Back from commercial in 3…2…1… (Cue Matty!)
…And we’re back at the MATTY AWARDS, the awards show that all of the Hollywood elite are talking about. As a matter of fact, I just overheard tonight’s Best Supporting Actor winner, J.K. Simmons say to Jessica Chastain that the only award he’s ever wished to win has been “Matty’s Golden Nostrils.”
Well, J.K., I’m happy that you finally received your “Golden Snout.” Congrats.
Ok, back to it, I’m your host Matty W. Kelley and it’s high time we move on to our next category, Best Actress.
Personally, I find this category the sexiest of all the categories. You gotta love the ladies.
And the nominees are:
Felicity Jones, (The Theory of Everything):
I don’t know too much about Miss Jones. I like her name. It’s both uncommon and common at the same time.
Besides “The Theory of Everything,” I don’t really know too many films she’s been in. I guess she was in The “Amazing Spider-man 2,” but I can’t really remember her character. (That may have something to do with the film being just “average.”)
She is fantastic in this film playing Stephen Hawking’s wife, Jane. She deals with the struggles of coping with Hawking’s motor neuron disease (ALS) as they grow older together.
She’s a strong actress in a powerful film. But is she strong enough to raise the “Golden Nose?”
Well, let me tell you, her being cast in the new “Untitled Star Wars Project” can only help her.
Julianne Moore, (Still Alice):
Speaking of powerful films, “Still Alice” is most definitely one of those.
Julianne Moore plays “Alice Howland,” a beautiful and brilliant 50 year old linguistics professor who is stricken with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She she tries to learn to live with it, but… it isn’t easy.
This is a great film, but difficult to watch, especially if you’ve seen the progression of this disease develop in a family member or a friend. I have seen this happen to a man I absolutely adored. This very popular man (Bob Singer) would come into the variety store (Guild Variety) that I used to work at and hang out. He was always so happy, so engaging, so courteous and accommodating to people. He would tell terrible jokes. He’d try to do magic tricks (which were also terrible), and he’d always pretend to steal stuff from the store and then laugh about it. He was just a great man to have around. He was so original and refreshing.
After a few years we (family and friends) started noticing that he’d repeat the same stories, questions, and terrible jokes. One day his wife came in the store and told us that he had Alzheimer’s disease. From then on I just watched him rapidly deteriorate. He went quick. His wife would bring him to the store everyday. At first he’d crack the same stupid jokes like, “Pete and Repeat were up in a tree. Pete fell down. Who was left? Repeat!” (and then he’d say it again… and again… and again). Believe me, the joke was funny, (I laughed all the time) but he actually never remembered saying it ten minutes earlier. It was tough to watch.
Eventually, he would come to the store and just stand there, quiet as a church mouse. People would come to the store and talk to him, but you could tell he had no clue who they were. He eventually passed away. It was a very sad time for me and his friends from that store.
ANYWAY, sorry about bringing you down with that story. BUT, what I was trying to get at was… I saw that same progression in Alice. Julianne Moore completely blew me away with how “spot-on” she was with this disease. She either REALLY did her homework or she has firsthand seen this disease in a family member or friend. She was INCREDIBLE in this film. Kudos to a job well done.
Reese Witherspoon, (Wild):
Another great acting performance by another great actress in another great film.
Witherspoon plays “Cheryl,” a girl who loses her mother to cancer. She then turns to drugs and alcohol to mask her pain. Then she tries to redeem herself by hiking 1100 miles up the Pacific Coast Trail.
Her mother (Laura Dern) always tried to show her the beauty that surrounds her. Cheryl tries to become the person her mother always wanted her to be (which was happy).
Now THIS film hit me hard too. I also lost my mother at a young, impressionable age. My mother always taught me to be happy. When she passed I thought drinking would make me happy. So I did it… for 15 years… HARD. Believe me, that doesn’t work. It makes it so much worse. It took me twenty years to figure this out. Now I try to do what I think my mother would want for me, and that is to be happy. I finally feel like I’m moving in the right direction.
This film made me think of my mother, and I loved this film because of that.
The one problem I had with it was it took me a bit to warm up to Cheryl. Maybe I had a hard time believing Witherspoon could carry such a heavy load. But after about 15 minutes I was totally into her character and she made the role believable.
Marion Cotillard, (Two Days, One Night):
Didn’t see it.
But I loved her in “Inception and “The Dark Knight Rises”.
Maybe that will propel her into winning her first “MATTY”… but I doubt it.
Rosamund Pike, (Gone Girl):
Now I connected with this character, “Amy Dunne” because we’re both mental cases. But she clearly takes the cake.
Pike’s character is an obsessive wife, hell bent on keeping her man (or losing her man). She’ll stop at nothing to keep her husband (or lose her husband). Murder people, frame people for murder, fake a pregnancy, whatever you want, this nut’ll do it.
Rosamund Pike plays one nutty character. There may be only one nuttier character in this film… Her froot loop husband.
Great film.
Scarlett Johannson, (Under The Skin):
Wow.
That’s all I can say about this film.
No it isn’t, here I go.
You know what? When I first saw this movie I thought Johansson’s acting was good, but it didn’t blow my socks off. But as time has gone by and the more I’ve thought about this film (and I’ve thought about it a lot) her character AND her acting has grown on me. She really needed to deliver a stoic, solemn, quiet, but determined performance, and I believe she did. The reason she needed to portray her character this way was because…. Well, you’re just gonna have to see the movie for yourself. But the ending blew me away and THAT’S why I think she deserves a Matty nod.
There’s your six nominees up for Best Actress.
And the MATTY goes to…
Julianne Moore.
Believe you me when I say this, THIS was a difficult category for me. So many powerful performances that hit home for me. It really was a race between Moore, Witherspoon, and Johansson. But when I broke it down I feel that Julianne truly dug into her character and delivered a “Golden Nose” performance.
But I must say they were all excellent performances by all actresses. (Except for Cotillard, cuz I didn’t see her movie. But I bet it was a good performance by her too.)
Who SHOULD win the Oscar: Julianne Moore.
Who WILL win the Oscar: Julianne Moore.
So there you have it, three categories down, two to go, including Matty’s pick for Best Picture.
Tune in next time to find out who Matty chooses for Best Actor.
Matty W. Kelley, reporting
mattywkelley.com