidding) - but not many of the people we've covered so far have had that sway across media. I'll try to think of some more ........
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 7, 2019 21:02:15 GMT
Alec Baldwin and Kim BasingerWe have covered Alec Baldwin but not in combination with his Oscar winning ex-wife and that wrinkle - the "Yoko" effect plays into many performers as we saw with Penn/Madonna and will see with some more over the next few posts. The reverse of that is the "Star is Born" effect - a male decline and female rise - sometimes it is a non-factor too. This comes up a lot and the woman is often blamed when the man is the bigger star - there's lots of examples of that. In this case Baldwin and his temper for a time cast him as the villain which temporarily derailed his career too - did Kim Basinger do that or did he do it himself? But Baldwin clearly was affected emotionally by his messy divorce - and his career across all mediums suffered for a time for it. Basinger never that major a player won an Oscar in a high water mark - theater and TV were for now at least off the table and haven't factored into her work. Baldwin has had much success on TV (and Emmys) and some major film and slight theater success too covered in his previous entry. In much happier times:
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 7, 2019 22:19:47 GMT
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 7, 2019 22:21:50 GMT
How did that last post get there? Weird - let's continue: Richard Burton and Liz TaylorWe recently covered Liz Taylor and her two marriages to Richard Burton (also covered) and she'll be the most typical and clear example of the career ramifications of a volatile relationship. They don't merely define it here for the 3 mediums - they define it in celebrity overall. In many ways Taylor defined Burton's celebrity and in many other ways he legitimized hers. The irony, like with Basinger is Taylor won the big prizes - 2 Oscar and Burton a GOAT UK contender got many Oscar nominations and a Tony in the US. Their volatile relationship resulted in shared movies - including both their peaks and low points and later stage work too - and they pushed each other - Shakespeare on film and Edward Albee too. Both did work across all mediums and they went through peaks and valleys .................together. As the worlds most glamorous couple - maybe their greatest roles:
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 7, 2019 23:13:46 GMT
Hume Cronyn and Jessica TandyTandy of course is major and covered before and a Triple Crown winner and Cronyn was her right hand man for a long time - 50 years +. Emmy winner, Tony winner and Oscar nominee Cronyn had a successful career without Tandy but like Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee we think of them mostly together and mostly wonderfully together. They are one of the great acting love stories, because sometimes love doesn't fade and they worked in all 3 mediums together too - from The Gin Game, on stage:
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Post by Javi on Aug 8, 2019 2:09:26 GMT
One of the things you notice as you do different actors is you get the people missing one of the categories - film, TV, Stage - in a strange way that sort of defies logic - such is the case with the bewitching Julie ChristieChristie has a major and much awarded film career the started in the 60s and few know she did stage as well a bit (she's British of course she did stage ) most famously in so-so received all star Uncle Vanya in the 70s with 2 actors already covered (though we may update the first) GOAT US contender George C Scott and Nicol Williamson for director Mike Nichols. Yet somehow, illogically, she's avoided TV as far as I know except for a German TV production with Burt Lancaster and Bruno Ganz which I've never seen (?) - how can such an acclaimed actress have avoided the BBC or other prestige drama - the mysteries of careers. For @tyler , a very big fan ....... From Broadway's Uncle Vanya with Nicol Williamson: One of the oddest careers out there, especially for someone who rejected stardom the second she got it (nobody turned down more roles in the 60s and 70s), and was ambivalent about acting itself. That's part of her appeal to me - she's both there (onscreen) and she isn't. Stars in one of the last Old Hollywood epics ( Doctor Zhivago), makes her mark in New Hollywood ( Petulia, McCabe, Shampoo), British New Wave ( Billy Liar, Darling, also The Go-Between and the iconoclastic Don't Look Now) then leaves Hollywood at the height of her fame for a farm in Wales. But her strangest period (almost never discussed and full of activity) might have been the 80s. She does two films in France, then in 86 stars in an Argentinean film, Miss Mary, with an entire cast of local Argentine actors (the film's mostly in Spanish) where she plays a British governess sent to educate a bunch of teenage aristocrats in a local hacienda (country house). Themes of oligarchy and repressed sexuality abound. It's an odd film but she does very interesting work in it. And her participation itself is kinda of unheard of. It isn't uncommon for big American/British actors to star in European films, but a tiny South American film with a borderline unknown director (Maria Luisa Bemberg?) Of course, at that point it wasn't a 'career risk' as we'd call it nowadays because she simply didn't care about any perceived career... she did what she wanted and when she felt like it. Around the same time she does the experimental feminist film The Gold Diggers by Sally Potter. Then a small Australian film and shoots Heat and Dust in India (a personal project for her given that she was born and raised there). She also appears in genuinely one of the worst movies I have ever seen, the bizarrely "post-apocalyptic" Memoirs of a Survivor. Her biggest TV success was probably Separate Tables (1983) opposite Alan Bates, again some very fine work there. And the same year she played opposite Glenda Jackson in The Return of the Soldier, a magnificent showcase for both: Jackson as the sympathetic one and Christie uses her natural qualities -loveliness mixed with guardedness- and makes them uncomfortable to watch, revealing something more than a little sinister. There's also the TV movie The Railway Station Man (1992) where she reteamed with Donald Sutherland but I haven't been able to find it. I hear her biggest success onstage was in 1995's Old Times (the Harold Pinter play) which seemed to have reignited her interest in acting and might have led to accepting the role of Gertrude in Branagh's Hamlet. Oh and as far as Oscar trivia goes, she remains the only actress in history to get Oscar noms for her first and final leading roles. For someone as reclusive as she was, that's an impressive 42-year run (1965-2007). Here's an interview from the Doctor Zhivago premiere in the US, December 1965 -- extremely beautiful, anxious as hell, already bored by it all and wholly unimpressed by the stupidity of the journalists. What's not to love???
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 8, 2019 8:17:38 GMT
Watching that interview clip was one of the most fascinating things I've seen in a long time - about 3-4 minutes in when the interviewer asks her if she reads her reviews and about the men in her life is kind of breathtaking especially. She corrects him rather pointedly about privacy vs. time first, politely but firmly swerves talking about her personal life at all and says "I know it was me" about her work - in the most direct and bewitching "wtf kind of question was THAT" way?!?
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 8, 2019 13:40:05 GMT
One followup to that Julie Christie video is what actor/actresses have a genuine air of mystery to them? At some point we're going to do Garbo and her and Daniel Day Lewis are the most obvious examples of it to me - but it's easy to confuse privacy with mystery but I mean it differently. That video of Christie you would find mysterious I'd say even if you didn't know who she was or know she did or didn't do interviews. She's mysterious in plain sight. If anyone can think of some others - let me know, maybe I can link them to Garbo even too. Not sure if we mean it is a quality more common for females than males but it's a quality that can be distinct and yet tied into performances too. The mysterious and previously covered (!) Daniel Day Lewis:
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2019 14:17:03 GMT
Javi - Lovely write-up! I love that you love Christie so much. I do recall that she was thinking about moving back to America after the Away from Her awards campaign, but evidently she decided against this? The Telegraph I wish she would work more! pacinoyes - Rampling is the textbook embodiment of mystery! Erotic, exquisite - you can look, but you definitely can't touch.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 8, 2019 18:08:23 GMT
Charlotte Rampling is a great mention. In fact - she's called mysterious even by people who just know her slightly. She also fits into an idea in this thread - great late period work - many would argue her for Hanna and 45 Years and I think both are post-70 or close to it. I love this idea of doing great actor work later like Christopher Plummer etc. I could definitely see us talking about her more because Rampling was once called "cold" a whole lot and I am not sure some people could have anticipated all of her later work and its facets - she still has the cool mystery but as she got older she added more colors too I'd say. Some theater in the 60s I know, an Emmy nod and a ton of mysterious roles on film - that's what I meant about it becoming part of the roles or the work itself - how many of these could we list!?! 2 of her mysterious ones - Angel Heart, Swimming Pool:
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 8, 2019 18:43:37 GMT
Now, let's all take a break and listen to a song - and hey the Replacements tie into this thread because playing live counts as on stage, they were on SNL on TV and who knows they may make their story a movie too. Please check the post before the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton profile - and if you get it, well you get it. I got so many ....
Tommy's too young, Bobby's too drunk, I can only shout one note, Chris needs a watch to keep time .......
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 8, 2019 20:23:50 GMT
Greta Garbo. The name - heck just the last name alone conjures up so much - and I don't usually post many straight praise pieces on here - usually every actor gets praised here or at least gets treated gently anyway, but think about this: We did DDL who has little TV and a good amount but not that much stage - (but none after 1989) and we said he "may" be the best actor just off of film. Well Garbo didn't do stage or TV and like DDL walked away from film at her very peak - a legend. Maybe that's the secret to being mysterious ........just walk away Garbo - she's the queen of the world :
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 8, 2019 21:28:17 GMT
Greta Garbo. The name - heck just the last name alone conjures up so much - and I don't usually post many straight praise pieces on here - usually every actor gets praised here or at least gets treated gently anyway, but think about this: We did DDL who has little TV and a good amount but not that much stage - (but none after 1989) and we said he "may" be the best actor just off of film. Well Garbo didn't do stage or TV and like DDL walked away from film at her very peak - a legend. Maybe that's the secret to being mysterious ........just walk away Garbo - she's the queen of the world : Movie legend!!
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 8, 2019 22:05:08 GMT
Here's one more for today so that it doesn't slip my mind. We have discussed couples and will again - and we've discussed Cruise and Kidman separately but in the divorce I think you learn quite a lot. Like Basinger/Baldwin, Taylor/Burton it's the female that wins the Oscar but the overall careers are more complicated than that. Here they are in 1992 with Pacino and his date (the Golden Globes where he won for Scent Of A Woman) - now Cruise and Kidman were a relatively new couple here. When they divorced in the early 2000s both insanely threw themselves into their careers. Many people will always see them as a couple - but it's hard to argue that things didn't get better for them career wise.......apart. Kidman with a varied career (Oscar and Emmy) and Cruise with historic box office. Like the other couples they worked together too in high profile films. In happier times: 1992 Golden Globes:
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Post by Javi on Aug 8, 2019 22:15:18 GMT
Greta Garbo. The name - heck just the last name alone conjures up so much - and I don't usually post many straight praise pieces on here - usually every actor gets praised here or at least gets treated gently anyway, but think about this: We did DDL who has little TV and a good amount but not that much stage - (but none after 1989) and we said he "may" be the best actor just off of film. Well Garbo didn't do stage or TV and like DDL walked away from film at her very peak - a legend. Maybe that's the secret to being mysterious ........just walk away Garbo - she's the queen of the world : Great shot from a lovely film! I think it's almost impossible for us to understand the effect she had on audiences back then. No other film actor or actress elicited that kind of response. It wasn't just audiences... the intellectuals of the age went mad for her - Borges wrote of the metaphysics of her face. Though I think it's just as likely many went mad with lust tbh; she was of course deeply erotic with just a gesture. She blurred the lines between "masculine" and "feminine" ( Queen Christina is a great example of this actually!), did a great many things no one else in the period dared to do, and always doomed to be better than her films. Terribly alone indeed, lost in the machinery. Even now, (heck I just watched Anna Christie for the first time the other day!), her close-ups leave you in a trance like state. Bette Davis called it witchcraft. And honestly "talent" seems an ordinary word when discussing her (though she had lots of it). There's a revealing written interview from her first years in Hollywood (she must have been in her early 20s), where she admitted to feeling ancient (she was sure she had lived many lives), mourned her native Sweden and said she felt like a bystander in the world... she gave the impression of being extraordinarily sensitive, displaced and already supremely tired... just a bored deity among us I really wish her projects with Ophüls and Bergman had materialized... or that she had embarked on a European career post-Hollywood. Can you imagine her, say, as the lead in Dreyer's Day of Wrath? Not only did she have the appropriate dose of immanence and eroticism but at her best her perfs had psychological resonance. Her early retirement is one of the great What-ifs...
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Post by Javi on Aug 8, 2019 23:30:04 GMT
pacinoyes I'm not familiar enough with her work to do her justice but the great Maggie Cheung might be the most mysterious contemporary actress. (Maybe the only one???) She's also retired. The movie gods are at it again...
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 9, 2019 0:50:20 GMT
Great shot from a lovely film! I think it's almost impossible for us to understand the effect she had on audiences back then. No other film actor or actress elicited that kind of response. It wasn't just audiences... the intellectuals of the age went mad for her - Borges wrote of the metaphysics of her face. Though I think it's just as likely many went mad with lust tbh; she was of course deeply erotic with just a gesture. She blurred the lines between "masculine" and "feminine" (Queen Christina is a great example of this actually!), did a great many things no one else in the period dared to do, and always doomed to be better than her films. Terribly alone indeed, lost in the machinery.
Even now, (heck I just watched Anna Christie for the first time the other day!), her close-ups leave you in a trance like state. Bette Davis called it witchcraft. And honestly "talent" seems an ordinary word when discussing her (though she had lots of it).I think this part is really tapping into something I've tried to get at in this thread and haven't done very well but it'll come up again I'm sure and that's just that movies specifically of the 3 mediums mattered a lot more at one time in the US (30s-the dvd era) and because they mattered more the stars and by extension the best actors (and stars) mattered more. Not that we have writers like Borges now but to be talked about like that is really mind-blowing and indicative of that. Marvelous point about the masculine/feminine aspects of her and of course she was that way in real life too and what she demanded for herself - she was no pushover and if you read about her contract battles she comes across as tougher than any male star of the era. I really don't know of a true equivalent - maybe Valentino, but I'm more limited in what I've seen or even know about him - it's more cursory tbh.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 9, 2019 0:56:32 GMT
pacinoyes I'm not familiar enough with her work to do her justice but the great Maggie Cheung might be the most mysterious contemporary actress. (Maybe the only one???) She's also retired. The movie gods are at it again... I was going to say I freakin' adore her - and that is even in some things that seems slight (but pretty wonderful) like Irma Vep but that would be damning her faint praise compared to how much the movie camera adores her. I wasn't aware she retired (wtf !!!) and I've only seen her bigger films but the way she moves on screen and just as a presence is really something to behold - you're right I can't think of a contemporary equivalent off the top of my head at all.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 9, 2019 2:46:21 GMT
“I wanted to be Laurence Olivier.” That's right: Stacy Keach - I just got around to reading this great Variety profile (lotta high praise and quotes) from last week for his H'wood Walk of Fame star. And he hasn't been mentioned yet so here goes. Keach, a staunch theater actor whose work on stage spans over 50 years and counting. He's played Hamlet (twice), Lear, Richard III, Falstaff, Nixon, Buffalo Bill (1970, Tony nom, Drama Desk winner), and countless others, including a Hemingway one-man show two years ago where he had a mild heart attack on opening night (!) but worked himself into shape and tackled the production again the following year. As ol' Ernest said, "A man can be destroyed...but not defeated." As for Movies/TV, he has over 200 IMDb credits. He won a Golden Globe (and Emmy nom) for playing Hemingway in '88, just a few years after his six-month jail stint for drug possession that didn't help his reputation any. But before that, his career looked great at the start, somewhat unconventional looking, a new leading man who could tee-up his immediate powerful presence with a dark and withdrawn delineation of character - like Doc, Fat City, New Centurions. And those perfs don't suggest that that actor was bred on the stage - in other words, he could play "the three" it seems though he peaked early in movies and never really hit that potential he carried. Often intense, easily frightening, or lighter too like Gravy Train an ok movie but him and Frederic Forrest make a funny pair. Two other underrated highlights - Roadgames where he's playful and poetic, amusingly unpredictable and at times gentle. And.... the 'Hair' segment from John Carpenter's Body Bags (TV Movie!) where he is outright hilarious. So much I haven't seen, any must-see gems...? Shout out to the fans - stephen Viced
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