The Final Conclusion - Best Actress 2007

2007

So the much anticipated ranking is:

5. Ellen Page in Juno
 I don't really know what to make out of Ellen Page's extremely weak performance. Although the character is incredibly annoying and as fake as possible, I really think that it's more due to Diablo Cody's  incompetent screenplay and Jason Reitman's forced direction. Ellen Page's only fault is that she's just not talented enough to make this character realistic and human. So after all, for me this work is nothing more than a failed effort.

4. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Cate Blanchett's second Elizabeth is a real disappointment, but I'm much more forgiving about it than others. Cate is always such a force on screen that it makes up for the flaws of the character a little bit. Although there's no depth or real development in Elizabeth, Cate is able to prevent the movie from being a total disaster and she kept me from turning off the tv set. A flawed performance for sure, but not a real failure.
 

3. Laura Linney in The Savages
Laura Linney gives an extremely relatable, wonderful performance as a person who doesn't seem to be likeable at all at first sight and yet we get close to her and sympathise with her character. She never goes for cheap tricks to portray the neurotic personality of Wendy. She excellently mixes comedy with drama, creating the ideal dramedy performance while seeming effortless all the time (something that one of her fellow nominees didn't really succeed in). 
 

2. Julie Christie in Away from Her
 As Fiona Anderson, Julie Christie gives an amazing, heartbreaking performance that stays with you long after you finished watching the film. She portrays Fiona's pain and suffering with an incredible amount of grace and dignity and that's what makes this movie even more effective and heartwrenching. Although Julie's acting might be too subtle and seem too effortless for some, for me this is a true masterclass in acting, which is easily among the greatest achievements of this fantastic actress.

1. Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose
In what's one of my easiest decisions ever, Marion easily walks away with this year. She is nothing short of amazing in every possible way an actress can be. Her performance has the effect of an earthquake: it makes you go through Édith's journey along with her and get to understand why this woman was such a brilliant artist. It's very unusual, extraordinary and unbelievable work from a truly great actress who gives probably the most  brilliant portrayal of a real life person.

So I can proudly announce

that the winner is...

Marion Cotillard

in 

La vie en rose

Easy win.

Final thoughts: What an unexcting year! Everything went the way I expected and things went pretty predictably. Marion simply killed her competition, Julie was shining, Laura was fine and then there were the two other ladies, far behind. With hindsight, I can't see how Marion could have lost this, she's so damn good here. Congrats to Andre Lepaun, Louis and Nues20 on your predictions! :) You can pick a year, that I'm gonna do some time, hopefully. :)

Omissions: 

• Anamaria Marinca in 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

About the next year: I really needed to go back to my favorite decade and my most special actress for some refreshment. :) I think this is enough clue. :) 


What do you think? Any thoughts on your mind?

Ellen Page in Juno

Ellen Page received her only Oscar nomination so far for playing Juno MacGuff, a really weird pregnant teenager who's giving up her baby for adoption in the Best Picture nominee, Juno. Until the Globes, Ellen Page seemed to be the real dark horse of the race who even had a chance of upsetting Julie Christie on Oscar. However, the Globes turned out to be in favor of the earth-shattering Marion Cotillard and this undoubtedly boosted her chances and jeopardized Ellen's. With hindsight, things turned out much better this way as Page didn't really go on to give better than average performances after her breakthrough in Juno (of course, not everybody has the luck and star power of Jennifer Lawrence, but look how wonderfully Carey Mulligan develops, for instance). 

Ellen Page's nomination can most easily be explained by the insane hype around Juno, which also helped the movie itself receive a really undeserved Best Picture nomination (beating out masterpieces like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days or Gone Baby Gone etc.). With hindsight, all the four nominations seem ridiculous to me. Jason Reitman's direction is nothing to write home about and just don't even get me started on Diablo Cody's  quite simply, terrible screenplay. She has absolutely no idea on how human beings work in real life and what could have been a socially relevant AND extremely humourous movie, turned out to be forced and schmaltzy. Even a high school drama student writes smarter dialogues. Still, I don't blame the Academy for rewarding her with the Oscar. First of all, they must have been taken by the hype (like I was) and they really had no other alternative thanks to the genious "I'm an ex-stripper who wants to make it big in Hollywood" 

campaign. 

However, I must also remember that this review is about the achievements of Ellen Page who plays the title role of Juno. In my humble opinion, Ellen Page is a weak, extremely one-dimensional actress (from what I've seen of course) who always tries to stick to playing her usual weird, but attractive young girl. And no matter how hard she tried, she cannot pull off being a believable femme fatale (like in the otherwise entertaining To Rome with Love) and her lack of true talent becomes painfully obvious when she's among true A-listers (like in Inception). 

Since this very pale actress worked from the incompetent screenplay of Diablo Cody, I expected nothing better than average. However, the result didn't even reach the level of mediocrity and I actually feel like writing a whole list of all the aspects of Ellen's performance that I disliked. She portrays Juno as a real weird girl with a weird family and even weirder observations. There's a scene when Juno talks about her classmates at school and how the cool guys actually go for girls like Juno and somehow the movie Monster came to my mind, when Aileen tells Selby what the guys at the skating rink must go for. From an experienced, 30 + prostitute, it felt authentic, but not from a 16-year-old, not so much. And strangely, these things could have worked if a more talented and humorous actress delivered these with real irony instead of faked and artificial sarcasm. And yes, this actually seemed charming and smart back in 2007 with all the hype around the movie, but with hindsight, I'm amazed that this movie got so far.

In the end, it really is the delivery of Ellen that pisses me off the most (that Mogan Freeman sentence is one of the most annoying ones in movie history). There wasn't a word coming out of her mouth that seemed to come out naturally and genuinely and she says them all in the same way, with the same face and the same tones in her voice. It really gets annoyingly repetitive after a while. And this is where (I think), Jason Reitman came into picture. Obviously, this was a very much directed performance and in my humble opion, Reitman wanted his movie to seem as hip and smart as possible so he forced his actors to talk like nobody in real life does, which wouldn't be a problem if the movie didn't try to also be realistic. This smart ass attitude certainly did wonders with Young Adult, but again, the two stories and main characters are completely different.

These desperate attempts from the filmmakers to make the movie cooler result in the complete lack of development in the characters. I think portraying Juno's attitudes towards pregnancy and motherhood were pivotal to the success of the film and Ellen's performance and yet it almost felt secondary that she was actually pregnant. The terrible, haunting desperation of the girls 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is not what I missed from this movie, it's just some dilemma. Just think about the scene at the abrotion clinic: it was full of great opportunities and yet they were all sacrificed in order to let Ellen Page deliver some cheesy, unbelievable lines. I never actually felt for Juno or cared about her because the movie showed none of her pain or dilemma (she's a PREGNANT TEENAGER, for crying out loud). And since Jennifer Garner was able to pull off the only decent performance of the movie (a really great one, actually), the lack of greatness from Ellen becomes even more apparent and annoying. One honest moment comes finally, when Juno cries in the car, which might seem out of place, but I think it's only because it really stands out of the movie.

The scenes of the childbirth are also surprisingly better than the rest of the film. While I don't know if it was just the emotionality of the situation or something beyond that, I started to feel for the characters (only to instantly leave it behind this when the cheesy ending with the singing came). Even the horrible Michael Cera - Ellen Page couple seemed to be working for a couple of minutes (despite the fact that they annoyed the hell out of me in the rest of the film).

All in all, I don't really know what to make out of Ellen Page's extremely weak performance. Although the character is incredibly annoying and as fake as possible, I really think that it's more due to Diablo Cody's  incompetent screenplay and Jason Reitman's forced direction. Ellen Page's only fault is that she's just not talented enough to make this character realistic and human. So after all, for me this work is nothing more than a failed effort.

What do you think? I'm BACK!!!! :)))) Did you miss me? 

The Next Year

2007

So the nominees were:

• Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age
• Julie Christie in Away from Her
• Marion Cotillard in La vie en rose
• Laura Linney in The Savages
• Ellen Page in Juno

A great-looking year, which I was lucky to follow at the time. Marion was a surprise winner over Julie Christie, let's see if I she'll be a winner here as well or I pick another fantastic lady. :) 

What do you think? Who's your pick? What's your prediction for my ranking? :)

TO ROME WITH LOVE

TO ROME WITH LOVE
Written and Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Penelope Cruz and Woody Allen


Jack: What’s so great about suffering?
Monica: There’s just something attractive about a man who is plagued by the perils of existence.

Woody Allen remains true to form with his latest international comedy TO ROME WITH LOVE. And by that I mean that he has followed up a genuine hit with a complete misfire. This is Allen’s pattern after all. On occasion, he gets it just right and many people thought he did just that with last year’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. The Oscar winner for Original Screenplay is not my favourite Allen film by any means, but it did certainly enchant with its whimsical look at Paris and people from a cross-generational perspective. His latest hopes to achieve that same success in Rome, but it is such a disconnected collage of familiar Allen talking points that I don’t see the masses swooning this time around. And sadly, if history continues to repeat itself, we will be in store for a few more Allen misses before another hit.

I’m not really sure where to begin with TO ROME WITH LOVE. Alec Baldwin plays an architect vacationing in his former stomping grounds and Jesse Eisenberg is, what I interpret as, a younger version of himself. Baldwin revisits his past by observing Eisenberg (the character Allen himself said he would have liked to play, y’know, if he was fifty years younger) as he waffles between passion (Ellen Page) and stability (Greta Gerwig). Alison Pill referees between her new fiancé, Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), and her parents (Judy Davis and Allen, making his first film appearance since SCOOP, another real winner), as Allen tries to make Antonio’s father (famed tenor, Fabio Armiliato) into a famous opera singer by staging him in shows where he sings in a shower. Meanwhile, Penelope Cruz plays a prostitute who is mistaken for the new wife of a young businessman (Alessandro Tiberi). They parade around the city with his family while his actual wife (Alessandra Mastronardi) remains perpetually lost in Rome. And then, as if the rest of it wasn’t absurd enough, Roberto Benigni plays a nobody who suddenly and inexplicably becomes an overnight sensation, his every move, from breakfast to bedtime, becomes public fascination. As individual parts, they are more or less amusing and occasionally very witty, but as a whole, they never cohesively come together to mean anything substantial.

TO ROME WITH LOVE was originally called, “Nero Fiddled”. The name change itself exposes what I believe to be the only major selling point about this movie. Clearly, the hope was that those who fell in love with Allen in Paris would do the same in Rome, which is, of course, just as picturesque. The reality is that there will certainly be more interest in this film as a result, but once those patrons get there, I doubt very much they will feel the warmth and charm they are expecting. Before long, everyone who celebrated Allen last year after years of denouncing him as over, will probably find themselves wondering if his late in life romp through Paris, was just a fluke.