Kathy Bates:

[ChgoTheatreGuy]

As a long time fan of Kathy Bates, I was incredibly happy that she won the Oscar for "Misery". But as good as her performance in that film was, I think that she is absolutely exceptional in "Dolores Claiborne". Actually everyone gives an amazing performance in the film. I still can't understand why it was overlooked at the Oscars. It has great storytelling, amazing cinematography and very good screenplay. What does everyone else think?

[Kasie]

Happy to see this. It's tough to examine both roles side by side. Brilliance is present on each count.

I will say this though. Crooked feet call for desperate measures. Or however that saying goes.

[best12bars]

Kathy Bates and Judy Parfitt are at the very top of my list of "Oscar robbery." To this day, I believe Dolores Claiborne is Bates's finest screen work. And Judy Parfitt should have won Best Supporting Actress that year, but she wasn't even nominated. Neither was Bates.

I can also tell you that my friend who voted for the Oscars over 50 years and nominated in the acting categories put both actresses down as her number-one choices for leading and supporting nods on her Academy ballot. Yet they got nothing.

My only guess as to why is simply bad timing, which is huge. Bates won her Oscar just a few years earlier for playing another Stephen King "scary lady" in a non-horror story. The movie trailer and publicity played up that fact, perhaps way too much, and in the eyes of the voters, it was just a blatant attempt to recapture that former glory. Anything but, in my opinion.

Bates surprassed her work as Annie Wilkes, if for no other reason than it's a far more complex role with many layers to the character. The whole cast in this film is good. I could easily see Christopher Plummer, David Strathairn, and Jennifer Jason Leigh scoring nominations as well ... but no. Not that year. "Dolores Claiborne" was considered nothing more than a "Misery" rip-off.

[trentsketch]

I really enjoy her performance in Misery, but I think Dolores Claiborne is just a better film. Bates is sensational in Dolores Claiborne.

[Jordan Catalano]

CLAIBORNE is one of the very best films of the 90s and is (I think) Kathy Bates' best screen performance of all time.

[morosco]

Good movie and an exceptional performance but I was continuously distracted by Jennifer Jason Leigh's cliché'd performance. The cinematography was amazing.

[bobs3]

DOLORES CLAIBORNE was sadly overlooked at Oscars (especially Bates, Parfitt, and the haunting cinematography) but it was released in March 1995 and by the time Oscar nominations got around in February 1996 most voters had forgotten about the film and Columbia Pictures didn't do any FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION advertising in the trades as the studio was putting all of its advertising resources into SENSE AND SENSIBILITY.

If they had held off the release until November or December it would probably have been remembered at Oscar time.

[TheatreDiva90016]

I love everything about both films, but if I had to choose one, it would be Dolores Claiborne

[ChgoTheatreGuy]

I can watch this movie over and over again and never get tired of it. The whole (spoiler) doing away with Joe scene is a classic scene of modern cinema. I admired the scene even more when I later found out that the whole scene was filmed indoors at a hockey rink where they completely duplicated the Claiborne exterior and used CGI. I would love for Warner Bros. to do a Blu-ray release of the film with extra features. The DVD only includes the trailer and that's it.

[morosco]

Why in the world is this not on Blu-ray yet?

[bobs3]

I always wondered how they did the summer exteriors because I know it was filmed in Nova Scotia during the winter. That makes perfect sense that they recreated the summer scenes of the property on an interior set.

[WOSQ]

Rather than delay the release of Dolores Claiborne to the end of 1995, I have always felt had they had moved up the release date to the end of 1994, Kathy Bates would have had a second Oscar.

1994 was a dreary year for leading actresses. The eventual winner was Jessica Lange in a movie called Blue Sky that few saw and fewer remember and that had been finished 2-3 years earlier and in the meantime the director, Tony Richardson, had died!

[ChgoTheatreGuy]

As much as I love and adore Jessica Lange, I think that even if Columbia Pictures has even campaigned only slightly for Kathy Bates in "Dolores Claiborne", she would have become a two-time Oscar winner. A movie that has lines like, "Sometimes being a bitch is the only thing a woman has to hold onto", can't be that horrible.

[ChgoTheatreGuy]

I am going to message Warner Archive and Anchor Bay video to see what the possibilities of doing a Blu-ray of this film. I would also want them to include the footage of how the eclipse scene was filmed to give people that have never seen the film before more insight into the masterful filmmaking.

[morosco]

Call me crazy but I had no idea Delores Claiborne was also an opera that premiered last year in San Francisco.
Dolores Claiborne Preview Trailer - San Francisco Opera

[east side story]

This thread prompted me to pull out my old DVD that I found in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart years ago. Jennifer Jason Leigh just BOTHERS me in nearly everything she has ever done. Bates is sensational, as is Judy Parfitt, who was apparently cast after the director's wife suggested her. Thank you, Helen Mirren.

[Gothampc]

She was good in Dolores Claiborne, but Judy Parfitt owned that movie.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Brief threadjack: I loved Judy Parfitt in
The Blackheath Poisonings

[Gothampc]

And she's excellent in Call The Midwife as well.

[ChgoTheatreGuy]

I just feel that of the two films that "Dolores Claiborne" has the better story, acting and overall better quality than "Misery". I do have to admit that "Misery" was the first movie that ever made me scream out loud in the theatre (the part where she did away with Richard Farnsworth). I just wish that Kathy Bates worked more and was able to be in better quality projects.

[MTVMANN]

I'm big into the oscars and when I got older and started looking at previous years I, too, was surprised that no one received a nomination. I think many thought it was too much like Misery. Too bad

[Gothampc]

"I just wish that Kathy Bates worked more and was able to be in better quality projects."

I was talking to Meryl Streep the other day and she said, "If that Bates b-tch steals one more role from me, I swear I'll cut her."

Kathy Bates has been working non-stop. American Horror Story, Harry's Law, The Office. She's storing up residuals so she doesn't have to do Aflac commercials in her old age.

[Roscoe]

Check out the sublime Judy Parfitt as Mrs. Clennam in the BBC adaptation of LITTLE DORRIT. She'd have terrified Dickens himself.

[MTVMANN]

Here's another clip of the opera. I have to say the first clip about Joe splitting his pants is borderline campy!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_-rkLgjl52E

[ChgoTheatreGuy]

I was incredibly excited to hear that she was going to join "AHS". In her early interviews she said that she would be playing one of the worst characters she had ever read, but I felt terribly let down when the show premiered. With that many great actresses in the show, everyone was jockeying for position and I feel that they were all out-acted by the great Frances Conroy. Since Kathy Bates is from the South, wouldn't she really have taken everyone out if she had gotten to act in "August: Osage County"?

[MTVMANN]

Was it just us hoping she would play Mattie Fae...or was she really up for the part?