FYC part 1

Every year Entertainment Weekly does a wonderful Oscar prediction edition. My favourite part of this is the “For Your Consideration” part, where they outline contenders many may have forgotten about as the year end squabbling for nominations reaches a fever pitch. Sometimes the people/films mentioned make it through, often times they do not. Still it must be wonderful to know such a popular circulation has honoured you.

I thought I would add my two cents in for this and host my own. Starting now, I would do each category (except the shorts), sometimes twice if I feel passionately enough.

Before the big reveal I will just like to show you some of the reviews this performer got for the role in questions:

”Beautifully played by the terrific ………., who exudes creepy charm and steely determination…..” Mark Adams – Sunday Mirror

”…… is marvellous” Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian

”…… was the perfect choice for the part and unsurprisingly emerges as one of the film's greatest pleasures.” Todd McCarthy - Variety

”….. is perfect here as the Teacher From Hell.” Roger Ebert – Chicago Sun Times

I guess by now you all know who I am talking about. So without further adieu, for your consideration for Best Supporting Actress I give you……

………Imelda Staunton in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!


Sure many of you will think of this performance as a fun little characterization in a silly kids movie. But no! This is more, so much more.
Her Dolores Umbridge is all perfection and sunny disposition.
She wears immaculately tailored and accessorized pink suits and dresses, like a perfect little gift of candy and love. She looks like those good women who volunteer for church socials, smell like powder and pinch you cheek while giving you a nice warm cookies fresh from the over.
In other words, she is harmless.

But Dolores has a hunger. She wants to succeed in the bigger picture of The Ministry of Magic, so she becomes the Ministries right and left hands by enforcing rules prohibiting cross-gender contact, the practicing of spells and virtually anything else that even vaguely resembles fun, or how she and her co-horts see it, an uprising against the Ministry.

Staunton does all of this very cleverly. As she begins to become more tyrannical and power hungry, the audience begins to see the volcano of sadism bubbling underneath the perfectly powdered and blushed surface. She does this with her eyes, they stop sparkling and become lifeless all the while the smile stays frozen on her face.
Like a volcano, she shakes when she is angered, she practically erupts so much so she seems to shock herself. All flustered when trying to compose her pretty outer package from the rage that almost took over.

Most actresses would have play her over the top during these temperamental scenes, and ruined the whole effect, Staunton does not. She knows that in order to strike fear into the audience she needs to play up the nice, and keep the nasty thick with murky realism.

We all had that teacher at school who was all sunny disposition, and when they were finally pushed over the edge by us, they became evil itself, and we all held onto our desks in white sweaty fear.

Imelda Staunton became that teacher for me. I never ever questioned any choice she made as an actress in this. For me, she deserves a place in the top five of the year.

I will leave with a great write up from The Daily Mail in the UK

”Umbridge, however, is the real threat - a smiling nightmare in a pink cardigan, ousting Potter's beloved Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and enforcing rules prohibiting cross-gender contact, the practising of spells and virtually anything else that even vaguely resembles fun.
Staunton is a refreshing addition to the Potter cast - not just because she is possibly the last quality British character-actor not to have appeared in it, but also because she can creep malevolently on to the screen without eliciting a tedious reaction of: "Look! It's that woman! From other films and stuff!"
By choosing to pitch Umbridge halfway between Margaret Thatcher and Hyacinth Bucket, she has found something that will probably work its way under the skin of pre-adolescents even more successfully than Timothy Spall's rat-man, Peter Pettigrew.
The moment where we enter her office, full of purring cats imprisoned in hideous engraved crockery, is the only time in any Potter film that I have been genuinely scared.
After this, even a man possessing only a quarter of a nose isn't going to prove sufficient in the fear stakes.
Voldemort tries manfully to match Umbridge's terror, but even when he starts getting Harry all riled with some family talk in the manner of The Empire Strikes Back, it doesn't quite hit the spot.” Tom Cox

A-Men Tom...A-Men.