Of all the industry guilds, the Writers is the biggest wild card. Snubs aren't only normal; they're ingrained into the legalese of the org's eligibility rules. Due to arcane requirements in their "Minimum Basic Agreement", the Writers Guild of America annually overlooks some of the season's major Academy Award contenders. Those most often snubbed are [...]
The two best films of the year according to the Golden Globes are Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book. Don't bet on the Academy agreeing with either. From the middlebrow Green Book pick to the lowbrow Bohemian shocker, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association went decidedly populist with their two biggest prizes -- Best Motion Picture Drama and [...]
Now this is a critics group putting their awards where their sophistication is. Critics Groups are, in a sense, like any other group. Their cumulative opinion often falls into a conventional wisdom or common narrative. Rarely does it result in a truly elitist pick, but such was the case this year as the National Society [...]
Producers go big, kicking low budget to the curb. The nominations for the 30th Annual Producers Guild of America awards - honoring the best produced movies of 2018 - have been announced. The omissions and the snubs are both glaring and telling. An equivalent to the Academy Awards' Best Picture category, the PGA nominations are [...]
You're Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers; of course I'll be your neighbor! Sony Pictures released its first photo of the beloved 2-time Academy Award winning actor as the beloved PBS icon, for their movie You Are My Friend. It's not a full biopic of Fred Rogers but, much like that Hanks-as-Walt-Disney film Saving Mr. Banks [...]
This Joker isn't dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight; he's doing it on the public transit a Gotham subway. In this leaked video clip from the set of Joker posted by TMZ (click here), Joaquin Phoenix saunters off a subway after having pulled some sinister prank, leaving chaos and violence in his wake. [...]
https://twitter.com/wbpictures/status/1043184618160021505 Whatever you may have been expecting from the Joker origin film starring Joaquin Phoenix, the look of Batman's most famous villain goes against every preconceived notion and precedent. In the video reveal on Twitter for Joker's makeup design -- posted first by director Todd Phillips (The Hangover Trilogy, War Dogs) -- gone is the [...]
You can have prestige or you can have popularity, but you can’t have both. That’s the conclusion I come to when reading some of the think-piece alternatives to recent changes made by the Academy to the Oscars ceremony. Many of them are reflected in this worthwhile piece by IndieWire’s Tom Brueggemann, “How To Make The [...]
In the wake of the changes to the Oscars telecast, the most controversial addition has been the new category “Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film”. Dubbed “The Popcorn Oscar”, it exists as a crass ploy for ratings that many fear will sacrifice the prestige of the award for the sake of (hopefully, maybe) more viewers. To [...]
The Oscars have officially gotten desperate, and it’s not a good look. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences – the producers of the Academy Awards, with a membership of Hollywood’s elite – has made some big changes to their annual telecast (although it was the Governor's Board of 57 people, not the full [...]
I Can't Unsee That Movie: film news and reviews by Jeff Huston 