I think it would be fun to start a weekly/bi-weekly poll on past Oscar years. Let's start with the Best Supporting Actress category, a popular one.
The nominees for Best Supporting Actress in '07 were: Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There as "Jude" Ruby Dee in American Gangster as "Mama Lucas" Saoirse Ronan in Atonement as "Briony Tallis" Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone as "Helene McCready" Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton as "Karen Crowder"
My ranking is: 1. Swinton - She gives the best performance in her film and in the category, a very subtle way of exposing this woman's breakdown as the only thing she has ever known - her career - begins to slip through her fingers.
2. Ronan - A very smart and complex performance from a young actress. She does a lot with gesture (that walk!) and facial expressions that many other actresses her age don't have the skill or innovation to do.
3. Ryan - A fireball of a performance, she strikes the right balance between hilarious and hateable and she leaves you wanting more.
4. Dee - Brief but very powerful, and despite the length one of the only "fully realized" performances in the film.
-. Blanchett (haven't seen it)
My personal ballot:
1. Amber Tamblyn in Stephanie Daley as "Stephanie Daley" 2. Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton as "Karen Crowder" 3. Leslie Mann in Knocked Up as "Debbie" 4. Saoirse Ronan in Atonement as "Briony Tallis" 5. Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone as "Helene McCready"
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"Notorious was nice, but it’s not in the color purple range" "Angels and Demons may get nominated for cinematography the imagery was profound" "District Nine will definitely win for best foreign film it made money and everyone loved it" ~ 8movies
Posts: 2714 | Location: nz | Registered: January 12, 2009
I'm fine with Swinton winning, but Ryan and Blanchett were better imo. I didn't like Ronan (I thought Romola Garai was much better) and Dee. Their nominations should have gone to Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jennifer Garner.
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I know that I am a huge Tilda Swinton fan boy, but it was this performance in Michael Clayton that made me such a fan of her. She was able to convey so much with her body and she didn't have to talk and we knew that she was having a dilemma. She totally deserved that Oscar and I hope we see her this year as she presents the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
1. Tilda Swinton 2. Cate Blanchett 3. Amy Ryan 4. Saoirse Ronan 5. Ruby Dee
For Your Grammy Consideration: Kristin Chenoweth - in all eligible categories
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Posts: 24734 | Location: North Carolina, USA | Registered: April 11, 2005
urgh, horrible category, but i loved the winner and would've voted for her without giving it a second thought. blanchett was fine, but it's the role that's juicy, not the performance. the other three did absolutely nothing for me and their performances are fillers in such a weak year that was 2007
Swinton's win was definitely a byproduct of being in a Best Picture nominated film. I think Ryan and Blanchett, who were the frontrunners, suffered from having their films not seen.
1. Amy Ryan 2. Cate Blanchett 3. Tilda Swinton 4. Saoirse Ronan 5. Ruby Dee
What I LOVED about the acting winners last year were that they were not only my first choices in each category, but they were the best set of Acting winners in years.
However, in Best Supporting Actress, I wouldn't have objected a win by Amy Ryan or even Saoirse Ronan.
My current ranking would be:
#1. Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton -I remember when Fritz was ranking the winners of Best Supporting Actress and he said (and I am paraphrasing) that Swinton's character of Karen Crowder is not so much a villain you hate, but a villain you pity. I agree with this fully. I think that she made Karen seem very human and you do pity her and every moment of fear or worry or anxiousness that she had to portray were so believable.
#2. Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone -This was my introduction to Amy Ryan (as it may have been for a lot of us). Her character of Helene McCready was powerful and convincing. I watched Amy Ryan create a complex but rather unforgiving character that I really didn't like and ****SPOILER ALERT IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET: At the end, you just want to slap her when she doesn't seem to be changing her lifestyle and therefore could be endangering her child's life yet again". END SPOILER****. It was still a great performance and then seeing Amy Ryan as the complete opposite character of Holly on "The Office", a charming, goofy lovable counterpart for Steve Carell, I became an even bigger fan and it was nice to see her be able to do a character like that.
#3. Saorise Ronan, Atonement -I am not necessarily convinced that Saoirse Ronan was the Best Supporting Actress in her movie (I really enjoyed Romola Garai's performance as the young adult Briony the most), but Saoirse Ronan does steal the beginning of the movie and has a great screen prescence, especially considering she is only 13 (reminiscent of Tatum O'Neal and Anna Paquin). I hope she gets more roles that will showcase her because she shows a lot of promise in this role.
#4. Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There -I think Cate Blanchett is a great actress and it is apparent in movies like "Oscar and Lucinda", "Elizabeth", "The Aviator", "Notes on a Scandal", and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" to name a few, but I thought this was among her weakest. I thought it was too gimmicky and it just seemed to be....there. I know some people really liked it but it just didn't do anything for me.
#5. Ruby Dee, American Gangster -There is no question that Ruby Dee has had her fair share of amazing performances in movies like "A Raisin in the Sun" or "Do the Right Thing" but for her to finally get some recognition for this role is really sad. Her brief performance is nowhere near the caliber of a short performance like Beatrice Straight's in "Network" or, one of my favorites, Cynthia Nixon in "Amadeus". She has that one scene with the infamous slapping of Denzel but even there, she doesn't exactly command the screen except for maybe a few seconds.
None of these knocked me out, but I was happy with Tilda Swinton. That last scene of hers was excellent. Amy Ryan would've been fine with me, too.
Saoirse Ronan was merely capable, Cate Blanchett was more gimmicky than in The Aviator, and if Ruby Dee wasn't Ruby Dee, nobody would have noticed this performance.
Posts: 2803 | Location: New York, New York | Registered: August 08, 2003
#3. Saorise Ronan, Atonement -I am not necessarily convinced that Saoirse Ronan was the Best Supporting Actress in her movie (I really enjoyed Romola Garai's performance as the young adult Briony the most), but Saoirse Ronan does steal the beginning of the movie and has a great screen prescence, especially considering she is only 13 (reminiscent of Tatum O'Neal and Anna Paquin). I hope she gets more roles that will showcase her because she shows a lot of promise in this role.
I think we will see Saoirse Ronan return as a nominee next year for The Lovely Bones.
For Your Grammy Consideration: Kristin Chenoweth - in all eligible categories
That girl(Ronan) annoyed the hell out of me. Such robotic acting and speech..especially when she was questioned in the movie. GARBAGE!! Here are my rankings for that year:
Blanchett Ryan Swinton Dee Ronan
Posts: 6496 | Location: Canada | Registered: December 13, 2007
1. Cate Blanchett - "I'm Not There" 2. Amy Ryan - "Gone Baby Gone" 3. Tilda Swinton - "Michael Clayton" 4. Saorise Ronan - "Atonement" 5. Ruby Dee - "American Gangster"
Blanchett's interpretation of Bob Dylan was the highlight of the problematic film, a revelation, and probably the only performance in this category that would have made my personal top five. The remaining four nominees gave good performances, but I was not strongly passionate about any of them, even Swinton, who is one of my favorite actresses but gave a better performance in 2007 in the little seen "Stephanie Daley," for which she deserved a Best Actress nod.
"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
