Of all the industry guilds, the Writers is the biggest wild card. Their arcane rules often exclude major Oscar contenders. This year, that includes Original Screenplay Academy Award nominees The Favourite and First Reformed. With that in mind: Bo Burnham's screenplay for Eighth Grade won the WGA's award for Best Original Screenplay of 2018. That certainly [...]
Released: February 15, 2019 Runtime: 73 minutes for entire shorts program Program: Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts for 2018 During every Oscar ceremony, there’s a stretch of categories with nominees that virtually no one has ever even heard of, let alone seen: the shorts. Divided into three competitive groups – Animated, Live Action, and Documentary – the Academy Award nominated [...]
Roma just became the film to beat. Despite winning 7 awards over all, The Favourite did not emerge from the BAFTAs (The British Academy of Film & Television Arts) -- a.k.a. the British Oscars -- as the favorite for a Best Picture win later this month at Hollywood's Oscar gala. That would appear to be Roma, [...]
Released: February 8, 2019 Runtime: 105 minutes Program: Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts for 2018 (Parental Discretion strongly advised; not suitable for children) During every Oscar ceremony, there’s a stretch of categories with nominees that virtually no one has ever heard of, let alone seen: the shorts. Divided into three competitive groups – Live Action, Animated, and Documentary – [...]
We may now know who's going to win the Academy Award for Best Director, but the Best Picture race is more wide open than ever. Capping a pre-Oscar awards run of near dominance, Alfonso Cuarón was named the year's best director for Roma by the Directors Guild of America. This follows a slew of wins for Cuarón [...]
Well that didn't help. That's what Oscar prognosticators were thinking when Emily Blunt won the Female Supporting Actor Award for A Quiet Place. In doing so, she became only the second winner in the 25 year history of the Screen Actors Guild Awards to not even be nominated for an Oscar in the same category. [...]
Big surprises and big snubs, all in really big categories. That's what defined the nominations for the 91st annual Academy Awards. Leading the pack with 10 nominations was (unsurprisingly) the period piece / acting showcase / dark satire The Favourite and director Alfonso Cuarón's personal passion project Roma. To get to 10, Cuarón's Mexican-language film set in [...]
For the Oscar nerds out there, here are my predictions of who and what the Academy will nominate on Tuesday morning for their 91st Annual Awards. I'm predicting nominees in all categories but three (Live Action Short, Animated Short, and Documentary Short). For Best Picture, Academy rules state that there can be "up to 10" nominees, but 10 [...]
And Film Twitter just lost its ever-flippin' mind. In the year of Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, and If Beale Street Could Talk, the Producers Guild of America - the Hollywood union that's an annual precursor for Best Picture contenders and winners - chose the year's most controversial film, Green Book, as the best. The PGA presented [...]
Well that took long enough. Yes, I'm a Top 10 straggler, but I'd rather be sure than second-guess myself down the road. Rushing out a list during the onslaught of screening season, simply to meet the obligatory date of December 31st, just doesn't allow that. Not for me, anyway. Instead, I like to let my [...]