26: Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator


Cate Blanchett gives an incredibly entertaining and also very convincing turn as screen legend Katharine Hepburn.
I mean, yes, of course, you are always aware that you are watching Cate Blanchett pretending to be Katharine Hepburn. But her behavior and her voice come across as so true that you can forget about that and just let Cate Blanchett do her thing!
The first scene with Cate is when we see her playing golf with Howard Hughes. This scene is a clear reference to the golf scene in “Bringing up Baby” and Cate Blanchett uses this scene to show us a Katharine Hepburn as we know her from her movies: talking with her unique voice, always full of energy and telling all we know about her: her political views, her love for the theatre, her way of saying everything that’s on her mind. Cate Blanchett very wisely plays Katharine Hepburn just like a parody from her early movies because that way the audience can accept her in this role: it’s the Kate we all know and love.
After we are used to Cate as Kate, she can go deeper and become more serious. She now shows us another side of Kate that we don’t know: deeply disturbed by the press (as shown in the great scene when she talks to Howard that “we are not like everyone else…we have to be very careful not to let people in or they’ll make us into freaks.”) and a loving woman who is sometimes even unsure of herself.
She gives us a wonderful portrayal of a world-famous woman with a lot of eccentricities and never fails. It’s a very brave performance (just a little different and it could have been a total disaster) and a real show-case for Cate Blanchett.


Best performance of the movie: Leonardo DiCaprio

My own choice for the win that year: Corinna Harfouch, Downfall

25: Renée Zellweger as Ruby Thewes in Cold Mountain


There are not many Oscar winners who are as hated as Renée (not so much here, but on a lot of other Oscar boards…) and, yes, I can understand why people would hate this performance.
It’s total scenery chewing and it’s a performance that you either hate or love.
Well, I’m on the love side. Personally; I always think it’s a difference it you play an over-the-top character or if you play a normal character and then act over-the-top in some scenes. I don’t like the second option but I love the first option when done right (like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard or Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). While Renée may not be on the same level as those two, it’s still a fantastic performance of a big, loud, over-the-top woman who brings new life into Ada’s household, her farm and the movie. Seriously, the whole movie becomes better the moment Renée appears on-screen, saying “Here I am”. It’s a scene-stealing turn that totally deserved the Oscar. It’s totally unique and original.
She brings a lot of humor to her role and I love her from the first moment (“Number one…Number two…number three…). And who can forget the way she treats the rooster or walks over the whole farm telling Ada what to do.
But besides those scene-stealing, funny scenes she also has some wonderful quiet scenes, like when she watches Ada play the piano and feels guilty after selling it or listens to Ada read a book.
I love it how she always plays tough, but shows that her behavior is very often just a mask to hide her true feelings, for example when she tells Ada about her father and pretends not to care about the lack of love she received.
Especially in those scenes with her father she shows Ruby as a loving person, slowly warming up to him. I think that this father-daughter relationship is the most interesting part about the whole movie.
Renée is especially wonderful at the Christmas party, watching Georgia and quietly hiding her joy about Ada’s present. And later she breaks my heart when they are out in the mountains and she finds the fiddle of her father, thinking he is dead. I also like her behavior towards Jude Law when he comes back unexpectedly and seems to destroy Ruby’s plans for the farm.
Yes, I can understand why many people don’t like the performance – but that doesn’t mean that I can’t love it!


Best performance of the movie: Natalie Portman

My own choice for the win that year: Natalie Portman, Cold Mountain

Well said, Fritz. I agree 100%

I completely agree with your analysis of Zellwegger's performance, and I especially agree that Portman's performance was the best in the film! I was sad she didn't receive any recognition for her short time on screen. Hers was the performance that left the strongest impression on me once the film was over.

Well i am said "Pilar" is so behind in your list. That hurts more than the others being so back.
Pilar is a character that for understanding you should know a bit of the situation... and I think she did a really extraordinary job with it.

quote:

Originally posted by JOSE:
Well i am said "Pilar" is so behind in your list. That hurts more than the others being so back.
Pilar is a character that for understanding you should know a bit of the situation... and I think she did a really extraordinary job with it.

Mmh, I think she did an amazing job, too, and I think I wrote how much I admire her performance.
And I don't think that position 29 is a bad position, I think it's a very good one considering I am judging a lot of wonderful performances...
So don't be sad, Jose!

Fscinating Fritz! I've read every single one (as I did with your rank of leading actresses as well)!

Keep them coming!

I'm pretty sure that many of the ones left would match up with my own..

Thanks for the compliments!

I just saw "The Bad and the Beautiful" again a week ago, and I still think Gloria Grahame's performance as Rosemary Bartlow is one of the highlights of a great film. She captures the superficiality of her Southern belle-ness as well as the underlying manipulation and greed her character is meant to represent. "Hannah and Her Sisters," which should have taken the Best Picture Oscar over "Platoon," was a tremendous performance piece, and I am certainly glad it opened so many doors for Barbara Hershey, but Dianne Wiest's neurotic fragility definitely deserved the Oscar win. Hershey deserved it years later, hands down, for "Portrait of a Lady." That's another story, with Binoche at least the second best choice that year (forget about Bacall!).
For the record, Jennifer Hudson's "performance" was based on one song, and she needs to prove herself dramatically again before I can take her seriously. Marisa Tomei, although entertaining in "My Cousin Vinny," hardly reached the emotional depths of Judy Davis ("Husbands and Wives") or Miranda Richardson ("Damage") or the memorable glow and ahead-of-her-time wisdom of Vanessa Redgrave in "Howards End." Hudson and Tomei just shouldn't have been made the cut at all.

24: Celeste Holm as Anne Dettrey in Gentleman's Agreement


Celeste Holm is one of those wonderful, natural actresses who shines in everything she does – a natural talent for comedy and drama and her talents are especially very well placed in the part of Anne Dettrey, a witty New York fashion editor. With her natural charm and her wonderful humorous and serious performance she saves “Gentleman’s Agreement” from becoming a complete bore – the preachy tale and the wooden pair of Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire don’t do anything to make this thing work. Not, it’s Celeste Holm who enters the movie like a fresh breeze of air and saves it from collapsing under its own seriousness.
Celeste Holm has only a few scenes in the movie but her character easily becomes the most interesting of them all. She also benefits from the fact that almost every scene she appears in asks her to be both funny and serious.
When she goes to dinner with Phil, she is charming and entertaining, but when a guy arrives and shows prejudice against Phil, she easily shows a more serious side. Anne is a person without a single trace of prejudice in her and won’t tolerate it from others. I also love the moment when she invites Phil to a party and he asks “Can I bring my girl”. For one second Anne’s face drops and you can see her shock (she was hoping to get Phil herself), but then she composes herself and says with a big smile “Of course”.
At the party, she again has to pretend a lot when Phil asks what Anne thinks about Cathy (his fiancé) and Anne, hiding her disappointment says “She’s lovely.” This line is especially great because you see that Anne is honest to Phil – she does think that Cathy is lovely and Anne is even more sad about that – she can’t hate Cathy for having met Phil first.
Her strongest scene comes at the end when she gives a great monologue against prejudice and tells Phil that Cathy, too, is one of those hypocrites who complains about prejudice but does nothing against it: “They haven’t got the guts to take the step from talking to acting.”
And then she tells Phil: “There’s time. Usually when two people are right for each other they discover it with time. If I had a kid I loved I wanted him to be brought up by people who felt the same way I did about the basic things.”
Phil: “Are you proposing, Anne?”
Anne: “Maybe…Maybe I am.”
It’s very moving scene and as I said, Celeste Holm is an amazing natural talent and everything she does is done with so much grace and charm.
A totally winning actress in a wonderful role.


Best performance of the movie: Celeste Holm

My own choice for the win that year: Celeste Holm

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Fritz,

quote:

Originally posted by CineBear:
I just saw "The Bad and the Beautiful" again a week ago, and I still think Gloria Grahame's performance as Rosemary Bartlow is one of the highlights of a great film. She captures the superficiality of her Southern belle-ness as well as the underlying manipulation and greed her character is meant to represent. "Hannah and Her Sisters," which should have taken the Best Picture Oscar over "Platoon," was a tremendous performance piece, and I am certainly glad it opened so many doors for Barbara Hershey, but Dianne Wiest's neurotic fragility definitely deserved the Oscar win. Hershey deserved it years later, hands down, for "Portrait of a Lady." That's another story, with Binoche at least the second best choice that year (forget about Bacall!).
For the record, Jennifer Hudson's "performance" was based on one song, and she needs to prove herself dramatically again before I can take her seriously. Marisa Tomei, although entertaining in "My Cousin Vinny," hardly reached the emotional depths of Judy Davis ("Husbands and Wives") or Miranda Richardson ("Damage") or the memorable glow and ahead-of-her-time wisdom of Vanessa Redgrave in "Howards End." Hudson and Tomei just shouldn't have been made the cut at all.

I'm glad you liked Gloria Grahame! Everyone has different taste and while I think that she was...nice, I really don't think that she deserved an Oscar for that forgettable part.
Dianne Wiest...I just don't get her...
And Marisa and Jennifer are incredibly entertaining, a criterium that's also important for me.

Thanks for your post, I always like it to hear the opinion of others!

23: Anna Paquin as Flora McGrath in The Piano


Anna Paquin’s upset win was the first time in 30 years that a child took home the Oscar.
And it was a very deserved upset.
Anna plays Flora McGrath, the daughter of mute Ada McGrath who are shipped to New Zealand.
Flora is a very curious character: you never really understand her intentions: she is a liar and even manipulates against her own mother (with tragic consequences) but seems also to be a little, loving child. She tells her mother she won’t tell her new husband “papa” but later she does it. She always talks in a way as if she is talking down to others (telling her mother “We’re not supposed to visit him” as if she was the mother).
It’s an essential supporting performance. She is most of the time in the background, but never slips out of the viewer’s mind and has some very impressive scenes, like when she is telling a lie about her father and of course, when she totally freaks out after her mother was punished by her husband.
It’s a very grim and dark performance for a child and the character always remains a kind of mystery and Anna Paquin is able to get all these aspects perfectly.


Best performance of the movie: Holly Hunter

My own choice for the win that year: Anna Paquin

22: Peggy Ashcroft as Mrs. Moore in A Passage to India


British stage actress took home the Oscar for playing Mrs. Moore, an old, grandmother like but very wise and generous woman who travels to India to visit her son and witnesses prejudices and the negative effects of British superiority.
Like a lot of other British winners in this category (Vanessa Redgrave or Judi Dench) Peggy Ashcroft is able to light up the screen whenever she appears. Her Mrs. Moore is the only voice of sanity in “A Passage to India”; Mrs. Moore is full of tolerance, has no prejudices or whatever and, as she tells other British visitors, likes “to come across some of the Indians socially. As friends.” The character of Mrs. Moore is almost a saint, but Peggy Ashcroft wisely avoids making her saint-like and instead simply turns her into an old and wise woman.
She shines in the scene when she first meets the Indian doctor in a mosque in the middle of the night. He tells her “You have no rights here. You should have taken off your shoes!” and she answers “But I have taken off my shoes. I left them outside.” Dr. Aziz is surprised because most English ladies never take off her shoes, especially when they think no one is there to see. Mrs. Moore simply says “God is here.”
Later, she is a guest at a party where the Indians are again treated like stupid natives by her fellow countrymen. Full of rage, she says to her son “This is one of the most unnatural affairs I have ever attended!”
Her most impressive scenes are when she and Adela visit some caves and Mrs. Moore gets frightened and runs outsight, scared and the echo and the darkness. Later, she tells Adela with a shaking voice “I think like many old people I sometimes think we are merely passing figures in a godless universe.” Yes, Mrs. Moore is also a woman who is afraid that death is no longer something unreal but rather something that becomes more and more likely. We see her looking at a tombstone with a worried look and sometimes we see how she grabs her chest with a look of pain.
Peggy Ashcroft makes Mrs. Moore an absolute loveable person everyone would like to know. When she tells Dr. Aziz “I am your friend”, it’s absolutely real. We also learn a little about her past: her first husband was rather the conventional type while her second husband was “very unconventional…” We see that her second husband was the love of her life, a man open-minded like Mrs. Moore herself.
Despite her supporting status, Peggy Ashcroft makes Mrs. Moore the central character.
It’s a amazing performance that shows that great acting knows no age.


Best performance of the movie: Peggy Ashcroft

My own choice for the win that year: Peggy Ashcroft

21: Mercedes McCambridge as Sadie Burke in All the King's Men


Mercedes McCambridge gives one of the most intense performances I have ever seen in the role of Willie Stark’s secretary. Especially her strong voice makes everything that Sadie does and says totally dominant to everything around here. Mercedes has one of the most strong screen presences ever and she gets everything out of the role and even much more.
Just like Katina Paxinou’s Pilar, Sadie is a strong woman in a world of men, not sexy or attractive but still fascinating. Sadie is a hard-bitten woman who knows how to play the game. She never gets treated like a lady (more than once she is told to “Shut up” or when she asks for a drink, all she hears is “Help yourself”) and Sadie has accepted it, playing with the boys on the same level instead of wanting to be a little wife. She talks always in an amused way about Willie’s wife, probably laughing about her fate as a housewife.
Mercedes McCambridge dominates every scene she is in and steals the show in a totally unique way (“He’s not used to a lot of things, are you, Willie? Are you? Are you? Are you?”).
And it’s no surprise when Willie begins an affair with her, but she soon has to learn that she is not enough for him. Angrily she shouts “I hate all women!” and again she underlines that she feels more comfortable around men. All this leads up to her scene in front of the mirror when she sees the picture of Willie’s newest affair. She compares that image to herself and now she opens up, telling that she had smallpox as a child which “leaves your face hard.” She now shows that she, too, would like to be beautiful and attractive, showing all her lost dreams in her face. But she quickly shows her tough behavior again when Jack slaps her and she just laughs in his face, saying “Well…”, as if he was a little boy.
And her scream at the end alone is worth an Oscar alone.
Outstanding work by an unique actress!


Best performance of the movie: Mercedes McCambridge

My own choice for the win that year: Mercedes McCambridge

20: Mira Sorvino as Linda Ash in Mighty Aphrodite


I’m just a sucker for dumb blondes. Judy Holliday, Jennifer Tilly, Jean Hagen…I just love them and Mira Sorvino is no exception. And as I said before, every actress who has to kiss Woody Allen should get an Oscar!
She plays Linda Ash, a prostitute and porn-actress with a heart of gold. I love it how Mira Sorvino is able to always make Linda like a little child and let her seem innocent even when she is saying “There was this guy f**king me from behind and there were these two huge guys dressed like cops in my mouth at the same time”. And besides that, Mira Sorvino is also absolutely hilarious. She makes me laugh so much the way she always says the most inappropriate things “Isn’t it a ****er?” or “I hate it when a guy comes in, wipes out a big dick and waves it all over the joint”. And how I love it when says “I just got a small part in an Angela Dawnson movie!…I get to do it with her!” Or when she is at the horse race and picks a horse: “Eager Beaver! I once did a film called ‘Beaver Patrol’! There were those drunk girls scouts…” and then says “My screen name is Judy Cum” to which Woody replies “Bad luck there is no horse with that name” and she answers “Oh no, no, no! My attorney friend would get to that! I got exclusive rights to that name!”
I also like it that Mira Sorvino treats the character with respect. The script and Woody’s direction more than once make Linda a complete idiot and there are a lot of jokes at her expense but Mira is able to make Linda so loveable and charming that she survives these attacks. When she says about her family “I’m the only one with any ambition” you somehow don’t laugh about her because you believe her.
Woody also gives her probably the worst joke ever in one of his movies when Linda says that she wants a guy who’s as smart as she is. A totally unnecessary and cheap joke, completely out of place and only there to make Linda seem more stupid. But as I said, Mira is still able to make it all work.
She is also very touching in her more serious scenes, especially when she tells Lenny about her child and she begins to cry, saying “I had a kid, Len. And I gave him up for adoption. It was the sorriest thing I ever did in my entire life.”
And she is also very nice in her scenes with her date when she talks about her dreams (and she is hilarious when one of the first things she says to him is “I bet you’re hung like a horse!”) and later very touching after having been beaten up, trying to act cheerful despite her tears.
It’s a wonderful performance that for some reason always gets a lot of hate. Well, Mira, don’t worry because I love you!


Best performance of the movie: Mira Sorvino

My own choice for the win that year: Mira Sorvino

And THANK YOU, Fritz, for your endeavor and allowing us to open discussion on an interesting topic. Your points about each placing are well-chosen and very educational!

Surprised to see Mira, Renee, Mercedes and Peggy didnt make your top 20, i was thinking that Peggy & Mercedes will be in your top 10.

I had a bad feeling about someone i do hate a lot (just only for her win over another one) will make top 5...

So lets think what we have left...
Jane Darwell (i bet she will be on your top 10)
Anne Baxter (no idea)
Claire Trevor (bet she may be on your top 10 too)
Josephine Hull (I know about your love to her, but i also though about any others...)
Kim Hunter (it is one of the everyone favourites performances... why not you...)
Donna Reed (no idea either... maybe top 12)
Eva Marie Saint (no idea)
Rita Moreno (i have no idea, u know my opinion about her)
Patty Duke (we love to disagree on her... let see top 3?)
Lila Kedrova (top 1) i might be surprised about that
Sandy Dennis (see Kim Hunter)
Cloris Leachman (one of anyone loves...)
Tatum O´Neal (she is leading)
MAggie Smith (top 5) even she can win that...
Meryl Streep (top4) you give her a top 2 in leading... who knows here
Linda Hunt (i love her)
Juliette Binoche (I know your love for that movie i hope a high position on your list=
Marcia Gay Harden (Everyone here loves her)
Catherine Zeta-Jones (I will prefer her in traffic. love her win... no idea)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JOSE,

Mmh, Jose, you have some good guesses and some are totally wrong!
Oh, and I know that there is one performance left you hate - in that case, you probably shouldn't follow this anymore...may be better for your health...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Fritz,

interesting that you mentioned corinna harfouch from 'untergang'. she's the one who plays goebbel's wife right? i too thought she was fantastic, definitely better than anyone on the category

i think the zeta and binoche will be on your top 10