Watching Cate Blanchett play Katherine Hepburn The Aviator

Are you shaking with disbelief?

Nice moment of her and di Caprio flying over LA at night and she's backlit bu the city lights and he just looks at her. Maybe ten seconds. And then she ruins it by talking.

Any man with a Gay Card can do a Hepburn impersonation, too.

Get on over to wardrobe Calla Lilly because Christ knows you can't do any worse.

In a world where Jonah Hill has twice as many Oscar nominations as Harry Fran Stanton I suppose I can believe anything.

OP, not only was she nominated, but she WON!

Damn it. I was going to post r6 word for word.

Yeah, I'd hoped I remembered that part wrong. What a stinker. Just the clumsiness of the 《《foreshadowing》》 of his OCD. And the incessant jazz score, yeah , we get it, we're in the 1930s. And that eccentric Hepburn clan, such a bunch of starchy New England characters! Not Scorsese's best. Directing awards should be for directing, not a lifetime achievement award for an old guy whose best days are probably behind him.

Money and success are the enemies of creativity.

She was bearable. But frankly, I cannot think of anyone else who could have done the part.

She won an oscar for Blue Jasmine I think it was called, very underwhelming, not even the best female performance in the film, Sally Hawkins was better. ,

You'll laugh but Hilary Swank looks more like Hepburn and could have kept the Yankee accent from migrating down into Dixieland as Blanchett's does.

Parker Posey should have played Hepburn.

I can't stand Meryl Blanchett

Yeah, it was an abomination.

God yes, R13. She came to be associated with a type of high strung quirky proto hipster based on her breakthrough role in Party Girl, like an American Audrey Tatou, but she quickly stalled because audiences wanted to see her play that character over and over then quickly got tired of her. She's one of those performers who could have had a very different career if one thing had been different. Blanchett I'm completely indifferent to. I found her very moving in The Talented Mr Ripley, but otherwise meh. Not a standout. And yet somehow she became one of the anointed ones.

She was great in it, you dolts.

Whatever. I loved her and thought she was smashing. You could also tell how much fun Marty had making the film. I think it was his most entertaining film in YEARS and what gorgeous, big-fat-old-fashioned Hollywood glamour production values, too.

She lapsed far too much into mimicry that became almost laughable at times, but she managed to produce one or two fine moments that seemed to me to get to the heart of Hepburn. In their last face-to-face scene in the film, DiCaprio says something cruel to her (I can't remember what it was) and the little smile of hurt she gives him before exiting the room was pure Hepburn, that combination of bravado and insecurity that was so her.

This one, R19?

The lunch at the Hepburn estate is a marvelous scene:

[quote] This one, [R19]?

Yes, but that clip cuts out at the exact moment I was talking about.

Ah, that's too bad, R32.

Meant to say, R22.

R20 the only thing that clip shows is how WEAK and miscast DiCaprio was in the film. I think Blanchett did a fine job.

I know how you feel OP. Honestly, I loved her until this film, from then on, I see her as pretty hammy.

She had missed out for Elizabeth and then went on to do a lot of acclaimed work but 6 years went by in between nominations so they had to giver her one when they could. Who knew whether at that point she'd get another chance?

plus the other nominees were Virgina Madsen in that stupid wine monologue in a straight man fantasy film. Same for little girrating Natalie in Closer. and I forget who the others were but I don't think they were in the race really.

I can't believe they cast Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner! Huh, what?!

She was absolutely awful, especially her accent, and I say that as an Australian. She should have gotten it for other roles but never for this film or any other film where she plays an American. Cate can NOT do an American accent to save her life. This was an apology Oscar after they took hers from Elizabeth and gave it to Gwyneth.

OP again, R26 articulated what irritated me so much, it was a caricature. Hepburn was easy to parody, harder to accurately capture. Martin Short did a better Hepburn for Christ's sake. Say what you will about Streep, Julia Child could have foundered in Dan Ackroyd territory and she avoided that. Kate Beckinsale and Gwen Stefani as Gardner and Harlow only brought home to me how insipid and characterless so many modern performers are. And I am in no way one of those who thinks it was all downhill after the 1950s. For me the Golden Age was the 1970s, and ironically Scorsese was one of the directors that made it so. But this was an over art-directed, lazily written exercise in self indulgence. It goes to show, if you want your award to mean anything, you need to give it to the emerging director or nobody actor for the out-of-nowhere small film nobody saw, not as a consolation prize ten years later.

Unbelievable she got an Oscar. Unbelievable The Aviator got so many nominations. Piece of crap.

She's a pretentious, snobby bitch. Hollywood is still reeling from how she gleefully mocked Judy Garland's addiction during her Goldrn Globes acceptance speech with Liza sitting in the audience. And then she made PSH's death all about her comporting herself all over Manhattan like the Widder Hoffman in the days after his drug demise. Odd how she didn't make fun of his heroin usage since that was her MO.

That's Mary Frann Stanton, R5.

What about DiCaprio as Howard Hughes with the over the top Texas accent? He was so bad that, in contrast, Cate Blanchett seemed on the mark.

Sorry, Harry DEAN Stanton. Lost the stylus on my Note4.

As a Texan, I'm so used to our NUMEROUS accents being mangled, I expect it. When you hear an actual native like Tommy Lee Jones or Woody Harrelson, it almost sounds false amid all the Deputy Dawgs and Lur-Leens.

As ridiculous as her performance is, Cate's energy is the best thing about the film, making the first half of the movie quite entertaining; once she leaves half-way through (other than the brief re-appearance mentioned above), all the energy and pizzazz simply drains from the film and it becomes a massive bore.

R32, nobody cared about Cate's Garland joke except for you. It's pure delusion to keep insisting that anyone even remembers that joke, let alone that Blanchett's career was in any way affected by it.

I'm indifferent to Garland, R37, and I didn't see that incident, but if it's true, it's very callous. Some folks are naturally humorous and she doesn't strike me as one of them. She probably thought Garland was a safe target because she's long dead, likely wouldn't make a similar joke about River Phoenix or Robert Downey Jr. She doesn't strike me as mean, just clueless. She takes herself too seriously to be (intentionally) funny, occupational hazard.

The nightclub scene wanted to make me vomit it was so over the top. I thought 'You're trying too hard!" We get it: Hughes, Hepburn, Hollywood, the late 1930s. And that queen doing some idiotic dance (he seemed like he'd just snorted a gram of meth) across the nightclub stage was the icing on the cake.

I thought Virginia Madsen deserved the Oscar that year. She gave a very charismatic, warm performance in Sideways (especially that monologue).

I wonder how different their careers would have been if Madsen had won instead of Blanchett. So many fine actors get to show a glimmer of greatness, and that's all, folks. Back to "playing the mom."

It was a terrible year for performances in general. Any year where Jamie Foxx gets two nominations, you know is from hunger.

And for my money, Belen Rueda in The Sea Inside should have won Best Supporting Actress. Cate was fucking awful, as was that film.

I've always wondered that, too, R41. Good point.

I fear that would've been Madsen's last shot either way. Not much respect for Older Leading Actresses, even the lovely ones. (P.S. I worked with her and loved her. Always a class act).

Can you go into more detail about working with her, R44? Sorry to hijack the thread.

(Google her name and "Herbert Ross Troll" and it might take you right to the thread where we talk about the famous actor spilling red cranberry juice all over her white wool dress in the waiting room -- and how sweetly she handled it all, even though he was mortified. Sorry, indeed don't want to hijack the thread. :)

Madsen might have had a few bigger roles than she got, but I think her career and Cate's would have ended up at roughly the same place they are today.

Basically, look to Marcia Gay Harden for what an Oscar-winning Virginia Madsen would have become. A few high profile supporting roles before settling in a television series.

Some people seem to believe Scorsese got a Director Oscar for this. He did not. It was for The Departed a few years later.

However, Cate Blanchett got it because voters thought she was due. And people still adored her at that time. Her characterisation of Hepburn is irritating, though.

Dead on, R47, for almost all of them but the top 1% -- Streep, Lange, Sarandon, almost Sally if she hadn't caved to TV, etc. Will be interesting to see which way Blanchett goes (I assume she will be around for the long haul myself but you never know).

(Actually, no idea how I could have forgotten it but Lange caved to TV too. Is Streep the ONLY actress alive who doesn't have to do series work?)

Yeah, calm down Hedda Hopper at R32. I doubt Hollywood is still reeling from anything Cate Blanchett has ever done.

R48, it probably didn't hurt that Hepburn nostalgia was pretty high at the time, since she had died the year before.

I'm really late for this conversation and even later at 15 years to see this movie. Seeing Cate Blanchett try to overzealously impersonate Katharine Hepburn makes me think $4. 99 was way too much for this movie in the Walgreens Bargain Bin. I think Wesley Snipes could play a better Katharine Hepburn than Cate Blanchett. Or maybe Verne Troyer God Rest his soul. In fact, I think a toaster with a Katharine Hepburn wig could have played a better Katharine Hepburn than Cate Blanchett did. I guess I'll finish the movie and try not to throw up in my mouth every time she talks... *Sighs heavily/slaps forhead*

Cate Blanchett is not a good actress. Everything I’ve ever seen her in was cringeworthy. In LOTR she talks all slow like she is on Xanax. She isn’t pretty enough to be Galadriel. In The Aviator she talks like a fucking cartoon character. Just hammy and spammy. She is godawful in every role.

..."forehead" that was. had a mild seizure and couldn't spell "forehead" correctly due to Cate Blanchett's shitty performance disrupting my central nervous system as I was typing the paragraph above the one above this. The one ending in *slaps forehead* Sincerely, anonymous

Eh, R54 I find her to be variable. She's often a stinker, but occasionally she knocks it out of the park. She was fantastic as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There and Oscar & Lucinda.

I love her all the time.

She has a tranny mouth/rictus grin.

She always sounds a drag queen with a dick in her mouth.

And soon she will play Lucille Ball.

She's a good actor, really good but does she have to be in everything that Streep is too old to play? I'd be happy to never see either one of them again.

She will be a terrible Lucy. I was so disappointed in this casting. Her American accent is atrocious. She doesn’t even look like her to make up for the bad acting. I actually think Frances Fischer did a great job playing Lucy in a made for TV movie. It came out in the early 90s. I believe it was called, “Before The Laughter”.

Her Hepburn was a bit much but the whole film was seriously weird. Howard Hughes should be the best dark, demented, inspirational and glamorous biopic subject ever. I guess it won't happen. I think Scorcese was off cocaine by the time of the Aviator, so I didn't get why he made such a silly glamorface movie. I understand his limitations better now.

Cate Blanchett. I don't care what she does, I can't look away.

The Aviator was one of Scorsese's worst films. It all feels very forced. And jude law as Errol Flynn was atrocious.

I watched this movie a couple of weeks ago, and I never imagined there would such disparate opinions. I thought Cate did pretty well; DiCaprio not so much. But I haven't enjoyed him since Gilbert Grape, so what do I know? I'm fascinated by the differences here.