> WONDER WHEEL A WHITE KNUCKLE-RIDE

Kate Winslet’s new movie, The Mountain Between Us, has people talking about her willingness to work in a very tough physical environment. But people making Oscar predictions about her work in her other 2017 film: Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel, which reportedly made a lot of emotional demands. Wonder Wheel is set on the Coney Island of the 1950s, with Winslet playing Ginny, the bored wife of carousel operator Humpty (Jim Belushi). She falls for handsome lifeguard Mickey (Justin Timberlake). Things really get complicated when Humpty’s estranged daughter Carolina (Juno Temple) shows up, and also shows interest in Mickey. Wonder Wheel doesn’t open until December — although it closes the New York Film Festival on Oct. 14, — and there’s one scene in particular that Hollywood insiders have been buzzing about as Winslet’s ticket to another Oscar nomination. That would be the eighth of her career, with one win for Best Actress ( The Reader). Winslet says she’s not sure exactly which Wonder Wheel scene it is that people are talking about, but she has a good hunch: “There is a quite pivotal scene between myself and Justin Timberlake, where my character Ginny gives him a gift which he does not know how to accept. Ginny really believes that he’s going to be brought to his knees with gratitude and overwhelmed with thanks and surprised by this generous extraordinary gesture that she makes. He just doesn’t receive it in that way, and it does make Ginny respond in a very loud, irrational, hotheaded manner. That’s how I can describe it.”