Author Topic: Keep these fine performances in mind (esp. Anne Hathaway)  (Read 2684 times)

Offline ethan

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http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-01-19-performances_x.htm

USA Today had one article predicting who will get nominated for acting awards at the Oscar. We have heard many on Heath, Jake and Michelle.

One should not forget the performance from Anne Hathaway. It was great to read that she got acknowledged for her great performance.

"Anne Hathaway as the take-charge Texas gal who marries Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain.
   
"While her co-star Michelle Williams certainly deserves the acclaim she has received, Anne Hathaway's work shouldn't be ignored," Duralde says. "Her final telephone scene with Heath Ledger is quietly shattering. And as a Texas resident, her portrayal of a moneyed society matron gave me shivers of recognition."
Remembering Pierre (chameau) 1960-2015, a "Capricorn bro and crazy Frog Uncle from the North Pole." You are missed

Offline ethan

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Re: Keep these fine performances in mind (esp. Anne Hathaway)
« Reply #1 on: Jan 23, 2006, 10:04 AM »
Keep these fine performances in mind
By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY


To paraphrase Sunset Boulevard 's faded screen queen Norma Desmond, it's the movies that got small this awards season.
Terrence Howard plays DJay, a Memphis pimp trying to establish a career as a musician in Hustle & Flow.       

Most Academy Awards talk has centered on low-budget movies and the performances in them, from Brokeback Mountain to Capote and Walk the Line. As Oscar voters face Saturday's deadline for having nomination ballots in, we asked critics about some relatively unsung but deserving performances that shouldn't be overlooked.

"This is the year Hollywood gave up and just sort of ceded all the award nominations to independent films," says Marshall Fine of the New York Film Critics Circle and film critic for Star magazine. "If you look at the major critics' groups awards, they're all sort of fishing the same waters. It's Capote; Brokeback Mountain; Good Night, and Good Luck; The Squid and the Whale. "The big studios are making movies that will sell on DVD and play on cable, but they're not making movies for the ages."

Oscar nominations are announced Jan. 31, and the winners are announced on March 5. Meanwhile, here are 20 performances that our panel of critics says should not be forgotten.

Best actor

Likely nominees:

• Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
• David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck
• Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
• Russell Crowe, Cinderella Man

But don't forget:

•Terrence Howard for his turn as a pimp with musical aspirations in Hustle & Flow.

"He's been tremendous all year in everything he's done, and he's done it without showboating," says Michael Phillips, film critic for the Chicago Tribune. "Even in a totally formulaic picture like Four Brothers he was great. When he shows up, it becomes a movie." Adds Marshall Fine, film critic for Star magazine: "Certainly, people are recognizing him for Crash, but Hustle & Flow was the performance of the year."

•Romain Duris in The Beat that My Heart Skipped as a thug grappling with his loyalties to his petty criminal father vs. returning to the study of classical piano.

"Duris' fierce, coiled energy, childlike restlessness and intelligent gaze bring (his character) fully to life," says Sheri Linden, critic for the Hollywood Reporter. "It's the finest performance of the year, an exacting character study."

•Anthony Hopkins for his portrayal of an elderly motorcyclist who breaks records in The World's Fastest Indian.

"He shouldn't be overlooked, but I'm afraid he will be because the film came out too late in the year, just for a one-week run, and voters probably haven't had time to catch up with it," says Stephen Farber, critic for Movieline magazine. "It is Hopkins' best performance in years, a masterpiece of understatement, and it's a crime that no one seems to be acknowledging it."

•Tommy Lee Jones as a ranch hand who struggles to fulfill a promise he made to a good friend to bury him in his Mexican hometown in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

"It's really the best performance of his career, and he directed himself in it," says Pete Hammond, film critic for Maxim.
   
•Steve Carell for his part as the sweet, middle-aged man who hasn't had much luck in love in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

"He's really the most interesting comic actor around now," Fine says. "All you have to do is look at that performance, and then look at Jim Carrey in Fun with Dick and Jane and see the difference. Jim Carrey was the comic standard. Then for a while it was Will Ferrell. Steve Carell is carrying the baton now."

Best actress

Likely nominees:

• Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
• Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
• Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents ...
• Charlize Theron, North Country
• Joan Allen, The Upside of Anger

But don't forget:

•Naomi Watts for her sad-eyed actress who falls for a giant ape in King Kong.
   
"Why she has been overlooked in the best-actress category is mystifying," says Jean Oppenheimer, film critic for public radio station KPCC. "She was wonderful. She gave that film heart and soul." Adds Newsday critic Gene Seymour: "She's one of the two or three movie lead actresses who would have no trouble being a superstar in the silent era, with the stuff she does with her face. (Her omission could come down to) a typical kind of academy prejudice against popcorn stuff. But she knocks you out, especially at the end."

•Joan Plowright as a lonely widow who hires a "grandson" to impress her friends in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont.

"She's one of the great actresses on the planet," says Leonard Maltin, film critic for Entertainment Tonight. "It's the kind of part that in lesser hands could be cloying or clichéd, but she never sinks to that level. She's luminescent in this film."

Adds Peter Rainer, critic for The Christian Science Monitor: "She's marvelously subtle, and subtlety is usually overlooked by the academy."

•Vera Farmiga as the drug-addicted mother in Down to the Bone.

"She at first appears to be a character we've seen dozens of times before: a junkie trying to go straight," says Scott Foundas, critic for L.A. Weekly. "But what makes Farmiga's performance so stunning is its aversion to all things melodramatic and grandstanding."

•Juliette Binoche as the mystified wife who, along with her husband, is being terrorized in the French film Cache, and as the troubled wife and mother searching for beauty and spirituality in Bee Season.

"The usually thankless role of the beleaguered wife was reinvented with invigorating psychological complexity by Juliette Binoche not once but twice in 2005 and in two different languages," says Wade Major, film critic for BoxofficeMagazine.

"Binoche does what few other living actresses can do: convey a wealth of emotions with just a simple look, weaving otherwise innocuous dialogue with carefully chosen silences to evoke profound emotion."

•Connie Nielsen as the wife of a soldier thought to be dead in Afghanistan who develops a bond with her husband's brother in Brothers.

"It's one of the most emotionally eloquent performances of the year," says David Ansen, film critic for Newsweek. "It shows how Hollywood has just scratched the surface of her talent."

Best supporting actor

Likely nominees:

• Matt Dillon, Crash
• Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
• George Clooney, Syriana
Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
• Don Cheadle, Crash

But don't forget:

•Frank Langella as CBS chief William Paley in Good Night, and Good Luck.
   
Warner Independent
Langella

"All the glory is going to George Clooney and David Strathairn, but Frank Langella really manages to steal scenes," says Peter Travers, film critic for Rolling Stone. "He could have played him as the standard villain. Instead, he doesn't. There's conscience and intelligence there, along with imperiousness."

•Alexander Siddig for his role as a Middle Eastern prince in the oil industry drama Syriana.

"Siddig is the great discovery of the year," says F.X. Feeney, film critic for L.A. Weekly.

•Joseph Godon-Levitt in Mysterious Skin.

His performance "as a teen hustler whose life has been irrevocably affected by childhood sexual abuse indicates that this young actor's career promises to extend far beyond Third Rock from the Sun," says Alonso Duralde, The Advocate's arts and entertainment editor.

•Richard Jenkins for his role as Charlize Theron's tough-minded father in North Country.

"Jenkins' eloquent performance as Charlize Theron's conflicted father generates a lot of the emotion," Farber says.

•Borje Ahlstedt as a sad son in Ingmar Bergman's Saraband.

"He shows you what it's like to be an aging version of a man who was already broken in his 20s," USA TODAY's Mike Clark says.

Best supporting actress

Likely nominees:

• Amy Adams, Junebug
• Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
• Frances McDormand, North Country
• Catherine Keener, Capote
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain

But don't forget:
   
•Robin Wright Penn as a disillusioned pregnant married woman who encounters an old flame in a supermarket in Nine Lives.

"This is the kind of performance supporting-actor awards were invented to honor," Farber says. "She has just one scene in the movie, but her portrayal of a woman whose life unravels as a result of a chance meeting with an ex-lover is absolutely shattering. She conveys so much non-verbally."

•Hope Davis as Gwyneth Paltrow's controlling sister in Proof or as Nicolas Cage's wife in The Weather Man.

"Every movie should thank its lucky stars when it has Hope Davis in it," Fine says. "She's like Robert Duvall. You just know whatever role she plays she's going to make it as real as she can."

•Rachel McAdams as the critical sister in The Family Stone and as the privileged daughter of a Washington bigwig in Wedding Crashers.

"She's on the fringes of both films but manages to create indelible impressions in characters the screenplays barely filled in," Rolling Stone's Travers says. "She's never the same from character to character. Maybe she's too attractive or too much of a chameleon for Oscar voters to realize that a true star — the kind that acts as well as shines — is in our midst."

•Anne Hathaway as the take-charge Texas gal who marries Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain.
   
"While her co-star Michelle Williams certainly deserves the acclaim she has received, Anne Hathaway's work shouldn't be ignored," Duralde says. "Her final telephone scene with Heath Ledger is quietly shattering. And as a Texas resident, her portrayal of a moneyed society matron gave me shivers of recognition."

•Emily Mortimer as a mother who writes letters pretending to be her deaf son's father in Dear Frankie.

"She's quite wonderful in that role," Maltin says. "She's totally convincing as the mother who has to walk a fine line in raising that little boy. She's a terrific actress; there's never any sense that she's acting. She commits to any character she plays."
Remembering Pierre (chameau) 1960-2015, a "Capricorn bro and crazy Frog Uncle from the North Pole." You are missed

Offline *Froggy*

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Re: Keep these fine performances in mind (esp. Anne Hathaway)
« Reply #2 on: Jan 23, 2006, 01:51 PM »
Anne was great in BBM...and next time I go to the movies I'll pay extra attentions to the girls!
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