Dracula Presents: The Eighth Annual Golden Stake Awards

Best Cameo

This is kind of an odd category, in part because I seem to change the rules and criteria almost every year. In a broad sense it’s meant to be a potential award for any kind of performance by someone who’s in a movie for a very brief time (usually less than ten minutes or so). Generally I want the nominees to also fit the more conventional definition of a cameo, that of a famous person appearing in a role that’s beneath their usual status. It should also be noted that this award isn’t strictly a matter of judging the performances themselves, it’s also about how clever the presence of the cameo is and how the few scenes involving this cameo play out

Seth Rogen- 22 Jump Street: 22 Jump Street rather famously ends with a clever credits sequence in which a bunch of silly ideas for future sequels are floated by as a sort of “fuck you” to just how deep into a hole a series can get if they go to the well too many times. One twist to the series that they explore is a situation in which Jonah Hill leaves the series, then suddenly we see his character being played by frequent Jonah Hill collaborator Seth Rogen in “29 Jump Street: Sunday School.” Then in the next scene Hill is back and the characters are like: “what contract dispute.” It’s a cute little joke in the middle of a larger joke, and it works because it understands the way the public perceive both actors.

Martin Short- Inherent Vice: Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Inherent Vice runs into a lot of crazy people over the course of his investigation but none more wild than a wacky dentist named Rudy Blatnoyd who’s played by Martin Short. This is pretty much the only character in the movie who’s even more interested in drugs than the protagonist and his behavior is… erratic. The presence of someone like Martin Short in a prestigious Paul Thomas Anderson movie is a little unexpected, but Short does rise to the occasion and seems oddly perfect for the role he’s in.

Uma Thurman- Nymphomaniac: Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac is ultimately a rather episodic narrative and there are a lot of big name actors who come in and out of the film momentarily. The most memorable of them is Uma Thurman, who plays a woman whose husband has walked out on her and her family out of some delusion that the titular nymphomaniac is in love with him. She’s so distraught by this that she barges in on both of them with her three kids in tow demanding to see “the whoring bed.” What follows is the most darkly awkwardly comedic sequences this side of “The Office.”

Alison Pill- Snowpiercer: Snowpiercer is kind of an uneven movie but it periodically gets injected with energy and one of the biggest bursts of energy comes in this scene where our band of rebels find themselves in a car intended as a school for upper-class passengers who are being taught by a freakishly energetic propagandist played by Alison Pill. Pill totally commits to her role as a dingbat educator who leads the class in a song called “and we all freeze and die” and later finds herself trying to kill everybody with an uzi. Yeah, it’s pretty out there.

DMX- Top Five: Chris Rock’s Top Five is filled to the brim with cameos, some of them very funny, but the zaniest and most off the wall cameo in the whole thing is provided by late 90s rapper DMX, who the protagonist meets while spending a night in prison. DMX, it turns out, is in the adjoining cell and has decided to abandon the rap game in favor of singing. He then launches into a very raspy rendition of Nat King Cole’s “Smile” complete with his trademark “what” yell. The whole scene is a bit random and silly, but it teaches the protagonist a lesson: stick to what you’re good at.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

I watched Seven and The Usual Suspects early in my "let's get serious about films" evolution and I knew the ending of both. I also watched The Crying Game for the first time a few weeks ago and I knew that twist going in too.

Best Supporting Actress

I won’t belabor the introductions to these acting awards, I think most people are familiar with what a supporting actress is and what reasons they tend to get chosen after all. I will note however that I find it interesting that both here and with the various awards bodies this is the award that’s least mired in biopicitus this year. Most of the people being honored in this particular acting award are being honored for creating characters from scratch.

Patricia Arquette- Boyhood: Pretty much all the actors in Boyhood deserve a certain amount of credit simply for being able to function within the crazy means by which the movie was made. However, there is a reason why Arquette in particular seems to have stood out and I think it has a lot to do with the way she expertly prevents the character from being a stereotype. There are so many ways that a single Texas mother could have been one-note but Arquette instills the character with so many ambitions and transitions her through so many changes in life and does it in a way that makes it seem effortless.

Agata Kulesza- Ida: I can’t say I’d heard of Agata Kulesza before she showed up in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida, but she seems to be a veteran of Polish cinema and it’s great that she’s finally been given a platform for international audiences to see her talents. Kulesza plays the aunt of the main character, a hard drinking judge who essentially guides this young nun through a journey into her past while being a pretty damaged person herself. The character seems to have had a rough past that isn’t detailed but which seems to have left her with an underlying sadness that she covers up with a sort of world-weary cynicism. That’s a tough performance to layer but Kulesza pulls it off and with a great presence to boot.

Marion Bailey- Mr. Turner: Mike Leigh seems to have a real knack for creating rich characters out of sweet old ladies. He did it in Secrets and Lies, he did it with Vera Drake, and he does it here too when creating the character of Sophia Booth, Mr. Turner’s twice widowed second lover. Booth lives outside of Turner’s usual social circles and is different from pretty much everyone else in the film. Bailey really brings this character’s sweetness to the forefront and gives you a good idea of why Turner would be attracted to her, but she doesn’t go too far with this and drive the character into caricature.

Stacy Martin- Nymphomaniac: This year’s winner of the “most impressive debut” award would almost certainly go to Stacy Martin, who hadn’t appeared in a single movie before jumping straight into the deep end of acting by taking a large part in a particularly crazy Lars Von Trier movie. Playing the younger version of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character, she is onscreen for most of the film’s first volume and is involved in a lot of the film’s sexual material. I’m not just giving her this nomination because it’s a brave entrance into the world of acting though. Martin earns this nomination through her ability to keep a rather crazy movie grounded during some of its wilder portions.

Melisa Sözen- Winter Sleep: Sometimes a great performance bursts out of the gate at full stride while others sort of creep up on you slowly. In the first hour or so of Winter Sleep Melisa Sözen seems like something of a quiet presence, a younger wife of the main character who certainly has a distinct personality but not a whole lot of places to go beyond the character’s slightly smug veneer. However, as the film goes on and as the character comes out of her shell and the drama really starts playing out she goes to some fairly powerful places.

And the Golden Stake Goes To…

I thought Kulesza did really well. That would've been my choice.

I really liked Ethan Hawke. By the way, if you hadn't mentioned it, we probably wouldnt have given a second thought to you nominated two from the same movie.

Good choices for both awards.

I disagree with the choice. As much as I liked that movie, I'm not seeing what others saw in the performance. Maybe her voice just bugs me? Not sure.

No nomination for Redmayne?

I'm glad The Immigrant was recognized in the lead acting categories. Really under-appreciated movie.

Very nice.

Best Original Screenplay

Where the adapted screenplay category is a barren wasteland this year, the original screenplay category is absolutely stacked. Pretty much all of the major awards contenders this year were in the original category and most of my favorites were as well. In fact I probably could have filled two categories worth with original screenplay nominees and still would have been better off than I would have been having to scrounge together five adapted nominees.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance): So many movies today are completely bereft of ideas, so when a movie comes along that almost seems to have too many ideas for its own good it’s downright refreshing. Using snappy dialog and meta cleverness, the four person writing team behind Birdman have (somewhat improbably) crafted a smart and highly entertaining bit of theatrical cinema.

Boyhood: I don’t really know how much of Boyhood was written when Linklaters started shooting the movie in 2002, I suspect that he had some outline in mind and that he more or less finalized a draft in each period of filming, but damn if he didn’t make it seem completely of a piece by the end. Linklater does an amazing job of coming up with perfectly relatable moments to capture his character in the midst of and makes this level of naturalism seem effortless.

Leviathan: The previous Andrey Zvyagintsev films I’ve seen have been very quiet and emotional, but Leviatthan is a lot more verbose and dense. The film is essentially a Job like tale of a man having his life fall apart because he dared to challenge authority and unlike the Hollywood version of such a story, the little guy is not allowed to prevail at the end. Zvyagintsev’s screenplay is bitterly subversive, deeply cynical, and darkly comic.

Mr. Turner: Biopics are generally very hard to write in interesting ways, but when just the right subject is selected by just the right writer they can be some of the most compelling cinema available. Such is the case with Mr. Turner which works in part because its audience is not likely to be familiar with the subject and doesn’t go in with preconceptions. Mike Leigh didn’t seem to have many preconceptions himself and was able to make his life a complex one full of contradictions.

Winter Sleep: Like Leviathan the screenplay for Winter Sleep seems surprisingly talky when compared to its director’s previous work. Written by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and his wife Ebru Ceylan, the film tells a rich tale about an arrogant man coming to terms with the fact that he isn’t as well liked as he thinks he is and that he’s been living a life that has been in many ways bereft of meaning. Film characters are rarely as well realized as the people in this film and the screenplay never becomes so verbose that it stifles the film’s visual sensibilities.

And the Golden Stake goes to…