Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 2006

The Contenders:

Meryl Streep: The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet: Little Children
Judi Dench: Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren: The Queen (winner)
Penelope Cruz: Volver

Gunn's Golden Rules

Film: The Devil Wears Prada
Format: DVD from NetFlix on The New Portable.

I am one of the least fashionable people I know, which makes a movie like The Devil Wears Prada a hard sell for me. I don’t care at all about fashion and never have. Oddly, I have a complete man-crush on Tim Gunn from Project Runway because I think he’s someone who belongs in that small but important pantheon of iconic people worth emulating, sort of Fred Rogers with bespoke suits (although he claims he doesn’t wear them). If you’ve never read Gunn’s book Gunn’s Golden Rules, I recommend it as much as I’ve recommended any book ever. Gunn is a wonderful writer, smart and compassionate, and he dishes with the best.

One of the best stories in the book is about Vogue editor Anna Wintour being carried down five flights of stairs by her bodyguards because the likes of her does not ride in an elevator with mere mortals. Gunn goes on for several pages about the fact that people at Vogue live in a small bubble where the only thing that matters is fashion and their opinion on fashion and dealing with anything like the real world is not merely frowned on but not even considered. I bring this up because it is widely believed that Meryl Streep’s character Miranda Priestly is based on Wintour. In fact, it’s so widely believed that notable people in the fashion world mainly refused to appear in the film as themselves for fear of encouraging her wrath.