Tilda who? Javier who? Oh, Daniel Day, you already know him. Curious about many of the below-radar winners of this year's Academy Awards? Next time you're shopping at one of our stores, keep an eye out for these films.
Call your nearest Bookmans to see if they have these on the shelf!
Tilda Swinton, Best Supporting Actress (Michael Clayton)
If you were wondering how circa-1976 David Bowie snagged the statue for Best Supporting Actress last night, your confusion is understandable. English actress Tilda Swinton is known for her androgynous (some would say unearthly) looks and chameleon-like ability to play both male and female roles convincingly. She portrayed the most famous gender-switching role of all in the film adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and was the archangel Gabriel opposite Keanu Reeves' dying exorcist in Constantine (based on the Hellblazer comic series). She's probably best known on these shores for her icy turn as the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but we also recommend two lesser known films: Young Adam, a sexually-charged murder mystery with Ewan McGregor, and Thumbsucker, a charming coming-of-age tale featuring Swinton as a concerned mother and bored wife whose son is resentful of her restlessness. Tilda has teamed up again with George Clooney for her first Coen Brothers movie, Burn After Reading.
Javier Bardem, Best Supporting Actor (No Country for Old Men)
It's unlikely any of Javier Bardem's previous roles will creep you out as much as No Country for Old Men's psychopath Anton Chigurh, but we can more or less guarantee he has much better hair in the following films. Only a few of the Spanish actor's movies have been released on DVD in the U.S., the most recent of which is the film adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera and Goya's Ghosts, in which he stars as the titular artist opposite Natalie Portman. He played Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnaebal's Before Night Falls, alongside Olivier Martinez and Johnny Depp, and as right-to-die advocate Ramón Sampedro in The Sea Inside, winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2005. He also makes a brief appearance in Michael Mann's Collateral as Felix, the drug lord who hires Tom Cruise's contract killer to take out witnesses in his upcoming trial. On the opposite side of the law, he was policeman Agustin Rejas in John Malkovich's directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs. He can be seen next as infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar in the adaptation of Mark Bowden's bestselling Killing Pablo, opposite Christian Bale.
Marion Cotillard, Best Actress (La Vie En Rose)
Marion Cotillard's work is largely unavailable on U.S. shores (scour online if you have a multi-region DVD player), but the French actress - recently cast opposite Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in Michael Mann's Dillinger epic Public Enemies - was most recently seen in Ridley's Scott's A Good Year with Russell Crowe, based on Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence memoirs. (We couldn't find anyone who'd watched this yet, leading us to believe that the thought of Russell Crowe in a romantic comedy was akin to finding a fly in one's soup.) She also has a small role in Tim Burton's Big Fish as Josephine, the wife of Billy Crudup's bitter William.
Daniel Day-Lewis, Best Actor (There Will Be Blood)
Three words: Bill the Butcher. Daniel Day-Lewis was a sociopath with a glass eye and a knack for blades in Martin Scorcese's Gangs of New York and, like Bardem's killer in No Country for Old Men, you brace yourself every time the man enters the frame. Day-Lewis's oeuvre is as legendary as his acting method, with memorable turns as an Irish youth wrongfully imprisoned for domestic terrorism in In the Name of the Father, a painter with cerebral palsy in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (which earned him his first Oscar), and an overprotective father struggling with his teenage daughter's emerging sexuality in the oft-overlooked The Ballad of Jack and Rose.
The Coen Brothers, Best Director / Best Picture (No Country for Old Men)
For most cinephiles, Joel and Ethan Coen are legends. There has been many a conversation behind the Bookmans trade counter about whether Raising Arizona is the funniest movie ever made, or if O Brother, Where Art Thou? is only good for its soundtrack; The Big Lebowski is quoted on a regular basis. There's no doubt their films tend to be polarizing given the brothers' quirky tastes. Perhaps Josh Brolin said it best at the SAG Awards when he referred to the Coens as "freaky little people." But there's no denying their resume is studded with classics: Fargo, Blood Simple, Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing, and so on. Stock up and have a marathon in preparation for the DVD release of their stunning and remarkably faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.
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