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Another Dispatch from TIFF: Nomadland Has Big Oscar Energy

By Patrik Sandberg

September 17, 2020

Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland is one of those films that dashes the festival circuit with a prewritten destiny attached. An official selection of Telluride, Venice, Toronto, and New York, this is the film the industry is pushing for Big Oscar Energy, and with good reason: it’s a classic American road movie with a moral sheen, a showcase for Zhao’s willingness to immerse herself into an off-the-grid culture as much as for her lucid, unblinking direction. But more than that, it’s a vehicle for the bulletproof Frances McDormand, one of the most compelling and amusing actors of her generation, who could probably read a Reddit thread out loud for two hours and millions of people would spectate without complaint. 

 

Revisiting Fargo

PUBLISHED AUGUST 18, 2023 · UPDATED AUGUST 18, 2023

Classic Coen brothers film goes “north of normal”

Photo: Maximum Film / Alamy
In all its quirkiness, the classic Coen brothers film Fargo gave new meaning to the concept of dark humor.

John Smistad
Olympia, Wash.

With Editor-in-chief Lori Ann Reinhall’s recent trip to Fargo, N.D., it seemed only natural to revisit the classic film Fargo—a film that left a deep impression on many, with its weird and wacky depiction of Upper Midwest Scandinavian-American culture, this film truly takes you “north of normal” in its uniquely quirky way. John Smistad, the ever-enthusiastic Quick Flick Critic, provides an entertaining and insightful review.

Synopsis: Slimy car salesman Jerry Lundegaard’s inept crime falls apart due to his and his idiotic henchmen’s bungling. Oh, and the keen persistent police work of the sly and very pregnant Marge Gunderson.

I first saw Fargo after it was released on VHS (Remember those, barn?). I remember liking it. I just forgot how much.

Having seen the film again only serves to further fortify my admiration and respect for the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, as enormously gifted and super quirky filmmakers.

American actress / Frances McDormand

 

AMERICAN ACTRESS

Frances McDormand

Winifred Watson / Nigthclubs, coctails and casual sex

Winifred Watson

NIGHTCLUBS, COCTAILS 

AND CASUAL SEX

Novelist who, like her heroines, had a second chance

Henrietta Twycross-Martin
Wed 14 Aug 2002 17.35 BST

Winifred Watson, who has died at the age of 95, wrote six well-reviewed novels in the 1930s and early 1940s, and was then forgotten until she came to renewed fame 18 months ago with the republication of Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, a comic fantasy about a middle-aged governess unexpectedly encountering - and approving of - the louche London world of nightclubs, cocktails and casual sex.

Frances McDormand / Interview / Willem Dafoe

Frances McDormand

Frances McDormand

by Willem Dafoe

BOMB 55

Spring 1996

I first saw Frances McDormand in Blood Simple — an eye opening film and a “where did they get that woman” performance. Next I saw her in Raising Arizona (a film I had been eager to see since I had badly wanted the Nicolas Cage role). Finally, I met her on the set of Mississippi Burning, where she played a battered southern housewife, and I played an FBI investigator. For her performance, she was nominated for an Academy Award.

In Mississippi, Fran struck me as down to earth, direct, and funny. Very serious and great at what she does, but I swear sometimes when I’d be with her I’d almost forget that we were actors. That’s why it was strange to do this interview because I feel we have talked each other’s ears off many times since we’ve met, yet we never talked about performing.

I’m a Coen Brothers fan—I’ve seen all of their films of which Fran has done four or five and I’ve seen many of her other films, each one wildly different from the rest. Among them: Sam Raimi’s Darkman, Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda, Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, and John Boorman’s Beyond Rangoon. Strong directors and not a formula picture in the lot.

 

Greatest Oscar winners ever: who is the best lead actress of all time? Photograph: Guardian Design Team

Who is the best Oscar-winning lead actress of all time?

Elizabeth Taylor? Meryl Streep? Frances McDormand? Our chief critic picks a winner from his five nominees – and reveals who you hose as your champion

Peter Bradshaw
Wed 14 Feb 2018

T

he Academy award for best actress confers a burdensome glamour on its recipient, in most cases a career-high but sometimes a career-end, a longed-for prize that nothing can top, making its winner a pampered jewel in a very male prestige display. Like almost everything about the Academy Awards, it rewards tragedy rather than comedy, and grandiloquence rather than subtlety, so there is something operatic in lining up a five-part fantasy league of the best actress winners. But these are some of the most glorious and intensely pleasurable performances it is possible to watch.