Showing posts with label Kate Winslet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kate Winslet. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

SAG Award Winners


The SAG Awards are on of my favorites. Not too many categories, so it's all done in two hours. In Memorium is only actors, so no agents or attorneys in there. Many shout-outs to Ukraine, whose president is a "fellow actor". Just about every acceptance speech was good; had some real teary-eyed gratitude come from Will Smith, the Squid Game crew, the CODA crew, and most moving was Michael Keaton, who lost his nephew to a drug overdose.

MOVIES
Best Cast - CODA
Best Actor - Will Smith, King Richard
Best Actress - Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Best Supporting Actor - Troy Kotsur, CODA
Best Supporting Actress - Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
Best Stunt Ensemble - No Time to Die
TV
Best Cast Drama - Succession
Best Cast Comedy - Ted Lasso
Best Actor Drama - Lee Jung-jae, Squid Game
Best Actress Drama - HoYeon Jung, Squid Game
Best Actor Comedy - Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso
Best Actress Comedy - Jean Smart, Hacks
Best Actor Miniseries - Michael Keaton, Dopesick
Best Actress Miniseries - Kate Winslet, Mare of Easttown
Best Stunt Ensemble - Squid Game

Lifetime Achievement Award - Helen Mirren

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Top 10 Worst Written Female Characters in Film History

This doesn't necessarily mean worst acted. Sofia Coppola was terrible in The Godfather Part III, for example, but had the original actress - Winona Ryder - not dropped out, that part wouldn't seem so bad. Some very good actresses made the list (in fact four of them are Oscar winners), but their characters deserve dubious distinction.

*Dishonorable mentions to half the female parts from the Twilight Saga and any movie that starred Elvis Presley or Freddie Prinze Jr.

*Also, Demi Moore's Hester from THE SCARLET LETTER. Completely changed the ending and therefore the point of the story.

10. Bronte (Andie MacDowell), GREEN CARD - An uptight woman really, really wants her greenhouse. And at the last second, for no reason, she says "I don't care about the greenhouse" because she's fallen for the cave troll played by Gerard Depardieu. Probably the least convincing "okay they really love each other" moment in rom-com history.

9. Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet/Gloria Stuart), TITANIC - Kate's a great actress. She and Leo and most of the rest of the cast really had to work to make James Cameron's one-dimensional characters come to life. Rose is a spoiled rich girl engaged to a cartoon villain, but she falls for the lower-class dude on the ship. All of that's fine. But when the ship starts sinking, does she stay on her lifeboat? No! She gets back on the sinking ship. If she'd stayed in her lifeboat, Jack would've been alone on the driftwood and would have lived! Then eighty-five years later, old Rose reveals to the audience that she had this giant expensive jewel in her possession which could have made her kids' and grandkids' lives easier, but instead she just throws it in the ocean. Boooo!

8. Lucy (Emily Browning), SLEEPING BEAUTY - Nothing much to a character who makes her living by taking knockout drugs and letting creepy rich men do whatever they want to her body while she's out cold.

7. Mrs. Cooper (Mercedes Reuhl), LEADER OF THE BAND - This was a "star" vehicle for Barney Miller's Steve Landesberg, and all there was to Reuhl's character is that she had extreme lust for him the second she laid eyes on him.

6. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), SUPERMAN RETURNS - They destroyed Lois by making her a mopey single mom who acts like a corporate lawyer at work.

5. Jennifer (Camille Keaton), I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE - The ultimate exploitation film (which inexplicably got a remake) about a woman who gets raped by a group of young men, and then raped again, and then again, and then it tries to redeem itself by her getting bloody revenge at the end.

4. Abby (Katherine Heigl), THE UGLY TRUTH - Maybe Heigl thought she was going to get some Apatow karma in this "farce" on romance. In truth, no actress could have made this work, paired opposite a chauvanistic Gerard Butler making her go through a series of humiliating romantic "tests."

3. Amidala/Padme (Natalie Portman), STAR WARS I-III - So let me get this straight. She lives in a society where they elect 14-year-olds to be queen, and those queens have actual power. Ah, but when her term is up, she later gets elected to the more responsible role of senator, but she's too busy going on picnics to fulfill most of her duties, so she lets the single stupidest creature in the galaxy vote on her behalf. Then when she gives birth to her twins, instead of having mama-bear maternal instinct kick in, she dies "of a broken heart."

2. Kate (Eva Longoria), OVER HER DEAD BODY - A woman dies on her wedding day before she can actually exchange vows. She follows her mopey fiance Henry around until he consults a medium named Ashley. Ashley is a fraud, except she can actually see and hear Kate. Ah, but when Ashley starts to fall for Henry, Kate does whatever she can to sabotage it. Like making giant fart noises. She has no curiosity about anything else in the universe or eternity, and no actress on Earth could have saved it.

1. Miranda Hillard (Sally Field), MRS. DOUBTFIRE - This movie needed a situation where a loving father resorts to a drag disguise to be near his kids, but in order to set that up, that had to split up the parents. Robin Williams' Daniel Hillard is obviously a loving father; maybe he could make safer career choices, but his shrewish wife decides she wants a divorce after Daniel throws a party that's too big. She isn't exactly honest in court at the beginning, but then at the end, she lets the judge get everything wrong when he decides Daniel only gets supervised visitation. This movie had its laughs but it was a terrible message to kids. Divorce is really, really easy, and it's all Mom's fault.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Random Movie Stuff - 6/15/12

- Hugh Laurie (House M.D.) has signed on the play the villainous CEO of Omnicorp in Jose Padhila's remake of RoboCop, starring Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Abbie Cornish and Samuel L. Jackson.
- A sequel is in the works for The Woman in Black. During WWII, the old house has been converted into a military mental hospital, and a young nurse new to the place discovers that the patients dying one by one is no accident.
- I'd be surprised if he said yes, but Philip Seymour Hoffman has been offered the role of Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Gamemaster in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson and Liam Hemsworth.
- Filming has begun on Labor Day. No, it's not an ensemble comedy about a bunch of C-listers celebrating a holiday no one cares about. It's from director Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) and it's about an escaped convict (Josh Brolin) who holds a single mother (Kate Winslet) and her 13-year-son hostage in her home over the four-day weekend.
- Production delays have forced the zombie apocalypse movie World War Z to move from its intended December release to June 2013.  It stars Brad Pitt.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Carnage - DVD Review


Starring Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly.
Directed by Roman Polanski.

★★★

I imagine this is a very entertaining play to watch.  It's a variant of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, except both couples have their problems bubbling under the surface that may explode out once the alcohol gets pouring.

Foster and Reilly play one couple, she a liberal-cause writer and he a hardware store owner.  They've invited over another couple, Winslet and Waltz, she an investment broker and he a lawyer, because their boys got in a fight that resulted in one hitting the other in the face with a stick.  At first, the couples engage in the polite niceties of four adults trying to work out a problem, but Foster is the victim's mother and she keeps reaching for an apology that never quite comes.  As the day wears on, the politeness takes an edge, and eventually the happy public faces are stripped away.

It's a dark comedy about eroding manners, and while I liked it, I never forget it was based on a play.  The whole thing takes place in a claustrophobic apartment.  The four actors have a blast in their roles, and while the women having showier scenes, I thought Waltz stole the movie.  His shark-like smile and dark eyes make him predatory.  He'll be nice if he has to, but don't push his buttons.

It has a quick running time, which makes its lack of an ending more jolting.  I enjoyed it, but the studio made a mistake positioning this as a limited-release late-December Oscar-bait movie.  I would have made it a spring or fall release on at least 1000 screens.  As is, when the Oscar nominations didn't materialize, it fizzled out at $2.5 million.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Contagion - DVD Review

★★★

Starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Ehle, John Hawkes, Bryan Cranston, Elliott Gould, Demetri Martin and Sanaa Lathan.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Steven Soderbergh is one of my favorite editors of a director. His stories are very succinct and compact, with nary a wasted scene. This 21st century Andromeda Strain warns us that, yeah, after a few overhyped diseases, there could still be a big one that hits and spreads.

We meet a couple, Mitch and Beth (Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow), but dearie-me, she has a cough. We all know what happens to pretty ladies who cough in movies. Just that quickly, Beth is gone, and Mitch is stunned. "Wait, what happened to her?" Dozens of people who came into contact with Beth drop dead. Mitch is fine.

There's a disease spreading quickly all over the world. Agents from the WHO (Marion Cotillard) and CDC (Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne) try to trace its origins, figure out how it started and how to stop it.

I like the use of several stars to tell the story. By having Paltrow die in the first ten minutes, we know no one is truly safe. This will really make you want to wash your hands when it's over.