I see what you're saying, but do you think she's only "mildly talented"? I think she can be overrated and overhyped by critics, as you say, but I wouldn't say was untalented. She's fun in these comedy parts, too.
Also, everything you say here, you could replace the name "Meryl Streep" with the name "Kate Winslet" and it would still all make sense. Awards organizations will definitely nominate Winslet "the moment she appears onscreen" - with your
Mamma Mia complaint, well, Winslet was nominated for everything for
Eternal Sunshine and Jim Carrey and the rest were all shut out: that's obviously reflective of the same sort of favoritism. She's still a great actress though. That's just the nature of the awards. They're lazy, and they stick to a familiar roster of names. In all honesty, I don't think either Winslet or Streep, or a director like Scorsese or Eastwood, deserve to be nominated every single time they make a new movie, but what can you do? I can't get worked up about it. Now if it was
Natalie Portman or
Gwyneth Paltrow being nominated every fucking time they acted, well yeah, I'd be screaming at the TV for sure.... but Meryl? Kate? So what. At least it's someone I can respect.
When I heard that Julia Roberts got nominated I had to stop and think what the hell she'd been in this year. Duplicity, really? Is the field that thin this year?
It's thin because unlike other awards, they have 10 Best Actress and Best Actor nominees (but, oddly, only 5 each for supporting categories, where comedic and dramatic nominees compete against each other). The Globes were created in an era when Best Musical/Comedy actress meant something, because Hollywood was churning out lots of comedies and musicals. The 30s and 40s were the golden age of musicals and screwball comedies. Now it's ridiculous - like Joaquin Phoenix winning Best Actor in a
Musical for
Walk the Line, which is absurd: it's a serious drama about a musician, it ain't no musical.
Helen Mirren will probably be there too. She won the Best Actress prize at Rome, and she has been nominated for a few other things for
The Last Station. Besides, Christopher Plummer looks like a dead cert for Best Supporting Actor, and it would be bizarre for him to be nominated and her not to be. All the reviews that praised his Tolstoy also praised her Mrs. Tolstoy, and vice versa. Nobody seemed to like one without the other.
In the end, though, I believe this is Meryl's year (sorry
hunter). She's going to win the Oscar for playing Julia Child. Everything's in her favor: Mirren won only a couple years ago, Sidibe's a newcomer and too young, Mulligan is another newcomer and she'll have plenty of other chances, and the fifth nominee is obviously not admired enough, otherwise we'd all know already who she'll turn out to be.
That leaves Streep. She is winning stuff for this performance. She's never been more popular with the general public.
Julie & Julia is a hit. Streep's reviews were excellent, far better than her mixed reviews from critics for
Doubt, where Viola Davis was generally thought to be better.
She's also 60. For some reason, reaching the age of 60 seems to have some magical talismanic attraction for the Academy, for legendary stars. Jack Nicholson won a third Oscar at age 60. Katharine Hepburn won only once for her screen debut, and then suddenly, after she turned 60 they gave her two Oscars back-to-back, 1967 and 1968's Best Actress. Ingrid Bergman also won a third Oscar at age 60. I seriously can't foresee anyone but Streep winning.
