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Tough and Tender - The Top 20 Female Performances of 2008

Twenty talented ladies, 20 performances worthy of multiple little gold men. Unfortunately, as in all years, someone has to come out on top. But after looking over this impressive list, picking the preeminent turn of 2008 seems almost impossible.

Film

Shameful Exposure

A fiery Kate Winslet saves morality tale in 'The Reader' while a similarly powerful Meryl Streep can't do the same for the overly certain 'Doubt'.

Film

The Reader

Most obviously, Hannah is unfathomable, the feminine object Michael must figure out and overcome in order to "become a man."

Reviews

Holo-Cost

Film

The Annihilating Feminine: Kate Winslet Gets Nasty in The Reader

In Winslet’s clever, low-key performance, all of the character’s ambiguousness remains intact, making Hanna her most complicated, mature creation to date.

Film

He’s Lost Control

The kids who grew up in the '90s had the haunted Kurt Cobain; my generation had the tormented Ian Curtis.

Film

Youth Without Youth

"You learn more quickly, more profoundly in dreams" -- the audience becomes a part of the hallucinations.

Reviews

Ode to Joy: Joy Division / Control (2007)

Film

Performance Art: The Best Acting of 2007 - Male

From the tender and eerie precision of Sam Riley's depiction of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in Control to yet another superlative performance by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, PopMatters highlights the best male actors of 2007.

Featured: Top of Home Page

Youth Without Youth

Based on the writings of Mircea Eliade, Francis Ford Coppola's first movie in 10 years is goofy, contrived, and self-absorbed.

Reviews

Control

What could have easily ended up as a humorless exercise in hipster excess turns out warm and snappy.

Matt Mazur

Reviews

Control

Despite occasional strange and impossibly intimate reveries, the film lapses frequently into biopickish shorthand.

Reviews

Downfall (2004)

Eva and Hitler kill themselves off-screen, the precise steps they took unseen because, the director says, 'the worst thing that could happen to this most horrible person of history is that he become a myth'.

Cynthia Fuchs

Reviews

Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004)

Downfall's preoccupation with a flesh-and-blood Hitler is central to its meditation on fanaticism.

Lester Pimentel

Reviews

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Tough and Tender - The Top 20 Female Performances of 2008

Twenty talented ladies, 20 performances worthy of multiple little gold men. Unfortunately, as in all years, someone has to come out on top. But after looking over this impressive list, picking the preeminent turn of 2008 seems almost impossible.

Shameful Exposure

A fiery Kate Winslet saves morality tale in 'The Reader' while a similarly powerful Meryl Streep can't do the same for the overly certain 'Doubt'.

Unclear Motives Make this 'Reader' Unrewarding

The Reader

Most obviously, Hannah is unfathomable, the feminine object Michael must figure out and overcome in order to "become a man."

Holo-Cost

The Annihilating Feminine: Kate Winslet Gets Nasty in The Reader

In Winslet’s clever, low-key performance, all of the character’s ambiguousness remains intact, making Hanna her most complicated, mature creation to date.

He’s Lost Control

The kids who grew up in the '90s had the haunted Kurt Cobain; my generation had the tormented Ian Curtis.

Youth Without Youth

"You learn more quickly, more profoundly in dreams" -- the audience becomes a part of the hallucinations.

Ode to Joy: Joy Division / Control (2007)

Performance Art: The Best Acting of 2007 - Male

From the tender and eerie precision of Sam Riley's depiction of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in Control to yet another superlative performance by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, PopMatters highlights the best male actors of 2007.

Youth Without Youth

Based on the writings of Mircea Eliade, Francis Ford Coppola's first movie in 10 years is goofy, contrived, and self-absorbed.

Control

What could have easily ended up as a humorless exercise in hipster excess turns out warm and snappy.

Control

Despite occasional strange and impossibly intimate reveries, the film lapses frequently into biopickish shorthand.

Downfall (2004)

Eva and Hitler kill themselves off-screen, the precise steps they took unseen because, the director says, 'the worst thing that could happen to this most horrible person of history is that he become a myth'.

Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004)

Downfall's preoccupation with a flesh-and-blood Hitler is central to its meditation on fanaticism.

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Star Parks Go for the Immediate with "Something More" (premiere)

Electro's Sotomayor Merge House and Merengue on "Menéate pa' mí" (premiere)

Gab De La Vega Turns and Faces the Familiar, Strange on "YYZ" (premiere)

British Soul/Blues Artist Izo Fitzroy Asks for "Blind Faith" (premiere)

Fell Runner Celebrate the Strange Dreams of an Unlikely Hero with "Jeffrey" (premiere)

The James Hunter Six's "Brother or Other" Asks to Spread the Love in a Time of Division (premiere)

Crowhurst + Gavin Bryars Demonstrate the Powers of Collaboration With "Dead Swans of Dreams" (premiere + interview)