Hammond: Will Marilyn Monroe Finally Get An Oscar?

Is Marilyn Monroe finally headed towards that Oscar nomination that eluded her in her all-too-short film career? In an odd twist of fate, yes. With the World Premiere Sunday night of The Weinstein Company’sMy Week With Marilyn (Nov 4) at the NY Film Festival another presumed awards contender is out of the gate. And if I were Meryl, Glenn, Charlize, Viola or any other lead actress Oscarhopeful I would be quaking in my boots. Michelle Williams as Monroe isthat good. Sexy, vulnerable, fragile, alluring, seductive, delectable, complexand all things in between she nails it and certainly has claimed a spot among the top five if not front runner status for theOscar itself. She also flawlesslysings a couple of Monroe standards as bookends for the film.I caughtit Sunday night at a small last-minute screening in Beverly Hills timed to coincide with its NY Premiere. Sony Classics did the same thing for Carnage when it opened NYFF over a week ago as Fox Searchlight did when The Tree Of Life premiered in Cannes. It makes us die-hardWest Coasters feel included in the hooplaI guess.At the very least it’ssmart Oscar strategy. An Academy acting branch member I talked to afterwards was totallyunder Williams’ spell. The movie directed by Britishtv producer/director Simon Curtis also turns out to be first class stuff which ,perhapsalong with Midnight In Paris,The Artist and The Descendants is one ofthe most purely entertaining films I’ve seen so far this year. I would imagine it will have great appeal for the same voters who went for Weinstein’s Best Picture winner The King’s Speech last year but realisticallyprobably has its best shots in performance and some below-the-line categories like Costume Design and Art Direction. Critical appreciation probably depends on the age of the critic. Those who don’t go in thinking this is about My Week With Marilyn Manson should be impressed. It also contains another surefire Best Supporting Actor nominee in Kenneth Branagh’s biting and all-knowing interpretation of Laurence Olivier in the film about the relationship between Monroe and production assistant Colin Clark who worked for Olivier during the troubled production of the 1957 comedy, The Prince And The Showgirl which the great actor also directed. Having acted and directed in Hamlet and Henry V just like Olivier it’s great to see Branagh get right to the heart of the man himself who thought his movie star credentials would be boosted appearing opposite Monroe only to be completely frustrated by the whole trying experience or working with the insecure American superstar. I have to confess after seeing some selectedfootage that was shown at the Weinstein party in Cannes last May I had my doubts about Williams as Monroe but thoseconcerns were completely erased in the context of the entire film where she gets to show three distinctly different sides of the star without ever drifting into impersonation.Ithink Williams haddoubtstoo when she was making the filmlast year in England. When I did a phone interview with her between takes to talk about her nominated turn in Blue Valentine I asked about playing Marilyn but she fumbled through an answer andcould not articulate what it meant then, much like the real Monroewhen she was making thereal film-within-the-film.The entire ensemble cast which includes a terrific Eddie Redmayne in the pivotal role of Clark, Dominic Cooper, Judi Dench, Zoe Wanamaker, Dougray Scott, Toby Jones and Julia Ormond could also figure for SAG’s Cast award as will the film in the Golden Globes Musical or Comedy categories where Midnight In Paris still has to be considered the favorite. Monroe herself was a Globeregular and in fact won Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for 1959′s classic Some Like It Hot. She was also nominated in the same category for 1956′s Bus Stop but never managed to getANY kind of Oscar recognition even though her co-stars in both those films, Jack Lemmon in ‘Hot’ and Don Murray in Bus Stop each earned Academynominations playing opposite her. You can’t really say it is because of the Acad’s reluctance to nominate blondes or comediennes because Doris Day won her one and only Best Actress Oscar nom for Pillow Talk the same year Marilyn was eligible for ‘Hot’. She was great in Bus Stop too with brilliant comic instincts but sadly the Academy didn’t catch up with her before her tragic death in 1962. Now oddly Monroe and her unique appeal could figure strongly in the 2011 Best Actress race as channeled through Michelle Williams. Ironically Monroe did win some major recognition for Prince and the Showgirl grabbing Italy’s Oscar, the David di Donatello award and a British Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Actress. In other West Coast rumblings about that East Coast film festival there has been much speculation about which “work in progress from a masterfilmmaker scheduled to be released this year ” is going to be the subject of NYFF’s mystery screening Monday night at Avery Fisher Hall,only the second time in their 49 year history. It’s certainly a good ploy for Oscar attention. A lot of the guessing centers around Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar or Steven Spielberg’s War Horse or The Adventures of Tintin but all of those films are finished, not works in progress at this point. Another popular guess is Stephen Daldry’s Post 9/11 NY-set Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close but fine as a director this three-time Oscar nominee is I don’t think the word “master” yet applies so scratch that. It could be the latest from Wong Kar Wai or Zhang Yimou but neither of those films are set for this year yet, at least in America. Some think it may be David Fincher’s The Girl In The Dragon Tattoo but I know for a fact no one at Sony is aware if it is and apparently it would violate his deal if he were doing this on his own – very doubtful. That leaves a genuine “master” Martin Scorsese with his work , the 3D Hugo from Paramount, still “in progress” towards its November 23 holiday release. However a Paramount source who knows these things guessed it was the Daldry filmwhilestrongly indicating it wasn’t Hugo adding , “Do you really think Martin Scorsese would premiere his movie that way?” Well, yes. He took Gangs of NY Cannes seven months before its December 2002 release and showed 20 minutes of the “work in progress”. Several sources “sworn to secrecy” are also pointing to Hugo. Guess it’s a wait-and-see game until 7pm ET Monday. Nice way to get people talking about you out here on the other coast, NYFF! Finally, even if it didn’t burn up the box office ($10.5 million for the weekend), the well-reviewed George Clooney directed politicaldramaThe Ides Of March packed them in at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Goldwyn Theatre at a Sunday 2pm matinee that drew an estimated 900, near-capacity. Response was said to be warm , particularly for the actors said a source who said they “liked it but it might have been too smart for the room”. Too smart for that room? It may not have been Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star but I think they could probably figure it out.