Rhett Wickham: And the Oscar Should Have Gone To...
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2001 Best Actress in a Leading Role
Dale Baer and Eartha Kit – as Yzma in The
Emperor’s New Groove
As I said, the voters tend to skip out when the role is funny, but when you ask them which is harder to perform…well they sing a different toon…er, tune. Sorry. So when the Academy tapped Juila Roberts for Erin Brockovich, Juliette Binoche for Chocolat, Joan Allen for The Contender, Laura Linney for You Can Count on Me, and Ellen Burstyn for Requiem for a Dream, they pretty much shut out the best laugh-out-loud performance of the year: Dale Baer and Eartha Kit’s knock-out work in New Groove. This is one of the performances that looks so easy, and an animator who makes it sound so easy when he talks about it, but in point of fact it is a complex, fascinating star turn that even Kit can’t top anywhere in her career, even when annoying President Lyndon Johnson. There’s stuff here that puts Baer light-years ahead of his peers, and even surpasses some of the work of the Nine Old Men. It’s certainly better than Linney (one of my favorite contemporary actors) who has done much better work than You Can Count on Me. And of all the animated features here, this is one that still shines as arguably the best comedy of the new millennium, and Baer’s and Kit’s Yzma is the best thing about it.
There are any number of other arguments to be made, from Ollie Johnston’s childish Thumper deserving a nod similar to that the Academy gave Judy Garland and Shirley Temple, or even Andreas Deja’s outstanding work as Lilo, which certainly outshines a little Miss who got tapped this year. But the most obvious stumbling of the Academy was the failure to go all the way with Beauty and the Beast. It was a breathtaking step in the right direction to give it a nod, but the prattling tongues of the flesh and blood contenders saw too it that no cartoon was going to trump a “real movie.�? Silence of the Lambs is a fine work, but in the end it’s simply a genre film, not a standard bearer, and it displays none of the cinematic vision, bucolic elegance, and deeply satisfying visual storytelling that Producer Don Hahn and Directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise brought to Beauty and the Beast.
Someday, perhaps, the industry will realize what people like Glen Keane and Kathy Zielinski and others are doing at their desks, and how deeply deserving they are of something more than a token nod. These folks are the real contenders, and they’re on the rise again. So look out Oscar®
because animation is coming back with a vengeance and you’d best be ready to go home with some real winners.Discuss It
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Rhett Wickham is a regular editorial contributor to LaughingPlace.com. and the publication Tales From The Laughing Place. He works as creative development and story consultant in Orlando and Los Angeles where he lives with his husband, artist Peter Narus. Mr. Wickham is the founder and principal of Creative Development Ink©® providing writing for film and themed entertainment and working with screenwriters, story artists, and producers. Among his recent projects is “I'm Reed Fish�? for Executive Producer Akiva Goldsman, which debuted at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. Prior to working in feature animation and themed entertainment production, Mr. Wickham worked as an actor and stage director in NYC. He is a Directing Fellow with the Drama League of New York and in 2003 he was honored with the Nine Old Men Award from Laughing Place readers, “for reminding us why Disney Feature Animation is the heart and soul of Disney.�?
The opinions expressed by our Rhett Wickham, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future plans of the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted February 23, 2007