Twitch-O-Meter: When Oscar Goes Bad Part Two. Here Come The Ladies …

Posted by Todd Brown at 5:48pm.

Posted in Twitch-O-Meter .

Back in November I wrote a Twitch-O-Meter reveling in the wonders of the Oscar Curse: that spectacular phenomenon where winning the little golden man seems to mysteriously sap its recipient of any recognizable talent. Part One dealt with the men, this time around it’s the ladies’ turn. But in preparing this I ended up wondering whether women simply are smarter than men because there just aren’t as many examples of the Curse to choose from, the malicious effects of the wee man only becoming truly evident in relatively recent years. Oh, sure, there are winners such as Faye Dunaway and Whoopi Goldberg who have some dodgy moments on their resumes simply because they like to work a lot and accept a broad mix of projects do seldom do the award winners descend to the levels of extreme crappiness need to make this list. Nominees are a different story - there are loads of examples there - but the actual winners tend to do okay ... and so the ladies list is limited to a mere three entries. Read on!

Angelina Jolie
Maybe it’s a family thing. Big daddy Jon Voight made the men’s list and here comes Angie with the women. Let’s be honest here. Angelina has a couple of spectacular moments on her resume but those generally come when she plays characters very close to her own personality. Ask her to do anything else and she tends to stumble and often quite badly. Case in point: she followed her Oscar winning performance in Girl Interrupted - in which she played a borderline sociopath, not a great stretch - directly with Gone In 60 Seconds. Icky.

Mira Sorvino
This one is a matter of debate. Was Sorvino’s fall an example of the Oscar Curse in action or, as seems more likely, the result of then-boyfriend Quentin Tarantino’s influence? Whichever it was she developed a sudden fixation with genre films after winning for Mighty Aphrodite and made one decent one - Mimic - before being absolutely excruciatingly bad in The Replacement Killers, putting a major damper on Chow Yun Fat’s chances of Hollywood success in the process.

Halle Berry
An inclusion that should surprise no one. Halle’s quality films before winning for Monster’s Ball? Pretty much all of them. Halle’s quality films since? Pretty much none. Catwoman gets the most hate but I personally think her turn as a Bond girl is even worse.

Obviously there is plenty of room to add to this list ... who would you suggest?

Reader Comments

Swarez 02/21/2008 @ 3:58am

Your mama!
Kurt Halfyard 02/21/2008 @ 8:16am

I liked Charlize Theron’s post-Oscar blockbuster AEON FLUX quite a bit actually. I seemed to be in the minority on this one though.

(http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/aeon-flux-review/)
Airchinapilot 02/21/2008 @ 12:08pm

I know Kathleen Turner was only nominated for an Oscar but I have to mention that on the CBC radio last night she was interviewed by Giam Gomeshi. It was a frank interview talking about what happened to her since she was at the top of her game (Romancing the Stone, War of the Roses, Peggy Sue Got Married). She had arthritis, then took to drinking but now apparently is on the rebound on stage. However, listening to her on the radio, she sounded *stinking drunk*.