Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1999

The Contenders:

Annette Bening: American Beauty
Hilary Swank: Boys Don’t Cry (winner)
Julianne Moore: The End of the Affair
Meryl Streep: Music of the Heart
Janet McTeer: Tumbleweeds

Like a Rolling Stone

Film: Tumbleweeds
Format: Internet video on laptop.

I don’t really know Janet McTeer as an actress, so I was curious about the rare film Tumbleweeds. Mostly, I was curious about why it’s evidently so rare. I couldn’t find this on NetFlix or at any of the libraries I use, and even interlibrary loan wasn’t enough to locate the film for me, which forced me to resort to the internet. The version I found had a couple of strange gaps in the sound, but you take what you can get. With Tumbleweeds, this is what I could get.

The film opens with a fight between Mary Jo Walker (a nominated Janet McTeer) and her fourth husband. Early-teen daughter Ava (Kimberly J. Brown) has evidently seen this before, because she’s already packing her bag while the fight goes on. In fact, she’s just about fully packed when Mary Jo walks in and tells her to pack because they’re leaving. She’s got better places to be than here. We soon learn that this is Mary Jo’s typical life choice. She shacks up with the first guy who looks promising and bolts when the going gets rough.