Thursday, February 17, 2000

Say it ain't so, Oscar: You're just as trendy as the next guy

Oscar loves a woman who keeps her mouth shut. Oscar also loves girls who dress in drag or get locked up in mental wards. And Oscar is terribly fond of murderers and of cute child actors who don't kill us with cuteness.
   This year's Academy Award nominations have some of each among the acting categories, continuing trends that have repeated for decades. (The awards ceremony airs live on ABC March 26.)
   Consider drag appeal. Just last year Gwyneth Paltrow took home Hollywood's highest accolade for wearing a wig and a jazz patch in her role as "Thomas Kent," the cross-dressing ingenue in "Shakespeare in Love." Linda Hunt won her 1983 supporting actress Oscar for believably playing tiny Indonesian terror "Billy Kwan" in "The Year of Living Dangerously."
   This year it's Best Actress nominee Hilary Swank who's the odds-on favorite for her role as "Brandon Teena," a gender-bending teen in "Boys Don't Cry." She's up against Annette Bening in "American Beauty," Janet McTeer in "Tumbleweeds," Julianne Moore in "The End of the Affair" and Meryl Streep for "Music of the Heart."
   Trust Oscar to reward the actress willing to flatten her chest and go without lip gloss for her star turn.
   All about face
   The Academy also has a history of making silence golden. Samantha Morton, supporting actress nominee for Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown," is the latest in a long line of movie mutes deemed Oscar-worthy. If she triumphs she follows Holly Hunter (for 1993's "The Piano"), Marlee Matlin (1986's "Children of God"), Patty Duke (1962's "The Miracle Worker") and Jane Wyman (1948's "Johnny Belinda") as a winner for best facial expressions.
   Morton's biggest competition is Angelina Jolie, playing another of Oscar's favorites as a feisty mental patient in "Girl, Interrupted." Willingness to act wacked-out onscreen (but not in front of the paparazzi) almost guarantees a victory: Kathy Bates for "Misery" (1990); Elizabeth Taylor in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966); Joanne Woodward for "Three Faces of Eve" (1957); Ingrid Bergman in "Anastasia" (1956) and "Gaslight" (1944); Vivien Leigh for "Streetcar Named Desire" (1951).
   Works for actors, too. Remember Tim Hutton in "Ordinary People" (1980), Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), Peter Finch in "Network" (1976) and Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend" (1945).
   Jolie and Morton are up against much weaker performances for Best Supporting Actress: Toni Collette as the sympathetic mom in "The Sixth Sense," Catherine Keener as the scheming office worker in "Being John Malkovich" and Chloe Sevigny as the girl who loves the boy who's really a girl in "Boys Don't Cry." Not a mute or a wack job among 'em.
   Partial to young 'uns
   Oscar also loves honoring kids who command memorable roles. In the past the Academy has honored 12-year-old Anna Paquin for "The Piano," Tatum O'Neal at age 8 for "Paper Moon" (1973) and 16-year-old Patty Duke in "The Miracle Worker."
   This year's Best Supporting Actor favorite has to be 11-year-old Haley Joel Osment who plays the troubled little boy who "can see dead people" in "The Sixth Sense." As the focus of almost every scene, Osment does some impressively serious acting opposite co-star Bruce Willis (whose own performance is enhanced by the intensity of his young counterpart). Amazing, considering that just a few years ago Osment was a TV sitcom kid on ABC's "The Jeff Foxworthy Show" (alongside "Jerry Maguire" tyke Jonathan Lipnicki).
   Go to prison, win an Oscar. That's another of the Academy's credos. In the past, lots of actors had to visit death row to execute a winning performance. This year's crop of movie convicts includes Best Actor nominee Denzel Washington for "Hurricane" and Supporting Actor nominee Michael Clarke Duncan for "The Green Mile."
   Previous Oscar-winning roles as felons include Kevin Spacey as the tricky con man in "The Usual Suspects" (1995), Joe Pesci as a short-tempered mobster in "Goodfellas" (1990), Anthony Hopkins as the serial killer in "Silence of the Lambs" (1991), Jeremy Irons as the murderous husband in "Reversal of Fortune" (1990), William Hurt as the cross-dressing prisoner in "Kiss of the Spider Woman" (1985) and George Kennedy as the chain gang member in "Cool Hand Luke" (1967).
   Noticeably absent from nominated roles this year is one of Oscar's longtime faves: The hussy with the heart of gold. Playing a proz in a major motion picture is usually a surefire way to walk off with a Best Supporting Actress award. Worked for Kim Basinger in "L.A. Confidential" (1997), Mira Sorvino in "Mighty Aphrodite" (1995), Shirley Jones in "Elmer Gantry" (1960) and Donna Reed in "From Here to Eternity" (1953).
   Guess they're just not writing great hookers the way they used to.
  
  

 
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