Nicole on Gwyneth

This is Gwyneth Paltrow performing "Country Strong" at the CMAs recently. She's quite obviously very nervous, but she does a fine job.


My favourite bit, however, was this:


You totally know that Nicole Kidman is all "Keep smiling! Bitch better not steal my Oscar nomination!"

You know it!

Hit Me With Your Best Se7en

I'm feeling a bit too crook to really delve in David Fincher's Se7en as a part of Nathaniel Rogers' Hit Me With Your Best Shot series, but thankfully I revisited the film back in May so you can read that if you would like.

Naturally, I had trouble choosing just one, but choose just one I did... after choosing six others. Here are my seven favourite shots from Seven ranked from 7 to 1. I'm not going to go into the hows and whys or these very much, they are are. Enjoy.


I like the slight introduction of colour into this very bleak, very gray world.


Startling!


He is his gun. He is violence.


The first sight of the van and the unease of "what the hell is gonna happen next?" increases tenfold.


From the opening credits. It's just striking is all.


Love the composition and the way that actual beauty in this world is hard to find, but it can be found in, of all places, the symmetry of study lamps.


My favourite shot is one of the only in the entire film that radiates. Innocence, which is hard to come by, emits from her face and brings a slight ray of hope into the film. Probably why I latch onto this shot most of all.

High Praise

It amazes me to this very day to read movie websites and blogs that still harp on about Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan to Best Picture honours. Even though people don't seem to realise that Saving Private Ryan would have made for perhaps the most cliched Oscar-winner in the history of the Academy (Spielberg! Hanks! WWII! Vin Diesel!) In that debate I remain firmly in the camp of Shakespeare, but if given the option between that or The Thin Red Line... well, the call would be close.

Meanwhile over in the Best Actress category people still think Cate Blanchett was robbed for her performance in Elizabeth, who was beaten to the golden statue by Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love. At the time I was all about Blanchett and in my very young life as an Oscar watcher (the first ceremony I remember sitting down and watching the entirety of was one year earlier when Titanic swept the board) I couldn't quite fathom how she lost. Since then I am all about Paltrow in the battle of Best Actress '98.

However, I imagine that all those people who cry foul over Blanchett's loss have never seen Lisa Cholodenko's High Art, for if they had they would have a far bigger snub complaint in the form of Ally Sheedy's performance as "Lucy Berliner". I had never seen it either and had only heard mythical whispering from the likes of Nathaniel Rogers and... umm... er, anyone else? Now that I have seen it, on the eve of Cholodenko's next lesbian love tangle The Kids Are All Right (released 5 September), I can wholehearted agree that Ally Sheedy should have an Academy Award on her mantel right now.

As Nathaniel mentions in the piece I linked to, "How could any of (the five nominated) performances not have been nominated", since there was Meryl Streep with cancer, the next big thing making Royalty Porn, Hollywood's daughter reciting Shakespeare, an aging international stay bonding with a small child and the star of a biopic of a tortured musical genius. Still, one watch of High Art and you've got to wonder the Academy let Sheedy's performance pass through their fingers. Is it because a) the film's confronting homosexuality (something I am unaware of them embracing at that stage), b) High Art came at the tail end of the '90s indie movement at a time when all the big names were breaking out and taking their culturally hip audiences with them along with their multi-million dollar budgets or c) they couldn't resign themselves to the fact that an actress who made a name for herself in 1980s teen dramas was actually capable of giving a performance richer than one by Meryl Streep and the traditionalists couldn't handle it.

Hmmm.

Yes, "hmmm" indeed!

Nevertheless, Sheedy deserved that Oscar. It's interesting to wonder what may have happened if she had even been nominated. What would her career be like today? Since High Art in 1998 Sheedy's most high-profile work has come on TV series such as CSI, Oz and Once and Again. Her recent cameo in Todd Solondz' Life During Wartime should hopefully kick start something, maybe another auteur will notice her, remember how great she is capable of being and cast her in a great role.

It's interesting to look at the 1998 Best Actress race and wonder what happened to some of the also rans. Christina Ricci, so very good and Golden Globe-nominated in The Opposite of Sex, has slid so far down the chain of great actresses since that role that it's nigh on depressing (Black Snake Moan and Monster notwithstanding although even those have their detractors). Jane Horrocks' Golden Globe-nominated performance in Little Voice lead to this and it's arguable that Meg Ryan (also Globe-nominated) has effectively been a complete non-entity since You've Got Mail. Ally Sheedy's in good company then.

Gwyneth Goes Country

I never did get around to seeing Crazy Heart for which Jeff Bridges won his long overdue Academy Award. You want to know why? It looks boring as bat shit and outside of Invictus it was probably the Oscar title I was anticipating the least. I did a good job coming up with reasons to not see it in cinemas and I think it's out on DVD right now, but, and I'm being honest here, I'd rather watch unseen-by-me cult classics like Supergirl or Surf Nazi's Must Die>. They may be shit, but I can at least say I've never seen anything like them before. Crazy Heart, not so much.

All of this is a long way of getting around to this new Gwyneth Paltrow movie called Country Strong in which Paltrow plays a country singer, recently out of rehab, trying to stage a comeback. Same story, it would seem, as dozens before, but I can't recall it being done with a young woman at the centre rather than some distinguished male actor. If I'm wrong here then by all means correct me and I'll reassess, but I think we can all be thankful that, if nothing else, Paltrow won't be seen romancing a handsome actor 20 years her junior. Unfortunately, there's a bit of The Coal Miner's Daughter influence going on, obviously, with Tim McGraw playing her husband slash manager, which seems fairly predictable. Fans of Gossip Girl should know that Leighton Meester - I don't watch the show so I haven't the foggiest idea who she is - also has a role as a young beauty queen turned singer.

Paltrow has proven to have a more than passable voice in Duets, which - I kid you not - provided Paltrow with #1 and #3 hit singles on the Aussie charts ("Cruisin'" and "Bette Davis Eyes" respectively). And having heard the film's title track I gotta say it's very impressive. It sounds a lot like the Dixie Chicks (with Patty Griffin on backup vocals!) and that's a-okay by me. You can listen to "Country Strong" here and, even if the film doesn't do for Paltrow what she hopes it will (aka, get her back into the good graces of awards bodies and critics) then the song seems like a good bet for a Best Original Song nomination at the Academy Awards, especially in this lackluster year for musicals.

And just to remind y'all, here's Gwynnie performing her surprisingly strong version "Bette Davis Eyes". It's got nothing on Kim Carnes, but what does? And then there's a clip from Infamous, the other Truman Capote movie from the mid '00s. I've always been a fan of Gwyneth and think she was quite great in Two Lovers