Palm Springs Shines on Natalie Portman and Colin Firth
Natalie Portman (pictured) and Colin Firth will be awarded the Desert Palm Achievement Award for actress and actor at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, whose Jan. 8 kickoff is hosted by Mary Hart, still pert after all these years. They join already announced PSIFF honorees Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem and Carey Mulligan (who, respectively, got six, four and zero votes on this week's GoldDerby pundit poll).
Firth's frontrunner status is getting so monotonous, it could actually become a liability. Portman feels like the news here. The King's Speech is all no-sex-please-we're-British; Portman's Black Swan persona is a sinfully rich cupcake of concupiscence, a crazed solar flare disrupting normal transmissions (like the conventional wisdom leaning toward an Annette Bening win). Citing Tom O'Neal, Sasha Stone says, "When confronted with older versus younger, Oscar almost always chooses younger." For the male heteros of a certain age in the Academy, "the 'f*ckable' aspect is almost always the immovable object in the best actress race."
Stone notes that Bening got beaten by Hilary Swank, and Ellen Burstyn by Julia Roberts, Sissy Spacek by Halle Berry, Diane Keaton by Charlize Theron, and Julie Christie by Marion Cotillard. Helen Mirren doesn't count because age doth not wither Helen Mirren. Stone notes that to nab the doll, Portman must overcome her shyness and act more like her Black Swan wild child on the red carpet. When I once ran into Portman in a fluffy robe at Santa Fe’s 10,000 Waves spa, she seemed meek as a monk. She just needs to treat news cameras more like movie cameras and erupt a bit.
Even though the young woman I rode the Telluride gondola with steamed up the windows after the 127 Hours premiere, squealing, "James Franco! What a sexy bomb!" I am guessing she was not an Academy member. So Firth may be safer than Bening from the Oscar Effable Effect.
Covering The Race
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Scott Feinberg
Lead Awards Blogger & Analyst
Scott, whose THR coverage appears both in print and online, is one of the film industry's most experienced and trusted awards analysts, and possesses one of the strongest track records at forecasting the Oscars. His best showings came in 2006 (when he called 21 of 24 winners) and 2004 (when he called 20 of 24 winners); he was also the only pundit to project long-shot best picture nominations for The Reader (2008), The Blind Side (2009) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011). An alumnus of Brandeis University, he previously ran "The Feinberg Files" blog for the Los Angeles Times. He is now a voting member of both the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, and is writing a book about film history for young people for which he has interviewed more than 350 high-profile Hollywood figures.
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Gregg Kilday
Film Editor
Gregg contributes awards news, features online, and "The Race" column in print.
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Tim Appelo
Film Reporter
Tim contributes awards news and features, both in print and online.
