By Samuel Negin
The 8th Broadway revival of Tennesee Williams‘ classic play A Streetcar Named Desire has opened on Broadway. The reviews are in and they are decidedly mixed. The physical production is, by all accounts, fantastic, but the acting is not.
In the history of the Oscars, only 16 men have been well-respected and well-liked enough by the Academy to score at least three best actor nominations within a span of five years. (Amazingly, two of them had two such streaks, bringing the total number of streaks to 18.)
The most recent actor to join this elite list: George Clooney, whose best actor nomination this year for The Descendants follows best actor noms for Michael Clayton (2007) and Up in the Air (2009). Clooney already has a best supporting actor Oscar under his belt for Syriana (2005) but has yet to win one for best actor.
Although Clooney lost this year’s best actor SAG Award to Jean Dujardin (The Artist), and though the past seven winners of that prize went on to repeat at the Oscars, he can take heart from the fact that 9 of the 17 other streaks of three (or more) best actor noms-in-five years produced at least one statuette, five for the third film in the streak (as would also be the case for Clooney).
Here’s a breakdown of each streak …
By Samuel Negin
A number of shows have been announced for the fall season of 2011 that have not materialized. Among them is Lisa D’Amour’s new play Detroit. The play was a hit at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company and was so successful that Jeffrey Richards, a New York based producer, quickly announced that he would be bringing the show to Broadway in a production to open this past fall. Clearly, that production has yet to materialize. When the New York Times inquired what was going on, Mr. Richards cited a hectic producing schedule between Chinglish, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. The problem now is that, in the hesitation, Playwrights Horizons announced three weeks ago that it would be producing an off-Broadway production of the play in the fall of 2012.
If the Academy honors both Christian Bale and Melissa Leo with Oscars for their performances in “The Fighter,” as it is widely expected to do, it will mark only the eighth instance in Oscar history in which the best supporting actor and best supporting actress Oscars have been presented that those categories were won by performances from the same film. (Both categories have been presented for the past 73 years, meaning that it has occurred only 9.6% of the time.) The other seven…
PLEASE NOTE: The following rankings and remarks reflect my personal opinions and do/will not in any way impact my projections or analysis on this site, wherein I strive above all else to correctly forecast what will happen, not what I believe should happen. My demonstrated ability to do that over the years is what has led most of you to my site, and any failure to do that will undoubtedly lead you away from it, so you can rest assured that I mean it when I say that one has/will have no bearing on the other.
Earlier this month, I spoke by telephone for about 20 minutes with the 30-year-old actor Ryan Gosling, who has since been nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor (drama) for his extraordinary performance opposite an equally impressive Michelle Williams (also Globe-nominated) in Derek Cianfrance’s controversial “Blue Valentine.”
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIO OF OUR CONVERSATION!
Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of spending about 45-minutes on the telephone with Michelle Williams, who is not only one of America’s finest actresses — and, at 30, will probably remain one of them for decades to come — but who is also a deeply intelligent woman; a devoted single mother; and a real survivor. (She’s also not bad on the eyes!)
Williams became a star at the tender age of 17 on the hit TV show “Dawson’s Creek” (1998-2003) — I remember when it happened because I’m about the same age as her and often tuned in. She proved that she had the acting chops to match her looks in a number of early films, but especially “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), for which she received a best supporting actress Oscar nod. She attracted the interest of the tabloids when she first began dating her “Brokeback” co-star Heath Ledger, with whom she would eventually have a daughter, Matilda — and again in early 2008, when Ledger died suddenly. After a period of mourning and seclusion, Williams reemerged in a series of roles that brought her widespread acclaim — from the bare-bones indie “Wendy and Lucy” (2008) to the eccentric ensemble piece “Synecdoche, New York” (2008) to the Martin Scorsese-mystery “Shutter Island” (2010) — and, before long, she’ll be seen portraying another movie star who died far too young, Marilyn Monroe, in a biopic entitled “My Week with Marilyn.” Things have never looked better for her in terms of her career, but she’s not ruling out the possibility that she might wake up one day, decide that she’s had enough of it all, and call it quits. There’s more to life than being a movie star, she has learned.
Over the course of our conversation — a full transcript of which follows — Williams and I discussed virtually all of the above. We focused particularly, however, on the pinnacle achievement of her career up to this point: her remarkable performance in Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine” (The Weinstein Company, 12/31, NC-17, trailer), a gritty, honest, adult drama about the complexities of a relationship. (To me, at least, it’s somewhat reminiscent of a play and film that preceded it by half a century, “A Streetcar Named Desire.”) To play the part of a woman who falls in — and, six years later, out of — love with the same man (Ryan Gosling), a lot was asked of Williams — extensive emotional and physical nakedness, a quick weight gain, and even some tap-dancing — and, as anyone who has seen the film can attest, she certainly rose to the occasion.
On Saturday evening, “Monogamy” (video preview) — the feature debut of Dana Adam Shapiro, who received an Oscar nomination for co-directing the great documentary “Murderball” (2005) — premiered at the Borough of Manhattan Community College as part of the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival. Ironically, it followed a screening at the same location of a new documentary about New York’s ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer, but I digress…