Edward Copeland's Tangents

"Grace Kelly as a country girl? That year's award should have gone to Judy Garland in A Star Is Born."
Al Weisel

"A superlative stage actress who occasionally duplicated her work in many an outstanding motion picture (A Woman's Vengeance [1948], The Birds [1963]), decided in her declining years to make movies her bread-and-butter by appearing in a never-ending series of crinkly, fun-loving senior citizen roles that support the argument for assisted suicide. Not only is Tandy embarrassing in Daisy, the film itself — which makes an average episode of Amos 'n' Andy look the picture of tolerance — is one of the worst films to ever win Best Picture."
Ivan G. Shreve Jr.

"Probably the worst actress ever to win the award, Jones brought nothing to the screen in any performance except a painful emotional detachment and insomnia-curing performances."
Tripp Burton

"A legacy award for one of the most inexplicably overpraised actresses in history."
Karina Longworth

"Proof that Hollywood was giving away inexplicable Oscars even back in the Golden Age."
Jenni

"Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looks today, but this one has really aged."
John Farmer

"A shovelful of saccharine doesn't make this non-performance
any easier to choke down."
John Burlinson

"Unlike the other ladies on this list, I actually like Ginger Rogers — and it pains me to pick on someone with actual talent. But the spark and savvy which informed her best performances is sadly absent from her work in Kitty Foyle. Her trademark blonde locks dyed a dull shade of brown, presumably for optimum seriousness, Rogers comes across as an earnest drone. I, for one, prefer my Ginger with a dash of spice."
Josh R

“Oy vey! The film that gives schmaltz a bad name.”
Peter Nellhaus

"Either you can handle the smugness of Lange, or you can’t. I for one, was never able to, and her most celebrated performances have always seemed like so much empty posturing. Blue Sky, however, is not one of her more celebrated performances, or even one of her tolerable ones. Campy, vampy and shrill, with a honeyed southern accent so thick it would make Tallulah Bankhead recoil in revulsion, her character is so blatantly unlikable from start to finish that when, in the film’s absurd climax, she finally appears galumphing triumphantly on horseback onto a nuclear test site, blonde tresses aflame, you finally think, yesss, the pay-off we’ve been waiting for."
Josh R

"A performance, and a movie, that was as soggy as yesterday’s oats, and as predictable in its taste."
Dennis Cozzalio

"The Harold Russell Memorial Award"
Exiled in New Jersey

"Judy was at best the fourth best choice amongst the nominees. I can understand if Anne Baxter and Bette Davis split the All About Eve vote, but Gloria Swanson losing for Sunset Boulevard? Unbelievable."
Karina Longworth

"It may be the 70s-ness that I don't like."
M.A. Peel

"Booth is so histrionic and annoying, you can hardly blame the damn dog for running away."
Odienator

"I think Kathy Bates IS a great actress, but not in Misery. I felt no real complexity to the character. She bored me, but, in fairness, Stephen King deserves the brunt of the responsibility for that."
Nomi

"Should have won for The Apartment or Sweet Charity. Not this crud."
Tim Footman

"I can't stand this movie, and though Dunaway's performance is not the worst thing about it, she certainly doesn't help any either."
Brian Darr

"She's been great in other things but this is just acting with a capital A... hell, it's just all caps. Maybe it's just that the character is vulgar but the performance strikes me as crude showboating. I didn't buy it."
Nathaniel R

"The pinnacle of Wyman's acting career remains the television soap opera 'Falcon Crest' where, as ballsy wine matriarch Angela Channing, she slyfully and successfully channeled the persona of first hubby Ronald Reagan's better-known better half, Nancy (Davis) Reagan. Janie got a major sympathy vote (after the birth and death of her baby daughter in 1947 and her subsequent crumbling marriage to the man who would soon be known around Rancho Yesteryear from 1981-89 as "The Great Prevaricator") for a performance that's the equivalence of being trapped in a city park with a doggedly determined mime."
Ivan G. Shreve Jr.

"Love the singing, want to brain her with a frying pan the rest of the time and, btw, I LOVE the movie. Go figure."
Joshua Flower

"Luise Rainer is pretty embarrassing as a Chinese peasant. After winning the Oscar the year before for The Great Ziegfeld her career succumbed to the double Oscar curse."
Al Weisel

"'Butterball 28' takes an ax to one of the 20th century's best women's roles."
John Burlinson

"I've never gotten this movie, and think most of it is overwrought pretentiousness, save for Anna Paquin."
David Gaffen

"Let's just say this performance has not aged well."
Charles Barrett

"She's just so "great lady" special that I start retching just thinking about it."
Richard Christenson

"A hand gesture thought out for every damn line — exhausting and unbearable performance I hope I never have to sit through again."
B. Lee

"Many supporting actress Oscars have been given just for being adorable and winsome, but how many lead trophies have been presented merely for being tremendously loveable? Oh and don't take this as a sign I don't like the performance or the movie, but is it really Oscar-worthy? (In retrospect, perhaps the greatness of this performance is in how bad I feel about listing it here?"
Daniel Fienberg

"She wasn't even nominated for Of Human Bondage, so this is one of those consolation Oscars they give out to this day, and shouldn't. You would never know Davis was a peerless screen artist by viewing this shrill, silly, damn near unwatchable performance in an extremely tiresome movie."
Campaspe

"I might have put her Mary Tyrone on my 'best' list if she had won that year — but Lion is a TERRIBLY acted film and she (along with everyone else in the film) was at her hammy worst."
B. Lee

"Chloe Sevigny carried this movie; Swank won on 'uglification.'"
Jenni

Labels: Lists, Oscars

# posted by Edward Copeland @ 11:40 AM