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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2019 12:55:21 GMT
Thoughts? Was this considered surprising at the time - I'm guessing people thought Gloria Stuart had a genuine chance? How do you think her performance (and this Oscar win) have aged over time?
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 3, 2019 13:03:29 GMT
I rather like her performance. She was part of a cast firing on every conceivable cylinder and she more than held her own. A little feminine energy was needed in the film, which while being quite beloved to me, is quite the sausage fest.
She had no business beating Julianne Moore to that Oscar, but I do actually nominate her. I'd take the Basinger win over a perspective Stuart or Driver win, both of whom I liked, but they were just fine overall.
I haven't seen Cusack.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2019 13:10:46 GMT
I rather like her performance. She was part of a cast firing on every conceivable cylinder and she more than held her own. A little feminine energy was needed in the film, which while being quite beloved to me, is quite the sausage fest. She had no business beating Julianne Moore to that Oscar, but I do actually nominate her. I'd take the Basinger win over a perspective Stuart or Driver win, both of whom I liked, but they were just fine overall. I haven't seen Cusack. Have you seen The Natural and The Door in the Floor? I think she's really very good in both of those films, too - very soulful performances. And perhaps I'm thinking with my second brain ( ), but I really like her work in 9½ Weeks, too. It certainly isn't "Razzie-worthy," at any rate.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 3, 2019 13:25:36 GMT
I rather like her performance. She was part of a cast firing on every conceivable cylinder and she more than held her own. A little feminine energy was needed in the film, which while being quite beloved to me, is quite the sausage fest. She had no business beating Julianne Moore to that Oscar, but I do actually nominate her. I'd take the Basinger win over a perspective Stuart or Driver win, both of whom I liked, but they were just fine overall. I haven't seen Cusack. Have you seen The Natural and The Door in the Floor? I think she's really very good in both of those films, too - very soulful performances. And perhaps I'm thinking with my second brain ( ), but I really like her work in 9½ Weeks, too. It certainly isn't "Razzie-worthy," at any rate. I haven't seen either of those.
In terms of the Razzies, they generally nominate / award a bunch of performances for name recognition. They're worse star-fuckers than the globes to a certain extent.
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Post by JangoB on Apr 3, 2019 13:35:06 GMT
I wasn't following the race back then (I mean, I was five) but I dunno whether that win would be considered surprising since she won the Golden Globe and shared the SAG award with Stuart and also took home some critics' awards and multiple nominations. I guess the two of them were the main rivals for the Supporting Actress award that year, the classic case of the old veteran vs. a beautiful star.
I like her in the movie a fair bit although I don't believe she quite deserved that much recognition for it. But she's good!
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 3, 2019 13:51:05 GMT
I like the film but it's overrated to me compared to the book and it gets compared to Chinatown way too much - it's gonna lose that comparison badly, every time. I still had it in my top 10 for '97 but I don't think time has been that great for it, it wasn't great then, now and it won't be 20 years from now either imo.
Also Basinger doesn't much evoke any Veronica Lake I ever saw - I have an insane lust for Lake particularly in Sullivan's Travels - where she's short, pixie-ish, quirky and quick witted - Basinger is all bombshell type and formulaic - I guess that's part of the point since she's a call girl but I dunno, it rang false to me. Basinger's perfectly fine though.......
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Apr 3, 2019 13:51:10 GMT
I'm not particularly keen on the performance being a winner, but there are far worse that have won Oscars.
Still, it amazes me that she's the one to get recognition in the film for a solid performance where others were delivering amazing work (Crowe and Spacey, particularly).
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demille
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Post by demille on Apr 3, 2019 13:57:21 GMT
I think Basinger gives a solid, restrained performance in L.A Confidential. She portrays her character with an emotional and psychological complexity that makes you interested in her story, but really underplays the emotional scars and psychological damage that you sense of her character's past. This gives her character an enigmatic quality. This portrayal works well in the context of the film cause on the surface she is all glamour and excitement, but you sense the pain and heartache that she suffers under the surface, and it comes across as genuine
I do rank her performance after that of Pearce, Crowe and Spacey though, who are all excellent in the film.
I have seen The Door in the Floor and I think she is excellent in this film. Her character is morally flawed, but she portrays her in a sympathetic way, again giving her character a complexity and an enigmatic quality.
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Post by TerryMontana on Apr 3, 2019 16:51:20 GMT
it gets compared to Chinatown way too much No Way
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Post by TerryMontana on Apr 3, 2019 16:54:46 GMT
I would nominate her for sure, liked what she did there.
But I would give the award to Moore hands down. She was amazing.
Maybe Kim would be my second choice, above Driver and Cusack. Gloria Stuart wouldn't be a choice for me, not even for a nom.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2019 18:02:19 GMT
The film as a whole was outstanding but Basinger gave the worst performance in it. While she did look very pretty and glamourous, her 'sexy' acting was one-note and her confrontation scene with Crowe on the porch was awful. I thought Julianne Moore was by far the best of the nominees and it's a shame that the race came down to the two least deserving nominees (Basinger and Stuart).
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Post by jimmalone on Apr 3, 2019 18:56:44 GMT
Don't remember how the race was. From what I remember though Basinger's win wasn't really well liked by most people at first glance, but has aged very well over the years and seems now to be pretty respected. Also from my side. I like her performance a lot and nominate her, though she's not my win. But she hits the exactly tight tone for that role and it's just that she's a bit overshadowed by even better performances around her (particularly Crowe).
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morton
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Post by morton on Apr 3, 2019 20:55:11 GMT
I wasn't following the race back then (I mean, I was five) but I dunno whether that win would be considered surprising since she won the Golden Globe and shared the SAG award with Stuart and also took home some critics' awards and multiple nominations. I guess the two of them were the main rivals for the Supporting Actress award that year, the classic case of the old veteran vs. a beautiful star. I like her in the movie a fair bit although I don't believe she quite deserved that much recognition for it. But she's good! Teenager me was all about Titanic that year, so even though I didn't love Gloria Stuart's performance and found it laughable when she drops the necklace into the ocean, which started all the discussion on whether she meant to do it or not because it didn't look like she did. I also loved LA Confidential, but I would have rather Crowe, Pearce, or Spacey get recognition. Plus, I wanted Titanic to break the Oscar win record. So I admit I was biased at that time and was hoping that Stuart would win. I agree though that the writing was basically on the wall already even with the tie at SAG which could be explained by Stuart being one of the founding members of SAG, and Titanic wasn't really praised for its acting at all except for Kate and Leo. For instance, I remember so many debates from Titanic fanatics who would argue with those that didn't like it that much that Billy Zane's bad acting was done on purpose back on AOL's message boards, lol. Plus, now that I'm just a little bit smarter and wiser, I know that an actress who is part of a large male cast has the advantage of not competing with anyone else in the film for the same category, so sometimes it seems like the Academy will just default to only recognizing that person. Not to say that Basinger didn't deserve to be nominated, but for a voter who loved both Crowe and Pearce but can't decide which one to throw their support to, at least by voting for Basinger, it's a way to make sure that the film gets recognized. I think it also helped Basinger is that she had been around awhile and had a lot of ups and downs in her career. While I think she always had potential, I think that it helped that she surprised people with her performance. On the other hand, I don't think Stuart was on the level of someone like Lauren Bacall, who still lost, as someone that was considered a legend, so I don't think Stuart got that many votes for sentimentality or nostalgia. Cusack and Moore weren't in Best Picture nominees, and I think the nomination was seen as their reward. Same with Driver plus I'm not sure that voters would want to award Good Will Hunting two acting Oscars.
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Post by stephen on Apr 3, 2019 21:47:56 GMT
It wasn’t surprising—she won SAG and the Globe, but more to the point, she was the easy consolation prize to give to L.A. Confidential, a film that likely would’ve been a far more dominant film at the Oscars without that damned boat movie getting in the way.
But in retrospect, it’s weird that in a film with top-notch performances across the board—Crowe, Spacey, Pearce, Cromwell, even DeVito are on their A-game—it was Basinger who got recognized. Not that she’s bad, but the role itself is definitely the weakest aspect of the movie. Lynn Bracken has so very little to do in the novel and even less in the movie; you could argue that she exists as Bud’s conscience but the film isn’t interested in using her to that end, so it doesn’t make much of a difference in the end. (And she doesn’t look anything like Veronica Lake.)
I do have to say that I do disagree with pacinoyes: I’d take L.A. Confidential over Chinatown every time, and I say that as a huge fan of Polanski’s film. To me, L.A. Confidential is a damn miracle of a movie: it winnowed down Ellroy’s expansive novel (which could support a five-season series easily, and that’s not even counting the connected works in his Quartet and beyond) and managed to make it feel like its own beast, worthy not just to stand on its own two feet but to challenge its source material and potentially come out on top. There are things the movie does even better than the book; Ellroy himself admitted he wished he had come up with the Lana Turner scene.
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