Category Archives: Olivia Wilde

Listmania ’11: Performances Of The Year

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Yet again my blogging schedule is thrown into disarray by what can only be described as a waking coma. A combination of night work, lack of sleep due to warring cats, and god know what else — probably some hex cast on me by some anti-blogging warlock — meant that last week I felt like I was trapped under a fog of confusion as thick as the thickest Greek yogurt. I’m not fully out of it yet, so this prologue might become a little off-kilter. Please bear with the blog until normal services are restored.

Not really much to say about this post other than that I’m watching a recording of the Golden Globes and seriously, this blog is more composed than this goddamn mess. It’s an uncomfortable experience made even more hard to bear by the fact that we’re watching it on the UK’s E! channel which has bleeped out every vaguely risque comment or mention of a product, thus rendering it unintelligible. Also in our favour; SoC hasn’t spent all year talking about last year’s Listmania as if it was easily the most shocking and daring blogpost of the year, and how we don’t care about the controversy it caused, and holy shit wait until you see what shocking jokes we’ve got in store for you this year; a build-up somewhat ruined by being followed with a couple of Kim Kardashian jokes.

No. We’ll be honest. This is merely a blogpost, one of millions. And yet we have our integrity, and our annual awards for Sam Rockwell and Michael Sheen, no appearances by Sofia Vergara’s Voice, and no awards for The Iron Lady. That, somehow, is enough. Please enjoy, and imagine them being read out in the voice of a slightly tipsy Ricky Gervais, punctuated by some cozy jokes about Johnny Depp and that faux-sneering thing he does to make out that he doesn’t really worship the people he is mocking (with, I’ll admit it, a bit of skill). The atheism is also implied.

Best Performance by an Actress: Tilda Swinton – We Need To Talk About Kevin

Honorable Mentions:

Anna Paquin – Margaret

Olivia Colman – Tyrannosaur

Jessica Chastain – Take Shelter

Carey Mulligan – Shame

Kirsten Dunst – Melancholia

Best Performance by an Actor: Michael Fassbender – Shame

Honorable Mentions:

Michael Shannon – Take Shelter

Gary Oldman – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Jean Dujardin - The Artist

Brendan Gleeson – The Guard

Woody Harrelson – Rampart

Best Supporting Performance by an Actress: Charlotte Gainsbourg – Melancholia

Honorable Mentions:

Jennifer Lawrence – X-Men: First Class

Anna Kendrick – 50/50

Ellen Page – Super

Déborah François – The Monk

Emily Mortimer – Our Idiot Brother

Best Supporting Performance by an Actor: Christopher Plummer – Beginners

Honorable Mentions:

Benedict Cumberbatch – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Sir Ben Kingsley – Hugo

John C. Reilly – Terri

Albert Brooks – Drive

Don Cheadle - The Guard

Best Individual Voice Work: Johnny Depp – Rango

Best Voice Cast/Direction: Rango

Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Elizabeth Olsen - Martha Marcy May Marlene

Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: John Boyega - Attack The Block

Best Career Moves of the Year (Actress): Jessica Chastain - The Tree of Life / Take Shelter / The Help / The Debt / Texas Killing Fields / Coriolanus

Honorable Mention: Carey Mulligan - Drive / Shame

Best Career Moves of the Year (Actor): Michael Fassbender - Shame / Jane Eyre / X-Men: First Class / A Dangerous Method

Honorable Mention: Ryan Gosling - Drive / The Ides of March / Crazy, Stupid, Love

“See? I Told You He Could Act” Performances of the Year: Matthew McConaughey - The Lincoln Lawyer / Bernie

“Wow, He Actually Can Act?” Performance of the Year: Jake Gyllenhaal - Source Code

“My God, I’m Even Angrier About The Uselessness Of Gilmore Girls Now Because You Deserve So Much Better Than The Bog-Standard ‘Pathetic Best Friend Of The Protagonist Who Is Only There To Make Her Look Better’ Stereotype And Look What Happens When You Get A Chance To Let Your Freak Flag Fly” Performance of the Year: Melissa McCarthy - Bridesmaids

“Dude, Where Have You Been? This Is The Best Thing You’ve Done In Ages. Oh Man, I Really Missed You, You Know. Jesus, X: Men Origins: Wolverine Sucked, But I’ve Got No Hard Feelings And This Kind of Commitment To Your Craft — Enhanced By Your Effortless Charm — Is Why We’ll Always Have A Place For You In Our Hearts” Performance of the Year: Hugh Jackman - Real Steel

Scenestealing Actress of the Year: Kat Dennings - Thor

Scenestealing Actor of the Year: Stanley Tucci - Captain America: The First Avenger

Most Wasted Actress: Robin Wright - Rampart / Moneyball / The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Most Wasted Actor: Walton Goggins - Straw Dogs / Cowboys and Aliens

Most Fearless Performance of the Year: Keira Knightley – A Dangerous Method

“Look, Can We Just Stop Acting Like He’s Some Anonymous Beefcake And Accept He’s Got Smarts And Range On Top Of His Looks And Is Actually A Very Charming, Committed and Talented Actor, FFS” Performances of the Year: Chris Evans - Captain America: The First Avenger / Puncture / What’s Your Number?

Best Cameo: James Franco - The Green Hornet

“Holy Shit, You’re Seriously Scaring The Bejesus Out Of Me” Performance of the Year: Pollyanna McIntosh - The Woman

“Please Let Him Become A Huge Star And Use His Clout To Bring Friday Night Lights To The Big Screen” Performance of the Year: Kyle Chandler - Super 8

“I Bet All Those Critics Who Used To Think You Were Nothing But A Pretty Boy Feel Real Stupid Now” Performances of the Year: Brad Pitt – The Tree of Life / Moneyball

“Now Can You Please Do Me The Favour Of Shutting The Fuck Up, Assorted Whiners Hiding At The Bottom Of The Internet Like The Tiresome Trolls You Are?” Performances of the Year: Kristen Wiig – Paul / Bridesmaids

Worst Performance by an Actress: Cate Blanchett – Hanna

Dishonorable Mentions:

Natalie Portman – No Strings Attached

Milla Jovovich – The Three Musketeers

Taylor Schilling - Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Julia Roberts – Larry Crowne

Blake Lively – Green Lantern

Worst Performance by an Actor: Jim Sturgess – One Day

Dishonorable Mentions:

Colin O’Donoghue - The Rite

Paul Rudd – How Do You Know

Ashton Kutcher – No Strings Attached

Henry Hopper – Restless

Grant Bowler – Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Worst Supporting Performance by an Actress: January Jones – Unknown

Dishonorable Mentions:

January Jones – X-Men: First Class

Lucy Punch – You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Lucy Punch – Bad Teacher

Juno Temple – The Three Musketeers

Lake Bell – No Strings Attached

Worst Supporting Performance by an Actor: James Corden – The Three Musketeers

Dishonorable Mentions:

Richard Coyle – W.E.

James D’Arcy – W.E.

Rami Malek – Larry Crowne

Rafe Spall - One Day

Ken Stott - One Day

Worst Individual Voice Work: James McAvoy - Gnomeo and Juliet

Worst Voice Cast /Direction: Gnomeo and Juliet

Actress in Most Dire Need of a New Agent: Naomi Watts - Dream House / You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger / Fair Game

Dishonorable Mention: Olivia Wilde - Cowboys and Aliens / The Change-Up / In Time

Actor in Most Dire Need of a New Agent: Jason Bateman - The Change-Up / Paul / Horrible Bosses

Dishonorable Mention: Ryan Reynolds - Green Lantern / The Change-Up

Actor/Actress Duo With The Worst Luck in 2011: Abbie Cornish and Oscar Isaac – Sucker Punch and W.E.

Performance Most Likely To Make Fans Think Some Consciousness-Altering Substances Were Involved Though I’m Sure That’s Not The Case And I’m Certainly Not Suggesting He Was As High As Voyager 1 When He Slurred His Way Through This Piece Of Shit: James Franco - Your Highness

“Hmmm, Okay, You Were Actually Okay This Year, And Thus Deserve Recognition And A Temporary Reprieve From My Usual Derision” Performances of the Year: Cameron Diaz – The Green Hornet / Bad Teacher

Most Entertaining Performance by an Actress in a Bad Movie: Andrea Riseborough - W.E.

Honorable Mention: Mindy Kaling - No Strings Attached

Most Entertaining Performance by an Actor in a Bad Movie: Anthony Hopkins – The Rite

Honorable Mention: Anthony Hopkins – 360

Most Bafflingly Busy Actress of the Year: Frieda Pinto - You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger / Rise of the Planet of the Apes / Immortals

Most Bafflingly Busy Actor of the Year: Billy Burke - The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 / Drive Angry / Red Riding Hood

Worst Cameo: Convicted rapist Mike Tyson, again – The Hangover Part II

“Where Have You Been?” Actor of the Year: Fred Ward - 30 Minutes Or Less

Best Accent: Chloe Grace Moretz – Hugo

Worst Accent: Anne Hathaway – One Day

Most Entertaining Acccent: Gary Oldman – Red Riding Hood

Most Disconcerting Accent: Jeffrey Wright – Source Code

Best Performance By Hott Sam Rockwell: Cowboys and Aliens

Best Argument For The Use Of Performance-Capture Technology And The Freedom It Gives To Actors Performance of the Year: Andy Serkis - Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Best Argument To Destroy All Performance-Capture Technology To Prevent Such A Crime Ever Being Committed Again Performance of the Year: Seth Green – Mars Needs Moms

“More Of This And Less Of This, Please” Actress of the Year: Rose Byrne (More comedies like Bridesmaids as she has a real gift for comedy, less dramatic roles like X-Men: First Class and Insidious.)

“More Of This And Less Of This, Please” Actor of the Year: Bradley Cooper (More dramatic roles in unexpectedly entertaining movies like Limitless, less fratboy bullshit in odious crap like The Hangover Part II.)

Hammiest Performance By Michael Sheen: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One

Hammiest Performance By Chow Yun Fat: Let The Bullets Fly

Next up: crew contributions of the year. Best screenplay is a lock but I’m going back and forth on best director. Who will it be? #HitchcockianSuspense

The Existence of Tron: Legacy Single-Handedly Justified By “Thirteen”

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Perhaps I shouldn’t be so willing to give Tron: Legacy an easy ride, and yet I find myself unable to hate it for its numerous flaws. Is it because of nostalgia for the Tron franchise? Not really: the original movie excited me as a child only until I actually saw it. The build-up to its release – with all of the chatter about its groundbreaking computer generated effects and integration of live-action and animation – promised more than could possibly have been delivered. Even as an undemanding kid I was underwhelmed, though I will admit the images of light cycles and disc battles stayed in my mind after the clunky and tedious movie ended. Even so, these memories were not persistent enough to encourage me to seek out any subsequent franchise efforts, such as the Tron 2.0 game.

Is it because I saw it in IMAX, where the visuals are truly breathtaking? I will happily grant kudos to the filmmakers for using full IMAX images at exactly the right moments for maximum impact: a trick that has only been used by Christopher Nolan and Michael Bay to this point, as far as I can recall. Nevertheless, it’s not just a big-ass screen or nifty 3D that make a difference. I’ve seen enough films on the IMAX screen to be able to differentiate good from bad without bias. At least I hope I can. I’ll wait to see it on a normal sized cinema screen, or on my beloved TV and get back to you on that.

Is it because I am a sucker for big stupid sci-fi movies with pretty images and a loud soundtrack provided by legendary French pioneers of electronic music? Let’s say that accounts for about 40% of the love. I’m only human, and as anyone who has seen some of the dubious films in my my DVD collection can tell you, if I buy into something early on, then I’ll usually ignore glaring problems with plot, execution, or rampant nonsensicality and then defend it against its attackers for years. Though Tron: Legacy regrettably makes the same mistakes as the first in not really spending enough time building up its world (all we get are tantalising hints and the odd quirky detail), it mattered little to me when scenes like the disc battle and light-cycle sequence are as beautifully constructed as they are here.

Is it because I love hard luck cases? Early reviews of Tron: Legacy have been highly critical, with Drew McWeeny’s impassioned demolition of the movie being particularly brutal. To be honest, there’s not much he’s said there that I can argue with. This version of Tron follows the structure of the first in a way that smacks more of laziness than a payment of respect, and certainly the CGI en-youngenising of Jeff Bridges is not that great (though as someone I follow on Twitter pointed out, the Uncanny Valley effect works well to make antagonist Clu seem other-worldly). However the script by Ed Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (who wrote the excellent Lost episode Expose as well as a whole lot of really not that great episodes) is an acceptable template for an action movie, with room for some surprisingly affecting father/son dynamics between Flynn and his son Sam, not to mention his Frankenstein creation Clu).

Criticism of director Joseph Kosinski is also a bit far off the mark. Anyone hoping that the world of ads would belch out another David Fincher or early-career Ridley Scott will be very disappointed, but he moves things along with enough zip, stages action acceptably well, and harnesses an amazing design team to construct a world of eye-fondling beauty, cast in neon and well-gradated shadow, as if adapting the best avant-garde car advert you’ve ever seen. Much of the fun of the movie is derived from having each scene feature some nifty little detail or visual quirk. In fact, many times during the movie I expected this well of pointless but amusing doodles to run dry, but it never does. As for his direction of actors, it’s worth noting that while he gets some fun performances out of the cast — Old Jeff Bridges’ wacky hippie/Jedi turn is especially amusing — he seems unable to make Garrett Hedlund do anything other than occupy space onscreen. It’s not a massive problem, though, as I will explain in due time.

I’m also mystified by the complaints that the finale of the movie borrows too heavily from the end of Star Wars. If adding turrets to some flying vehicles in order to stage a dizzyingly-staged dogfight counts as a rip-off, then I guess it does, though in that case it also “plagiarises” Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as well, seeing as that features a long sequence with Henry Jones blasting Nazi scum from the skies (the lovable old fart!). I know that George Lucas has tinkered with the Star Wars movies a lot, but not so much that the final scenes that I remember from my last viewing look anything like the end of this.

I have to admit, I expected more borrowing from Star Wars than there actually is: Kitsis and Horowitz wrote the Lost episode Some Like It Hoth, in which Hurley memorably re-wrote The Empire Strikes Back to hand to Lucas during his trip to the past, so their Star Wars fandom is now well-established. The mild homage they add to Tron is more than acceptable, and no reason to denounce the movie (though the subsequent inexplicable last-minute turnaround of an antagonistic character makes little sense: complaints about that are fine by me).

No, the main reason for this faint-praise-but-still-praise-dammit review — a reason that accounts for 50% of my new affection for the Tron franchise — is one character: Quorra, the “Warrior Ninja” personified by Olivia Wilde in a fetching catsuit-and-off-kilter-bangs combo. Though her ninja skills don’t really get a work out, she is the one truly relatable character here, simply by being recognisably awestruck by the momentous events around her. If the rather trad Race to the Portal / Quest for the Disc plots work at all, it’s only because it’s important to Quorra, who actually runs through a gamut of emotions during the movie while most other characters are merely grimly determined. In contrast to Sam Flynn’s pouty self-absorption (a character trait that transforms by movie’s end, of course), Quorra’s curiosity, courage and unstoppable affection for her two companions is utterly charming.

We can be grateful to Wilde for this. She was the best thing about House for a long while, and here she gets a opportunity to fill a large screen, an opportunity she grabs with both rubber-clad hands. It’s a very pleasant surprise to see her leave the box she has found herself in, having been stuck with grouchy Thirteen in House and snarky Alex Kelly in The O.C. Her spritely energy, hither-to untapped playfulness and instantly iconic look are enough to vault this movie up from mostly forgettable to highly watchable, and it’s notable that while she’s onscreen poor Garrett Hedlund disappears as if by magic. If this movie is successful enough to launch a new franchise, I only hope so in order to see more of Quorra — her journey is far more interesting than anything else going on here — and Olivia Wilde.

(BTW, if you think my calculations are off and I’ve missed out 10% of my love, fear not. I drape that love all over the amazing Michael Sheen, here trying very hard to steal the show by playing a flamboyant night-club owner as a cross between Fred Astaire, Lady Gaga and Larry Grayson. He should be employed to ham up every movie ever made.

ETA: Twitter pop-culture maven Dan Pittman has pointed out to me the debt Sheen owes to David Bowie and Labyrinth: there is a recognisable element of Goblin King in this hysterical amalgam of extravagant actorly tics.)