I’ve updated the foreign film pages to reflect some of our now known contenders: Iraq (Son of Babylon), The Netherlands (Tirza), Romania (If I Want to Whistle, I’ll Whistle) and Taiwan (Monga) have all announced. South Korea has narrowed their list down to six films, though most suspect it’ll be Lee Chang-Dong’s Poetry in the end. Many countries have yet to announce but there’s still time. We generally don’t know the full list until sometime in October. And some of the submissions won’t have even opened in their home countries yet. (Foreign language submissions have to have been released in their home countries between October 1st, 2009 through Sept 30th, 2010 to compete in this category for the 2010 film year.)
Romania: if he wants to whistle, he’ll whistle, okay?
Taiwan: if he wants to shoot, he’ll shoot.
Many countries have yet to announce but there’s still time. We generally don’t know the full list until sometime in October. And some of the submissions won’t have even opened in their home countries yet. (Foreign language submissions have to have been released in their home countries between October 1st, 2009 through Sept 30th, 2010 to be eligible in this category for the 2010 film year.)
So far in the competitive lineups we have two rough sets of twins: two dramas about young male criminals (Taiwan & Romania) and two journey films wherein an older person searches for their adult child with a young child helping them (Iran & The Netherlands). And yes, “Oscar already loves the Iran and Dutch entries sight unseen,” he said sarcastically. This AMPAS branch just digs cross generational journeys. A lot. You know they do.
I wrote about the Taiwanese submission Monga very briefly over at Towleroad earlier this year because of some talk show incident wherein they asked the 20something leads, Mark Zhao and Ethan Ruan, to kiss. I can’t imagine an American talk show asking Young Hollywood co-stars to kiss. Could you imagine the ruckus if the ladies from The View asked the Twilight boys to lip lock in order to get their trailer shown?
To quote Nomi Malone… “different places!”
Here are the popular boys singing “Tonight Tonight” from Monga (with clips from the movie). It appears to be the theme song though Wikipedia states differently saying that this cover of “Making Love Out of Nothing At All,” the Air Supply classic, has that honor. (“!!!” and also “???”)
I’ll update more Oscar pages tomorrow. In the meantime, if you need more Oscar speculation check out All These Wonderful Things’ list of documentary hopefuls. *
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The following article was originally published in January 2007. It’s slightly revised below.
It didn’t take Meryl Streep long. By 1987 at the very latest, just ten years into her career, we knew that she could do everything. We’d already heard the accents, seen the funny, witnessed the sexy, fallen in love, had our hearts broken and heard the magnificent singing voice. If she were less endearing and emotionally attentive as a performer her technical range would be just hateful, a thing to curse as she popped up again and again in films. But this woman has it all. She is, put simply, the most consistent versatile actor in the movies.
So what is there left for Meryl Streep to do? It turns out quite a lot.
The joy of watching her now, thirty plus years into a great filmography, is seeing which actors’ muscles get flexed for each new project and seeing which past performances are its predecessors. There’s also a communal thrill in watching her surprise both herself and us in each performance since there’s nothing left to prove. Can you name another movie star who so regularly seems to be having a grand ole time while they’re acting? Can you name another actor who is so technically accomplished but still regularly manages moments that feel spontaneous onscreen? I can’t.
I’ve seen nearly all of her filmography which could explain why I prefer her comedic work. There’s less of it so you have to hold it closer. Plus the thing I love most dearly about Meryl Streep (her joy in acting) bubbles right to the surface when she’s asked to joke about. The Streep performance I cherish most on a personal level is her work in 1990’s Postcards From The Edge wherein she also joked, sang, and played an entertainer. And all of this, if you’ll excuse the breathless intro, is a very long way of saying that I was thrilled to see her comedic and musical chops get a work out again as “Yolanda Johnson” in A Prairie Home Companion .
Yolanda (Streep) is part of a singing group “The Johnson Girls” that once had more members but now includes just herself and her sister Rhonda (Lily Tomlin). For the first half hour of the film we get to know Yolanda in a series of brief sequences backstage. In the first she enters the theater where A Prairie Home Companion will hold its last broadcast (please note: this is a fictional film about the still running radio program) with her sister and daughter (Lindsay Lohan). She is holding too many things and nattering incessantly mostly to herself but ocassionally to others. Streep gives her character a quick easy laugh and a fluid temperament. As this sister act prepares for the show, Streep fills you in on the rest of Yolanda.
Yolanda’s body language is a little fussy but also slow and open. She’s often got her arms outstretched. She has a welcoming folksy presence but you get the immediate sense of fatigue from both age and a life on the road. There’s also a weird dichotomous specificity of feeling that Yolanda is both a nervous girl and an old woman entirely at ease with her lot in life. Regarding the latter: several verbal remarks indicate otherwise but Streep plays them more like canned instinctual responses; They come from the character’s simple humor and are uttered primarily for her sister Rhonda’s benefit.
It’s Rhonda who harbors more illwill toward their showbiz history. The famous Altman overlapping dialogue aids Lily and Meryl in detailing this sister act. Yolanda and Rhonda have spent their entire lives together and the actresses ably sell this. They’re constantly talking to each other, but it’s a well rehearsed decades-long togetherness: their minds are free to float elsewhere knowing that they’ll always return to one another.
Yolanda’s primary concerns are her death-obsessed daughter (whom she clearly worries about but takes joy in) and Garrison Keillor, the host of the show. You realize through her shift in demeanor with the host that she has either loved or romanced him before the events of the film takes place –Streep shows you this with simple glances even before the dialogue confirms your suspicions. She makes this dead romance her best running gag in the film, mining it for abundant laughs that a lesser actor wouldn’t even know where to find let alone amplify.
By the time Streep hits the stage you’re already completely aware of this woman’s personality and her circumstantial simplicity (this life as a midlevel sister act is the only life she’s ever known.) And, then in her vocal performances onstage she just keeps on deepening those initial impressions while giving a musical performance, full of idiosyncratic feeling and beauty.
As in all the best ensemble pictures, the performances of other actors inform each individual turn as well. In a great moment backstage Yolanda, realizing Rhonda is upset about a story they’ve been retelling, sings an old familiar tune and embraces her sister. When the tune ends, Rhonda tearfully says “singing is the only thing that ever puts me right”. She’s talking about herself but in Meryl’s exuberant, silly, and vocally powerful stage performance that follows, you realize the same is true for her. They’re peas in this showbiz pond. Singing also puts Yolanda right.
In so many melancholy and bittersweet ways Robert Altman’s last film was a farewell. Casting America’s most enduring Great Actress in this role made it sweeter. In the film’s last scene the sisters and friends gab around a table about the departed radio show. Yolanda, giggling and reminiscing, is determined to jumpstart a farewell tour…
I love doing that last show. I just wanna do one last show and then another until I’m in a wheelchair. I just wanna keep doing ‘em.
The Angel of Death (Virginia Madsen) enters this final sequence and smiles benevolently at these principal players corking Yolanda’s infectiously loud joy. You realize immediately that one day all of us will give our last performance. One day all of these actors will be gone, even this beloved goddess of the cinema. Feel free to tear up. It’s a testament to the film that the feeling is still somehow a good one.
Meryl Streep is now in her early sixties. She’s been knocking her performances out of the park for thirty plus years and there’s no reason not to hope for thirty more. She’ll keep giving one last great performance until they put her in a wheelchair. She’s gonna keep giving ‘em.
‘Streep at 60′ Performance Write-Ups: Julia, The Deer Hunter, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Plenty, Death Becomes Her, The River Wild, Music of the Heart and The Devil Wears Prada.
Oscar Nominations Discussed: 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 90, 95, 98, 99, 02 and 06
An Asian remake of the Coen Bros’ debut Blood Simple hit theaters this weekend. It’s called A Woman a Gun and a Noodle Shop. So let’s mark the occasion of their first remake (unless I missed one?) with a look back at the peaks and valleys of the Coen Bros. They’re consistently interesting filmmakers and often inspired (see Robert’s ‘Directors of Decade’ column) but have you seen their whole filmography?
The Big Lebowski (1998) | O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) | The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Intolerable Cruelty (2003) | The Ladykillers (2004) | No Country For Old Men (2007)
Burn After Reading (2008) | A Serious Man (2009) | True Grit (2010)
How many have you seen? How would you rank them? It’s a pretty consistently fascinating filmography, percentage wise. Well done, Joel and Ethan. Do you think Oscar was correct to focus mostly on Fargo for the 90s and No Country for the Aughts? And am I the sole person alive who wishes Holly Hunter were nominated for Best Actress for Raising Arizona in 1987 instead of Broadcast News?
I’m getting more curious about True Grit (2010) as we near its release. That Carter Burwell evening I attended helped stoke my interest and then of course there’s the cast and general quality of their filmography to recommend it, trailer unseen. Perhaps I should read the novel. Have any of you read it? *
Tamil film superstar Rajinikanth’s daughter Soundarya wed Ashwin Kumar (Stanford graduate), who is a Chennai based entrepreneur. The ceremony was performed in a pure Brahman style and saw the gathering of biggies from films, politics and industry of Tamil Nadu. The wedding was attended by high profile guests like Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Telegu star and Praja Rajyam President Cheeranjeevi, Kamal Haasan and actor Surya with wife Jyothika among other big names. The wedding ceremony was in the Rani Meyammai Hall in Chennai. Here is latest Soundarya Rajinikanth Marriage Wedding Photos, soundarya rajinikanth wedding wallpapers, Rajinikanth daughter Soundarya Marriage Images, Soundarya Ashwin Kumar Marriageg Photos, Soundarya Ashwin Kumar Marriageg Pictures, Soundarya Ashwin Kumar Wedding Photos, and Soundarya Ashwin Kumar Wedding Pictures.
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Romania: if he wants to whistle, he’ll whistle, okay?
Taiwan: if he wants to shoot, he’ll shoot.
I wrote about the Taiwanese submission Monga very briefly over at Towleroad earlier this year because of some talk show incident wherein they asked the 20something leads, Mark Zhao and Ethan Ruan, to kiss. I can’t imagine an American talk show asking Young Hollywood co-stars to kiss. Could you imagine the ruckus if the ladies from The View asked the Twilight boys to lip lock in order to get their trailer shown?
It didn’t take Meryl Streep long. By 1987 at the very latest, just ten years into her career, we knew that she could do everything. We’d already heard the accents, seen the funny, witnessed the sexy, fallen in love, had our hearts broken and heard the magnificent singing voice. If she were less endearing and emotionally attentive as a performer her technical range would be just hateful, a thing to curse as she popped up again and again in films. But this woman has it all. She is, put simply, the most consistent versatile actor in the movies.
Yolanda’s body language is a little fussy but also slow and open. She’s often got her arms outstretched. She has a welcoming folksy presence but you get the immediate sense of fatigue from both age and a life on the road. There’s also a weird dichotomous specificity of feeling that Yolanda is both a nervous girl and an old woman entirely at ease with her lot in life. Regarding the latter: several verbal remarks indicate otherwise but Streep plays them more like canned instinctual responses; They come from the character’s simple humor and are uttered primarily for her sister Rhonda’s benefit.
In so many melancholy and bittersweet ways Robert Altman’s last film was a farewell. Casting America’s most enduring Great Actress in this role made it sweeter. In the film’s last scene the sisters and friends gab around a table about the departed radio show. Yolanda, giggling and reminiscing, is determined to jumpstart a farewell tour…
Blood Simple (1984) | Raising Arizona (1987) | Miller’s Crossing (1990)
Barton Fink (1991) | The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) | Fargo (1996)
The Big Lebowski (1998) | O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) |
Intolerable Cruelty (2003) | The Ladykillers (2004) | No Country For Old Men (2007)
Burn After Reading (2008) | A Serious Man (2009) | True Grit (2010)
I’m getting more curious about 
