Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (Triumph Films)
With this year’s Academy Awards just days away, it’s time to ramp up the excitement as well as the cynicism about the event and its honors. The Oscars aren’t just about celebrating the movies and a lot of their components. They’re also about us regular folk having fun challenging the opinions of the elite, declaring such offenses as category fraud, snubs, bully campaigning, unfair rules, unpopular winners, undeserved winners, supposed misread winners, career-achievement-based winners, etc. I guarantee there are more people that hate the Oscars than love them, but plenty of the former still watch the show. Mainly in order to have additional ammo for their criticisms.
We have a well-balanced appreciation for the Academy Awards, good and bad. We like to highlight when they’re an important institution as well as when they’re a joke. Here we’re doing the first, focusing on the negative. Tomorrow we’ll do the reverse. Below is a list that provides evidence the Oscars aren’t as prestigious as they mean to be. These are the very worst performers to have Oscars — for acting — who are still alive and working today. More than 10 bad actors and actress have won, but these are the least deserving, as far as their lifelong level of talent (or lack thereof) has indicated. Their wins were flukes, most likely thanks to the work of great directors. And they’re lame company for the truly great thespians with Oscars to have to share their distinction with.
1. Jon Voight
Best Actor winner for Coming Home (1978)
The Karate Dog (Screen Media Ventures)
The top spot goes to a man who has been nominated three other times from the occasion of his win, most recently and laughably with his heavily made-up impersonation of Howard Cosell in 2001’s Ali. I think he’s been lucky, and maybe he has enough friends in Hollywood to help maintain his reputation. Too bad he hurts it himself by appearing in too many movies that would seem beneath him. Not just stuff like Zoolander and Transformers but, worse, The Karate Dog and the Baby Geniuses series. But his choices don’t make him a bad actor. That’s in his performances, none of which have ever convinced me he’s even close to embodying his role. He doesn’t always ruin a movie by being in it, but he did keep me from being able to like the TV series Ray Donovan.
2. Mira Sorvino
Best Supporting Actress winner for Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
Smitty (Phase 4 Films)
For an actress who works as much as Sorvino does, you’d think you’d be seeing more of her. But she’s just keeping afloat in awful movies that fit her skill set. I recently had to watch a 2012 family film she’s in called Smitty. It made me really embarrassed for her. Acting opposite one of the worst child actors I’ve ever witnessed plus Jason London and a dog all made her look like a master thespian by comparison, yet she was still unbearable. Her win is one of many that exposes a problem for the supporting actress category, the corner of the Oscars that saw Marisa Tomei dishonored by critics claiming her award was a literal mistake. No, it’s just how this particular award tends to go — I do think Tomei is one of the more decent actresses in the bunch, though.
3. Anna Paquin
Best Supporting Actress for The Piano (1993)
X-Men: The Last Stand (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)
Please no more Oscar nominations for child performances. Please, please, please, please, please. Thank goodness Jacob Tremblay missed out this year, and he’s actually one of the few I could see going on to become a great actor in his adulthood. Paquin, sadly, did not become a great anything, except manager of her career in a way that she’s stayed relevant. I’ll admit, she’s very good in The Piano. So is Harvey Keitel, though, and he’s another who is mostly a terrible performer who has been able to make great choices and work with directors who can do impressive things with him. Paquin didn’t deserve the Oscar. Jane Campion did. At least she was nominated. Women are rarely nominated, yet kids with undeveloped talents are regularly honored. If there’s one thing making me look forward to X-Men: Apocalypse this year it’s that Paquin’s Rogue is apparently not in it at all. I can’t believe people wanted her reinserted into the last one.
4. Tatum O’Neal
Best Supporting Actress for Paper Moon (1973)
Saving Grace B. Jones (New Films Cinema)
Before there was Paquin, there was O’Neal. Yes, it was cute that the Academy used to give special awards to juvenile stars like Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney. Mostly people who made a lot of money for Hollywood, which was definitely a factor for Oscars in the early years. But look at the youths who’ve been nominated for legit acting Oscars, from Jackie Cooper through Justin Henry and Haley Joel Osment to Quvenzhane Wallis and tell me it’s ever been a good idea. Wait for them to become grown and see how they turn out, like with Jodie Foster. As for O’Neal, she’s definitely wonderful in Paper Moon and was even a fine adolescent actress for a few years. But she’s never been too suited for drama or anything of real weight. Now she’s best used for nostalgic stunt casting like her role in The Runaways, playing a mom in the ’70s to another child actress, Dakota Fanning.
Related Posts:
The Evergreen Appeal of Spy Comedies- Retracing Hollywood’s Fascination with the Remake
- ‘Picard’ Explained: There’s No Escaping Death in ‘Et in Arcadia Ego Part 1’
- An Overpass, a Helicopter, and the Riskiest Stunt in ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’
- ‘The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension’ Needs No Comic To Fill Its Universe
0 comments:
Post a Comment