“The Help” is the Best Movie of 2011 and Sure to be a Big Oscar Player

Watching the beautiful and brilliant film The Help this weekend, I was a sniveling crying mess. That is when I wasn’t laughing like a crazy person or entranced by the luminous and fantastic performances. You see this film based on the best seller by Kathryn Stockett is a must see and by far the best movie of 2011 thus far. Sure this year hasn’t given us too many awards worthy films (aside from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Beginners and Crazy Stupid Love), but irregardless, The Help is bound to be a big Oscar player at year’s end.
The film follows Skeeter (Emma Stone) as she travels home from college to Jackson Mississippi in the early 60′s hoping to become a writer. She sets out to write a book on the experiences of the black maids of her town and the white families they work for. Through the stories of the stoic Aibileene (Viola Davis) and the sassy Minny (Octavia Spencer) and their peers, the film explores what it was really like in the South during the volatile Civil Rights era. And boy does the film deliver. It’s at times hilarious and heartfelt while also harrowing and heartbreaking. The cast is extraordinary led by the Oscar worthy performances of Davis and Spencer who breathe hard worn life into these three-dimensional brave and determined women who are fighting for a better life for their children and themselves. Davis is simply awe-inspiring. With the subtlest of reactions, she could move you to tears. Her strength and conviction are unparalleled and Spencer is a revelation. While she throws off many of the films best one liners (along with a hysterical Sissy Spacek as an older Southern woman fighting dementia and her daughter played with an extreme villainy that is simply horrifying and perfectly executed by Bryce Dallas Howard), she also embodies the abuse that was so unfortunately common at the time. However, she does it with grace and dignity. The other revelatory performance comes from 2011 “It Girl” Jessica Chastain (Tree Of Life, Coriolanus, The Debt) who plays a shunned white trash wife who battles for her own standing in the community. Simply incredible… In fact, I’ll say it again the whole cast was just wonderful with Emma Stone giving her most fully realized performance to date and Allison Janney as her mother delivering a tricky role with ease. (I don’t want to spoil anything for you there). Plus Oscar nominee Cicely Tyson is tremendous in it as well. In fact, you could fill up the whole Oscar Supporting Actress category with women from this film and clearly it will be a front-runner for the SAG Ensemble Award.
So, just where will it stand at the Oscars? Here’s where I think it will be recognized….

Definite Oscar nominations:
Best Actress: Viola Davis (she could go Supporting though)
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer
Best Costume Design
Best Original Song: “The Living Proof”- Mary J. Blige & Thomas Newman (performed by Blige)

Likely Nominations:
Best Picture
Best Original Score
Best Adapted Screenplay

Possible Nominations:
Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain

Best Art Direction

Dark Horse but Deserving Nominations:
Best Supporting Actress: Bryce Dallas Howard, Cicely Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney
Best Actress: Emma Stone
Best Director: Tate Taylor

I cant recommend this uplifting and empowering and educational film enough. If you have a heart, you will love it. Go see it today and watch for the Awards to start rolling in. Grade: A+

And here’s the trailer for The Help:

Mary J. Blige gives you “Living Proof”

Grammy winning R&B superstar Mary J. Blige has been through it all. Drugs, booze, ups and downs with career and relationships and she always pours it out into some great music. Who can forget the brilliance of “No More Drama” for just one example? … And now, she is serving up some more dramatic music as she mines her emotions and those of the characters of the new film The Help with the first single off the soundtrack, “The Living Proof”. On this beautiful ballad, Blige sings of surviving and thriving through one’s troubles just like the ladies of the Kathryn Stockett best seller. The book and the film tell the story of a young white writer (Golden Globe nominee Emma Stone) who chronicles the lives of the black maids who she grew up with in the South during the 1960′s. Co-starring in the film are Oscar nominees Viola Davis (Doubt) and Cicely Tyson (Sounder), Oscar winner Sissy Spacek (Coal Miner’s Daughter), Emmy winner Allison Janney (The West Wing) plus Bryce Dallas Howard (Twilight Saga), Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life) and in a scene stealing performance, that like Davis’s, is getting Oscar buzz, Octavia Spencer (Ugly Betty). The much-anticipated film hits theatres in the August sweet spot (specifically Aug. 10th) that berthed the female-centric hits Eat Pray Love and Julie & Julia which as you might recall netted Meryl Streep another Oscar nod (which she should’ve won~ darn you Sandra Bullock). For more on the film, head here, and check out Mary J. Blige on what could become an Oscar and Golden Globe nominated song, “The Living Proof” from The Help.

Mary J. Blige “The Living Proof”