2009 Honorees: Best Supporting Actress

CLAUDIA CELEDÓN for The Maid, who lacks critical distance on the full scale of her privilege, but her inchoate feelings for her maid surpass mere sympathy or cluelessness;

VERA FARMIGA for Up in the Air, because she exudes a palpable shift in thought every three seconds, while still being sexy and sporting, and still keeping mysteries at bay;

MARCIA GAY HARDEN for Whip It, whose sense of family ties, rejection of the unfamiliar, fondness for old-school femininity, and secret rebellious streak all feel so real;

MIMI KENNEDY for In the Loop, because she evokes genuine outrage, avoids the lazy ballbreaker route, and is so sharply comic with relatively few boldfaced character notes; and

MO'NIQUE for Precious, who lacks polish but emits profound commitment, blazing with anger, self-pity, and illness, forcing us to feel the lethal stakes of this story.

Extremely honorable mentions to Rona Lipaz-Michael, who is almost as gripping an observer-reactor to Hiam Abbass in Lemon Tree as Celedón is to Saavedra in The Maid; and to two secret weapons of the Mumblecore-ish set, Alycia Delmore's patient but exasperated girlfriend in Humpday and Katy O'Connor, the spacy, occasionally tearful store clerk in Beeswax, who wears her liberal bleeding heart on her thrift-store sleeve.

Next tier down, though "down" is hardly the right word, were Mariah Carey's weary, candid, but ultimately overchallenged social worker in Precious, Naturi Naughton's commanding Lil' Kim in Notorious, the deftly comic character work of Anna Chlumsky in In the Loop, the chilly, death's door maternity of Edith Scob in Summer Hours, and Hope Olaide Wilson's impressive spin on the stock role of the tough, abandoned older sister marooned on some unlucky relative's front door, this time in Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself.

2009 Honorees: Best Actress

Those of you who have pieced together that my Twitter account is the only reliable place to find me during this very busy summer and fall have already heard me acknowledge that I couldn't well move forward with my usual mid-year progress report of favorites without at least some quick tips of the hat to the cream of last year's movie crop. All of my End-of-Decade hoopla usurped all the time and energy I would have needed to single them out at the proper moment. But, in case you're still wondering where I wound up by year's end, I'm at last coughing up some very quick overviews.

It's cheating a little to start with Best Actress, since it's the one category where you may already know the names of my five champion causes from 2009. But nonetheless, at Twitter length, my late-arriving bouquets belong to...

ABBIE CORNISH for Bright Star, because she found a way to make Fanny potent and smart but not quite prodigious, a bit blunt around the edges but vibrant at her core;

TILLY and MAGGIE HATCHER for Beeswax, because they know every damn thing about these spunky, aching, complex but quotidian women, and they don't need Big Scenes to show it;

CATALINA SAAVEDRA for The Maid, because her ferocious agitation is sympathetic and unnerving, without any overplaying, and she still finds room for surprising vulnerability;

GABOUREY SIDIBE for Precious, because her spirit and voice are on full lockdown, but instead of fancying herself a butterfly, she plays an inchworm, slowly making her way; and

TILDA SWINTON for Julia, because she's a one-woman China syndrome, but she makes you feel the weird, graceless athleticism required to be this drunk, and this crazy.

Extremely honorable mention to Kim Ok-vin in Thirst, who bounded into a vampire-crazed moment in pop culture and acted so bold, bruised, wicked, and wronged that she felt utterly one-of-a-kind.

My next rung of contenders were quiet, tense Arta Dobroshi in Lorna's Silence, loose and insouciant Meryl Streep in It's Complicated, proud but humiliated Hiam Abbass in Lemon Tree, and two indelible teenagers: Ellen Page, who blossoms but not without paying some costs in the delectable Whip It, and the much-maligned but very affecting Kristen Stewart, who conjures a hideous self-contempt and a narcotized boredom in Adventureland while still projecting an attractive, low-frequency charisma that allows the story to work.

The Best Actress Project: 2009

One of these women is not even nominated, but just shut up about it, okay? Another of these women will go home with an Oscar a week from today, on March 7. Theoretically, of course, more than one could be going home with Oscar—and if we miraculously wind up working that '68 groove and are witness to a Best Actress tie, just imagine the kiss that Bullock and Streep will be forced to exchange!

Anyway, amidst a flu, a writing deadline, the final week of an academic quarter, and my harrumphy status as a conscientious objector to this year's Oscars, this is all you're getting from me this week in terms of pre-Oscar coverage... but I tried to make it count! You were all so wonderfully voluble and spirited in your responses to yesterday's profile of the Women of 1944 that I sort of figured, why wait? These are so fun to write up, even when the fields leave a few things to be desired. (Note: Rankings slightly revised since initial posting.)

And speaking of desire: I think I have a strong idea of who will win my poll as the actress who should be copping this year's Academy Award. Still, I hope that as many readers as possible will seek out The Maid and Beeswax, the least-seen movies of those I have included on my personal ballot, despite being two really invigorating slices of funny-serious cinema, both of which give the DIY aesthetic a really great shake. Make sure to let me know, too, what I absolutely need to rent before I seal this year off. The Burning Plain and Lion's Den are already on DVD, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee bows this week, Séraphine drops later in March, and Cloud 9 will be out in April. I'm intrigued by all five, but go ahead, guide my hand.

P.S. While prepping this new addition to the Best Actress section, I noticed that I never added a poll for 2008, and though the currency of the questions has wilted, my interest in your answers has not!

Monday MVP: Gabourey Sidibe

If Gabby Sidibe can immerse herself in the grotty and forlorn world of Precious for three months of filming, and hold up to global press barrages as a first-time actor, and still roll up giggling this infectiously and throwing down this hard on The Ellen Show there is no. reason. I cannot make it through another week of waking up early to go to work. (It helps that my job is neither grotty nor forlorn, but I do wish it involved more dancing.)



Trawling for Ellen clips on YouTube is a personal weakness, but I should tip you off that In Contention was equally seduced. And it would seem that my prophecy just last week about Sidibe's chances for the Oscar and her best means of campaigning for it are sounding less unusual all the time. But remember: she doesn't want to talk about it.

CIFF 09: Precious

(NOTE: Review has been revised and, if you can believe it, expanded.)

Since I've been away for two days from regular, review-based festival coverage—busy, I don't mind saying, submitting a dossier of 400+ pages of new writing and teaching materials to ensure the security of my job for the next three years—I figured I needed to come back full swing to keep you hooked on this CIFF material. So what better time to reveal the one exception I made to my general rule of avoiding the marquee presentations of imminent commercial releases? Even if I'm at least as excited about the possibilities of Antichrist, playing elsewhere in the festival lineup, and of Where the Wild Things Are, which I'm dutifully skipping till the festival is over, there was no way anyone was keeping me away from Precious. At this point the film needs no introduction, though my review merits the forewarning that it's one of my longer pieces. Possible spoilers along the way, unless you've already been inundated with coverage about the film, which has tended to speak pretty liberally about its structure and key scenarios. I like the film but couldn't quite love it; as engrossed as I was, I had qualms about the terms on which my fascination and even my sympathy were being elicited. I'll hope to be hearing from you in the Comments, even after the movie rolls out for its hugely hyped commercial release.

Precious played two dates at the Festival, including the Centerpiece Gala where Lee Daniels and Gabourey Sidibe won awards for artistic achievement. The film opens commercially in the U.S. on Fri, 11/6.

Start the Car, I Know a Whoopee Spot

Where the city's cold, but cinema is hot! With the ticket counters opening and the new website premiering yesterday for the Chicago International Film Festival, we have officially arrived at one of my favorite periods of the year, and certainly the month when I am happiest to be a Chicagoan. Sure, I still dream one day of making it to Toronto, Telluride, or one of the European festivals, but the CIFF is a bonafide cornucopia and deserves much wider recognition than it gets. Then again, part of why its profile remains a little lower than those of some other festivals is that this one isn't a sales market and, despite wonderful Gala Presentations where I've met the likes of Laura Linney in the past, it doesn't host a lot of flashbulby premieres. What CIFF willingly forgoes in global press scoops it gains back tenfold in the privilege it gives to average moviegoers to enjoy the films, afford the tickets, and hobnob much more closely with visiting filmmakers than it's possible to do at a Toronto or a Cannes, with their phalaxes of studio scouts and frenzied, hierarchalized reporters.

This year's special guests will include Career Achievement Award winner Uma Thurman and her most recent director Katherine Dieckmann, Precious helmer and Artistic Achievement Award winner Lee Daniels, the same film's Breakthrough Performance honoree Gabourey Sidibe, plus Willem Dafoe, Lone Scherfig, Martin Landau (proving that the much-hyped but distro-seeking Lovely, Still still exists!), Virginia Madsen and her Emmy-winning mother Elaine, Ben Foster, Oren Moverman, John Woo, and Patrice Chéreau. Cinephiliac celeb-spotters could do a lot worse, and Special Presentations of The Yellow Handkerchief (from the where's-he-been director of My Son, the Fanatic) and of the Tennessee Williams-scripted and Bryce Dallas Howard-starring The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, directed by Safe ensemble member Jodie Markell, are promising guest visits without naming names. (A hint: it's probably not Tennessee Williams.)

Of course, the emphasis remains deservedly on the movies, and I've already bought tickets to a baker's dozen, being as scrupulous as I can to avoid imminent commercial releases, even the one's I'm dying to see. I fully expect to buy plenty more, particularly for movies from Iran, Mexico, Taiwan, the UK, Ireland, Israel, Chile, Syria, Australia, South Korea, France, Switzerland, Italy, the USA, and the Philippines that are unlikely to sell out, even though that Filipino entry, The 'Thank You' Girls (pictured left), is free one night if you show up in drag.

Of course, life always intervenes to dictate that I see slightly less than I intend, and my attendance last year got cut short by my sublime trip to the concurrent London Film Festival. Still, with only two days to enjoy last year's offerings, I filed early, elated reviews of Julia and Ballast, both of which surfaced on my year-end Top Ten list, which is surely the most you can ask of two days at the movies. The year before, I got my first looks at 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Taxi to the Dark Side, Yella, Silent Light, and Flight of the Red Balloon and told you at length everything to love and occasionally not to love about Michael Clayton, Hallam Foe (later released Stateside as Mister Foe), Stuck, Control, the since-unseen Mohsen Makhmalbaf film Scream of the Ants, and the entrancing Argentine dystopian comedy The Aerial/La Antena (pictured left), which scored two citations in my annual awards that year.

I can't say it more clearly: attend this festival, if you're anywhere near the Windy City. Where the Wild Things Are, New York, I Love You, and, God help us, Couples Retreat will all still be waiting for you after the two-week event wraps on October 22. Meanwhile, eye this space for CIFF09 dispatches, starting October 8!