Fresh off the heels of an Emmy-nominated season of Netflix’s The Crown, the Princess Diana story – parts of it anyway – comes to theaters this fall in Pablo Larrain’s Spenser, starring Kristen Steward as Diana. The new teaser trailer shows a lavish Christmas at Sandringham Estate during which Diana contemplates very tough decisions. The film also stars Timothy Spall, Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, and Sally Hawkins.
What to make of Stewart as Diana? She looks the part physically, but she’s only given two words of dialogue (“They don’t”) in the actual teaser. We’ll know how it plays out next week when Spencer premieres during the Venice Film Festival.
Spencer opens in theaters only on November 5.
Ehh I got excited for Jackie and it turned out bad. I’m no longer in Larraín’s camp.
What were your issues there? I’m genuinely curious (it’s an offbeat/arthouse take on a character study, and the framing device doesn’t always work smoothly, but its beautifully filmed and scored).
If the film / performance gets raves next Friday in Venice, Kristen Stewart will be well positioned for frontrunner status considering her main competition is
– previous winners (Frances McDormand, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lawrence, Olivia Colman)
OR
– most likely competing in supporting (Kirsten Dunst, Jodie Comer, Caitriona Balfe, Haley Bennett).
I will say though that if
– an Oscar-less previous nominee sweeps precursors for a good-not-great film (Jessica Chastain ?)
OR
– a newcomer’s film turns into a proper top5 BP / BD player (Rachel Zegler ?),
then all bets are off.
P.S. Meanwhile for now I am ignoring the most likely scenario : The Tragedy of Macbeth turns into a solid BP frontrunner, McDormand gets the “let’s give her a tie with Katherine Hepburn!” campaign narrative, and she wins again. I have nothing against McDormand, great actress. But not “4-time Best Actress winner great”. Not when the likes of Glenn Close, Angela Bassett, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michelle Yeoh, Jessica Chastain, Amy Adams, Carey Mulligan, Rosamund Pike etc. ; have none.
McDormand is not winning 4th Oscar for The Tragedy of Macbeth. I just don’t see it. Even if she deliver best performance of the year.
She is excellent but three Academy Awards seems already a bit much for her. She is not on the level of Hepburn, Streep, Bergman, Blanchett etc.
I doubt she’s winning a fourth, especially for this film. She’s quite limited as an actress. But truth be told, Hepburn was quite limited as well. She certainly wasn’t the chameleon Streep is. Yesterday I watched Silkwood and I thought: WOW, if this wasn’t only a year after her second Oscar, this could have been a winner! She was brilliant in this one. Brilliant.
That’s exactly what I thought last season, especially after previous nominee Carey Mulligan’s film got Picture AND Director nominations on top of quickly turning into the frontrunner in Original Screenplay.
I agree that McDormand is excellent, I have never seen a film in which she didn’t give an excellent performance. My issue is range. She cornered the market on the “resilient, small-town, working class, no-nonsense American woman” roles in prestige films, and she received 6 Oscar nominations (Mississipi Burning, Almost Famous, North Country) including 3 wins (Fargo; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Nomadland) for this exact type of role. And while surely these characters are different in many important ways, and she does play them skilfully and beautifully, at the end of the day , in my opinion at least, they are too similar to garner 3 lead Oscars.
Especially when there are Oscar-less actresses out there with incredibly versatile filmographies and not just the legends like Glenn Close (who did Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons back to back, no Oscar) or Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Liaisons, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Batman Returns, Love Field, The Age of Innocence in a 4-year span, no Oscar) but even the next generation has been delivering wildly impressive bodies of work as of late : I mean Carey Mulligan did An Education, Never Let Me Go, Shame and Drive in a 3-year period (no Oscar); Rosamund Pike delivered Gone Girl, A United Kingdom, A Private War, I Care a Lot in a 7-year period (no Oscar); and don’t even get me started on Jessica Chastain aka “Mini-Streep” who plays, to great acclaim, wildly different roles in wildly different films pretty much on an annual basis.
Long story short : do I love Frances McDormand ? Yes, I do. Do I think she deserves 4 lead Oscars ? No, I do not. I wasn’t even on board with her third. Not because she wasn’t great, more because the other 4 were considerably more impressive to me. I mean when I look at the star making turns Mulligan, Day, Kirby delivered, I am still in awe and think “WOW in any given year any of these three would have been the winning performances”. Then I remember : 2020/2021 could have been that year since the eventual winner already had 2. But the Academy thought giving her a third (and fourth) was more important. Oh, well.
The irony of course is that this time around McDormand is stepping outside her comfort zone with a Shakespeare adaptation, and as an experienced, classically trained actress, she will clearly nail the role and I will have no choice but to stan.
We’ll see soon enough.
I don’t have faith in Gaga winning an Oscar this year, but I wouldn’t really classify her as a previous winner because of a Song win.
Fair but I think if she gets a second lead nomination for her second lead role ever WITH an Oscar for songwriting already under her belt, the campaign will have a hard time making a case for her being due. Especially if she gets another song nod (Top Gun : Maverick) that will probably split her votes.
I wonder how many times KStew will bite her lip and brush her hair back. The over/under has been set at 5. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/116ad972b099e4608262c8f87ff63df7964ee6a4c7f4ffbeddba56de50cdebda.gif
What I had an issue with in Jackie was the central performance. It felt forced and lifeless. After this trailer, I don’t have much faith in Kristen Stewart delivering a performance that would sweep me off my feet. And the comparisons with Corrin won’t be in her favor. But people ate Portman up back in 2017… for whatever reason… I expect they’ll do the same. For whatever reason.
What? Portman was Absolutely awesome
This is your opinion. It’s not a fact. In my opinion, Portman’s performance was stiff, forced, and at moments a borderline caricature case.
Absolutely gorgeous – I think this might be my most anticipated film of the year.
If everything goes well, Stewart will be a strong contender in Actress and the film should get in BP at least.
Edit: Just realised it’s Claire Mathon behind the camera! Coming for her first nomination?
This trailer breaking the internet in 3, 2, 1…
Looks good but, seriously, the timing of this movie couldn’t be worse – sandwiched between The Crown seasons 4 and 5, especially after Emma Corrin did such great job in the role.
Unpopular opinion but I think Larrain should have made some other biopic now and wait with Spencer and Kristen a few years.
I haven’t even watched the Crown and even I’m feeling a good dose of Diana fatigue (and royal family fatigue more generally). I also wonder whether this is good or bad timing. But the movie does look gorgeous
I agree. Corrin was absolutely brilliant. After watching the season (it took me some time), I did my research. Corrin did a very detailed job. I fear Stewart will pale in comparison. Judging by the trailer, it won’t even be close.
Looks good, Kristen is very has been very under appreciated during her career due her personal
Life, but she is indeed a good actress, nomination would be awesome for her, not sure about a win.
Otherwise, Jackie was average good although the real deal was Portman espectacular performance, way better than huppert and def stone that year.
*has been
I’m sold. Shut up, and take my money.
Both Diana and Charles were kind of horribly self-absorbed people.
Spencer, not Stewart.
To be true, I´d prefer a film about Stewart! 😉
My mind immediately wandered to a Jimmy Stewart biopic starring Kristen Stewart, which could actually be a really solid casting choice.
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Sorry about that. I was typing too fast and flubbed it.
That said, I’d always imagined Scarlett Johansson as Jimmy Stewart.
Well you know – since Daniel Day-Lewis mentioned it in his acceptance speech for “Lincoln”, he originally was offered the leading role in the Thatcher biopic while Meryl Streep was Spielberg´s first choice to play Lincoln. In this respect, it doesn´t seem far-fetched to have high hopes for Kristen Stewart as Jimmy Stewart – who cares Lady Di? (unless Day-Lewis returns for that part)
For the record, even though at first I was going to mention this in the form of a joke (since I felt the actors have pretty different energies), eventually I really came around to that idea and the suggestion that the casting could be really good is not in any way a joke. It’s been 15 years since I’m Not There., for which Blanchett should have an Oscar and I feel like no one else has done “gender-blind” casting since despite the success of that performance (and speaking in more general terms about thinking talent-first in terms of casting, even Ianucci’s approach with The Personal History of David Copperfield, which worked really well, has seemingly largely been ignored). So why couldn’t one cast Kristen Stewart to play Jimmy Stewart? And the more I think about it, the less I feel like those energies are clashing at least on an impressionistic level. I’m not suggesting the kind of makeup-heavy impersonation that seems to win people Oscars but something relatively naturalistic where the actor finds their own version of the energy the person had. For example, I think Personal Shopper at least showed that Kristen Stewart could be both frantic and haunted, two qualities that I think are somewhat essential in figuring out Jimmy Stewart’s screen persiona. It’s not the same haunted or the same frantic but it could evoke Jimmy Stewart if slightly modified.
I´m always excited for some offbeat and experimental casting choices. Cate Blanchett (since you mentioned her) was fantastic as Bob Dylan (even though the film didn´t work for me beyond her performance). Kristen Stewart is a very interesting actress, after the vampire franchise sage (no kidding, but I don´t even remember the title) you probably would´ve expected her to go the safe way and make some money with more Hollywood franchise, but no – she really made some great, artistical inspired choices. That said, even though I don´t care too much about the main character portrayed, both Larrain and Spenc… errr Stewart make me want to see this film.