Best Actress 2013: Kate Winslet, Labor Day

It's always interesting to watch an Actress negotiate her career after winning a leading Oscar.  The ladies from the early 1990s didn't do too badly.  But, for a while, it was the kiss of death, or a lifetime achievement award.  While Helen Mirren has benefitted greatly from The Queen, her younger counterparts have struggled.  But things have seemed to start coming back together for a whole lot of them since 2002.  Nicole Kidman, after failing commercially several times while tempering her higher-profile projects with arty ventures, has found a happy medium.  Charlize Theron has been more fortunate at attaching her name to franchise roles which pay well, but aren't too much of a gamble, enabling her to break out a humdinger of a performance every now and then like Young Adult.  Reese Witherspoon, who has weathered some pretty huge bombs has come out unscathed and landing edgier parts.  But, perhaps the best model of gracefully working your way back into the system is Kate Winslet.  She won in 2008, and just like after the monumental success of Titanic, she has rather unassumingly weaved her way way into film (aside from marrying someone with the legal last name RocknRoll).  She won an Emmy and Golden Globe for playing Mildred Pierce in the HBO miniseries. Having worked with Todd Haynes, she then collaborated with other reliable directors like Steven Soderberg and Roman Polanski.  And, now that she is no longer the young ingenue seeking critical validation, she is taking the more mature step of maintaining a commercial appeal by taking on a supporting part in the upcoming Divergent franchise.

Recently, she teamed up with Jason Reitman, who showcased Theron's acting talents in Young Adult a year ago.  Reitman seems to have specialized in comedy-dramas, but, his latest Labor Day, sounds like a drama, that may even border on a thriller.  Told through the eyes of her son, Winslet plays a 1980s/90s-ish mother who extends kindness to man with a record, unbeknownst to her.  Reitman adapted the screenplay based on the Joyce Maynard novel.  Reitman uses some of his Up in the Air team including composer Rolfe Kent, costumer Danny Glicker (Milk), longtime cinematographer Eric Steelberg and editor Dana E. Glauberman, and production design team of Steve Saklad and Mark Robert Taylor.  Filmed last Summer in Massachussetts, Paramount Pictures will likely release the film sometime this year.

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