Vera Farmiga: Stop asking permission.

Vera Farmiga is one of those actresses that sneaks up on you. 

She was Oscar-nominated for her role in Up in the Air opposite George Clooney, but she's not exactly a household name. Yet. 

A few years ago, director Rod Lurie brought his film, Nothing But the Truth, (a story loosely based on the Valerie Plame scandal), to be screened at Syracuse University. Lurie mentioned that one of the stars, Vera Farmiga, was an alum and really wanted to be there, but she was pregnant and off shooting a movie with George Clooney. Such is life.

Nothing But the Truth wasn't exactly a hit, but Farmiga's portrayal of CIA operative Erica Van Doren was one of the best performances in the film in a cast list that included Alan Alda.

As a fellow SU alum, I've been following her career and would not have gone to see Source Code if she hadn't been cast in the film (as much as I enjoy Jake Gyllenhaal.)

Farmiga's role in Source Code looked small and efficient from the trailers, but I was excited to see what she could do with the part of Colleen Goodwin. The Guardian got it right when they said the littlest expressions make the character so much more than what was on the written page: “On screen, she possesses a rare combination of luminescence and a mastery of nuance, expressing internal conflict with a slight twist of the mouth; conveying a sense of deep emotion through the merest flicker of the eyes.”

Most of Goodwin's time is spent at a desk, staring into a lens, giving Jake Gyllenhaal's character orders, but whenever Farmiga was on camera, even in the background, I found my eyes drawn to her. 

Her performance is even more impressive when it turns out Gyllenhaal and Farmiga were not present in the same space while filming their scenes. It was shot much like it is portrayed in the movie, with Farmiga staring into a camera--an obstacle she had to tackle--with only the script supervisor as company or at the most, with Gyllenhaal on speakerphone, reading his lines. Yet there is an emotional connection between these characters when watching the movie, a credit to the two actors.

“That’s really what I focused on most, all the sort of psycho-spiritual energy between the two and how best to convey it when the actor is not in your presence....He [Gyllenhaal] was there a couple days reading lines off camera, but other than that it was a script supervisor and me staring into the barrel of the lens, which is extremely difficult to do for an actor that spends most of their time ignoring it,” Farmiga said in an interview with News in Film.

Despite her ability to give depth to a character that in another actor's hands might have easily fallen flat, Farmiga seems to prefer the roles she finds in the independent film world.

Farmiga feels the roles written for women in bigger studio films tend to feel watery and not as sharply edged as the ones she sees in independent movies. “They are not renderings of women as I know them,” she told The Guardian.

Partly out of her frustration with the lack of meaty roles for women, she's created her own opportunities. She recently directed and starred in Higher Ground, a story of a woman's struggle with her faith. It played at Sundance earlier this year and will be part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

“Great material always comes my way, but still, given the economy, it’s really few and far between to read those gems. It’s pretty cutthroat for actresses that are vying for those roles. So my manager gave me that advice. He was like, “What are you waiting for? Stop asking for permission,” Farmiga said.

As easy as it would be to compare the trajectory of her career to other female stars who got their first big roles in their late 30s, it seems Farmiga is comfortable with forging her own path. And I'll happily let her. 

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News in Film: http://www.newsinfilm.com/2011/04/01/interview-vera-farmiga-talks-source-code/

The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/27/vera-farmiga-film-interview

Best Actress Oscar: Body of work or single performance?

There's always much debate and discussion this time of year. It has nothing to do with taxes or college basketball, but rather, the Oscars.

Always hotly contested, the competition for the Best Actress statue has reached a boiling point the last couple years. Last year, it was Team Sandra versus Team Streep. This year, it's Natalie Portman versus Annette Bening. 

I spent this weekend in L.A. with a group of young women, from 22 to 33 years old, and we discussed past Best Actress Oscar winners. The funny thing is, our favorite actresses tend to be about twenty or thirty years our senior.

One of the points that was brought up was: should an Oscar be based on one performance or should it take into consideration the body of work. Typing that out, it seems silly, because Oscars are based on one performance. An Oscar nomination is for one movie, it's not a lifetime achievement award. Sometimes it's hard to remember that, though, when you take into consideration things like: Charlize Theron: one Oscar, Laura Linney: zero Oscars. Halle Berry: one Oscar, Patricia Clarkson: zero Oscars. Meryl Streep: a zillion nominations, only two Oscars. 

So even though the nomination is based on one performance, it's hard to feel celebratory when some of the greatest actresses of their generation are getting passed over for younger actresses who have, let's face it, pretty flimsy bodies of work.

As my sister said, she finds it hard to love young actresses. Why is that? Hollywood certainly loves them. They're constantly getting cast in the next big thing. 

Maybe it's like the Lady Gaga versus Madonna argument. You cannot claim Lady Gaga is the new Madonna until she's been around for thirty years and reinvented herself umpteen times. Only then I will concede that yes, she is. 

Can you claim that someone is a great actress because she gave an amazing performance in The Blind Side? Have we forgotten she was in The Lake House? Speed 2? Hope Floats? Sorry, Sandy.

On the other hand, the argument for actresses like Sandra Bullock and Reese Witherspoon and Charlize Theron would be if only those actresses who have a deep body of work were nominated and won an Oscar every year, it would be a pretty small pool. And Meryl Streep, as much as I love her, doesn't really need fifteen Oscars.

So on Sunday, I'll just try to forget about Annette Bening's performances in American Beauty and Being Julia. Although, in my mind, the swan queen will never outrank singing Joni Mitchell at the dinner table.

I won't be a chauffeur forever.

I've always rolled my eyes when an awards ceremony gets to the miniseries/TV movie portion. I'm not sure I could tell you the last quality miniseries or TV movie I watched, much less genuinely enjoyed. (And yes, I'm including HBO in that. John Adams? I love Laura Linney, but boring.)

So as always, the British are proving they're better at the genre than us Americans.

Recently, PBS Masterpiece aired Downton Abbey, a seven part series that aired on Britain's ITV network last October. The series--which may not be so mini anymore, since it got renewed for another seven episodes--is created by Julian Fellowes, who wrote Gosford Park and Young Victoria.

Downton, much like Gosford Park, explores the lives of servants and aristocrats at a country estate during the Edwardian era. 

Many probably think the Edwardian years are not far removed from the Victorian era, but quite the contrary, the show has several strong female characters, both upstairs and down.

Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery), the eldest daughter of the family that lives on the estate, does not always follow the path the aristocracy would want her to take. She turns down several potential suitors, seemingly unconcerned with fitting into society's prescriptions. It's not quite clear what Mary is searching for, someone to love her, although even once she has that, she seems to turn away from it. A complicated, but not always likeable character, it'll be interesting to see where the next season will take her.

The youngest daughter, Sybil Crawley (Jessica Brown-Findlay), is a favorite of mine. The Crawley family treats their servants with respect, but Sybil seems to have an even closer bond with one of the maids, Gwen Dawson.

Gwen aspires to become a secretary and when Sybil hears of this, she helps her achieve her goal as much as she can. Gwen is already taking a correspondence course and saves up her wages to buy a typewriter. Sybil drives a horse and buggy in order to accompany Gwen to an interview in town. She also reassures her when Gwen seems to lose hope in her job search.

Sybil is also quite political, a supporter of women's rights, and she attends several meetings with her family's chauffeur, Tom Branson, who wants to be a politician. Sybil expresses an interest in canvassing, but her father forbids her to attend any more of the meetings. Of course, she does, and puts herself and Branson at risk.

Her budding relationship with Branson is very sweet and I look forward to the decisions Sybil will have to make regarding that versus what her family expects of her.

Another miniseries that aired across the pond this year is actually a reboot of an old classic, Upstairs, Downstairs. The new version was just three parts and aired after Christmas on BBC One.

It takes place in 1936, when a diplomat and his wife, Lady Agnes, move into the same townhouse occupied by previous generations of the Upstairs, Downstairs family.

Even with Dame Eileen Atkins and Keeley Hawes in the cast, the shorter series could not provide as much depth into the characters as Downton. The cinematography and 1930s costumes are quite gorgeous, though, and it's worth the three hours. Between it and The King's Speech, I'm quite enthralled with the 1930s right now.

Cool parental units: "I just love my rotten little brats."

One of my favorite shows when I was nine or ten was Clarissa Explains It All. No matter how awesome I thought Clarissa’s hijinxs were—her best friend climbing up to her bedroom window to come visit was especially cool—I couldn’t convince my mother of the show’s greatness. It turns out whatever the show lacked in writing or characterization is not what my mother opposed, rather she hated how Clarissa’s parents were portrayed: as clueless ditzes who had no idea what was going on in their daughter’s life. 

I don’t think my mom was expecting Clarissa’s parents to be the Bradys, but she simply expected parents—even TV parents—to be active in their children’s lives. Over the past few years, I’d say she’s gotten her wish.

Even though the “mom role” is one that some actresses disregard because it is one of the few roles available to women of a certain age, plenty of actresses have shown that these roles are more than just the agreeable wife and/or oblivious mother, they have meat to them.

One of the first in a trend of active parents was Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) on Gilmore Girls. The show centers on Lorelai and daughter, Rory, who live together in a small town in Connecticut. Their parent-child relationship is more like that of best friends or sisters, since Lorelai had Rory when she was only sixteen.

Although the pilot episode of Gilmore Girls received funding from the Family Friendly Programming Forum, many other family groups complained that the show was portraying teenage pregnancy in a positive light. Quite the opposite, since Lorelai was often encouraging Rory not to make the same mistakes that she had and was active in her daughter’s life, whether it was schoolwork or dating.

An even more realistic and down to earth counterpart to Lorelai Gilmore is Friday Night Lights’ Tami Taylor. Not only is Tami fiercely loyal to her family, but she is committed to bettering the students that she counsels at Dillon High School and later, East Dillon. As guidance counselor, she tries to be open and honest with her students and has been known to take some of them under her wing. One example is Tyra Colette, who Tami sees something in that Tyra’s family and Tyra herself don’t even see. Tami knows Tyra wants to get out of Dillon, so she pushes her to be diligent about her schoolwork and apply to four-year colleges rather than community college. 

Tami is played perfectly by the wonderful Connie Britton. I dare you to watch Tami and not want her to be your mom, your cheerleader, your mentor. This is not even touching on the fabulous parenting and coaching skills of Tami’s husband, Coach Eric Taylor. The two of them are a force to be reckoned with.

Cool parents have also taken up residence on movie screens in recent films featuring teenage protagonists.

In Juno, in which “quirky and quotable” (per Jiminy Glick) high school student Juno MacGuff gets pregnant, her parents, Mac and Bren (played by J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, respectively) keep cool heads. They’re supportive of their daughter’s decision to put the baby up for adoption. Through her pregnancy and meeting the future adoptive parents of her child, Juno experiences the pressures of adult life, but she is able to talk to her parents, especially her father about these events.

Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) tells a simple lie in Easy A that rapidly spins out of control at her high school and starts to damage her reputation. Instead of fighting back against the rumor mill, she goes along with it and lets everyone in her high school think she’s sleeping around.

Olive’s parents, Rosemary and Dill (I know, I know—Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci) were the highlights of the movie. They have witty repartee, but most importantly, trust their daughter and let her do her own thing. Even when the circumstances of Olive’s situation become more suspect—such as her wearing clothes to school embroidered with a scarlet A—Olive’s parents simply ask if they need to be concerned and when she tells them no, they let her have her space. There’s also a great scene between Patricia Clarkson and Emma Stone, where Olive is coming clean about the situation to Rosemary.

Back to the small screen, the most recent mom role that is more complex than it first appears is Sarah Braverman on NBC’s Parenthood. Several years after Lorelai Gilmore, Lauren Graham takes on the role of Sarah, a single parent who moves her two teenage kids from Fresno back to her childhood home in Berkeley. Sarah, who works as a bartender and did not finish college, feels outpaced by her siblings Peter and Julia and at times, outparented. However, Sarah’s relationship with her children is my favorite on the show, especially her bond with her daughter, Amber (Mae Whitman).

Amber is not happy about having to start over in a new town and she often rebels against her mother, but at the same time, they seek solace in each other when they most need it. Sarah knows Amber is smart and encourages her to strive for more than she did—namely, a college education. Graham and Whitman give effortless performances and make their mother/daughter bond realistic without being cloying. Their tenuous bond was the heart of the show in its first season and I look forward to seeing it develop even further.

Mad (Wo)Men: "Whatever can be on your mind?"

The close of the fourth season of Mad Men may contain one of my favorite scenes from the series—a scene that did not last much longer than a minute. I’m talking, of course, about the scene between Joan and Peggy after hearing that Don Draper got engaged to his 25-year-old secretary, Megan.

It’s taken four seasons, but the show has finally given us two female characters that I genuinely care about. The journey, at least in my opinion, has been a little rough.

Elisabeth Moss has always been excellent in the role, but I found the character of Peggy painful to watch for the first couple seasons. During her start at Sterling Cooper, she was constantly the butt of jokes by the ad men she worked for, mostly because she was not viewed as being “classically pretty” like the other secretaries.

Although I admired Peggy’s work ethic, allowing her to become the first female copywriter at Sterling Cooper since World War II, I still didn’t understand a lot of the personal decisions she made. Sleeping with Duck Phillips? A little unsure of who she was personally and still finding her way professionally, I found it hard to sympathize with her, but all that has changed in the span of a season.

Peggy has never been hesitant to voice her opinions to Don, but this season it became clear how much Don thinks of Peggy as an equal. The episode, “The Suitcase,” solidified the character of Peggy Olson. She confides to Don that she knows what she’s supposed to want, but how none of it seems as important [to her] as what happens in the office. Peggy, despite her personal choices (after all, we all have foibles), is the 1960s career woman, who continues to fight for equal footing in a man’s world.

I love that Don and Peggy’s relationship took on a more personal tenor this season. Not only will Peggy voice her opinions about work to Don, but she feels comfortable questioning his personal decisions as well. And he’s comfortable enough with Peggy to let her without flying off the handle.

The great thing about Mad Men is a viewer may see a character one way, but later on their actions and choices reveal he or she to be different, perhaps more complex than the audience may have originally observed. This certainly seems to be the case with Joan Holloway (now Harris). In the first season, it’s clear that as the office manager at Sterling Cooper, Joan is the “queen bee” among the women of the office. She seems to be the 1960s version of a “mean girl,” since she often makes fun of Peggy for her prudish wardrobe and lifestyle.

At first it seems that the goal for this ‘Marilyn’ is to marry wealthy so that she can quit Sterling Cooper and become a housewife, but we’ve seen that Joan is not that simple. During the second season, Joan becomes engaged to Greg, a doctor, and it seems she will have the epitome of every girl’s dream. Although Joan is happy with her engagement, she’s afraid that quitting the world of Sterling Cooper will result in her being a bored and lonely housewife. When she offers to help Harry Crane read soap opera scripts to determine ad placement, she finds herself enjoying the work. Hoping that Harry will require her help full-time, Joan is disappointed when a few days later, Harry hires a clueless man to take over her ad placement duties.

This season, as the new firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is on the verge of collapse, Lane Pryce tells Joan that because of her dedication and hard work, the (male) partners have promoted her to Director of Agency Operations. However, because of the firm’s financial troubles, he cannot offer her a salary bump. Joan takes this in stride, but later, alone with Peggy, her fellow in the trenches, complains about how if there was any celebration about her promotion, it must have been “while (she) was pushing the mail cart.” Joan also tells Peggy that she learned a long time ago that she wasn’t going to get satisfaction from her job. Peggy replies, “That’s bullshit!” Whether she is calling Joan on her fib or saying that Don’s engagement is not long for this world, it’s an interesting statement on what these women of 1965 put up with in the work place.

As long as Matt Weiner & Co. keep writing scenes like the one from Sunday night's finale, I'll keep watching.

The Good Wife: 2x01, Taking Control

I’m really happy with the way CBS is handling The Good Wife. With maybe the exception of Friday Night Lights, I think it’s the best network drama out there. (And is FNL still a network drama if it's aired on another channel first?) 

Julianna Margulies said she was looking to do a cable show—more flexible scheduling for an actress who has a family and meatier roles for women—but that she read the script for the show and fell in love with Alicia Florrick. “It was a cable show that just happened to be on a network,” Margulies said during The Good Wife cast panel at The Paley Center for Media in April.

I couldn’t agree more. It handles all the adult issues that its cable equals do and it does it with deft writing and stellar acting week after week.

On a channel that is known for its procedurals, CBS has let the creators of the show, Robert and Michelle King, forge their own path. As Margulies tells it, at first the scripts were monitored to be about 60% procedural, 40% character-driven, but after glowing reviews and nominations in its first season, the network has released the reins and let the show explore what it does best: layers. Not the layers of law, although there is certainly that too, but the deeper fibers of these characters and who they are, why they do the things they do, and what it means in the larger scheme of the show.

The season premiere was no exception.

Last year the show left us at a press conference of Peter Florrick’s. Alicia is waiting to “stand by her man” as it were, when she receives a call from her boss and old flame, Will Gardner (Josh Charles). She tells him she gets the romance between them (and so does everyone else, viewers included), but that she has a family, she needs a plan. As Alicia is about to step out into the spotlight to support her husband, her phone rings again. It’s Will.

The premiere on Tuesday night picked up where the finale left off: Alicia’s phone ringing, Will’s name on the caller ID. Being practically forced on stage by Peter and her husband’s campaign manager, Eli Gold (Alan Cumming), Alicia leaves her phone to the devices of Mr. Gold. Upon seeing two voicemail messages from Will—in one of which he confesses his love for Alicia—Gold deletes the message that could throw a loop into his grand plans to have Peter return to the state’s attorney’s office a renewed golden boy.

The chemistry between Will  and Alicia is one of many things that makes the show  great, these two characters with some sort of romantic past, but which the audience does not know much about, other than they knew each other in law school and Alicia ended up with Peter. I didn’t expect the writers to up the ante so soon by having Will and Alicia share a kiss late in season one, but it was done so beautifully that their relationship wasn’t cheapened. It breaks my heart to see Will and Alicia interact now—Will thinking that she got his messages and chose to ignore his confession, Alicia having listened to only the first message, therefore thinking he wants their relationship to remain purely professional—there’s so much sadness and confusion between them, but the complications in the relationship keeps them interesting and the audience’s anticipation high.

Even though I was hesitant to watch in the first place, because I didn’t want to watch a show about politicians’ scandals, something that seems to constantly be making the rounds in the 24-hour news cycle, I liked the season starting with a new scandal involving a politician from Colorado. It cleverly shows that no matter how much time has passed, it doesn’t reverse what Peter did to Alicia and his family. I’m guessing we will see Alicia realizing and dealing with that fact this season.

Other than the Alicia-Peter-Will love triangle, the premiere reminded me how strong the supporting cast is and how genuinely likeable they are. Once again, the writers are great about giving these characters’ storylines complications. In this first new episode, we saw a competing investigator, Blake (Scott Porter), go up against Kalinda (Archie Panjabi). He already seems to have flustered the unflappable Kalinda, so it’ll be interesting to see where that arc goes.

Diane introduced a new partner, Derrick Bond, to the firm of Lockhart and Gardner. Although it’s clear that Bond is someone Diane has dealt with in the past, the scene at the end of the episode with Will and Derrick “bro”-ing it in his office and Diane looking on was well-played. I’ll be curious to see if Diane starts to feel left out of the boys’ club this season. Maybe that means she and Alicia will get closer, which would be lovely. Any chance for more scenes between Baranski and Margulies.  

Four TV Shows with Strong Women (That You Probably Aren't Watching)

Although strong roles for women in film seem to be few and far between, with cable and premium television programming becoming so popular, many female actresses are turning to the smaller screen.

Over the past few years, Showtime has centered several of its shows around female leads, but with a twist. These main characters are not black and white. These women have flaws. They may make questionable decisions, but they are trying to do what is right for their family, for themselves. They’re human. 

Edie Falco plays Jackie Peyton, a nurse, a mother, and a prescription drug addict. Nurse Jackie displays Jackie’s indiscretions—taking a couple Vicodin to get her through the day, having an affair with a co-worker— but also focuses on the empathetic side of the character. Even with her rough New Yorker exterior, Jackie cares about her patients, her co-workers, and her family. 

The half-hour dark comedy has been paired with United States of Tara in Showtime’s lineup. Tara is another series that focuses on a woman with a seemingly normal life: Tara Gregson has a caring husband, Max, and two teenage children, Kate and Marshall. But Tara also has dissociative identity disorder, which means her family rarely gets to see wife, mother and artist Tara; they are more often dealing with her other identities, which include Buck, a motorcycle riding veteran, flirty teenager “T,” and old-fashioned housewife, Alice.

Tara struggles to balance raising her family with finding out more about her disorder and what she can do to fix it.

Toni Collette plays Tara, for which she was awarded a Best Actress Emmy in 2009 and a Golden Globe in 2010. On Sunday, Falco was awarded an Emmy for her work on Nurse Jackie. 

The supporting cast of characters on both Jackie and Tara are strong as well. Even though the half-hour format and the twelve-episode seasons do not lend as much time to explore these characters as audience members may like, it’s another reason to come back for more.

The programs on basic cable channels such as AMC and premium channels like HBO and Showtime may be getting a lot of press lately, but there are still quality shows (with strong female characters, no less) on network television.

One female who does not get recognized enough is Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, on NBC’s Parks and Recreation. The half-hour comedy is shot in the same mockumentary style as The Office, so many critics were quick to write off the show as a carbon spin-off. (See what I did there? Carbon copy? Carbon spin-off?) However, in the second season, it’s really come into its own.

Leslie Knope is not a female Michael Scott. Leslie is the assistant director of the Parks Department in Pawnee, Indiana. She and Michael Scott both overestimate the importance of their jobs, but unlike Mr. Scott, Ms. Knope has a better reason. She’s a civil servant and her enthusiasm for improving Parks Department programs and the love for her community is touching.

Even though her overt enthusiasm is sometimes portrayed as being grating to her friends and colleagues, Leslie Knope is the type of person (and the type of character) that everyone loves. Her friends and co-workers would do anything for her, because they know, if the situation were reversed, she would do the same.

As intriguing as it is to watch dark comedies about dysfunctional families, sometimes it’s nice to take a break with a show that has a lot of heart and makes you laugh out loud.

Speaking of bureaucracy, Chicago politics provides the background for the new CBS hit, The Good Wife.  

Peter Florrick, a Chicago state’s attorney, has been accused of corruption as well as being involved in sex scandal. The show focuses on his wife, Alicia’s story, and how she handles her husband’s crimes. The show was inspired by Eliot Spitzer’s scandal, as well as other politicians, including John Edwards and Bill Clinton. Knowing the basic premise, TV viewers may ask why they would want to watch a show focusing on an issue that is a common item in the news and overplayed in the 24-hour news cycle.

Most politicians’ wives are portrayed by the media as blindly standing by their man, but I sympathized with Alicia. Some of that empathy may be a credit to Julianna Margulies, who is excellent in the role, but when Alicia decides to not divorce Peter, it’s easy to understand her reasoning. She wants to protect her family and keep her children’s lives normal, especially after they have been through so much turmoil.

Ms. Florrick does not waste a lot of time feeling sorry for herself. She seeks out work as a lawyer. Through her new job as a junior associate at Lockhart and Gardner, we meet a supporting cast of strong women. Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) is one of the firm’s partners. Alicia, who was hired by an old law school friend, Will Gardner, feels that Diane does not approve of her working at the firm, but throughout the season, it’s clear that the two women have a mutual respect for each other.

Another strong supporting female is the firm’s private investigator, Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi). She and Alicia often work together on cases, Kalinda providing a cynical, pessimistic counterpoint to Alicia’s idealistic view.

Many TV viewers may get turned off by thinking that The Good Wife is a show about law and while that is certainly part of every episode, it is ultimately about a woman who has watched her life fall spectacularly apart and is trying to piece it together again. 

In all of these women’s flaws and quirks, there is also an ability to relate to them. We see slivers of ourselves.

So why aren’t you watching?