Supporting Actress Smackdown 1992

Just look at how perturbed the normally wan Ruth Wilcox has become upon learning that she did not win StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Smackdown for 1992. I totally feel her; though either a Redgrave or a Davis win would easily have ranked among my all-time favorites in the category, I'm especially awestruck by how much Redgrave achieves, implies, and obfuscates in a short run of extremely delicate scenes. She gets how much the audience should and shouldn't know about Ruth, and she's poignant, gorgeous, gratuitous, and a little creepy. All the more remarkable if you know that she was filming in stretches of just a few days apiece while flying back and forth to the Middle East to protest the first Gulf War. One suspects Joan Plowright was not doing the same on days when the Enchanted April call sheet was all Josie or all Miranda.

I had really hoped to participate in this month's Smackdown (as had Nathaniel, apparently), so here's a public apology to Stinky. Admittedly, the recent rules about heart distribution would have felled me. Judy (more here) and Vanessa (more here and here) would both have demanded five from me, and I'm kind of a two-hearter on all of the other three performances, though I haven't seen Damage or April in a while. I started rewatching Damage a while ago as preparation for this exercise, but the lugubrious pacing and direction and all-time-worst use of Juliette Binoche (by Malle, by the stylist, and by Binoche herself) quickly started doing me in.

In terms of my own preferences, according to Oscar years of eligibility, my list would probably go Davis, her castmate Juliette Lewis, Rosie Perez in White Men Can't Jump, Redgrave, and Richardson in The Crying Game, with a possible sub-in of Kaycee Moore in Daughters of the Dust. Pfeiffer's great in Batman Returns, but I remember her as a lead. Plus, there's tons of important work from '92 that I haven't seen or not in a while, so take these suggestions with a half-grain of salt. Except the endorsements of Judy and Vanessa: they're indelible.

They Weren't Cold in Anyone's Shadow

Please accept my apologies, Lulu et al., for not having any of this together in time for the Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon earlier in the month.

Bests of the Bests Keep Getting Better

After telling you yesterday about all the great year-end features happening around the Web, two Near'n'Dears of Nick's Flick Picks came through yesterday with really delicious treats. StinkyLulu hosted the second edition of his grand annual party on behalf of supporting actresses. How I longed (and intended!) to attend. Had I found the time, I was going to ask, why is everyone so mad at Knocked Up for selling out the smart, classy dame to the barely redeemable schlump when Marge Simpson has been consigned to the same fate for more than a decade? In case we didn't notice, Marge is still the best thing going in The Simpsons Movie, and Julie Kavner makes something heroically poignant out of Marge's video-recorded goodbye to Homer, which made me only a little less tempted to scream, "YESSS!! She's finally getting away from him!"

I know we're supposed to love Homer, and yeah, I sorta do, but does he have to be that idiotic and congenitally self-absorbed? Does he have to steamroll his whole town and pull every rug out from under his entire family three or four times in the space of 90 minutes, and still get to star in the heroic finale? Oh, well: at least he keeps setting up Marge/Kavner for her sad, beautiful, bizarrely affecting variations on patience and marital resilience. And yes, the movie is hilarious, if a little standard-issue for the big screen. Lots of the jokes are zesty, but Kavner's voicing of that farewell made for one of the few moments truly worthy of the big screen. Then again, speaking of Supporting Actresses: why is Lisa in so little of this movie? She catalyzes the whole environmental-crisis angle and then gets all but buried? The whole movie's about fathers and sons. It's the There Will Be Blood of Simpsons narratives. No country for female Simpsons. The Emancipation of Bart Simpson from the Imbecile Homer Simpson. Harrumph. Women couldn't get a break in '07. Then again... not a new story.

But try telling that to Marisa Tomei, who this year continues a bright and eclectic career on film in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and on stage in Oh, the Humanity and other exclamations. If two estimable artists like Sidney Lumet and Will Eno don't already constitute an amazing year for an actress, Marisa keeps her game high high high in '08 with Darren Aronofsky and Nick's Flick Picks idol Caryl Churchill. Wanna hear about it? And way, way, way more about from the enchanting and talented Ms. Tomei? Well, fire up the positraction, and speed over to Nathaniel's site for his first-ever podcast, which starts with a generous, revealing, and vivacious interview with Marisa Tomei and ends with Nathaniel, Joe Reid, and I coffee-klatsching over the Screen Actors Guild nominations (well, the film categories). Now, why Nathaniel had to cast a wee pall over this delightful 45 minutes with even a short clip of Helena Bonham Carter "singing" is a little beyond me... but he won those points back a dozen times over by asking Marisa my pre-submitted question about pet indie films from her back catalogue that she wishes had gotten more attention. If you want to know which ones, you gotta listen! And why aren't you already listening, anyway? (Seriously: way to go, Nathaniel!)