Natalie Portman Wins Best Actress Award at the Golden Globes

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Natalie Portman won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture for her role in 'Black Swan.  She beat out Halle Berry - 'Frankie and Alice' Nicole Kidman - 'Rabbit Hole' Jennifer Lawrence - 'Winter's Bone' and Michelle Williams - 'Blue Valentine'. 

Sunday's win is the second trophy Portman has picked up in three days. The starlet also nabbed Best Actress at the Critics' Choice Awards on Friday. Both wins bode well for Portman at the Oscars. 

As I stated in an earlier blog Portman give an amazing performance. Not only was it the greatest performance of her career, but one of the best performance ever.  What is also intriguing about Portman's performance is that it came under the direction of Aronofsky.

Aronofsky's direction in The Wrestler is credited for Mickey Rourke's comeback performance.  As Bob Strauss of the Los Angeles Daily News wrote Rourke was one of the most talented actors of the 1980s, had alienated collaborators, made bad career choices and generally misbehaved himself almost entirely out of the movie business, even spending a few years in the 1990s focused on a professional boxing career.  As a result his performance in The Wrestler Rourke garnered the Best Male Lead at the Film Independent's Spirit Awards as well as a 2009 Golden Globe Best Actor award, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts [BAFTA] Best Actor award, and a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a leading role.

Although she didn't fare as well as Natalie Portman or Mickey Rourke, Ellen Burstyn was nominated for an Academy Awards for Best Actress  and the Golden Globes Best Actress for her portrayal of Sara Goldfarb in Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream.

Aronofsky: A Director Obessed

Aronofsky's films are about obsessions and the destruction that they bring. In each of his films the protagonist suffers significant loss as a result of his/her obsession. Whether it is a reclusive math genius obsessed with running calculations on pi that will allow him to decode hidden patterns in both the stock market and the Qabala [Pi 1998]; a trio of junkies addicted to heroin and a lonely and overweight Jewish widow obsessed with being a possible game-show contestant, and fixated on stuffing herself back into a favorite red dress for her date with stardom [Requiem for a Dream 2000]; a husband/scientist searching for a cure for death/immortality [The Fountain 2006];  a nearly washed-up wrestling star who had his heyday during the 1980s and has been struggling ever since to regain everything that he had lost [The Wrestler 2008]; or a child-woman ballerina who is obsessed with being perfect [Black Swan 2010] all end up being destroyed.  

The title of Aronofsky's second film, Requiem for a Dream, best describes the consequences due to the destructive nature of obsessions. In Requiem for a Dream the four characters suffer addiction, electroshock therapy, amputation, incarceration, and sexual degradation. In Pi the protagonist increasingly suffers from migraines and paranoid episodes ending his torment ends through self-mutilation.  In his next two films, The Fountain and the Wrestler, alienation and death are the tolls extracted for their obsessions. In his latest film, Black Swan, the pursuit of perfection ends in both triumph and suicide.


I stornly recommend seeing each of his films with the exception of The Fountain. I am not a huge Hugh Jackman fan nor did I like the storyline. It is the furthest from the theme of the destructive nature of obsessions, however the visuals are interesting.

Black Swan Posters

Black Swan

Synopsis: A psychological thriller set in the world of New York City ballet, BLACK SWAN stars Natalie Portman as Nina, a featured dancer who finds herself locked in a web of competitive intrigue with a new rival at the company (Mila Kunis). A Fox Searchlight Pictures release by visionary director Darren Aronofsky (THE WRESTLER), BLACK SWAN takes a thrilling and at times terrifying journey through the psyche of a young ballerina whose starring role as the duplicitous swan queen turns out to be a part for which she becomes frighteningly perfect. (C) Official Site 

Critical Acclaim: 

To induce a state of dread and mesmerize with beauty is a rare, paradoxical achievement.

Claudia Puig, USA TODAY 

Full Review: http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2010-12-03-blackswan03_ST_N.htm .

This is, no doubt about it, a tour de force, a work that fully lives up to its director's ambitions.

David Edelstein, New York Magazine 

Full Review: http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/69780/ 

A wicked, sexy and ultimately devastating study of a young dancer's all-consuming ambition, Black Swan serves as a fascinating complement to Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," trading the grungy world of a broken-down fighter for the more upscale but no less brutal sphere of professional ballet. 

Peter Debruge, Variety 

Full Review: http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117943400?refcatid=31

A near-masterpiece of a film set in the hothouse world of New York ballet.

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
Full Review: http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/black-swan,1169493/critic-review.html

Portman's portrait of an artist under siege is unmissable and unforgettable. So is the movie. You won't know what hit you.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Full Review: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/black-swan-20101202

Lurid and voluptuous pulp fun, with a sensationalistic fairy-tale allure. You can't take it too seriously, but you can't tear your eyes away from it, either.

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly 

Full Review: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20446266,00.html

A near-irresistible exercise in bravura absurdity, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan deserves to become a minor classic of heterosexual camp-at the very least, it's the most risible and riotous backstage movie since "Showgirls.

J. Hoberman, Village Voice

Full Review: http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-12-01/film/natalie-portman-goes-batshit-in-a-tutu-in-black-swan/

Audaciously whacked-out and never less than entertaining, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan mixes a backstage dance drama with a Freudian psychological thriller that's indebted to Roman Polanski's studies of shattered feminine psyches and David Cronenberg's movies about repressed bodies in rebellion

Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Full Review: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/tiff/todays-movies/james-franco-james-caan-and-much-more/article1712493/page2/

Aronofsky blurs the line between reality and fantasy, turning the film into a gothic horror show that is fascinating and disappointing in equal measure. What's resplendently real, though, is the beauty of Ms. Portman's performance. She makes the whole lurid tale worthwhile

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

Full Review: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704594804575648932101678038.html

Black Swan' Leads Critics' Choice With Record 12 Nominations

BROADCAST FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION CRITICS' CHOICE MOVIE AWARDS 
Nominations announced: Dec. 13th
Ceremony: Jan. 14th

Best Picture
Best Actress, Natalie Portman
Best Supporting Actress, Mila Kunis
Best Director, Darren Aronofsky
Best Original Screenplay, Mark Heyman and Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin
Best Cinematography, Matthew Libatique
Best Art Direction, Therese DePrez and Tora Peterson
Best Editing, Andrew Weisblum
Best Costume Design, Amy Wescott
Best Makeup
Best Sound
Best Score, Clint Mansell

Golden Globes: 4 nominations for 'Black Swan,' including best actress for Natalie Portman, best supporting actress for Mila Kunis 

GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS
Nominations announced: Dec. 14th
Ceremony: Jan. 16th

Best Motion Picture, Drama
Best Actress, Natalie Portman
Best Supporting Actress, Mila Kunis 
Best Director, Darren Aronofsky

SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS
Nominations announced: Dec. 16th
Ceremony: Jan. 30th

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, Natalie Portman
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, Mila Kunis

DIRECTORS GUILD OF AMERICA AWARD
Nominations announced: Jan 10th
Ceremony: Jan 29th
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan

If you love film you must see this movie, Portman's performance is simply amazing and should not be missed. It is films like this that remind me why art is critical to living a full life.  The film also reminded me that I missed going to the ballet. I have been fortunate enough in my life to see Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and Fonteyn, as well as the Bolshoi Ballet Company.  I need to start going again.