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January 9, 2002
12 Weeks Away: 1.02.03
13 Weeks Away: 12.26.02
14 Weeks Away: Part 2
14 Weeks Away: Part I
15 Weeks Away: 12.12.02

11 Weeks Away

By this time next week, talent will start arriving in town for the Golden Globes ceremony.  Some will make an appearance at the BFCA dinner first.  Others will do “special” screenings around town, getting in that last non-Globes Oscar push. 

This week… more settling…

I figured that I would take this quiet moment to point towards some of the films and potential nominees who seem to be sliding off the map and deserve better.  Some of them are not my personal favorites.  (Some are.)  But each candidate has either a fading place at the table, left their “reserved” sign in their seat a little too long or needs to jump on the table in order to get some late attention.

REMINDERS

There are performances that are still on many lists, but seem to be fading a bit.  In the best interest of all involved, don’t forget:

Antwone Fisher – Fox Searchlight is fighting for their boy, suddenly selling “Denzel Washington’s Antwone Fisher” this week.  People keep talking snidely about last year being “the Black year’ and about backlash against Denzel Washington for allegedly playing the race card last year.  What they aren’t commenting on is that this film is the rarest of commodities – a black drama that could just as easily be a white drama.  And in the end, everyone in that audience cries just as hard as if it were their own kin.  I’m afraid that Denzel Wahington isn’t bending over deeply enough for awards voters, but we shall see.

Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Find of 2002, Gyllenhaal not only appeared in the breakthrough Secretary, but turns up in the Charlie Kaufman double feature Adaptation and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind as well.  There is something about Gyllenhaal that suggests a woman, even though she is playing young characters.  And that suggests that she is not going to get caught up in the teen hype merry-go-round.  Our only suggestion is that she finds a nice boy to sleep with on screen… in these three films, she bends to an S&M romance, muses for a non-existent screenwriter (finally, a topper to the old “Polish girl who slept with the screenwriter” joke) and indulges in intercourse with Chuck Barris for only, it would appear, an excuse to smoke a cigarette. 

Conrad Hall – No one wants to say it, but Conrad Hall, who did a great job on Road to Perdition, became a mortal lock for an Oscar nomination by passing away.  It will be his tenth.  You didn’t really need to be reminded.  But you can stop whispering now.

Samantha Morton – I would be pushing for serious Oscar consideration for her supporting turn in Minority Report.  It’s a remarkable near-silent performance.  But this slot is for her grand turn in Morvern Callar, a performance that you can’t help but to consider one of the best of the year… if you’ve seen the movie.  It’s getting a lot of critical attention, so I assume that Academy voters are paying some attention. 

Michelle Pfeiffer – I really like White Oleander.  Others did not.  But I defy anyone to take apart Michelle Pfeiffer’s powerful performance as the toughest mother since Joan Crawford.  Some have mentioned that her hair looked too good in jail or something, but that’s really off the point.  Pfeiffer hit it right out of the park in this role, as she usually does when she plays strength instead of weakness, much like the comedian playing drama… she has the chops and rarely gets to play them.  A great performance.

Dennis Quaid – He’s hovering right there at the “almost in/almost out” point for his swaggering male portrayal of closeted fear (and relief) in Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven.  I think it’s his best work since his very underrated turn in Everybody’s All American.  He’ll probably make it in.

Campbell Scott – One of the great performances of this or any year.  It’s almost inconceivable that the Academy could overlook this child of Hollywood… well, of New York.  George C. Scott cut quite a swath across the industry in his time, but he was not the town’s best loved guy.  Scott is also a bit of an anti-industry snob.  But dear God, what an incredible, incredible performance!  Artisan doesn’t always have the easiest time getting nominations.  But this one is right up there with Daniel Day Lewis and Jack Nicholson… right there. 

REVIVALS

These are films or performances that have been in the mix, but seem to be fading a little too fast for comfort.

About A Boy – A really fine film with wonderful performances by Hugh Grant, Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette.  It certainly deserves to be right there in the Best Adapted Screenplay category.  It should not pass without some sort of Academy recognition.

Nicolas Cage in Adaptation – It’s too easy to overlook his performance as Charlie & Donald Kaufman, which he makes look a lot easier than it had to be.  People in this business get dismissive about “stunt” performances.  But this is not one of those.  It is a complex, nuanced, bizarre but oddly restrained piece of work that deserves as much recognition as the (deserved) mortal lock for supporting actor Chris Cooper.

8 Women – I love this movie.  And I completely understand the people who hate it.  But I love it and I hope enough other people love it to get it into the final 5 for Best Foreign Language feature.  Ozun shows a real love of women and the joy of movies.  It’s not nearly the accomplishment of last year’s Amelie, but it is still worthy celebrating.

Tom Hanks in Catch Me If You Can – A fairly “regular” performance, but watching it again recently… Damn! That Tom Hanks is GOOD!  It really isn’t a very special role in the writing.  But Hanks brings so much to this boring, by-the-book guy, the emotional opposite of Christopher Walken’s smirking, suffering, dancing father figure.  Really a great performance. 

Samuel L. Jackson in Changing Lanes – People buzzed about it when it came out last spring, but it has been lost in the shuffle.  This is a great, great performance without the fireworks that we are used to from Jackson.  He does a wonderful job, flying up and down the emotional ladder, struggling to find the moral answer and the answer to his personal needs at the same time. 

Jude Law in Road To Perdition – Law’s turn in this film reminds me of the great Joel Grey performances from over the years.  Much like in A.I., Law nearly dances his way through the role, which is the one element of the picture that delivers the tone that the entire movie should have embraced.  Law plays a man who embraces the dirty side of life/death and he has no compunction with being an instrument of more darkness.  If Tom Hanks’ character had been shaded as mercilessly as Law’s, Road to Perdition would have been the Oscar movie it promised to be.

Minority Report – Besides the “fun” movies (Jaws, Raiders, etc), this will probably be the best-remembered Spielberg film ever.  Spielberg hit the perfect tone of Kubrick’s cold futurism and the Spielberg heart and made a special movie that suffers mostly from being tagged as a Spielberg film.  Time should be very, very kind.  Some have made fun of my contention that Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski should be nominated for their work on this film, even if it is not nominated for Best Picture.  (It would be a pleasant surprise in a year of low-grossing downers.)  But I haven’t seen any better work from a director this year.  Really, not close.  The first scene of Cruise “conducting” the future crime scene should be right up there in the pantheon of great scenes in all movie history.  And all of those people “ooh-ing” and “ahh-ing” over Femme Fatale should be positively wetting themselves over this one.

Emily Mortimer in Lovely & Amazing – A daring, funny, sexy, raw turn.  My guess is that academy voters are going to watch five minutes of their L&A tapes/DVDs and write it off as an Indie Spirit movie.  But if they got to the scene where Mortimer asks a Hollywood star to criticize her body… well, it is memorable for much, much more than her nudity.  (And congrats to her and Alessandro Nivola on their impending nuptials.  I spent 10 minutes with the guy once and I truly believe him to be one of the nicest guys I met all of last year.)

Nowhere in Africa – It’s not a tough movie like the great (stupendous) City of God and it isn’t nouveau-kinky like 8 Women, but it is a solid, more-complex-than-expected tale that will stick with you if you take a look… and a nomination means that many Academy members will take a close look.

Robin Williams in One Hour Photo – It’s hard to be Robin Williams.  To completely misquote Jenny Garp, he is a comedic suspect.  A role like this one in One Hour Photo is not just brilliant, it also has to carry around the baggage of Mork and Patch Adams and that just isn’t right.  This is a remarkably taut, specific, disciplined performance. And Williams’ gifts as a mime allowed him to do so much without words.  Superior work that doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.

RESURECTIONS

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda… these are nominations that no one has ever quite taken seriously, but should have.

Sam Rockwell – No one could have done Chuck Barris better.  No one.  Earlier this year, Jeffrey Wells made a stink over Miramax’s unwillingness to cast Kyle McLachlan as George Reeves.  It was a moral issue, I guess.  But I didn’t see McLachlan, a fine actor, as Reeves personified.  Rockwell was born to play Barris and does it with precision and flexibility.  Honestly (George), I could have seen a little less Rockwell ass.  But this is an amazing performance in a film that didn’t get any traction at all until it was really too late.  I would fight for Clooney to get recognition for his direction of this performance and the film, but that seems truly futile.  Rockwell should get recognition from the American-friendly SAG Awards and an Oscar nomination would be happy news indeed.

Jason Patric in Narc – Playing the straight man to one of the best supporting performances of the year is not easy.  But watch Narc a second time… a third time… and you will find a lot to appreciate in Patric’s performance.  He’s been stripped away of all artifice (except for the terrible facial hair) and still he delivers.  Patric remains one of America’s best “undiscovered” actors.  He could be our homegrown Daniel Day Lewis.

Gollum/Andy Serkis in The Two Towers – New Line has started pushing and they aren’t kidding… and they shouldn’t be.  I don’t know if the Academy is ready to take this leap (SAG, maybe?), but there is no question that Serkis breathes the life into the CG character of Gollum in every way, and deserves to be considered.  BFCA created a Best Digital Character this year and the Academy might have to follow suit in future.

We Were Soldiers – Adapted Screenplay is a brutal category this year, but Randall Wallace did a wonderful job of bringing a very non-PC subject to the screen with style and earnestness combined.  There is no traction out there for this film, but it deserves not to be forgotten as we let 2002 slip into 2003.

Viola Davis in Antwone Fisher – The Great One is one of the undertold stories of 2002.  She is in Solaris and Far From Heaven, in addition to her role in Antwone Fisher.  And what a piece of work that is.  Five minutes and forty seconds… mostly silent…. 12 total words… the impact is overwhelming.  In that small span of time, Davis does what Halle Berry talked about I her Oscar speech last year… she embodies the history and pain of America’s urban underclass.  She is sad and bitter and ambivalent and real and even out-of-context, her humanity brings tears to my eyes.  So far, Viola Davis has been the spice in movies, but I can’t wait to see her get her first full roles, a couple of hours of an extraordinary actress at work.  And she deserves an Oscar for her brief, shining moment here.

The next edition of 15 Weeks to Oscar will appear next Thursday.

EMAIL DAVID POLAND