P.Y.T.

Movie City News calls it "A Rather Silly Oscar Story, Focusing On Female Sexuality Instead Of The Power Of Transformative Performances..."

But to tell you the truth, I had the exact same thought while watching Vera Drake the other day.

Imelda Staunton and Annette Bening are by most counts the two front-runners right now. I do expect one of the "pretty young things" to emerge during the next few months as a new front-runner. The optimistic (read: foolish) part of me thinks it will be Kate Winslet (for Eternal Sunshine...). If Spanglish is as good as As Good As It Gets, Tea Leoni could very well pull off a Helen Hunt.

But I do have a couple of qualms with O'Neil's assessment.

He says that “since 1990, only one woman over 50 has won an acting Oscar,” which is true. However, in the next paragraph, he notes that Bening is 46 and Staunton is 48. If 46 was used as the cutoff, he could’ve added Dianne Wiest (who was just a day shy of 47 when she won her second Oscar) and Susan Sarandon (who at 49 was also the oldest woman nominated in her category that year).

At the top of the article, he also cites as an example of this ageism Bening’s defeat at the younger and prettier hands of Hilary Swank. However, at the time, Old Lady Bening was all of 41 (and still of child-bearing age). By that standard (which is much closer to Hollywood’s definition of old than 50), Jessica Lange (45 at the time), Mercedes Ruehl (44), Kim Basinger (at 44, she only seemed young compared to Gloria Stuart, right Tom?), Kathy Bates (42) and Marcia Gay Harden (41) should also be counted. Add to that list Frances McDormand who was pushing 40 when she won at the ripe old age of 39 and you’ve got nine “elderly” recipients of acting Oscars since 1990… now, that’s nine out of 28, but it’s still better than the “one” O’Neil names.

What’s I find more revelatory than O’Neil’s statistic is that of the nine women I counted, only one (Gay Harden in 2000) has won since 1998. The last Best Actress in a Leading Role winner was the young’un, McDormand, in 1996, and before her, Sarandon. The trend has definitely become more pronounced in the last five years, where outside of Gay Harden, the oldest female winners were Halle Berry and Nicole Kidman, both 35.

The other mistake O’Neil makes is that, as the Movie City News editor suggests, he ignores the issue of “quality.” In the All About Eve-esque match-ups he refers to (Berry vs. Spacek, Swank vs. Bening, Binoche vs. Bacall, Basinger vs. Stuart), it’s clear the youngsters didn’t just coast by on their looks or youth. In Swank’s case, she was always tracking ahead of Bening (except when Bening won the SAG Award and when some suspected an American Beauty sweep might take her along). And though Sissy Spacek was an early favorite, the tide was definitely turning in Berry’s favor as Oscar night approached, so it was no shocker to anyone (but Berry herself) when her name was called.

As for the Binoche and Basinger upsets (in both instances I predicted the old ladies would win), they were more indicative of the falsehood of another Oscar-forecasting myth: The Life Achievement award disguised as competitive Oscar. Yes, the Academy likes to honor elder statesmen who’ve never won, but the performance has to merit it (just ask odds-on-favorites Burt Reynolds and Martin Scorsese). Jessica Tandy, James Coburn and Roman Polanski didn’t win because they were old and win-less, they won because they did, arguably, the best work of their careers, respectively, with Driving Miss Daisy, Affliction and The Pianist (Jack Palance may be the exception that proves this myth).

But the question remains: Where is the young and pretty frontrunner for Best Actress this year?