Academy Award-Winning Recommen-DAMES-tions
Our rooting interests for Sunday's ceremony and a new paid-subscriber perk.
Hello, Dames Nationals!
This week, we are using Hollywood’s Biggest Night to give everyone a taste of the newest perk we’ve put together for our paying subscribers: monthly Recommen-DAMES-tions. Once a month, our paid subscribers get to pick their favorite of three possible themes and then receive a trio of recommen-DAMES-tions derived from that theme, with one each from Dames Karen, Margaret, and Sophie!
We felt like the easiest way to demonstrate its value would be to write a sample issue forr you, and what better subject could we ask for than rooting interests for the 96th Academy Awards!
The Academy Awards: The Moments for Which We Your Dames Will Be Watching
Dame Sophie, on behalf of all three Dames: Like my fellow Dames Margaret and Karen, I’m all in on rooting enthusiastically for Da’Vine Joy Randolph and her performance as Mary in The Holdovers. I’ve been firmly on Team Da’Vine since her performance as Cherise in one of my most beloved and deeply mourned one-season-wonders, the Hulu adaptation of High Fidelity. Cherise was a wholly reimagined version of Barry, the character who introduced me to Jack Black.
Where Black played Barry as a hyper-judgmental ambulatory tornado — think the Tasmanian Devil crossed with Captain Caveman and, somehow, a way less starchy Sam The Eagle — Randolph made Cherise the kind of character you’d find both annoying *and* magnetic in real life. At the time, I described her performance in one recap as “so assured and crisply hilarious that she threatens to steal every scene she’s in”. Watch this one and tell me that I’m wrong:
The Holdovers has its witty moments, but it calls on Randolph to draw on weariness, grief, and exasperation more than anything else. As Mary, the head of the boarding school cafeteria, Randolph draws deeply into herself both physically and emotionally. Mary is mourning the death of her son Curtis, who was killed in action in Vietnam. This will be her first Christmas without him, and she’s determined to power quietly through it by hurling herself into the work of cooking for Paul Giamatti’s curmudgeonly Paul Hunham and Dominic Sessa’s anguished Angus Tully, chain smoking, and watching TV, with one party thrown in for good measure.
No surprise here: she’s amazing in this role, too! Given her avalanche of wins at the BAFTAs, the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards, the SAG Awards, and all the regional critics circle awards, she is heavily favored to make a clean sweep of things by bringing home to Oscar, too, and I think she deserves to. Go, Da’Vine!
And bonus, please enjoy her cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)”, an enduring joy we received from the aforementioned High Fidelity adaptation:
Dame Sophie’s (Solo) Rooting Interest: Justine Triet Winning Best Director
My other rooting interest is a hope that Justine Triet will win Best Director for Anatomy of a Fall, purely on the basis that the other two acceptance speeches I’ve seen her give (BAFTAs and Independent Spirit) were both delightful and largely artless. She’s one of those people who looks glamorous, even when rumpled, a quality I would love to see bottled and available for purchase. I want to be clear: I haven’t seen Anatomy of a Fall and have no idea when or if I will see it! This is a no thoughts, just vibes hope, and I know darn well it’s a vain one, as Christopher Nolan is going to snag this in a walk for Oppenheimer (which I both saw and admired a great deal).
Dame Karen’s Rooting Interest:
My biggest non-Da’Vine Joy Randolph-centric Oscar wish is for Holly Waddington to win Best Costume Design for her series of glamorously monstrous sleeves as worn by Emma Stone in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things. This was a hard one for me, as I also really loved the costumes in Barbie, but Jacqueline Durran has won three Oscars for Best Costume Design, including one for another Gerwig movie, Little Women. I wholeheartedly sign off on that win, thanks mostly to her stridently cozy employment of Sontag shawls, also charmingly known as “bosom friends” due to their purpose of giving one a snug little warming hug across the chest. That was 2019, however, and on one hand, I need a snug little warming hug more than ever, and the costumes in Barbie did make me happy in a nostalgia-drenched, smiling ear to ear way. [I wore my own version of the hyperfemme pinker than pink onslaught to the movie theater and got so carried away by the power of ✨vIbEz✨ I started yelling “Hi, Barbie!” to every other person in pink at the Regal MGM Springfield.]
HOWEVER, here in 2024, I feel disconcerted and weird all the time and am therefore rooting for surreal looks that make me feel even more confused and uncomfortable, particularly at the Oscars, which I mostly watch for the fashion ANYWAY and I’m only truly happy when someone wears something outrageous that used to go on the much-missed Mr. Blackwell’s Worst Dressed List. Yes to Bjork’s swan dress, yes to Celine Dion’s entirely iconic and way ahead of its time backward tuxedo, and yes forever to Cher winning Best Actress for Moonstruck and doing so while wearing this:
I also am a sucker for first time nominees winning and this is Waddington’s first nod. She has actually worked as an assistant to Jacqueline Durran on several films, including Atonement aka Oh That Green Dress My God, and several Mike Leigh movies, which are probably my favorite movies in the world at the end of the day. I love the idea of the student becoming the master and winning because who doesn’t?!
Apparently the giant sleeves were actually Yorgos Lanthimos’s idea, per this New York Times article, and he was onto something because 2023 saw all sorts of wild sleeve action. I love it. I hope Emma Stone tops her BAFTAs outfit and does TWO giant puff on her shoulders.
Hell, add bracelets and do four. I’m not going to rock a leg o’mutton sleeve because I work in a warehouse when I’m not slumped on my couch writing about god only knows what or napping under a weighted blanket, but I’m going to keep my fingers crossed for a sleeves bigger than one’s head winning moment on Sunday.
Dame Margaret’s Rooting Interest: Ryan Gosling Being “Just Ken”
The part of this year’s awards ceremony I am most anticipating is Ryan Gosling performing Best Original Song Nominee “I’m Just Ken.” This is quite distinct from rooting for that song to win– as much as I love Mark Ronson, I will be rooting for Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas to become the fourth and fifth people ever to win two Oscars before turning 30, and the official betting odds are in their favor. No, I’m just eager to see one of my all-time favorite goobers GOOB IT UP live, on an enormous stage. Moreover, I am grateful to Greta Gerwig for reminding everyone that this is Ryan Gosling’s essential self. Sure, he may have finally gained respect in Hollywood by playing Serious Men: heartbroken male leads in romantic dramas both mainstream and glossy and low-budget and grim; cocaine-addicted middle school teachers; and not one but TWO stoic stunt drivers who reluctantly turn to crime (first as a getaway driver, then as a family-supporting bank robber). Despite this early masc track record, Gosling himself is a deliciously unserious person– I knew this when I first fell in love with him as “aspiring ladies man/nerd” Sean Hanlon on the late 90s teen sitcom Breaker High (it’s a high school! on a boat!) and have been delighted ever since to see it peek through in movies both mediocre (Crazy, Stupid, Love) and captivating (The Nice Guys). But no movie has ever given his gooberosity more magnificent scope of expression than Barbie, and no aspect of Barbie made better use of it than “I’m Just Ken.” I don’t know that it should take home a statuette, but I am thrilled to watch the theater nerd from this ET interview about Young Hercules bust a move Hollywood’s Biggest Night:
If you enjoyed this, consider this your invitation to join the ranks of our paid subscribers— subscriptions are 25% off their usual price: $5.25/a month or $52.50/year. If you subscribe by Sunday, you’ll be able to vote for one of this month’s three possible themes:
A piece of culture we cannot stop recommending
A favorite story (either real or fictional) about show biz
Ways to welcome springtime
Make your wishes known and help sustain our work!
XOXO/ Dames Karen, Margaret, and Sophie
Rooting for Barbie! And perks! Love your picture, Kiki.