OVP: Actress (2003)

OVP: Best Actress (2003)

The Nominees Were...

Keisha Castle-Hughes, Whale Rider

Diane Keaton, Something's Gotta Give

Samantha Morton, In America

Charlize Theron, Monster

Naomi Watts, 21 Grams

My Thoughts: I sometimes feel like an old man (which depending on your birth certificate, I may well be) when I talk about old Oscar races, but it's hard to impress how wild of a ride 2003's Best Actress race was.  Even compared to recent fields (like this year's crazy, frontrunner-less year), 2003's nominations got bonkers with only two names showing up in most of the precursors (and not a single name landing in all of them), and the remainder feeling totally influx throughout the season (just wait until we get to the precursors below).  We'll start with the two names, though, that never felt in doubt with Oscar all year long.

Charlize Theron, it's hard to remember in 2003, was not considered a particularly compelling actress.  Beautiful, yes, but she had largely stuck to "girlfriend/wife" roles until that point, and when she saw her break playing totally against type in Monster, she took it.  Theron has been called one of the great performances to ever win this award, and to some degree I find that to be hyperbole.  I think she's excellent, inhabiting Aileen Wuornos & humanizing her in a way that probably works better in fiction than in a biopic (the sympathy for serial killers angle always feels like a tightrope considering the lives they ended up destroying even if they started out from sheer horror like Wuornos clearly did).  I don't think she lands the romantic arches with Christina Ricci (there's not enough chemistry there), and I also feel like some of her shock appeal is the makeup doing heavy-lifting because we know what she really looks like, but this is a worthy nomination, even if I don't think it's an all-timer.

Diane Keaton was having yet another comeback in 2003 (her last, to date, with Oscar), and like Theron, there are moments where it doesn't quite work.  I don't know that she had enough chemistry with Keanu Reeves late in the movie for my taste, never quite making it work the same way as with Jack (and there are moments it feels like she's playing Diane Keaton more than her character).  But this is minor quibbling about a terrific performance.  Playing a woman who has found immense success in every avenue of life except love, and then having that be a bumpy, fraught, vulnerable journey for her rather than a simple rom-com...Keaton sells a woman who had settled for her life, even if she always knew there could be more.  It's great stuff from one of the best of her generation.

I feel a little bad ragging on child performers, particularly since I know my brother reads this blog & will be guarding his beloved Whale Rider with mama bear arms, but Keisha Castle-Hughes doesn't work with me.  There's naturalism in a performance, and then there's just not emoting enough, and I think she's more in the second half.  It doesn't help that her script is hackneyed and filled with coming-of-age cliche that even the most skilled of performers wouldn't have been able to bring to life, but I wasn't into this the way that so many were...bonus points to the Academy, though, for putting her in the correct category as this is 1000% a lead performance.

Samantha Morton is better with naturalism in In America.  She plays her mother as a real, complicated figure, someone who can have horny sex with her husband (strong chemistry between Morton & Paddy Considine), while also having great anger toward him later in the movie & still make it feel believable.  Morton's work is informed by grief, her Sarah knows that she can never fill the void left by the death of her son, and just wants someone to blame because blaming no one is the worst punishment.  Morton was capping off a truly impressive run in the late-1990's & early-2000's with this her second (and final) nomination, and while it was a surprise, it was a pleasant one from Oscar.

Our final nomination cannot get the same compliment.  Naomi Watts has been nominated for a My Ballot Award before for King Kong and was in sixth place for The Painted Veil-I consider myself a fan.  But she is actively terrible in 21 Grams and I will never understand why Oscar chose this as the moment to honor her, one of the worst performances of her career.  She is constantly screaming, constantly angry, acting as if there's nothing underneath her hostility toward the world, nothing that existed prior to the confines of the movie.  This, like her nomination for The Impossible, feels like they're nominating the role more than the actress, and that these movies (and not something unique & film-fitting like Kong) are where she got her nominations will never not confuse me. 

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have eleven women nominated for these awards.  For Drama it's Theron besting Cate Blanchett (Veronica Guerin), Scarlett Johansson (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Nicole Kidman (Cold Mountain), Uma Thurman (Kill Bill: Volume 1), & Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen), while for Comedy/Musical it's Keaton over Jamie Lee Curtis (Freaky Friday), Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation), Diane Lane (Under the Tuscan Sun), & Helen Mirren (Calendar Girls).  SAG gave us Theron as the winner over Keaton, Watts, Wood, & Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent) while at the BAFTA Awards it was Johansson (Lost in Translation) winning over Watts, Johansson (for Girl), Thurman, & Anne Reid (The Mother) (due to release schedule issues, Theron wasn't eligible until the next year with BAFTA, which used to happen a lot more there than it does now, and she was nominated but lost that season).  All of this is to say-who the hell knows who was in sixth place...there are thirteen names just listed and only three of them made it with Oscar, and that's not counting that for much of the race Jennifer Connelly (House of Sand and Fog) was considered something of a favorite.  If I had to guess, thanks to Johansson's campaign being royally botched, it was probably Wood, but this was a bizarre race & one that I still can't figure out.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Similar to our comments for Return of the King, it's hard to know where to put Uma Thurman's work in Kill Bill exactly since it's one great performance split in half, but it's a darned shame that Oscar didn't make room for her in either 2003 or 2004.

Oscar’s Choice: There was no beating Theron-that trophy was undeniably hers...Keaton didn't stand a prayer, and she was obviously in second.

My Choice: I'm going to go with Keaton, who gives the stronger character arc without the need for prosthetics to enhance the performance, against Theron (I also, to be fair, like Keaton's movie way better as I didn't like Monster at all and in a close race, that matters).  Morton is third, with Castle-Hughes & Watts falling behind.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you with Oscar & Theron, or do you dare to be different with Diane & I?  Why do you think that Oscar has the worst taste in Naomi Watts movies?  And who the hell was in sixth place here?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2003: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2003

Past Best Actress Contests: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019

OVP: Crimes of the Heart (1986)

Film: Crimes of the Heart (1986)

Stars: Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, Tess Harper, Hurd Hatfield

Director: Bruce Beresford

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actress-Sissy Spacek, Supporting Actress-Tess Harper, Adapted Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The 1980's are a weird time for me cinematically.  I was alive in the 1980's, but the movies I was obsessed with were Lady and the Tramp and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day...I was not really concerned with the kinds of films that Oscar was acknowledging.  As a result, I don't have any nostalgia to surround myself with from the decade, and am left with kind of a bad feeling every time someone brings it up with reverence...as the 1980's is easily my least favorite decade cinematically.  The acting is a bit too involved, the headliners are not my favorites, the scripts are too indulgent and anguished...it was a decade where people seemed to be totally oblivious to how awful Ronald Reagan was as president.  I had this sense of apprehension heading into Crimes of the Heart, even though I genuinely like all three of the leading ladies in it (even with my 1980's allergy), as I was curious what a film like this would feel like, and if it would rise above the 1980's trappings.  What I didn't expect, however, was how weird it would be.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about three sisters, all of whom have very different natures.  Lenny (Keaton), is a spinster who has spent much of their life taking care of their dying grandfather (Hatfield), while Meg (Lange) is a struggling singer in Hollywood who has left behind her family.  They are both home immediately following Babe (Spacek), their youngest sister, having had an affair with a black teenager & shooting her husband who regularly beats her senseless.  As the film progresses, we learn more about the trio, specifically the shocking trauma they endured when they were children (that their mother hanged herself and her cat, making them national news).  As the film ends, it looks like Babe will kill herself in a fashion similar to her mother, but is unsuccessful in repeated attempts to commit suicide, and the film ends with the three sisters finally acknowledging their need for one another, despite their differences.

The movie is bizarre not in its approach (it actually kind of works for a theatrical adaptation, even if you can see the strings of it being a play from a mile away), but in its strange tonal inconsistencies.  It is a tender film, one about three sisters who love each other despite deep differences & genuine animosities. But it also runs rampant between comedy-and-drama, oftentimes in ways that you can't really tell what the director is trying to accomplish.  The cat hanging comes as a total surprise during a felt scene, and while it is a spit-take moment, it also feels kind of cheap.  There's something to be said for telling the story of people who endure 15 minutes of fame in the lens of comic tragedy (we've all seen headlines like that "Woman Hangs Self & Cat" feels ripped from the back pages of a tabloid newspaper), but the movie itself never successfully lands on what its purpose is, and when it tries to turn Babe's suicide into an equally comic moment (after seeing what it did to these women as children)...I just didn't like it.  It felt like a parody, and not in a good way.

The film won three Oscar nominations.  As I mentioned, the stage-to-screen translation is good even if you can tell its a play, but weirdly that can be accredited to the art directors.  I loved the lived-in sense of Lenny's house, the way it is bursting with too much stuff, quilts & photo albums & boxes that you've "meant to throw out but have been collecting dust for twenty years."  So often in films we don't see this attention-to-detail, but it's very real-look at your house, and notice things that have sat on counters or on closet shelves for a decade without having been moved in all that time.  Adding this sort of personality makes it feel less like a stage.  The script, though, doesn't do that kind of legwork, and its issues with tone & strange shock value felt off-putting.

Sissy Spacek is the best member of the cast, by a lot in my estimation, even if she also gets the best part.  Keaton is the pro at comedy, but has never done well with films that tread across genres (she's a good dramatic actress, but she needs to play that drama completely straight otherwise it comes off sarcastic), but it's Spacek who best encapsulates the black humor of the film.  She plays her part as someone who lives a more spontaneous life than her sister Lenny, but one more sporadic than her sister Meg, and she's very good when she's pitting her two older sisters against one another (as if she's done it her whole life).  The nomination for Tess Harper is weird.  Harper had just had a breakout part three years earlier for Tender Mercies, but that hardly explains her shrill, blink-and-you'll-miss-it role in Crimes of the Heart, a totally one-note performance that lacks any of the nuance that Spacek is bringing.  It's honestly bad acting, and totally runs aground the rest of the picture.  It's hard to imagine Oscar couldn't have done better.

Book Club (2018)

Film: Book Club (2018)
Stars: Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Richard Dreyfuss, Andy Garcia, Don Johnson
Director: Bill Holderman
Oscar History: It's not that kind of movie.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

4 Oscars, 6 Emmys, and 12 Golden Globes.  If we go to the nominations, it's 13, 16, and 39, respectively.  The women of Book Club have created so many film and television memories through the years, honestly, they could have filmed their actual book club and I would have shown up to watch it.  This seems to be the attitude of most of the people I follow on Twitter, who were thrilled to be attending Book Club even if it didn't actually look any good.  The fact that it got made at all is interesting, and proof, perhaps, of Hollywood having missed the boat a bit when it comes to counter-programming.  Book Club is a genuine hit at this point, and proves that you don't have to have an English accent to storm the box office against blockbuster giants (these four women's British contemporaries like Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, and Maggie Smith regularly get to lead their own summer comedies).  That said, this is a film review, and it's important for me not to just ask "is this fun?" but also "is this good?"

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around four lifelong friends: Diane (Keaton), Vivian (Fonda), Sharon (Bergen), and Carol (Steenburgen) who get together every single month to read a book, and because Hollywood demands we have to have a hook in order for four beautiful older women to talk about sex & relationships, the book club pick is Fifty Shades of Grey.  Thankfully this isn't a huge part of the film itself (only Steenburgen seems to indulge a bit in EL James erotica, and that's less central to her subplot than the trailers would suggest), as it would feel a bit ageist to have a bunch of worldly women focus entirely on being shocked by S&M, but it is indicative of the pretty uninspired thinking that screenwriters Bill Holderman and Erin Simms bring to this movie.  For it has to be said-Book Club, for all of the promise of its legendary stars, is not very good.

The film's central problem lies in it being too predictable, and feeling a bit too much like an original movie you'd catch on cable (in many ways it reminded me of Wild Oats from a few years back, which premiered on Lifetime).  There's nothing unique or special happening here.  Candice Bergen is the only person doing something original here, and the only character whose story I wanted to learn more about as the film progressed.  Bergen breathes life into her character, a stately judge who is trying to start dating again, and finds at least some under-explored facets of aging; watching her ex-husband introduce "the love of his life" is a cruel scene, particularly when you consider that he's not meeting some harlot, but instead a genuinely nice younger woman.  There's also the frayed dynamic between her son, who is clearly more like his dad than his mother, and herself, and the way that Bergen tips her hand that she needed to be a more absent mother in order to have her successful career, and the resentment that builds from such a decision.  That's great stuff, and while heavy for a comedy, Bergen makes it work.  The rest of the cast, though, doesn't have that luxury and doesn't expand their characters beyond two dimensions.

Fonda, for example, is phoning in her role as a sexy nymph who let a man get away-she could do this in her sleep.  Keaton's performance as a mother rediscovering love is the same role she's been playing for twenty years.  It would have been genuinely interesting if they had messed around with these parts, for example, and not had them play their own public persona (imagine Fonda as the neurotic mother or Keaton as the lusty single gal), but that's not really what people are buying tickets for; like the Dench/Smith films, they want to see the star they know-and-love, and they don't want them to stretch too much.  As a result, this is a film that feels instantly disposable, which is a damned shame as these actors are too talented to discard.

George Clooney's AFI Win is Too Soon

Yesterday, the American Film Institute announced that George Clooney will be receiving its Life Achievement Award.  This is considered one of the highest honors in the world of cinema, a landmark achievement that puts Clooney alongside such luminaries as Bette Davis, John Ford, and Fred Astaire.  It also makes him the sixth youngest person to ever win the award, tying Harrison Ford who won the honor in 2000.  This struck me, however, as a bit pandering and as one of those life achievement awards that feels far too soon, and perhaps a little undeserved.  I figured I'd explore that line-of-thinking here today by looking at Clooney's career in comparison to some of the legends that he now joins by being on this list.

The first thing I want to discuss is Clooney's age itself.  In an era where people are living considerably longer, (provided you have access to quality health insurance) winning a life achievement award before at least 65 feels far too premature (he'll be 57 when he picks it up).  This isn't the first time that the AFI has jumped the gun on honoring someone.  Tom Hanks won in 2002 at the ridiculously early age of 45, which meant that some of his lauded recent work in pictures like Captain Phillips and Bridge of Spies wasn't among his clips at the time, and Steven Spielberg picked up the award in 1995, probably deservedly but still without Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, or his most ambitious work-to-date, AI: Artificial Intelligence, being part of that conversation.  Clooney's winning at such an early age means that we don't really get to see where his career goes.  One could argue, for example, that Hanks ended up being less consequential to the landscape of film than he was specifically at the age of 2002, though still a major actor in his own right, and others who won young it seems silly that we honored them before they hit a new renaissance in their careers.  Martin Scorsese, for example, picked up the trophy at the age of 54 in 1997, meaning that his wave of five Best Picture nominees that came after it, including The Departed which won him the Oscar, weren't amongst the reasons that he took the AFI Award.

Honoring too early in itself is not a problem, of course.  One could argue that Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, both of whom won the honor when they were younger than Clooney, more than deserved the trophy at that point in their careers (2004 and 1994, respectively), as they'd been omnipresent figures in film for decades at that point, though it's worth noting both would go on to give an Oscar-winning performance later on in their career.  And there's always the risk that you run into great work happening after the AFI Life Achievement Award-it's not a retirement party.  Perhaps the most glaring example of this would be Clint Eastwood, whose career as an actor and a burgeoning director in 1996 likely warranted this trophy, but who would go on to have a HUGE second career as a filmmaker of pictures like Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, and American Sniper; Eastwood would quite frankly win for a filmography that has largely been overtaken by what his actual legacy as an artist will entail.  Henry Fonda and Robert de Niro both were Oscar-nominated after their wins, and it seems likely that John Williams will be this year as well.  Since some artists work until their final curtain closes, you do have to pick an age that they win it.

But 57 is too early, and certainly too early for Clooney.  This is where I might come off as unkind, so I do want to point out that Clooney is a very good filmmaker.  He has four times been nominated as an actor by the Academy Awards (winning for Syriana), and is also an Oscar-nominated director, writer, and producer.  Two of those performances were amongst the best of the year and more than exhibited his big-screen talent (Michael Clayton and Up in the Air), and he has directed one additional brilliant movie in Good Night, and Good Luck.  It's a career literally any artist would envy, but George Clooney is hardly as prolific or as consistent of a filmmaker as almost any other recipient of this award.

Let's examine the evidence, but point out a caveat first.  The American Film Institute, while it doesn't expressly exclude specific people who are important to the craft categories in moviemaking, tends to highlight either acting or directing.  There are exceptions (Williams being the biggest one), and one could argue that someone like Steven Spielberg might have in-part made it based on some of the work that he produced, but by-and-large this is for acting or directing (Spielberg would have won without The Goonies).  It also tends to favor headliners.  Great character actors tend to not win, even ones who ended up being leading players at the peaks of their fame (look at someone like Robert Duvall, who has never picked up this trophy).  The first film that George Clooney got above-the-title billing was From Dusk til Dawn in 1996 and the first movie he received top billing on was The Peacemaker the following year (interestingly enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger got top billing on Batman & Robin despite not playing one of the title characters).  That means that Clooney will have been a headlining movie star for about 22 years when he wins the trophy next year.

There are few actors you could find who have had shorter careers as marquee stars than Clooney in this regard.  For comparison sake, let's look at Diane Keaton, who won this year.  Keaton got star billing for the first time in 1973's Play It Again, Sam, and would get top billing for the first time four years later for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, at which point she'd already been a co-lead for most of that time.  That means that Keaton had 40 years of leading lady moviemaking under-her-belt, and really we should up it to 45 as we're discounting the first two Godfather movies in that equation (Clooney never had such a significant supporting role before he became a leading man).  One could argue that Keaton was more deserving at 57 (which would have been in 2003, during her big comeback year), than Clooney is now.

There's also the question of Clooney's actual filmography.  Since From Dusk til Dawn (not really his breakthrough, which was ER, but that's television), Clooney has made about 25 major movies, including a couple of cameos.  That's not a lot for someone who is being ranked alongside people like John Ford or Lillian Gish, and it's not like all that many of them were that significant.  Really, outside Clooney's most successful artistic period from 2005-2011, where he won four Oscar acting nominations and directed a Best Picture nominee, there's not much to distinguish Clooney's career.  Yes, he's had a few hits in the Ocean's Trilogy and O Brother Where Art Thou, but nothing approaching the likes of someone who has a comparatively thin filmography like George Lucas (whose Star Wars so redefined moviemaking that it's hard to argue with his victory even if it seems to have only been for Star Wars...and even then the AFI made him wait longer than Clooney).  Clooney post-The Descendants has kind of been a bust.  He's produced some decent movies (Argo, August Osage County), and been in one good movie that he had a supporting part (Gravity), but he seems relatively post-peak as an actor, even if he's still very in-demand as a philanthropist and celebrity.

All this wouldn't be a problem if there weren't other people who deserved this honor who haven't won it yet, but unfortunately that's still a very long list.  Sally Field, Faye Dunaway, Francis Ford Coppola, Jessica Lange, Julie Andrews, Julie Christie, Ridley Scott, Robert Redford, Woody Allen, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Gene Hackman, Glenn Close, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Robert Duvall, Anthony Hopkins, Liza Minnelli, Norman Jewison, Vanessa Redgrave, Gena Rowlands, Sissy Spacek, Goldie Hawn, Burt Reynolds, Ellen Burstyn, and Sylvester Stallone are all over seventy and have been working in major movies longer than Clooney.  You can quibble maybe with 1-2 names on this list, and admittedly rumor has it some don't want the honor even though it's been offered to them (Redford, Allen, and Hackman being toward the top of that list), but taken as a collective it's hard to justify Clooney besting all of them.  Which makes his honor feel more like a nod to his celebrity more than anything else, as he's certainly going to get more clicks than any of those people.  That's a pity, because if Clooney could rebound a bit artistically as an actor and/or director, in ten years he may have earned this award.  But for now, it feels like he's winning too early, too soon, and perhaps most unfortunately, without earning the trophy.

My Dozen Favorite Actresses

I am back to writing daily blog articles this week, and as a result of that, I want to do a few GTKY articles in relation to movies, as we're now entering the phase of the year where we weirdly overlap movies/politics.  The Oscars are picking up, the elections are in full-swing, and so I decided to do a series of three articles (we'll go one today, one Thursday, and one this weekend) where I count down my dozen favorite actresses, actors, and directors, of all-time.

I haven't really done this before, and I was debating whether to rank or whether to go alphabetical, and partially because of a cop-out, but mostly because I think it's darn near impossible to actually rank different actors/styles, I decided to go alphabetical below.  If I get enough comments (or at least a couple), I'll spill the beans about how I would have properly ranked these, but in the meantime, let's start with the ladies as they're always the most interesting.

Honorable Mentions: It has to be said that a lot of women were in contention here.  There are some that just missed (Cate Blanchett ignobly was positioned at thirteenth, with people like Tilda Swinton, Julie Christie, and Myrna Loy were not far behind).  There are a few actresses where I feel like they're poised for greatness, but haven't quite made enough movies yet (Chastain, Viola Davis, Cotillard, Weisz), while others I've always loved but can't quite claim to have seen enough of their filmography to warrant a spot (Stanwyck, Lombard, Hayworth, and Dietrich all spring to mind).  It also has to be said that I could name-check women that should be on this list until the end of time, while the men's list will not remotely approach this adoration.  This is an endlessly fun activity, though, so please berate, agree, and recommend in the comments (along with providing your own list).

Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982)

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Gaslight, Anastasia, The Murder on the Orient Express)
First Impressions: I think my first experience with Ingrid Bergman was actually Casablanca-I want to say I saw it right at the same time as Anastasia so theoretically I could have seen her there first, but my gut is telling me Casablanca was the culprit.
Why the Love: I don't think that you can pinpoint exactly one reason to love Ingrid Bergman, for many years my easy answer for favorite actress (I'm not ranking here, but she'd be still be Top 5).  She has this instinctive, natural introverted glamour in every movie she makes.  Even when she's being funny or joyous, there's something mesmerizing in the way that she does it.  There are few actresses in the history of cinema I've felt more connected to the language of their eyes and faces-she is the sort of performer who would have been famous in every decade of the movies.
My Favorite Performance: Casablanca, most assuredly.  I know she didn't like that everyone pointed this movie out, but she's my favorite performance in my favorite movie, and the way she just effortlessly projects being the object of Rick's affection, and yet still striking in her own ways as a woman complicated by loving two men at once: it's to-die-for.
Missing Piece: Almost certainly the performance of hers I'm missing and most excited to see is Autumn Sonata.  I love both Bergmans, and so the idea of the two of them together is thrilling.

Juliette Binoche (1964-Present)

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (The English Patient)
First Impressions: I think the first film I ever saw of hers was Chocolat, a film I remember quite enjoying when it came out even if it was a bit frothy (it's the sort of pleasant comedy that I tend to have a lovely time with even if it's not remotely Oscar-worthy), though I will save both my brother and I the embarrassment of sharing my initial thoughts of Binoche, particularly when she shockingly bested Lauren Bacall at the Oscars.
Why the Love: Binoche is truly a superb actress, one who finds the center in pretty much every characterization she's in, and who has been, in her forties and now fifties, continually growing.  Her early work as a young, earthy beauty has transformed into a mature, confident performer, one who continually amazes even decades after she first got onto our screens.  Honestly-Binoche is one of those rare performers I'll not only see all of their movies, I'd be willing to bet I'd like the movie that holds them.
My Favorite Performance: Surely it'd have to be (my favorite?-it competes with Casablanca on a steady basis) movie The English Patient.  The way she handles line readings as the optimistic, but consistently abandoned Hana is a work of pure poetry.
Missing Piece: I've never seen Blue.  I know, I have no excuse on that one.

Joan Crawford (1904-1977)

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Mildred Pierce)
First Impressions: Like most people younger than forty, my first impression of Crawford was clutching a wire hanger, being impersonated by Faye Dunaway in a camp classic (which I've never seen somehow, but we all know that rodeo even if we haven't caught the picture).
Why the Love: No Golden Age performer has grown more on me in recent years than Joan Crawford.  Seriously, for all of the Mommie Dearest jokes or the cracks about her shoulder pads, Crawford was a consummate movie star, and a damned fine screen presence.  Honestly-I have yet to find a film of hers where I didn't enjoy her, even if occasionally the films surrounding her border on the absurd (or more accurately in her grand guignol period, the camp).  Crawford is intensely watchable, perhaps even more so than her arch-rival (who, thanks to a fortuitous use of the alphabet, she sits right atop right now), and always holds the attention of every movie she's starring in (Joan Crawford doesn't do bit parts).
My Favorite Performance: I mean, I truly hope one of these isn't a horrible cliche, but I'm going to go with Mildred Pierce, where she's absolutely aces as a melodramatic mother (with a daughter from hell).  She won the Oscar in a bit of a surprise that year, but her victory was well-earned.  Truly, though-Joan Crawford's greatest role was pretty much always Joan Crawford.
Missing Piece: I haven't seen either of her other two Oscar-nominated turns in Possessed and Sudden Fear, so I'll go with those-arguably the two Best Actress nominations I'm most looking forward to from the late 40's/early 50's.

Bette Davis (1908-1989)

Oscar History: 10 nominations/2 wins (Dangerous and Jezebel)
First Impressions: The Kim Carnes song aside, my first introduction to Bette Davis was weirdly Jezebel.  When I first got into the Oscars I started randomly watching any film on AMC that had ever won a Big 6 trophy, which is why a twelve-year-old boy was watching a then sixty-year-old movie about a woman desperately (but unfortunately) in love with Hank Fonda.
Why the Love: Because Bette Davis doesn't take shit from anybody, and you have to admire someone like that.  You'll notice by now if you're peaking ahead that I didn't put her longtime Oscar rival Kate Hepburn on this list.  At one point she absolutely would have made this and if I expanded to 20 I probably would have found room, but Hepburn I almost never could get into when she did drama (1968 set aside).  Davis, on the other hand, was worth it whenever she was delivering a laugh or a dramatic line, and perhaps was best when she was trying to do both (Baby Jane Hudson, anyone?).  She was a consummate actress, even if the public toward the end of her career demanded a movie star, and one that echoed her tough broad persona even more than in her heyday.  Davis always delivered.
My Favorite Performance: I looked ahead-I don't always go with the cliche, so I'm here going to say the role that she was born to play (all do respect to the talented Claudette Colbert, but it wouldn't have been the same had the producers' first choice been available): Margo Channing.  Her throw-a-mink-like-a-wet-umbrella attitude was classic, and she sells all of the lines of (arguably) the best screenplay ever written with All About Eve.  A close runner-up is her desperate romantic nature in Now, Voyager, which is a much better movie than you remember it.
Missing Piece: I'm going to go with Dark Victory, the film she ended up in instead of Gone with the Wind, and the movie that many people suspect she would have clinched her third Oscar for had it not been for Vivien Leigh.

Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993)

Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Roman Holiday)
First Impressions: Like so many, I remember loving My Fair Lady growing up, thinking it absolutely loverly.
Why the Love: Audrey Hepburn has also been someone that I've said for years is "my favorite actress" and depending on the day probably still is.  There's a quiet grace in her work, something that's hard to pinpoint but evident when she's at the top of her game.  It's not just the waif-like beauty, but also the way she presents her heartbroken self as genuine, and genuinely lonely.  I see something like Sabrina, and am flabbergasted at how good her performance is in an era where she was more likely to go into histrionics over a lost man than simply sustain a subdued facial expression.  Hepburn largely disappeared from the cinema after she set it afire for most of the 1950's and 60's, but she left a wonderful footprint.
My Favorite Performance: Sabrina Fairchild is actually pretty close to the top-it's one of those romantic comedies that works better if you slightly change the ending (Sabrina never really needed any man-just her Paris cookbooks), but I can't deny the impact that Holly Golightly has had on me.  I spent years after Breakfast at Tiffany's emulating her deep, distant love for Fred, to the point where I once walked in front of Tiffany's with a croissant, playing "Moon River" on my iPod.  Yes, that happened-the movies are my life.
Missing Piece: Arguably Hepburn is the actress I do the best on in terms of seeing all of the important works.  I am missing her Oscar-nominated turn in The Nun's Story, and while I haven't heard great things (it seems to be the weakest link in her AMPAS quintet), it's the only major film she ever made I haven't caught, so I'll go with that one.

Diane Keaton (1946-Present)

Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Annie Hall, though Keaton better step it up if she's going to continue her strange only-once-a-decade Oscar streak).
First Impressions: One of my mom's all-time favorite films is Baby Boom, and we would watch it as a family on a regular basis for many a movie night-I probably still know most of it by heart.
Why the Love: Keaton's the quirky girl you desperately hope to be while forcing yourself to fit into a group of people you don't really like.  The actress is strangely good in drama (oddly enough, despite her multiple successful forays into comedy, she's actually best as a dramatic actress), imbuing her characters with a wide-eyed forcefulness, even if they don't match her actions.  She's spent years creating a honed, eccentric (and besuited) persona offscreen, but my love for her comes in the quieter, honest moments she brings to the big-screen.
My Favorite Performance: I told you I'd go off the beaten path here.  I love Annie Hall, don't get me wrong, and what a wonderful thing that she got her Oscar for Woody's magnum opus, but for me this has to go to Reds, one of the most romantic films ever made and almost certainly Warren's magnum opus as well.  I might even put Annie in third, behind Louise and then Kay Corleone, in the second installment of the series (I may or may not have done the "it was an abortion" speech every single time my brother and I were washing dishes as a kid).
Missing Piece: Here's a strange case where I've seen most of her work, including a lot of her stuff with Allen.  Perhaps Looking for Mr. Goodbar, the film that many people thought helped carry her Academy Award across the finish line?

Nicole Kidman (1967-Present)

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (The Hours)
First Impressions: I believe that Nicole Kidman was one of the first actresses to ever really underscore what a sexy woman was for me, which is a weird thing for a very gay man to proclaim, but her work in Batman Forever was so glamorous, and I maintain to this day that I'd probably be into blonds if I were straight (fortunately for me I'm gay...and into redheads).
Why the Love: Kidman, after a decade of being married to Tom Cruise with only a spattering of success, managed to have one of the great second acts of movie history, pushing out a series of fine, pitch-perfect performances for auteur after auteur.  She is courageous as a performer (witness The Paperboy), gamely finding herself in pretty much every vision that is put in front of her, and is occasionally lightning in a bottle when she finds the right match for her icy, grand talents.
My Favorite Performance: Oh Satine, you are breathtaking, but I will always be looking to Virginia Woolf, waiting for the train.  I am that person who actually thought she deserved the Oscar for The Hours even in hindsight.
Missing Piece: The 2004 duo of Birth/Dogville stick out in my mind, or perhaps even the dark comedy of To Die For.  Either way, Kidman is that rare recent actress where I actually have some room to grow.

Vivien Leigh (1913-1967)

Oscar History: 2 nominations/ 2 wins (Gone with the Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire)
First Impressions: Strangely, it's not Scarlett, but Blanche that first made my acquaintance.  I was eleven-years-old, and I credit that screening of A Streetcar Named Desire as the exact moment that I permanently became a fan of the movies, someone who didn't just go casually but was willing to devote their life to them.
Why the Love: Because Vivien Leigh is perfect, and not just because she gave two of the world's most iconic performances.  Leigh is glamorous steel, a weird conglomerate of pixieish beauty and a dangerous, ardent performer's heart.  She also may be one of the cinema's most underrated performers.  I mean, look at some of the work that she's done-even if she just had her two most iconic creations, that'd probably be enough to be on this list, but she also found time to make a slew of romantic heroines in the 1940's that were continually excellent.
My Favorite Performance: Leigh's made some of my all-time favorite films, and while Gone with the Wind is a titanic achievement (word-choice quite purposeful) and Waterloo Bridge is one of the most romantic movies I've ever seen, nothing compares to Streetcar.  I've seen thousands of movies, tens of thousands of performances, and this is my favorite in all of film history.
Missing Piece: I'd probably go with The Deep Blue Sea, a film that I absolutely loved Rachel Weisz in a few years (I would have given her the Oscar), as I think the tortured soul having a love affair is a part Leigh was born to play.

Shirley MacLaine (1934-Present)

Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Terms of Endearment...though it's worth noting one of her nominations was for directing the documentary The Other Half of the Sky)
First Impressions: My first impression of Shirley was actually not a film, and not even her belief in channelling or UFO's, but instead an ardent need to see the film Guarding Tess, which looked delightful when I would constantly pass it at our local video rental store, but I never was able to rent it (it had to have been rated PG-13, which was forbidden in my household).  Either way, I loved the sly grin she had on all of those posters and was convinced it could be a favorite movie.
Why the Love: MacLaine is one of those performers I've come to more passionately as the years have gone by, an actress that is so consistent it's hard to remember she's also consistently refreshing.  I honestly can't think of a Shirley MacLaine performance I didn't love.  I've seen other actresses on this list upstaged, but I genuinely can't remember a single MacLaine film where she isn't the best part about it-it's the fact that she's always a trouper.  While other actors of her generation slid into the laziness of playing themselves over-and-over-and-over again (cough, Al Pacino), Shirley continues to make interesting films whenever she gets the chance well into her eighties.  Man do I wish filmmakers would take advantage of her still solid timing and ability.  We deserve a Shirley moment for the ages just one more time.
My Favorite Performance: Aurora Greenway-it's that perfect combination of terrific movie, marvelous movie star turn, and damn fine acting.  It was probably a victory for MacLaine at the Oscars because "how the hell hasn't she won yet?" but it's likely she would have won anyway even if she was hunting for a second trophy as she was just that good.
Missing Piece: I'll go with The Turning Point, a film that stars not only Shirley, but actually gets her to act opposite an actress I haven't seen her with (Anne Bancroft).  Shirley's always at her best starring opposite other women (Debra Winger, Meryl Streep), so this feels like an easy answer to investigate.

Maggie Smith (1934-Present)

Oscar History: 6 nominations/2 wins (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and California Suite)
First Impressions: Maggie Smith is that rare performer who, especially for Millennials, is littered with performances you remember from childhood.  My first impression of her was actually in Hook, though, as an aging Wendy.  I thought she was wonderfully creepy and old in the role (which is saying something for the makeup department, who made her look older than she was), and it was kind of a love affair whenever I found her later on in any picture.
Why the Love: Smith's voice is where it starts.  That crisp, precise accent that only she can achieve (though countless comedians are constantly trying to parody), is so marvelous and exact.  But she's an actress that can rely on more than just her dialect.  She's someone with great feeling.  It might shock a generation of people who watched her do her "Maggie Smith schtick" in things like Downton, Harry Potter, and Best Exotic Marigold, all prim and upper-crust, to know that she once-upon-a-time was an actress that was quite sexual in her role choices and would fling herself into affairs in my favorite of her works.  Smith is the sort of presence, even if the film's not on the top of its game, I'm always more than joyful to see show up on an opening credits line.
My Favorite Performance: Undoubtedly this would have to be The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, one of those rare Best Actress wins that not only totally deserved the win, but was the exact right moment for an actor who was actually a bit of a surprise victory at the time.  It's a towering achievement if you've never had the chance to catch it, and one of my personal favorite movies.
Missing Piece: I somehow have never seen the other film that won her an Oscar in California Suite, which I'll obviously hit sometime in the OVP, but impatience may get the better of me one day and I'll move it to the top of the queue.

Meryl Streep (1949-Present)

Oscar History: 19 nominations/3 wins (Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice, The Iron Lady)
First Impressions: I genuinely don't know what the first film starring Meryl Streep I ever saw was-I want to say it might have been Kramer or The Deer Hunter-that sounds about right as I would have seen both of those films when I was first starting to watch Oscar-winning pictures.  My first impression of her, though, was that she was an actress that was treated as something of a deity, as I remember reading an Entertainment Weekly Oscar issue in 1995 where they talked about how she could upset Susan Sarandon's expected victory as she had legions of fans at the Oscars who always voted for her (they may have been onto something there).
Why the Love: I mean, at this point naming Streep as one of your favorite actresses is like naming Michael Jordan one of your favorite basketball players-everyone has to do it.  But the point of the matter is that Streep deserves her spot in the pantheon.  Some of her work, especially when she's at the top of her game, is unmatched.  She can develop a naturalism onscreen like few others can achieve, and she's that rare multi-talented performer where it's almost hard to tell what she's best at-she can make you laugh, make you cry, she can sing like an angel and forebode with just the slightest of inflections.  All-in-all, Streep is worthy of all the hype.  After all, she can live up to it.
My Favorite Performance: For years I would have said The French Lieutenant's Woman, but I've actually had something of a resurgence this year of Streep roles (I've seen three of her Oscar-nominated turns for the first time...four if we think Florence Foster Jenkins gets there, which is looking increasingly plausible), and one of them has taken the top of the heap: Silkwood, where Streep casts aside pretty much any pretenses we have about her and just, scene-after-scene, is marvelous and exact and nails it.  A brilliant piece of work.
Missing Piece: Like I said, I'm working my way through all of Streep's Oscar-nominated turns quickly and swiftly, but I still have two left: A Cry in the Dark and One True Thing.  So I'll go with those two, but the Streep filmography gaps are closing quickly.

Kate Winslet (1975-Present)

Oscar History: 7 nominations/1 win (The Reader)
First Impressions: I actually most remember my mom talking about how much she liked her.  The 1995 Oscars were the first Academy Awards I really got into (it helped that there were several films like Apollo 13, Batman Forever, and Babe that I had actually seen which were up for a number of awards), and I recall my mom looking at the Supporting Actress lineup and proclaiming Kate Winslet the one that should have won.  As my mom dictated a lot of the movies I could see, that instantly added a huge weight in wanting to see Winslet in more films.
Why the Love: Winslet is the youngest actress on this list by nearly a decade, and so I teetered whether to include her or thinking perhaps she was still too new (and hadn't yet entered the treacherous-for-actresses period of her 40's).  Yet I can't deny the love is there, and pretty much always there.  I've seen most of Winslet's filmography, and she's one of the few women on this list I can genuinely claim I've seen every one of their Oscar-cited turns.  She's a vision, consistently, onscreen-someone who is rarely judgmental of her characters, which gives imperfect creations like Rose or Marianne or Hanna so much more weight as she portrays them on the big screen.
My Favorite Performance: I'm torn.  I think arguably her best acting role ever was Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a truly wonderful and special movie, one that will probably never be duplicated (it feels like the kind of film you only pull off once in a career), but the other half of me is screaming "TITANIC!" at the top of my lungs.  As she's the last actress listed here, I'll just say both and cheat and bravo for getting through one of my lengthier blog posts.
Missing Piece: Like I said, Winslet's a rare performer I've actually seen most of her major movies.  I'll go with her big break, though, which I haven't caught yet which is Heavenly Creatures.

There you have it-my twelve favorite actresses!  Like I said, please take some time to visit the comments section, as I'm positive you have your own list of favorite actresses, or thoughts on mine!  There's a plethora of comments directions to take, so I encourage you to do so!

Finding Dory (2016)

Film: Finding Dory (2016)
Stars: Ellen Degeneres, Albert Brooks, Hayden Rolence, Ed O'Neill, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell
Director: Andrew Stanton
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

When I was growing up, we had things called Direct-to-Video movies, something that seems to kind of be a thing still from what I can tell, but nowhere near the level that it was then in terms of hype.  I distinctly remember, for example, when Return of Jafar came out and having a great amount of fanfare over the prospect of seeing more of the world of Aladdin, only to be severely disappointed that the movie, well, wasn't as good as the first one (I was a very discerning ten-year-old and upon researching this article prior to writing it, I find out critics by-and-large agreed with me).  This started an avalanche of sequels that I wasn't necessarily allowed to watch all of the time (we were not rich, so we only got to buy the films we had actually seen in theaters as a rule), but would catch on the Disney Channel as I got older.  As a whole, these movies were inferior to their previous, theatrical incarnations, the sort of easily dismissed trifles that come along when you have a potential $1 billion franchise on your hand (which seems to be par-for-the-course with the King Midas's of movies, Disney).  However, they didn't really diminish the original pictures as they were easily avoided if you didn't go to that section of your Wal-Mart.

Unfortunately in recent years Pixar hasn't really gotten the memo that their sequels aren't living up to the originals, and that perhaps a direct-to-video situation would be better for all involved.  Likely buoyed by the absolute wonder of the Toy Story films (all of which were sublime), they have instead started popping out sequels that are, well, subpar.  From the critically-lambasted Cars 2 to to the underwhelming Monsters University, the movies of the studio have becoming kind of junk lately, and have vastly tarnished the brand's name in hopes of cashing in on major profits.  This seems to be something that will continue, with at least two Pixar films I point blank refuse to see (Cars 3, because ugh, and Toy Story 4 because apparently it's worth ruining the beautiful bittersweet ending of that third film with an easy cash grab).

(Spoilers Ahead) Which all brings us to Finding Dory, a sequel to a film that didn't need one but based on the ubiquity of Ellen Degeneres and her legion of fans, was inevitable.  Finding Nemo, the original film, is one of my favorite Pixar entries.  It lacks the inventiveness of Toy Story and perhaps the cerebral high-point of WALL-E, but it is complete fun from start to finish and gives Degeneres a truly marvelous, iconic role as Dory, a fish with short-term memory issues.  Absolutely a treat, and one that only the most curmudgeonly of fans could besmirch.

But like I said, the film didn't need a sequel, and the world that it created didn't really need expansion.  After all, we already saw all of these wonderful side characters and it was hard to imagine them finding a more inventive way to add to this universe, so a sequel felt like it was dangerous territory, something that I realized about twenty minutes into the movie when the picture started to continually retread the entire plot-line from the original.  What made the Toy Story films so fantastic was that they felt like they were a part of a larger journey, a journey of a side character named Andy who is growing up while his toys, who are forever stagnant, have to realize that they will be forced to become older or move on as the film progresses.  This is not the case, however, for Dory, as the film instead just decides to go with an origin story, and one that is easily predictable from the onset of the film, and then has another chase-after-someone-captured-by-humans situation.  I mean-come on here-this is everything about Finding Nemo without some of the same excellent side characters we got from the original.

After all, there's no terrific "Sharks Anonymous" or even jumping through the jellies here.  Instead we're treated to a series of side characters that, while rich in their universe-building (Pixar still does that better than anyone, and the actual set direction here is on the better side for a Pixar film) feel more marketed as toys to be sold than actual avenues for the film to progress.  None of the new characters, not even an "Ed from The Lion King"-style sea lion is worth gravitating toward, and most of them are retreads of the original (Gill/Hank stick out, but there's no one that feels wholly unique to Dory despite most of the original side characters getting only cameos this time around).  Even the animation doesn't mirror the beauty and splendor we expect from Pixar-only rare moments like the pollution-filled ocean around Dory's parents' longtime home feels like something spectacular onscreen, as otherwise it's just run-of-the-mill and doesn't pop in the way we've come to be enamored with Pixar.

It also is a major problem putting Dory front-and-center, as her character suffers as a result.  Degeneres' comic timing is still sharp, but here she's not as funny as the same trope of "random flashback/sudden plot advance" is repeated over and over and over again.  The original film had the constant emerging dynamic between Dory and Marlin to rely upon, but here it's less believable that Hank doesn't like Dory or that his urgency isn't as great as a father looking for his son, so the frustrations are less authentic.  Dory the character isn't a well-rounded enough character to be a protagonist, and acts like a one-note side character for too long, eventually wearing out her welcome.

All-in-all, despite occasional laughs and liking some nods to the original film (though the end credits scene would have been cuter if we'd gotten some sort of hint that it was coming earlier in the picture), I was very disappointed in this movie.  If you had a different opinion, please share below in the comments-what did you think about yet another sequel from Pixar?

Mrs. Soffel (1984)

Film: Mrs. Soffel (1984)
Stars: Diane Keaton, Mel Gibson, Matthew Modine, Edward Herrmann
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Oscar History: While it wasn't nominated, Keaton landed a Globe nod for Best Actress in a Drama, so you know it was pretty close.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's hard to remember now (really, really hard), but at one point everyone in America loved Mel Gibson.  Like really and truly loved Mel Gibson, and it wasn't always because he was a major action star whose children always seemed to be getting kidnapped and the government was out to get him while he mooned the British.  No, it was because Mel Gibson was perhaps the prettiest man in the world circa 1984, and was a devastatingly romantic leading man.  The plot and progression of a film like Mrs. Soffel, of which I've always been curious because it was during that period where Diane Keaton was doing almost entirely straight dramas and yet only once got an Oscar nomination while dominating at the Golden Globes post-Reds.  I came away with perhaps a realization as to why they didn't like Keaton at the time, but also as to why it was so disappointing when Mel Gibson turned around and we all realized he was a bigot.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, Diane Keaton plays Kate Soffel, the wife of a Pittsburgh prison warden who has in his jail two wildly celebrated outlaw brothers who have become cause celebre for the women of the town, all of whom seem to be in love with them after seeing their pictures in the paper.  Kate has been very ill for months (perhaps postpartum depression or some bout of mental illness, it's never quite clear what is the problem), but decides to start to read biblical verses to the two men and then slowly falls in love with the older brother Ed (Gibson) and plans a prison break for both brothers where she escapes with them, running out on her husband and four children.  The law catches up with the three of them, with Kate nearly dying in a shootout that takes the lives of Ed and Jack (Modine), and eventually she loses pretty much everything that she once held dear as her warden husband and children turn their backs on Mrs. Soffel when she heads to prison.

The film is dour and dark, and Keaton is oddly out-of-place in my opinion as the aging Mrs. Soffel.  We get some of the casting here, and I wish director Gillian Armstrong had played a little bit more on the way that self-esteem played into this (Keaton is a striking woman, but is less conventionally attractive than Gibson, and that's a part of the dialogue here as it's never completely clear if Ed is using her as a means-to-an-end or if he's actually in love with her until very late in the film), but that doesn't rear its head frequently enough in the movie.  Keaton is a fine dramatic actress, as witnessed by her powerful Louise in Reds, but here I feel like she tries too hard to simply present a dour-and-introverted face without enough outburst of feeling.  It's odd to see Keaton in this sort of environment, quite frankly, in the same way it's bizarre to be reminded of what Meryl Streep was like before Devil Wears Prada made her so much more wink-y in her dramatic work, but I do wish we'd seen some sort of relaxation in the performance, particularly earlier on in the film when she had the upper-hand on Ed.

Gibson is, I'm sorry to admit if you're a hater and I feel like I am at this point, quite good.  He's not a great actor but he's an insanely charming movie star and someone that is intense and expressive, which is what this role calls for; you get the sense that you too would leave your upper-class life and children behind just for a chance to see what he's like when you get rid of the prison bars, and it's hard to blame Diane Keaton (she should have pleaded temporary hormonal insanity-any judge that saw a photo of him would allow it).  Again, here it seems like a female director helped in a way that a male director would have sort of glossed over the situation, as Armstrong makes a point of showing that it was lust, and not just moral fervor or romantic adoration, that got Kate to free Ed.  This, plus the weird sexual power dynamic makes the film more than just a dismissible curiosity, even though the picture feels a bit drab and dusty thirty some years after its release.

There are my thoughts-how about yours?  Anyone a fan of Mrs. Soffel?  What are your thoughts on a pre-drunk driving Mel Gibson?  How about a straight-dramatic Diane Keaton?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Oscar Trivia: The Quest for Six Decades

An Oscar nomination is a truly amazing moment in an actor's career.  For many, it's the moment they have dreamt of all of their lives-the culmination of years of work, determination, and a little bit of luck when just the right fates align and nab them their career high point.

And for most Oscar nominees, that's it.  If I remember my statistics right, it's about 65% of all Oscar nominees for acting will only get that one nomination, that one moment in the sun that will be in the first two lines of their obituary.  And that's great-we'll get to all of you in the OVP (or we've already gotten to you, in which case don't get greedy).

But for other actors, that one Oscar nomination is hardly enough, and they want more.  Some of these actors enjoy quick bursts of nominations like Renee Zellweger or Russell Crowe, but we're going to focus today on people who have managed to sustain decades of Oscar stamina.

It's actually extremely rare to be able to be nominated at least one time in four different decades, and even rarer to pull it off consecutively.  Since we're about to hit the decade's halfway point (can you believe that?!?), this is the perfect time to see who is on-track to continue their streaks and who might be in trouble.

Before we start, let's go through the people who have passed on and are no longer in the running but hit 4 or 5 decades (as the title alludes to, no one has hit six...and yes, this is a trivia article so if I missed an actor, share in the comments below).

Five Decades in a Row: Laurence Olivier (1930's-70's)
Five Decades Non-Consecutively: Katharine Hepburn (1930's-1980's, no 70's), Paul Newman (1950's-00's, no 70's as well)
Four Decades in a Row: Bette Davis (1930's-60's), Jack Lemmon (1950-80's), Geraldine Page (1950's-80's),
Four Decades Non-Consecutively: Mickey Rooney (1930's-70's, no 60's), Peter O'Toole (1960's-00's, no 90's)...both of whom never won competitive Oscars though they both won Honorary ones

Again, it's a short list, and one that has gotten considerably longer as the stars of the 1960's have stuck around further than was typical with stars of yore.  We'll start out with those actors that are still living and have already hit three decades.

Waiting for the Fourth...

Of the thirteen living actors who have been nominated in three separate decades for acting awards (and for the record, the year the film came out is the beginning of the decade-none of this "Google Search Driving Miss Daisy won the 1990 Oscars" crap), some actually have to wait a few more years before they can try again as their third nomination came in the 2010's and they can't get another decade under their belt for a few more years.  Most of these actors did this in the 1990's, 2000's, and 2010's: Brad Pitt, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, and Annette Bening all have nominations in each of the past three decades (it's worth noting that Bening is the only one of these four actors who doesn't have an Oscar, and is one of only two actors who have hit more than three that is still alive without an Oscar-I'm just saying AMPAS, but keep that in mind in a few years when you're handing out Honoraries and Bening is still empty-handed).  The only non-consecutive actor who has scored this decade would be Sally Field, who took a 28-year gap between her second and third nods, and did this oddly with only three nominations (Lincoln, her most recent nod, is her only loss to date).  And though it's hardly worth listing all of the actors who have two decades behind them, at least a trio of theoretical threats this year (Julianne Moore, Hilary Swank, and Marisa Tomei) could potentially join this list.

There are eight other actors, however, who could well reach their fourth decade citation in upcoming years.  Most promising of the bunch would be Robert Duvall, who is actually on most people's projections for a nomination later this year with The Judge (though Duvall has come extremely close to grabbing a nomination before with Get Low in 2010 and came up short so he may miss again).  Duvall is in the majority in not having consecutive decades: he's joined by Jodie Foster (who hasn't been nominated in twenty years), Sissy Spacek (who skipped the 90's), Ellen Burstyn (who also skipped the 90's), and Al Pacino (who skipped the Aughts).  All of these actors work fairly consistently, though Burstyn is more about television these days and Pacino is more about cashing in on his once grand legacy as an actor.  Still, though, if Robert de Niro can randomly get nominated for Silver Linings Playbook, anyone can come out of awards show retirement.

Only three actors are working on the slightly more impressive four consecutive decades: Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, and Holly Hunter.  Freeman and Kingsley work consistently and constantly, and Kingsley in particular is the sort of actor who gets nominated every time there's something prestigious about his work (he also has that feel of an actor who may score one last supporting win to get two trophies).  Hunter has long since been relegated to television (she got her third-in-a-row for a supporting role in Thirteen in something of a comeback, and you only get so many of those).  Still, these are actors to be on the lookout for in coming years to see if they can continue their respective streaks.

Waiting for a Fifth...

Once again, we can start out with five actors who have already scored their 2010's hit and are now just biding their time until they can try again.  Two of these actors have done five decades (shockingly) non-consecutively (which means they very well could have been in the running for six if they'd had a little more luck in a certain year).  Jeff Bridges skipped the 1990's (missing for The Fisher King) and Robert de Niro missed the Aughts (probably getting closest for Meet the Parents...though admittedly not too close).  The other three actors, though, have hit every decade since the 1980's consecutively: Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, and Daniel Day-Lewis (all, oddly enough, nominated in 1989), and have already gotten this decade crossed off.  Day-Lewis has notably won in three of those four decades.

Another twelve actors have scored four decades and are on the search for a fifth.  They range from actors who are constantly churning out films to actors who have largely retired from the cinema but are thankfully still kicking.  Though many of these actors scored their nominations consecutively, only one of the dozen is currently on a streak: that would be Diane Keaton, who has scored a nomination every decade since the 1970's (and only one nomination per decade, it's worth pointing out).  Keaton rarely challenges herself since Something's Gotta Give, but she's the sort of actor who bides her time until something brilliant randomly comes along and everyone remembers how much they love her.

Other working actors that could make it include busy actors such as Jon Voight (who skipped the 1990's despite constantly making movies since his big break in Midnight Cowboy), Shirley MacLaine (who, had she scored for Postcards from the Edge as she was expected to, would be a column down), Vanessa Redgrave (her botched campaigns for Atonement and Coriolanus actually mean that she could well have had the record by now!), Dustin Hoffman (who continues to make enough films often enough that he should be able to pull this off in a surprise supporting role, despite missing the Aughts), and of course Dame Maggie Smith (who skipped the 1990's, but came roaring back in the past ten years as a genuine box office draw and nearly won a citation for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel a couple of years ago).  The only one with a legit shot this year appears to be Smith, who has what could be a sleeper hit later this fall in My Old Lady (in a weak Best Actress year her name could be enough, and she's my dark horse contender for a nomination).

Other actors who are looking for a fifth don't work as often or are notoriously curmudgeonly about working again.  Joanne Woodward (not nominated since 1990, but extending all the way back to the 1950's with her streak, the earliest nomination for a living person in this article) rarely works anymore, and Gene Hackman (who missed for The Royal Tenenbaums due to category confusion, costing him his fifth consecutive citation) is happily retired.  Albert Finney (who missed the 1990's) hates the Oscars and only does bit parts these days, though he's the other actor (aside from Bening) who is living and has hit the 3+ decade counter, so he'd also be a decent contender for an Honorary Award (that he'd never show up for it in a million years).  Warren Beatty keeps claiming that he'll make another movie (that long-rumored Howard Hughes biopic is the stuff of cinematic legend), but I'll believe it when I can hold a ticket for the film (my plan is to see it as a double feature with Flora Plum)-he missed the Aughts but made it back to the 1960's with Bonnie and Clyde.  And finally there is Julie Christie, who has resumed working if not necessarily in major cinematic work.  She skipped the 1980's and bizarrely has only received one nomination in each decade she's been cited in (much like Keaton).

Waiting for a Sixth...

As the stats above corroborate, getting a sixth is damn hard work, as there's a reason no one has done it.  Kate Hepburn probably could have had she done more significant film work in the 1970's, but she spent most of that time on the stage, and she's probably the only one who has come close until now.  Three living actors have pulled off five decades in a row, and one in particular seems determined to break yet another of Hepburn's records (not settling for a tie).

Meryl Streep is the only actor who has managed to pull off a 2010 nomination already and have five in a row.  Streep, it's worth noting, is also the only actor to have more than one nomination in five different decades (Olivier getting Rebecca made a year too late), a record that may stand for infinity (of all of the living actors we've profiled, Robert Duvall is the only other actor who has gotten more than two in each of his eligible decades, and he's twenty years behind Streep and is 83-years-old).  Streep will need to continue her current stamina to hit the goal, but at this rate she could well take it in the 2020's (she'll only be in her seventies).

That is if one of the two other living actors don't go for the title first.  Both have received consecutive nominations since the 1960's, and at least one is still working.  Michael Caine, an actor you don't always think of for such lists, got his first nomination in 1966, then got cited in 1972, 1983, 1986, 1999, and 2002, and despite being 81, continues to work constantly (he'll be in the highly-anticipated Interstellar later this year) and has made no secret about his desire to win a third Oscar for a leading role.  Just one nomination would land him the record, and put Streep in a difficult position-2030 is a long way to go to actually beat this title outright.

The other person is the recently retired Jack Nicholson, who made his last film four years ago and claims he is done with cinema.  I don't want to call Jack a liar, but part of me wonders if his best friend Warren Beatty couldn't talk him out of that self-imposed exile to do a showy supporting role in that long-gestating Hughes biopic (surely Beatty's final film?) and get one last nomination.  Either way, it's hard to deny he's had a spectacular career.

And there you have it folks-a morning's dose of Oscar trivia.  Do you think that Streep, Caine, or Nicholson could take the record?  Who will be the next person to score four or five decades' worth of nominations?  Share in the comments!