This was a strange year for Best Actress, because there was a set lineup for months before the nominations were announced. There was not much room for a nominations upset. This is a love-it or hate-it year, that's the impression I get. I will make new threads for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, going back in time in descending order, once a day.
The nominations in Best Actress for 2006 were: Penelope Cruz in Volver as "Raimunda" Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal as "Barbara Covett" Helen Mirren in The Queen as "HRH Queen Elizabeth II" Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada as "Miranda Priestly" Kate Winslet in Little Children as "Sarah Pierce"
My ranking: 1. Dench - Simply a fireball performance. Until this movie I had always thought that Dench was an elegant, talented yet a little bit dull actress. Watching this I truly realized why she was a Dame. An emotional rollercoaster performance, super creepy but somehow makes you empathize with this monster of a woman.
2. Cruz - There's a graceful, warm presence to this performance that definitely made American critics wake up to Cruz's strengths as an actress. I had a soft spot for her even before she started doing good work in films that American critics noticed, so I was glad to see her get this kind of attention. I didn't think she gave the best performance in the film, though (I give that honor to the haunting Blanca Portillo).
3. Mirren - She gets the mannerisms right but I don't think she truly sells the emotional maelstrom the character is experiencing until the end of the film (where the little girl gives her flowers and her final television address). It isn't as lucid a performance as it probably should have been, in my opinion.
4. Winslet - I find this film to be such a confused jumble of moods and themes that all the actors are sort of lost in the mix. Winslet is always better than the material ("Titanic", "The Holiday") but I find this to be one of her least inspired, and inspiring, performances.
5. Streep - I know that this performance is popular because it "shows humanity in what could have been a farce character", but I think that the film was so unfunny (save for Blunt's scenes) that it really could have benefited from some more broad comedy. There are inspired moments here, but I think she underplayed it far too much and the film really needed some larger-than-life acting for this character. And the last scene in the car with Anne Hathaway seemed like something out of a soap opera to me.
My Personal Ballot: 1. Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal as "Barbara Covett" 2. Shareeka Epps in Half Nelson as "Dre" 3. Penelope Cruz in Volver as "Raimunda" 4. Jennifer Aniston in Friends with Money as "Olivia" 5. Ellen Page in Hard Candy as "Hayley Stark"
"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 enjoyed all of these performances. But, Helen Mirren gave the performance of the decade, and beyond that. She was exceptional and deserved every single accolade she received.
Posts: 13924 | Location: canada | Registered: December 22, 2005
The only person who deserved this as much as Mirren was Cate Blanchett, but since she was fraudulently nominated for supporting actress for Notes on a Scandal and not nominated for the best performance of her career, Little Fish (for which she was also eligible), then
1- Mirren 2- Streep 3- Cruz 4- Dench 5- Winslet
This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,
01. Penélope Cruz, Volver 02. Laura Dern, Inland Empire 03. Maggie Cheung, Clean 04. Julia Jentsch, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days 05. Shareeka Epps, Half Nelson
All of these "who should have won" threads are not necessary or needed in the Oscars forum right now. There is too much going on with the current races and films. Start these topics in the second Oscars forum if you want.
Helen Mirren, but I have to admit that I was a little underwhelmed with her performance, mainly because she won everything except the Nobel Price for it.
#1. Helen Mirren, The Queen -This performance proves that subtlety doesn't mean a performance is lesser than ones filled screaming and crying and having to be told to take it easy. Helen Mirren embodied Queen Elizabeth II and gave one of the best performances of the decade and certainly one of the best in a long time.
#2. Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal -Having just said that Helen Mirren proved subtlety works wonders, we now have Judi Dench, whose performance in "Notes on a Scandal" was mostly the opposite of subtlety and she hits it out of the park. I have often thought which actress deserved this award more but I usually end up giving it to Mirren, who was also in the better movie.
#3. Penelope Cruz, Volver -Before this movie, I think most of us didn't think Penelope Cruz was that great of an actress but seeing her doing a performance in her native language was a revelation in a sense. I think this is part of the reason why her performance is also affective in "Vicky Christina Barcelona" because it is probably 60% in Spanish.
#4. Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada -I thought that Meryl Streep did a great job in many of her scenes but I wasn't exactly blown away by her performance either. I didn't see this movie until after her Oscar nomination and I was a little underwhelmed with her performance and wasn't sure if I would call it Oscar worthy. I don't begrudge her a nomination but she may not make my personal list.
#5. Kate Winslet, Little Children -Kate Winslet deserves an Oscar and she may finally get her due this year, but I didn't think this performance was that special. I thought she was overshadowed by the supporting players (like Jackie Earle Haley and Phyllis Somerville) and that she didn't really get a chance to shine, except for near the end of the movie.
Posts: 1293 | Location: WV | Registered: October 23, 2005
1. Kate Winslet, "Little Children" 2. Helen Mirren, "The Queen" 3. Judi Dench, "Notes on a Scandal" 4. Penelope Cruz, "Volver" 5. Meryl Streep, "The Devil Wears Prada"
A stark comparison to 2005. Best Actress 2006 was a fantastic category, and I remember that these five women were pretty much locked in as the nominees as early as the Golden Globe nominations. (Though puxzkkx rightly cites Jennifer Aniston and the remarkable Ellen Page on his personal list.)
At the time, I was on the Helen Mirren bandwagon, and her Oscar win was extremely well deserved, but I think the Winslet performance in "Little Children" is the one that has stuck with me the most. As for the other three, ranking them seems almost unfair. They're all terrific. One of the best acting lineups in an Oscar category this decade.
"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)
Cruz would've been my winner, it's one of my favourite performances of the decade. She stitched herself up in the character so much, it felt like it was the very role she was born to play.
This really was a uniformly great category though. When you can call Streep and Winslet the weakest of the nominees, as I do, there was something incredibly remarkable about the rest of the company. And with that said, I would've replace those two with Maggie Gyllenhaal in Sherrybaby and bumped up Blanchett from Supporting in Notes on a Scandal. A role that was clearly lead and was only taking up space in Supporting because she was so obviously NOT gonna win there.
It would've been very cool to have seen either Shareeka Epps, Keke Palmer or Ivana Baquero breakthrough. Although it probably would've taken the very hand of god for that to have happened.
------------------------------------- Member on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Posts: 1181 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: May 08, 2003
