Understandably so. It is terrible.Originally Posted by Elliott?
Understandably so. It is terrible.
If Coming Home is Argo, then The Deer Hunter is Crash but with better actors.
:teamAnUnmarriedWoman:
"Keep yoah paint outta my pahhking spot aaaahhhht depaaahhhhhtment!!!"
That's horrible than what HEAVEN'S GATE did to Cimino's career.If Coming Home is Argo, then The Deer Hunter is Crash but with better actors.
:teamAnUnmarriedWoman:
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+1 to the sentiment that Meryl was much better in The Deer Hunter than she was in Kramer vs. Kramer, and I think that if her role had been beefed up, she would have been a deserving winner in lead. I wasn't around in 1979 to see how the campaign was handled, obviously, but I wonder if the fact that she wrote a lot of her dialogue for Kramer vs. Kramer was a compelling reason for people to feel even more impassioned to vote for her performance? And, her win is obviously attributable to the fact that she was in the Best Picture winner that year, for the second consecutive year, and that the rest of the ballot for 1979 is so comparatively weak, held up against her performance. But, for me, her performance in Kramer vs. Kramer is never one that I can feel as passionate about as something like Silkwood, A Cry in the Dark, The Bridges of Madison County, or Adaptation.
And, I also hate Coming Home, and still need to see An Unmarried Woman.
I think her performance in Kramer vs Kramer is one of her most subtle performances ever. Not my favorite by her, but definitely top 5.
In a million years, when kids go to school, they gonna know;
once there was a Hushpuppy, and she was nominated for an Oscar.
Her performance in Kramer vs. Kramer is incredibly bland. She does nothing for the entire film and then, out of nowhere, she has this big crying scene about the son's bedroom that doesn't make any sense for her character and is incredibly, incredibly manipulative and sappy. It may be a problem of the script. She weeps convincingly, I guess. But still doesn't make up for the fact that her character is terribly written, phoney and bland. Mariel Hemingway all the way for 1979.
I don't get Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan at all.I just saw that again recently and for me it's an utterly bizarre WTF nomination. She's not bad, just very ordinary. Diane Keaton is extraordinary in the picture however and Woody is pretty terrific too. No one else deserves a nod there for me. Yes, not even Meryl Streep.
Also, I think Meryl is still pretty darn tootin great in Kramer - it is one of her best acting jobs - just not a particular favorite of mine comparatively speaking but it is an acting tutorial thats for sure - she didn't sweep all the critics awards for nothing for that, that's for sure. She helped flesh out that character in a way no other actress could have and added dimension to the proceedings that were very important to make the thing balanced and to make you understand what at first seems an unsympathetic character - she ends up being a powerful voice for feminism and the women's movement with her performance.
Streep swept the critics awards out of leftover goodwill from Deer Hunter and having three high profile movies that year. She won at all critics awards for the three performances, not for Kramer alone. She was like Jessica Chastain last year, only even, on top, with noticeable work the year before. They just had to acknowledge this new force. It was a given and she would have won regardless. The fact that you have to bring the performance's social "importance"* to defend it shows that, on acting alone, there's not a lot to say. It's a bland character to whom she lends her talent to emote, but there's no meat at all to it, it's very, very bland and poorly written.
As for Hemingway, she didn't do anything for me either at first sight, but the last time I saw it I loved it. I even wrote a piece on her for Pop Matters!
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature...lie-kavner/P1/
Hemingway is no Streep, sure, but in 1979, she certainly created a much more vibrant and believable character.
* Speaking of which, hy is it important to women's lib such a bland character that instead of fighting for her son gives him up to her husband because her son's "true home" was the fist one? Like, LOL. It's backwards, if anything. But mostly it just doesn't make sense as a character or as a woman.
Sounds like Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables to me.
She does nothing (she isn't even onscreen!) for the first 30-40 minutes and then, out of nowhere, she has this big crying scene about her dreams that doesn't make any sense for her character and is incredibly, incredibly manipulative and sappy. Then she dies. And her spirit comes back at the end of the movie. It may be a problem of the script. She sings convincingly, I guess. But still doesn't make up for the fact that her character is terribly written, phoney and bland.
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Well, Fantine has become an iconic character across the world. Who knows who that Kramer woman is and what she did?Sounds like Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables to me.
She does nothing (she isn't even onscreen!) for the first 30-40 minutes and then, out of nowhere, she has this big crying scene about her dreams that doesn't make any sense for her character and is incredibly, incredibly manipulative and sappy. Then she dies. And her spirit comes back at the end of the movie. It may be a problem of the script. She sings convincingly, I guess. But still doesn't make up for the fact that her character is terribly written, phoney and bland.
But it was a nice try from you, honestly!
I watched Devil in a Blue Dress the other day, and overall I thought it was a good, well-made film, very good art direction and cinematography, and I liked it's look at the culture of the post-WWII black community in LA, rising in economic status but still facing the strong specter of racism. I don't get why Don Cheadle got so much Oscar buzz back then though (he won LAFCA and NSFC), he was nicely entertaining but it felt like he was barely in the movie.
I didn't really care for this and thought that Cheadle was better in Out of Sight, where he should have been Oscar nominated...
I enjoyed that one as well. Perhaps Cheadle seemed like a breath of fresh air at the time, now he's a known quantity so the effect might not be the same.
I was looking at Carl Franklin's filmography, and I totally thought Out Of Time was another Tony Scott/Denzel collaboration. I remember liking that one so it's nice to know it was Franklin. Between this, Blue Dress, and One False Move he's proven vey adept at variations on the thriller genre.
T E A M R I V E T T E
Out of Sight is on the (long) list of 90s movies I need to get to. That's been my major movie-watching project lately, when I have time to watch movies (being in college is not exactly conducive to having a lot of time to do this). Right now, as you can tell from Devil in A Blue Dress, the year I'm on is 1995 (I'm trying to take it one year at a time).
Awesome. I've covering the 90's right now too...I'm only at 1992 thought, trying to wrap that shit up. I did not like Out of Sight, despite the raves from so many, but Cheadle was hilarious.
I haven't been doing the years of the decade in order, I've pretty much just picked 1995 because I felt like it.
Little Odessa is next up for me. I hope it improves my opinion of James Gray so far; I didn't like We Own The Night and was mixed on Two Lovers.
I doubt Fantine is considered an iconic character throughout the world. Now, if you tell people "she's Susan Boyle" then yeah, people would recognize her, but only for the song, they probably wouldn't know what she did besides sing that song. You could probably say the same thing about Kramer. People wouldn't recognize the name, but if you say "It's Meryl Streep" they would at least recognize the name.
I'm with CocoActual Items
In the Year 2000
As more and more people start having sex with robots, it will become increasingly embarrassing to buy a can of WD-40.
This is absolutely ridiculous and not even remotely true. Meryl would have still easily waltzed to Oscar victory if The Deer Hunter and Manhattan and The Seduction of Joe Tynan had never existed. You simply do not get how massively popular Kramer vs. Kramer was nor how well it did with critics groups. I have seen Meryl's 2 other performances that year - her performance in the Woody is barely the length of a sneeze and while she is terrific in TSOJT, that movie was a total non-starter/flop and wouldn't have gotten her nominated at all. Kramer vs Kramer was the #1 grossing movie of the YEAR. It is an iconic film in pop culture circles even if it wasn't graced by the hand of a saintly auteur.It will always be one of Meryl's most recognized films and characters.
And you totally don't get the film by the way. The reason why it was groundbreaking was because it showed that women could make a choice about how to lead their lives - they could be stay at home moms if they wanted to but they could also lead lives of their own. The movie showed how life for a women as a wife and mother can be stifling, how it can prevent their growth, how it can be overwhelming. It showed that a wife and mother is a woman first, that she needs to find out who she is in the world now, in 1979, because when she was growing up, she was still being reared by the mom and dad's who grew up in the 1930s-50s. Meryl's character walking away was a very painful decision for her, and of course once she has reclaimed her life, she would like to reclaim her son as well, but she makes the toughest decision of all to not rip her son out of the arms of a parent after he just had to get over losing her. She realizes it would be selfish to take such a young kid again away from a parental figure and continue the tumult, so she decides to leave him with Dustin. This is all very tricky to play and make the audience understand. Some want to hate her character in this. It is a movie very much of it's time so it can be hard to understand what a woman of this period had to go through who is trying to be emancipated but is already thrust into the social strata she has been brought up to adhere to.
There's nothing bland about Meryl's performance or the writing in this at all! Except to those who think it's dated and can't put themselves back in that time when women were still figuring out how to have it all, a family, a job, a sense of self worth alongside men.
"it wasn't graced by the saintly hand of an auteur!" lol! Good line.
So basically Meryl Streep's character in Kramer vs Kramer did something that Jean Simmons did better in The happy ending?
Jali Awards Best Actress 1920-1925
1920 Tora Teje, Erotikon // 1921 Pola Negri, The wildcat
1922 Anna May Wong, The toll of the sea // 1923 Marion Davies, Little old New York
1924 Marie Prevost, The marriage circle // 1925 Gloria Swanson, Stage struck
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