The Other Best Actress Curse.

Natalie Portman's Best Actress Oscar win was inarguably the highlight of the Oscars; but, as I cheered about her triumph something else struck me. With the assurance that Black Swan would definitely not win the Best Picture award, Natalie was perpetuating a Best Actress curse no one talks about: the Best Actress Oscar is the only award their respective movies get.

Think about it, during the last decade (and we could even go all the way to 1999 when Hilary Swank first defeat Annette Bening) only two movies have won another Oscar besides Best Actress and only one of these movies won Best Picture (Million Dollar Baby).

Compared to the fact that movies that win Best Actor have 8/11 in the "more than one Oscar" statistic, we really might be onto something here, right?

Let's take a year by year look:

(I also noticed Best Actresses like this fabric and color...)

2000 - Best Actress - Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich (Wins 1 - Nominations 5)

Best Actor - Russell Crowe for Gladiator (Wins 5 - Nominations 12)

One Best Actress nominee (Ellen Burstyn) was the sole nominee for her film.

2001 - Best Actress - Halle Berry for Monster's Ball (Wins 1 - Nominations 2)

Best Actor - Denzel Washington for Training Day (Wins 1 - Nominations 2)

One Best Actress nominee (Renee Zellweger) was the sole nominee for her film.

2002 - Best Actress - Nicole Kidman for The Hours (Wins 1 - Nominations 9)

Best Actor - Adrien Brody for The Pianist (Wins 3 - Nominations 7)

One Best Actress nominee (Diane Lane) was the sole nomination for her film.

2003 - Best Actress - Charlize Theron for Monster (Wins 1 - Nominations 1)

Best Actor - Sean Penn for Mystic River (Wins 2 - Nominations 6)

Three Best Actress nominees (Keisha Castle Hughes, Diane Keaton and Charlize Theron)

were the sole nominations for their respective movies.

2004 - Best Actress - Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby (Wins 4 - Nominations 7)

Best Actor - Jamie Foxx for Ray (Wins 2 - Nominations 6)

Two Best Actress nominees (Annette Bening and Catalina Sandino Moreno) were the

sole nominations for their respective movies.

2005 - Best Actress - Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line (Wins 1 - Nominations 5)

Best Actor - Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote (Wins 1 - Nominations 5)

One Best Actress nominee (Felicity Huffman) was the sole nomination for her film.

This is also the only year when all the acting winners were their films' only wins.

2006 - Best Actress - Helen Mirren for The Queen (Wins 1 - Nominations 6)

Best Actor - Forrest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland (Wins 1 - Nominations 1)

One Best Actress nominee (Penélope Cruz) was the sole nomination for her film.

Curiously this year four Best Actor nominees were their film's sole nomination.

2007 - Best Actress - Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose (Wins 2 - Nominations 3)

Best Actor - Daniel Day Lewis for There Will Be Blood (Wins 2 - Nominations 8)

This is the only year when all Best Actress nominees were accompanied by other nominations.

2008 - Best Actress - Kate Winslet for The Reader (Wins 1 - Nominations 5)

Best Actor - Sean Penn for Milk (Wins 2 - Nominations 8)

One Best Actress nominee (Anne Hathaway) was the sole nomination for her film.

2009 - Best Actress - Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (Wins 1 - Nominations 2)

Best Actor - Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart (Wins 2 - Nominations 3)

One Best Actress nominee (Meryl Streep) was the sole nomination for her film.

Which brings us to Natalie Portman. Out of her film's five nominations she was the only one who even stood a chance of winning. After the Academy found ways to not love Black Swan as much as other organizations had (denying it Score, Screenplay and Costume nominations) it became clear that if Portman lost the movie would go empty handed.

This strange phenomenon would be less significant if it wasn't because it establishes something everyone keeps saying to no avail: Hollywood doesn't offer women interesting roles.

7/10 Best Actor winners during the past decade where in Best Picture nominees, with women it was just 5 and as obvious as it is that The Blind Side really didn't need another Oscar, what then about the editing in The Hours? Or Black Swan's breathtaking cinematography?

For that matter was Gladiator a better movie than Erin Brockovich?

The fact that Oscar voters just feel the need to reward one category out of this actresses' films might be saying that they think they were the only worthy thing in their films and that their award will be enough for the whole movie. But again, why wasn't Monster nominated for Best Makeup for example (when at least 70% of Charlize's performance is owed to that).

This would seem less conspicuous when measured against the number of Best Actor wins that often seem to provoke "en masse" vote for other categories.

Speaking of this, out of Meryl Streep's 13 Best Actress nominations, she's been the sole nomination for 5 out of these occasions. What is this really saying about Hollywood? Am I seeint too much into this blockade of opportunities for Actresses? When's the last time a Best Actress carried an entire Best Picture as opposed to having a film about men winning the top prize?

If we examined this we would run into even fewer cases where this happened which would include: Gone With the Wind, Mrs. Miniver, Annie Hall, Terms of Endearment, Driving Miss Daisy, The Silence of the Lambs, Shakespeare in Love and Million Dollar Baby.

Eight out of 83...hmm maybe I'm not being paranoid right?

If so what can this mean for filmmakers making movies about women? Let's be honest, in other years films like The Blind Side, Winter's Bone, The Kids Are All Right and to a lesser degree Black Swan would've never factored in the Best Picture race and movies about women competing for the main prize would be out of the question.

So young filmmakers of the world if you want to win a Best Picture Oscar make biopics about disabled men! Stay away from Amelia Earhart! Oh wait, that already happened...

What do you think about this? Do you think actresses will eventually be leading forces behind Oscar winning movies? If Meryl hasn't been able to do it, what are the chances of less beloved actresses ever achieving this?

Uninspired By True Events.

Watching Conviction you just know it's the kind of "inspired by true events" movie that will end with a picture of the real people and a corny song. You do not expect this from 127 Hours though.

Yet both do it and with the same degree of corny smugness as the other, the one difference is that while one feels just redundant for it, the other does it to teach us a metaphysical lesson of sorts and loses whatever credibility it had before. Care to guess which is which?

In Conviction Hilary Swank plays Betty Anne Waters, an unemployed single mom who decides to become a lawyer to get her brother Kenny (Rockwell) out of jail. Kenny was accused of murdering a woman and according to his sister he's innocent. We follow her through her hard years of school as she deals with working at a bar, raising her sons and maintaining that thick Massachusetts accent for as long as she can.
This is one of those movies in which you know how everything will go: the villains are scary (Leo gives a one note performance as an evil cop), the good guys are practically angels (Swank is missing but a halo from her "hard working but tastefully dressed" look) and someone always comes along and makes the movie seem much, much better than it has any right to be. In this case it's both Rockwell who gives another of his crazy cowboy performances and Lewis, who in a mere two scenes pretty much owns the film. The movie is directed efficiently, if not truly memorably by Goldwyn who seems to put more attention to his characters than to any stylistic flourishes yet in the end the movie fails gigantically because it doesn't make Betty someone we are dying to know more of.

Have you ever noticed how watching a Hilary Swank movie, you know it's a Hilary Swank movie? Not because she takes over the screen with her inescapable charm or magnetic screen presence but because every other character always seems to bow to her's.

Watching talented actors the likes of Driver, Rockwell and Lewis gaze teary eyed at Swank as if they were in the presence of something divine lacks the impact it would have if they were staring at Julia Roberts. Swank, unlike Julia, isn't capable of killing the "sanctify me" glare the supporting players emit. With a big movie star, their shine is so bright that they make scenes like these work, with Swank you just know she has a hand for picking screenplays and/or casting herself in films she produced.

Speaking of creative control, remember how once upon a time Danny Boyle was one of the most surprising working filmmakers? Each of his films felt like something completely new and exciting. From the creepy terror of 28 Days Later to the joyful cuteness of Millions and of course the addictive Trainspotting, his career seemed to scream "prolificness".

After going unintentionally mainstream with Slumdog Millionaire he seems to have compromised his vision and turned it into something that resembles conformity. Such is the case in 127 Hours where Boyle shows us the events that led mountain climber Aron Ralston (Franco) to amputate his own arm after getting trapped in a canyon.
And by saying he shows us, it's really because he makes a show out of everything, 127 Hours think it's being introspective and deep when it's mostly being obvious and overtly didactic. At the beginning of the film we see how Aron barely misses his Swiss Army knife when packing for his trip and from the position of the camera and the angle we know that this knife will play a part later on. Of course it does and like the knife, Boyle uses flashbacks and characters to put together a puppet show about how sad Ralston's life was before the accident and how amazing he must've felt after being reborn (no spoilers here considering we learn the film is an adaptation from a book by Aron).

Boyle uses complicated techniques to try and inject some energy into the proceedings but the truth is that this time he tries too hard to express stylistic freedom displayed through conventional methods. When his split screens should be recalling triptychs and art history, all they really do is make us think the editor is just showing off his new software and for all of the metaphysical ramblings he makes Aron say, all we're stuck with is ninety minutes of Boyle interpreting the whole "light at the end of the tunnel" people are supposed to see before they die.

After the film sends us home floating in a cloud of positivity (the Dido meets Enya theme song is arid and cliché) we might not be thinking too much about Aron and the rock but wondering if that Oscar fell upon Boyle and is keeping his true talent trapped?

Grades: Conviction ** 127 Hours **

Masculin Femenin.

Browsing through Hilary Swank's Wikipedia page (don't even ask how I got there for starters) I found something curious (an obvious typo, well two actually, which make me doubt if it was just an accidental mistake) that made me laugh out loud and confirm one of the theories I've had about Ms. Swank for ages...
Click on the picture to see the categories she won a Golden Globe and Golden Satellite for in "Million Dollar Baby".

Makes one wonder if in this alternate Wiki-universe the rightful actresses were rewarded for their roles that year...