acting

Make Glenn Close the Oscars’ Last Acting ‘Career’ Winner

If Glenn Close wins at Sunday’s Oscars for her performance in The Wife, the seven-time nominee will end her reign as the most nominated living actor without any wins. (The late Peter O’Toole holds the all-time record with eight nominations.) Amy Adams, also competing this year in the supporting category—as Lynne Cheney in Vice—would assume the record with a sixth winless nomination.

A Best Actress win would be a justified, admirable conclusion to The Academy’s embarrassing habit of overlooking the stalwart actress. But it shouldn’t have taken this long. While Close carries the perfunctory film with deep, quiet strength, it’s certainly not her best performance, or even the year’s best. Her fellow nominee Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me? as well as the non-nominated Toni Collette in Hereditary and Regina Hall in Support the Girls would top the year’s list with singular, career-redefining performances—their version of Close’s Fatal Attraction.

The phenomenon of the “Career Oscar”—winning for career excellence rather than for the year’s best performance—is another wrench in the Academy’s ongoing overhaul. Along with the debate over popular films, running times and non-broadcast categories, comes a central question: Is the Oscars honoring the best of the year, or the most beloved of the moment?

If the Oscars are there to highlight the best of the year, then Brokeback Mountain would have beaten Crash in 2006 and The Social Network would wear The King’s Speech’s crown. Classics like The Big Lebowski, Daughters of the Dust, and The Shining all deserved at least one nomination in their respective years. Fortunately for these films, the notorious snubs often transform into career fodder, offering the actors and directors as much reverence as any win. It should give this year’s overlooked crew Eighth Grade, Burning and First Reformed some relief.

Close and Adams, beloved couple Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and—it appears once again—Bradley Cooper lead the acting sect of cinematic martyrdom. They’re lauded for continuously weathering the award season storm without a win, yes, but also without compromising their integrity.

Accusations of wanting too badly to win have been leveled at many of their peers: Kate Winslet for The Reader, Julianne Moore for Still Alice and Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant all won with strong performances in forgettable films. Anne Hathaway notoriously faced unprecedented backlash for actively pursuing her Oscar. Sure, she deserved to win for Rachel Getting Married, but her powerful turn as Fantine in Les Misérables should never have led to her short-term blacklisting. Unfortunately, she now counts among a different group: unparalleled actors whose legacies come with a condescending caveat.

These perceptions of who wins and loses are a bit simplistic. Winning an Oscar largely has little to do with talent or groundswell support and instead largely rests on appearing at every industry dinner, offering quippy soundbites for news outlets and, until recently, avoiding one of Harvey Weinstein’s notorious Oscar smear campaigns.

That’s not to say there aren’t worthwhile winners. Mo’Nique in Precious, Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose and any one of Daniel Day-Lewis’s performances all deserve their acclaim. But too often fellow actors are sidelined in their best performances to honor someone previously forgotten. Al Pacino lost for The Godfather Part II so veteran actor Art Carney could win for Harry and Tonto. Pacino finally received his Best Actor trophy in 1993 for Scent of a Woman but in doing so usurped Denzel Washington’s untouchable turn as Malcolm X. Then there’s Martin Landau with one of the most surprising wins of all time for 1994’s Ed Wood, beating out Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction—to date somehow his first and only nomination.

Among the many changes the Academy needs to make, in addition to attracting younger audiences and maintaining their esteem, is honoring actors at their peak, not in their golden years. It was a joy to see Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years A Slave or Octavia Spencer in The Help win for masterful turns early their Oscar timelines. If Spencer was forced to wait for future nominations, her fellow 2016 nominee Viola Davis might have had tougher competition for her Best Actress win and competitor Allison Janney might still be gunning for her first Oscar, which she won last year.

An anonymous Oscar voter told The Hollywood Reporter this week they’re voting for Close. Not because they adored her performance in The Wife, but because they found her “wonderful” in Dangerous Liaisons, a film she was nominated for 30 years ago. “Sometimes you do vote for an accumulation of work, and she’s of a certain age, and I think it’s just time,” they said.

Perhaps it’s time to stop waiting for the work to accumulate.

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Former acting solicitor general: If Mueller investigation is a witch hunt, he's 'found a coven'

© Provided by News Communications, Inc. Former acting solicitor general: If Mueller investigation is a witch hunt, he's 'found a coven' Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said Sunday that if Robert Mueller's investigation is a "witch hunt," the special counsel has "found a coven at this point."

Katyal during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" pointed to Mueller's indictments of dozens of individuals, including several of President Trump's former associates, such as former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, the president's former personal attorney.

"So if this is a witch hunt, Mueller's found a coven at this point," he added.

Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump has long railed against the investigation, labeling it a politically motivated "witch hunt."

Mueller is also reportedly probing possible obstruction of justice on the part of Trump.

Katyal said Sunday that obstruction of justice "comes pretty close" to collusion, adding that obstruction of justice is a "crucial" crime.

"It's a really thin read to say, 'Oh, you've been indicted for obstruction of justice about Russian collusion and not the Russian collusion itself.' I mean, some people denigrate these as so-called process crimes. But anyone in law enforcement knows, these are really crucial crimes," he said.

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The bad acting of Jussie Smollett | Reagan

By Michael Reagan

Jussie Smollett didn't think he was getting paid enough for acting in "Empire."

The poor guy was only getting $20,000 per episode - pocket change in episodic TV land - and he's been a regular character on the popular Fox dramatic series since 2015.

He apparently thought that if he got a big splash of national publicity, Fox would have to pay him more.

So last month the gay black former child actor and proud Trump hater played the racist card, the homophobic card and the "I hate Trump" card - all at once.

As the entire country has since found out, Smollett staged a hate crime on the cold streets of Chicago starring himself as the victim.

To make sure his attack was sympathetically covered by the media, he told police he was beaten up by two racist, homophobic supporters of Donald Trump in red MAGA hats who, for extra measure, poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck.

To everyone not working in the liberal media or for the Democrat Party, Smollett's story stunk to high heaven from the get-go.

It was too politically perfect to be true, full of implausible holes and sounded like it was ripped from the script of a bad TV cop show.

But Don Lemon of CNN, Robin Roberts of ABC and the professional Trump-haters on "Morning Joe" and elsewhere swallowed Smollett's phony story hook, line and sinker.

To them, there is nothing too evil or disgusting that the bigoted supporters of Donald Trump wouldn't do.

Therefore, Smollett's outlandish tale didn't need to be questioned, checked out by the liberal media or even confirmed by police.

It fit their anti-Trump narrative perfectly, so what he claimed happened was automatically true and automatically to be believed.

Thanks to the work of Chicago police, however, we now know Smollett paid two friends $3,500 to help him stage a hate crime because he allegedly was unhappy with his salary.

At a press conference Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said it right: Smollett "took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career. I'm left hanging my head and asking why."

Why? Because Smollett is a troubled egomaniac and had every reason to believe he could get away with it.

He knew his pal Lemon, Hollywood celebrities and left-wing Democrats like Cory Booker would immediately fall for his tale and use it to "prove" their claim that Donald Trump has created a more racist and more homophobic America.

Chicago Police Supt. Johnson was terrific. He blasted the celebrities, media people and presidential candidates for giving Smollett's "phony attack" so much favorable national publicity.

But where is the outrage of the black community? Where is the outrage of the LGBTQ community?

They are the ones who should be most offended by Smollett’s incredibly inept scheme to become a celebrity victim, because his stunt has diminished the credibility of real hate crimes in the future.

Smollett smeared Trump's supporters as racists and bigots. He also smeared the ordinary people of Chicago and the U.S.

In the long run his hate hoax and bald-faced lying afterwards have done a public service he never dreamed it would.

It exposed the fake news media for what they are to the whole country and proved how deep and wide the Trump derangement syndrome is in the media and in Hollywood.

Smollett got the attention he craved, but his hoax backfired on him. His scenes in the final episodes of "Empire" reportedly have been drastically cut back.

He could end up in jail for three years for filing a false police report, but in the long run he'll be excused or forgiven by Hollywood and the liberal media because he's such a devout Trump hater.

In fact, it won't surprise me if his progressive friends in La-La Land give him a special Oscar Sunday night for the acting job he did in his dishonest interview with Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America."

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.