Remembering Jude

I still say Cate Blanchett should have won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her Dylan deal in I’m Not There — the most riveting, fascinating and feeling-ful peformance of 2007. The woman who did win….I can’t remember who that was. Thinking, thinking. It was Michael Clayton‘s Tilda Swinton but I had to look it up. She was very good, but I think her win was compensation because Clayton wasn’t going to win in any other big-five category and the Clayton lovers knew this, so Tilda was the lucky recipient.


I’m Not There DVD is out May 6th. Not a must-rent as much as a must-own.

“I will tell you right now — Cate Blanchett will win the Oscar,” George Clooney told the Associated Press last October about his Good German costar. “She’s the best actor working today. Not actress — she’s an actor. Intimidating, in a way, to work with an actor that good.”

14 thoughts on “Remembering Jude

  1. I agree Jeff, except Ruby should have won IMO. Just those few minutes when she confronts Denzel are so riveting. I couldn’t get pass 1 hour of Michael Clayton – the most boring movie to be nominated last year. Tilda’s role wasn’t so great, her acting wasn’t so great, almost anyone could have played that part — Jodie Foster, you name the actress. Nothing special.

  2. -INT is THE best film of 2007.
    -CB deserved to win.
    -I LOVED TS in MC.
    -Ruby Dee deserved it for AG? Yeah, truly because that was the first time we ever watched a black woman take no sass from her young’ns!

  3. AMERICAN GANGSTER deserves nothing more than to be forgotten. and I’M NOT THERE… was largely drivel, but CB was rather fantastic.

  4. I thought Tilda Swinton’s accent was ridiculous — so I couldn’t see past it at all. Would have preferred any of the other four. (Don’t get me started on Tom Wilkinson’s).

  5. I think George Clooney is intimidated to work with anyone who can act, period… which would explain casting Zellweger and John Krasinski in Leatherheads.

  6. Here we go with the short-term memory thing and it’s barely a couple months past Oscar. Tilda Swinton was a knockout in Michael Clayton. In case anyone who got “bored” watching on DVD and was fast-forwarding, go back and watch her scene on the street where she suddenly realizes she is instructing a hit on Tom Wilkinson — she is totally mesmerizing and complex, and you can fully see her personal and corporate ethics tangling. Then go watch her in the final scene with Clooney. This is one hell of a performance. By contrast, Blanchett was her usual superb-ness in I’m Not There, but the role is essentially a stunt and has virtually no emotional life. If it were up to me, I’d hand her the Oscar for something every year. But I’m Not There is an esoteric film that hardly works in the first place, and she doesn’t so much support it as she does rise above it.

  7. “but I think her win was compensation because Clayton wasn’t going to win in any other big-five category”
    I love it when Jeff says something really obvious that everybody else said months ago (some of us even correctly predicted who would win because of it), as if he’s just thought of it.
    “George Clooney is intimidated to work with anyone who can act, period…”
    Yeah, why else would he hire David Straithairn, Frank Langella, Robert Downey Jr and Patricia Clarkson to act with him?

  8. Blanchett as Dylan was the epitome of stunt. As a good as she is, one never stops thinking “Wow, Blanchett is really good as Dylan.” Which was Haynes point in doing it.
    While I think having now seen GONE BABY GONE that fuck yeah Ryan was the best in that bunch, Tilda still deserved it over Blanchett. It’s rare for a performance that nuanced and played without hammy cheap ticks gets nominated much less wins (like when Molly Parker did more in 5 mins of CENTER OF THE WORLD than all of Julia Roberts in a push-up bra).

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