Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Reza wrote:

Precious Doll wrote:Poor Isabelle Huppert can't get a break this year.

Anyway Best Actress is certainly looking full: Natalie Portman, Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Meryl Streep & Ruth Nega's all have a ring about them.

I think Huppert may well make it to the Oscars. I seriously doubt Streep or Nega will get nods.

Reza,

Have you seen Elle?

Just gonna point out that Huppert is in the actress roundtable that the Hollywood Reporter does.

Though it's kinda obvious how little fucks she gives about this whole thing.

But whatever, I'm gonna keep predicting it.

It also looks like Jessica Chastain's Miss Sloane isn't going to be a major contender either. Hidden Figures hasn't premiered yet but I have a hard time believing the filmmaker behind St. Vincent can deliver something strong enough. But who knows?

Stone, Portman, Negga, Adams, and either Huppert or Bening. I'm not much of a fan of 20th Century Women, but A24 knows how to get their films out, Bening is also in a film by her husband in the Christmas, and she's in the club at this point. 20th Century Women might not be a perfect love letter to Annette Bening but it certainly is some kind of love letter.

Precious Doll wrote:Poor Isabelle Huppert can't get a break this year.

Anyway Best Actress is certainly looking full: Natalie Portman, Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Meryl Streep & Ruth Nega's all have a ring about them.

I think Huppert may well make it to the Oscars. I seriously doubt Streep or Nega will get nods.

Poor Isabelle Huppert can't get a break this year when it comes to awards.

Firstly she missed out in Berlin for Things to Come which the Meryl Streep led jury opting for Trine Dyrholm as 'best actress' for basically played a door mat in Thomas Vinterberg's groon inducing The Commune. Dynholm's Berlin win is doubly galling as the jury completely shut out the astonishing 24 Weeks by Anne Zohra Berrached all together which had the only other great performance in Berlin by Julia Jentsch as a young woman contemplating a late term abortion. Maybe it was just too strong to take for some of the poor dears or their 'liberal' beliefs are less than they would like us to believe. At least Huppert's film earned her the best director award - and it was more than deserving.

Secondly at Cannes, Elle is locked out all together - along with Toni Erdmann, Paterson, Aguarius, The Handmaiden & Sieranevada. Not an award between them. Sight and Sound jokingly stated that maybe the jury couldn't decide between 3 great performance of Sonia Braga in Acquarius, Sandra Huller in Toni Erdmann & Isabelle Huppert in Elle so opted to give the best actress award to less deserving choice in Jaclyn Jose in Ma'Rosa - sounds like a good way to bring a disagreement to a close.

And now with Elle, note performing all that well at the US box office Hupperts chances despite possible critics awards is very much D.O.A.

Her best hope if the Caesars for which she has been nominated 15 times and only won once. No doubt she will have some strong competition, just have to see how that works out.

Anyway Best Actress is certainly looking full: Natalie Portman, Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Meryl Streep & Ruth Nega's all have a ring about them.

Now that I've seen Elle, I see why some here have been less optimistic about Huppert's chances. It's not that she's not (typically) impressive, both in subtle ways (how you read the intricacies of her facial expressions determines a lot about how you read the movie) and more obvious ones (numerous emotional rape scenes). But there's quite a lot of rape in this movie, and when you throw in the implication that Huppert's character somewhat enjoys it, I wonder how many Oscar voters will simply just be turned off. It's also tonally much more of an enigma than many of the other recent films that have produced art-house Best Actress nominees (45 Years; Two Days, One Night; Amour), which, by comparison, are a lot more emotionally direct.

The other thing -- and here I'm going to completely contradict what I wrote below -- is that this year is far more bountiful for American actresses than the years that produced nominations for those films. (In addition to many of the names we've cited below, Taraji P. Henson has started to pick up some buzz for Hidden Figures, so throw her in as a possibility as well). As Uri would point out, a lot of foreign nominations happen when voters simply run out of American options (Riva would have surely gone the way of Trintignant had the female side been as competitive as the male side that year, and likely the only competition for Cotillard '14 was in a movie as bad/obscure as Cake.) So you do have to wonder if voters will have plenty of Best Actress candidates among the kinds of movies they like that they won't need to go so far outside their comfort zone with Huppert.

ITALIANO wrote:

Okri wrote:Italiano, you basically nailed the reasons why I'm predicting Huppert. I think the studio is really going to push the film hard - Huppert already has an AFI tribute event lined up; I also think that Benning, Negga, and Chastain have serious hindrances. I also think that Huppert will take New York OR LA.

But I also really want this to happen (I have seen Elle, fwiw) and will predict it until AMPAS proves me wrong.

Don't get me wrong - I'd also be very happy to see this great European actress nominated after decades of not just excellent but also unusual and original work. Yet, if you think of Deneuve, Riva, Rampling... They had these "big" roles in very important movies. Huppert's role belongs to a kind which even English-speaking actresses have only rarely been nominated for - two I can vaguely think of are Diane Lane and Rosamund Pike (much inferior actresses, I know).

Exactly. Huppert is not getting nominated and I say this with Elle being my favourite film of the year so far in a very strong year for intelligent adult cinema (Toni Erdmann, Paterson, A Quiet Passion, The Bacchus Lady, The Death of Louis XIV - all better than anything from 2015).

Also, Sony Classics opened it in Australia last week on a limited numbered of screens across the country (16) and it bombed BIG TIME. Take a look at Box Office Mojo for an idea of just how poorly it performed in Europe. If it can't make money in those markets Sony Classics are not going to be able to turn straw into gold in the U.S with Elle.

If only Things to Come, Huppert's other great film and performance of the year could get more traction it would be a perfect Oscar performance but in today's market Mia Hansen-Love's latest and best film to date has barely received the notice it so richly deserves.

Okri wrote:Italiano, you basically nailed the reasons why I'm predicting Huppert. I think the studio is really going to push the film hard - Huppert already has an AFI tribute event lined up; I also think that Benning, Negga, and Chastain have serious hindrances. I also think that Huppert will take New York OR LA.

But I also really want this to happen (I have seen Elle, fwiw) and will predict it until AMPAS proves me wrong.

Don't get me wrong - I'd also be very happy to see this great European actress nominated after decades of not just excellent but also unusual and original work. Yet, if you think of Deneuve, Riva, Rampling... They had these "big" roles in very important movies. Huppert's role belongs to a kind which even English-speaking actresses have only rarely been nominated for - two I can vaguely think of are Diane Lane and Rosamund Pike (much inferior actresses, I know).

The Original BJ wrote:One thing that I think could definitely help Huppert is the likelihood that (as I wrote in another thread) Stone and Portman could hog the vast majority of number one votes in Best Actress. Which would leave a lot of other actresses to fight over the remaining spots, none of which are place-filler, but none of which are delivering performances that feel like they DEFINITELY will get nominated (Adams, Bening, Negga, Streep of the ones I've seen, and it's possible Chastain fits this bill as well.) In this context, I could certainly see a group of dedicated Huppert supporters pushing her through this miasma to get her a spot at the Oscars, in the same way they found room for Rampling, Cotillard, and Riva in recent years despite not being Globe/SAG-bait.

But all of this is why people like Kris Tapley should not be referring to the open "fifth spot" in Best Actress at this point, cause a lot of that category seems pretty up-for-grabs to me right now.

Asking Oscar bloggers not to try and narrow the field early is like asking a dog not to sniff. It's what they do, no matter how embarrassed they ought to be by their frequent wrongness.

I agree that Huppert is exactly the sort of long-revered/never-nominated European actress that a certain segment of the Academy likes to put onto the list when there's an opportunity (Catherine Deneuve in Indochine is another, older example). I would point out, though, that the recent such instances all won either NY or LA best actress prizes, so Huppert's chances may be dependent on scoring there. LA would seem her best bet, given their propensity for non-English speakers. But what happens if Portman sweeps the legit critics? Her reviews so far seem to me in Blanchett/Blue Jasmine territory -- the sort of performance that can romp through awards season, even with respectable competition. None of these old-time groups chose Portman in her 2010 Oscar run -- not that they should have -- so it's not as if they'll be tired of her.

It's the constant weirdness of Oscar season as practiced these days that we're all talking about a final Oscar face-off, between Portman and Stone, concerning performances none of us have seen.

One thing that I think could definitely help Huppert is the likelihood that (as I wrote in another thread) Stone and Portman could hog the vast majority of number one votes in Best Actress. Which would leave a lot of other actresses to fight over the remaining spots, none of which are place-filler, but none of which are delivering performances that feel like they DEFINITELY will get nominated (Adams, Bening, Negga, Streep of the ones I've seen, and it's possible Chastain fits this bill as well.) In this context, I could certainly see a group of dedicated Huppert supporters pushing her through this miasma to get her a spot at the Oscars, in the same way they found room for Rampling, Cotillard, and Riva in recent years despite not being Globe/SAG-bait.

But all of this is why people like Kris Tapley should not be referring to the open "fifth spot" in Best Actress at this point, cause a lot of that category seems pretty up-for-grabs to me right now.

Italiano, you basically nailed the reasons why I'm predicting Huppert. I think the studio is really going to push the film hard - Huppert already has an AFI tribute event lined up; I also think that Benning, Negga, and Chastain have serious hindrances. I also think that Huppert will take New York OR LA.

But I also really want this to happen (I have seen Elle, fwiw) and will predict it until AMPAS proves me wrong.

I can understand all this talk about a possible nomination for Isabelle Huppert. She is probably the greatest, most celebrated living actor who's never been Oscar-nominated, and lately they usually find a spot for iconic foreign stars; and while in Elle she plays one of her famously extreme, daring characters (one which was rejected by several American actresses), the movie is actually very accessible, "shocking" in form but not really in substance - it was directed by Paul Verhoeven, not Michael Haneke - so even Americans could find it bearable. She's in every single scene, and plays a role which could sound like a parody of Great Contemporary Parts for Actresses - a middle-age (Huppert is 63 but convincing as a woman at least fifteen years younger), successful divorced woman and mother, daughter of a former mass murderer (of children), whose mother is going to marry a much-younger toy boy she (Huppert) despises, and - finally, but this is the first scene - gets assaulted, beaten and raped by a mysterious masked man whose identity she tries to discover for two thirds of the movie, and sort-of perversely likes it. I know, this will never be Big Magilla's favorite movie - and to be honest, despite the truly puzzling raves it got at Cannes (some even compared it to much more ground-breaking, provocative masterpieces of the past), it's a far from memorable effort. It's saved by Huppert's subtle, almost, I'd say, "tongue-in-cheek" performance - she clearly knows that the material isn't that deep (I guess - hope - that Verhoeven knows it, too), and find an interesting distance from it, an act of balance which is probably as difficult as walking on a rope. A more committed, method-style actress would have miserably failed - but Huppert has a grace and an intelligence which make her performance here (if not the movie itself, which isn't more than rather entertaining) fascinating to watch.
But will the Academy appreciate this kind of sublety? I frankly don't think so.

Sabin wrote:

Pushing it to Adapted would be the smartest thing they could do. It could win.

Adapted Screenplay is for "material previously produced or published." An unpublished book provides the option of Original Screenplay.

Right now, I'm thinking Stone, Portman, Huppert, Streep and Adams.

But the real rule of thumb that should be stated at the beginning of every award season is to also never count out Meryl Streep.[/quote]


agree -many in the past have left off Streep from their predictive lists at their own peril - that elusive 5th spot could very easily go to her for FFJ - especially since a Globe nomination is a sure thing.