Dracula Presents: The Thirteenth Annual Golden Stake Awards

Honestly thought that would win best chase, the slow laborious run down was tense as shit. It's available on Hulu in the states at least.

Best Cameo
My criteria for this award has gone in a lot of directions over the years and over time to encompass both the traditional definition of “cameo” to something more akin to “best actor who’s only in a scene or two of a movie.” Generally speaking I’ll try to include a few nominees from both of those camps this year and I’ve even gone so far as to stretch it to include roles from two actors I straight-up hadn’t heard of before, one old and one young.

Malcolm McDowell – Bombshell: Though we are privy to much of the Fox News hierarchy throughout Bombshell, we do not see the wizard behind the curtain until close to the end of the movie when Rupert Murdoch enters the movie at the eleventh hour and we see that he is played by none other than Alex DeLarge himself Malcolm McDowell. McDowell is not a dead-ringer for Murdoch but there is a certain resemblance and you kind of need someone who is largely known for screen villainy to really capture his essence. And as a fan of HBO’s “Succession” it was cool to see another boisterous British character actor take a stab at a role based on this dude.

Usher – Hustlers: Of the nominees here this one is probably the closest to being a true cameo as it’s an actor playing himself and it’s getting more of a charge out of that stunt casting than it is out of an actual performance per se, but its an impactful casting choice just the same. The scene is essentially meant to be the last moment of the “good times” at this club before the 2008 financial crisis and depicts a “magical” evening when Usher comes into the strip club and starts making it rain while one of his songs plays. There is a certain sadness to all of this though, because there is something kind of pathetic about the highlight of someone’s life being something as mundane as being in the same building as a popular but not exactly legendary figure like Raymond Usher.

Joan Gregson – It: Chapter 2: Joan Gregson is basically a nobody. The eighty six year old actress has about 77 credits to her name, mostly bit parts and television work, and yet she was allowed to dominate the screen for this highlight sequence in this blockbuster horror movie. Playing the role of “Mrs. Kersh,” a sweet old lady who is in fact a manifestation of the evil force Pennywise and this reveals itself over the course of her one scene with Jessica Chastain. Gregson finds the perfect way to be unsettling in the scene with these little pauses and slightly twisted line readings. The scene kind of goes to hell when Gregson is suddenly replaced by a ridiculous looking CGI monstrosity, but that probably just speaks to how good her performance was in the first place.

Stephen Merchant – Jojo Rabbit: This has been a very good year for Stephen Merchant cameos as he also had a great small part in the movie Good Boys as well as this great scene which is something of a highlight in the otherwise over-rated Jojo Rabbit. In it Merchant plays a Gestapo agent who knocks on Jojo’s door and engages in a rather tense but humorous search of his house which involves several compulsory rounds of “heil Hitlers.” Merchant’s status as both a 6’ 7” giant and his status as a gawky nerd comedian go a long way to make this character seem both imposing and pathetic, which is the kind of balance the whole movie is going for with its Nazi characters.

Julia Butters - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Julia Butters is a ten year old actress that Quentin Tarantino felt confident enough in to give a two scene role to that ends up being something of an emotional core to his latest movie. Butters is playing an actress on the set of a TV series that Rick Dalton is guest starring on and turns out to be a much more professional and articulate actor than Dalton despite being eight. Playing someone who is scripted to be a great actor is probably a lot of pressure but Butters really lights up the screen and completely holds her own opposite Leonardo Di Caprio.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Julia Butters had more screen time than Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Zoe Bell, Bruce Dern, Dakota Fanning, Maya Hawke, what’s-his-face who played Speed Racer, Leo’s Italian Wife, the Manson Family and Steve McQueen.

Might as well given Best Cameo to fucking Bruce Lee.

Best Supporting Actress
Pretty self-explanatory. Looking for the best actress who isn’t in the lead role. Kind of a weak field overall in this category and I wasn’t thrilled with a lot of the choices that have been winning awards in the category elsewhere but I found some choices I think were smart.

Jennifer Lopez – Hustlers: Jennifer Lopez is someone whose career has largely been out of sight and out of mind for me in the last twenty years. I have minimal exposure to her music career and she literally hadn’t made a single movie I’d seen since the turn of the millennium until she came out of nowhere to star in the film Hustlers. Here she sets aside the glamourous image she’d been developing and channels “Jenny From the Block” persona again, this time to more convincing ends. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she seemed “real” but it was certainly fun to watch.

Florence Pugh – Little Women: The character of Amy March is supposed to be twelve years old at the chronological start of Little Women and I don’t think the character has really been aged up to be played by twenty three year old Florence Pugh, but there is something to be said for the fact that the movie really manages to avoid making this too much of a problem and Pugh deserves definite credit for this as she really manages to tap into that childish energy in those scenes. Even more impressive is that you really see her mature in her scenes as an adult where she really brings out the layers of sadness in the character.

Margaret Qualley - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: It maybe says a lot about the power of celebrity that despite having such a small role in the film Margot Robbie has gotten a lot of awards buzz for her work in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood while the name “Margaret Qualley” almost never comes up. Qualley also has a small role as a hippie girl who goes by the name Pusseycat and is a fictional member of the Manson Family, but her scenes with Brad Pitt are incredibly charming. Her character just feels so full of life and you can see why Cliff would be seduced into what proves to be something of a trap.

Cho Yeo-jeong – Parasite: There were several female supporting performances that I was impressed by in Parasite, but the one that seemed the most important and crucial was the performance that Cho Yeo-jeong gave as the ditzy matriarch of the rich family who set off the events of the film by hiring the Kims. I’m not very familiar with Cho’s previous work but she knocked it out of the park when given the difficult task of making her character seem dim in a way that was believable but also not completely condescending. If she hadn’t been up to that the whole film could have fallen apart.

Taylor Russsell – Waves: Taylor Russsell’s placement in the supporting category is a little dubious as she is for all intents and purposes the lead character for half of the film, but it didn’t exactly make sense to place her in the lead category either. Whatever category she belongs in there’s little doubt that this twenty five year old actress does a great job in an emotionally tricky role. (Spoiler) Like the entire family in the movie, Russell has to react to a big tragedy at the film’s midpoint and then spends that second half in a state of trauma and grief before slowly recovering.

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Hoping to finally watch that this weekend.

I keep seeing her name thrown around and still have no idea who she is.

You know WWE’s Paige? From PG Cooper’s favorite sex videos. She played her in the movie.

Kirsten Dunst or Natalie Portman or Florence Pugh?

Pugh definitely deserved her win here. Fantastic work.

It's what it is.

I'm 100% on board with all of your acting choices ao far.

You can easily swap out Pitt and DiCaprio in this category for Phoenix and Sandler.