Blue Jasmine reviews

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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

Post by Reza »

Eric wrote:
Big Magilla wrote:Blanchett - Dench - Olsen - Streep - Thompson.
If that's the lineup, Olsen can't lose.
If I have to go by my theory of "youth" I'd put my money on Blanchett. Never understood her win for that mannered performance in The Aviator.

Always been peeved by when a "leading lady" type wins an Oscar in the supporting category first. Like Blanchett. Streep and Lange made good on that by winning later in the "right" category. Alas my all time regret is that Vanessa Redgrave could never follow suit.

So a Blanchett win would sit well with me.

Of course it could all end horribly with Watts winning because voters thought she was due.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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Big Magilla wrote:Blanchett - Dench - Olsen - Streep - Thompson.
If that's the lineup, Olsen can't lose.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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My current predictions: Blanchett - Dench - Olsen - Streep - Thompson. Blanchett and Olsen replace Kidman and Watts from my earlier predictions. Diana has a U.S. distributor, but no release date yet.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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Whenever anyone says "how can you resist?!" I can't help but hear it in Big Edie's voice.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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Big Magilla wrote:
Reza wrote: If it boils down to a toss-up between Dench and Blanchett, then the latter is bound to win on youth points. I seriously doubt Dench is going to win a second Oscar - this time in the lead category. The days of Jessica Tandy are over, I feel. The Oscars are more youth oriented today.
If it boils down to personalities, yes, although 20-something Elizabeth Olsen would seem to fit the youth quotient better. However, if it's about performance, character and politics, Dench wins in a landslide. Philomena has everything - politics, religion, changing mores over a sixty year period, closeted gay Republicans, mother-son devotion, a bittersweet ending with the mother visiting the son's grave in the cemetery of the convent where he was born - how can they resist?
I think it's more like, how can YOU resist, Magilla?! Clearly, we have the performance you'll be pushing this year.

The trailer for Blue Jasmine is hilarious and Cate Blanchett's performance looks like a tour-de-force. I would sub her in for one of the bio-pic chicks (Kidman or Watts). It looks like an interesting counterpart to her much-celebrated turn as Blanche DuBois on stage. Blanchett seems like just the kind of actress who might be able to side-step all these folks for a leading Oscar, ten years after her supporting trophy. For now, I'd definitely put her down on the shortlist based upon what's shown in the trailer.
Last edited by flipp525 on Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:54 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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Mister Tee wrote: And wasn't it the case that Watts' Diana movie was screened widely and still left Cannes without a distributor? That doesn't exactly scream Oscar hopeful.
The same could be said of the bidding war for Philomena in reverse, especially since our old friend Harvey already had a lot on his plate for this year. Mark my words, the stars are aligned for this one.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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The 10 (well, actually 11) candidates I jotted down a couple weeks ago on 2013.doc ... Usually at this early point, it's about 50-50 "post-Cannes wishful thinking" and "bored resignation." There's a lot of lame celeb impersonations to squeeze in this year.

Bérénice Bejo, The Past
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Marion Cotillard, The Immigrant
Julie Delpy, Before Midnight
Judi Dench, Philomena
Adèle Exarchopoulos or Léa Seydoux , Blue is the Warmest Color
Nicole Kidman, Grace of Monaco
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County
Emma Thompson, Saving Mr. Banks
Naomi Watts, Diana
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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Okay, I know I started it with my idle speculation, but, truly, it's silly to start ranking candidates whose films haven't been seen (or even finished) against something that's already been exposed to critics. I think that's what BJ has always meant by his bird-in-hand theory: many films/performances can be extraordinary in our imagination, but a good percentage of them turn out mediocre-to-terrible when they're made flesh. Cate Blanchett's performance is at this point an indisputable fact: few performances in a year, or even a decade, get this level of high praise. This doesn't make her a slam-dunk Oscar win (if reviews meant everything, David Fincher would have a statuette on his mantle), but comparing her to something no one's seen and judging her chances of winning against it is like polling Hillary Clinton against Generic Dream Republican Candidate -- meaningless.

But, to add a few facts to the speculation below:

All I heard out of Cannes was that Carey Mulligan's role in Inside Llewelyn Davis was quite small; she seems supporting if anything.

And wasn't it the case that Watts' Diana movie was screened widely and still left Cannes without a distributor? That doesn't exactly scream Oscar hopeful.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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All the films everyone is mentioning sound terrible, so maybe 2013 should be the year I stop becoming an Oscar completist and only see the new films that I want to see for myself. It would certainly give me more time to watch all the ones I want to revisit.

I saw a trailers at the cinema this evening for the film on Diana and Blue Jasmine. As a very rarely watch trailers online (one or two a year if I'm lucky) this was my first 'exposure' to them both.

Diana looks like some made for TV cheapie. That the trailer doesn't contain any dialogue is not a good omen.

Blue Jasmine actually looks like it has potential even if it is so obviously inspired by Streetcar. That is has gotten positive reviews from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter does give me hope that this will be one of the few better Allen films from the last 20 years or so.

And speaking of Blanchett I saw her on stage yesterday for the first time ever in a very uneven and clumsy adaptation of Jean Genet's The Maids. I have never been a fan of Blanchett's screen work. She's a great mimic and like Streep something of a acting technician but more remote and disengaged then Streep. I wasn't impressed with her work in The Maids, though she had more stage presence then Isabelle Huppert who was the only reason my partner and I went see to the play.

Huppert is one of the greatest and most consistent actresses working on the screen over the last four decades but her internal style of acting simply didn't work on stage, even with a huge screen up high at the back of the stage which projected some of the action on stage from angles that cannot be seen by the audience. I found it somewhat distracting.

Sometimes two actors working together with completely different approaches can work but what hampered this work further was I felt no connection with what was going on in stage which is so vital for my enjoyment.

I had had high hopes for the play until a couple of weeks ago when I found out that Blanchett's husband Andrew Upton had adapted the play. If Upton wasn't married to Blanchett he would have drifted into obscurity after his much accalimed1990's adaptation of Isben's Hedda, as everything he has done since has been pretty much received with disdain.

Interestingly, though there were three encores, there didn't seem like a great deal of enthusiasm from the audience. People politely applauded and a couple of people stood up but there was none of that buzz you get after a show has finished and people just kind of explode, cheering, whistling, hooting, etc.

I just hope Isabelle had a pleasant time a couple of months on the other side of the planet. I'd like to see her return, perhaps in a one woman show.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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Reza wrote: If it boils down to a toss-up between Dench and Blanchett, then the latter is bound to win on youth points. I seriously doubt Dench is going to win a second Oscar - this time in the lead category. The days of Jessica Tandy are over, I feel. The Oscars are more youth oriented today.
If it boils down to personalities, yes, although 20-something Elizabeth Olsen would seem to fit the youth quotient better. However, if it's about performance, character and politics, Dench wins in a landslide. Philomena has everything - politics, religion, changing mores over a sixty year period, closeted gay Republicans, mother-son devotion, a bittersweet ending with the mother visiting the son's grave in the cemetery of the convent where he was born - how can they resist?
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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Big Magilla wrote:The early hype for Naomi Watts as Diana and Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly seems to have died down. Grace of Monaco appears to be lightweight while Diana appears to be a bit too sensationalistic. Kate Winslet in Labor Day sounds like Meryl Streep in The River Wild, not one of her strongest contenders. Streep herself will surely be nominated for August: Osage County but will most likely be an also-ran.

Emma Thompson seems to have her best shot at another Oscar in years as P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks and Elizabeth Olsen as Therese Raquin in Therese could have an easier time nabbing a nod than she did for Martha Marcy May Marlene, but the one to beat is Judi Dench who may well have the role of her celebrated career in Stephen Frears' film version of The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. Harvey Weinstein's release strategy on this one is to break it out slowly beginning at the Venice Film Festival where The Queen broke for Helen Mirren. It's the true story of an elderly Dublin woman searching for the son she was forced to give up fifty-two years earlier. Sold by the Catholic Church to rich Americans, that son grew up to be Michael Hess, the first George Bush's White House chief counsel who died of AIDS in 1995. His futile search for his mother is just as poignant, and is presented in flashbacks, but the story is told from Philomena's point of view and is said to hit all the right buttons.
If it boils down to a toss-up between Dench and Blanchett, then the latter is bound to win on youth points. I seriously doubt Dench is going to win a second Oscar - this time in the lead category. The days of Jessica Tandy are over, I feel. The Oscars are more youth oriented today.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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The early hype for Naomi Watts as Diana and Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly seems to have died down. Grace of Monaco appears to be lightweight while Diana appears to be a bit too sensationalistic. Kate Winslet in Labor Day sounds like Meryl Streep in The River Wild, not one of her strongest contenders. Streep herself will surely be nominated for August: Osage County but will most likely be an also-ran.

Emma Thompson seems to have her best shot at another Oscar in years as P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks and Elizabeth Olsen as Therese Raquin in Therese could have an easier time nabbing a nod than she did for Martha Marcy May Marlene, but the one to beat is Judi Dench who may well have the role of her celebrated career in Stephen Frears' film version of The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. Harvey Weinstein's release strategy on this one is to break it out slowly beginning at the Venice Film Festival where The Queen broke for Helen Mirren. It's the true story of an elderly Dublin woman searching for the son she was forced to give up fifty-two years earlier. Sold by the Catholic Church to rich Americans, that son grew up to be Michael Hess, the first George Bush's White House chief counsel who died of AIDS in 1995. His futile search for his mother is just as poignant, and is presented in flashbacks, but the story is told from Philomena's point of view and is said to hit all the right buttons.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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I guess the question is: who will be her competition? Meryl Streep is obviously on everyone's lips, but now that she has her third Oscar, clamoring for a fourth will die down tremendously. Naomi Watts poses a strong threat as Diana, but as the recent spate of one-woman historical dramas shows, it's harder to get a quality drama out of material than it seems on paper. Same goes for Nicole Kidman as Grace of Monaco. Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks? Kate Winslet in Labor Day? Carey Mulligan in Inside Llewyn Davis? There's talk of Judi Dench in Philomena and Marion Cotillard in The Immigrant. There may be a lot of competition, but other than Mulligan and Watts, these are all past Oscar winners, which makes a second, third or even fourth trophy less likely. So, Cate's chances are diminished because she has an Oscar. It could be Watts' year or Mulligans or perhaps someone else will emerge towards year's end who becomes a de facto winner...who knows for sure right now. It's only July.
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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Wonder what Blanchett's real chances are keeping in mind her potential competition?
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Re: Blue Jasmine reviews

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NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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