Supporting Actor Has No Frontrunner

Oh sure... Liam Neeson you say. So did I at one point. But Silence is looking like an increasingly imaginary film, don't you think? I'm not dumping him from the predicted lineup just yet though The Supporting Actor Chart has a ton of movement post-festival explosion.

The biggest chart debut goes to Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy in Jackie (they love actors as real famous people and he's typically strong) while Michael Shannon moves on up for stealing the entire show in Nocturnal Animals. And with the eyebrow-raising news that Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is not debuting for critics before its NYFF premiere, have we been overestimating that film? What a strange decision! 

Finally what to make of the men of Moonlight? They're all terrific but due to the triptych nature of the film, not a one of the men is in more than a third of the picture. My favorites were Trevante Rhodes (the lead character as an adult) and Mahershara Ali (a major figure in the first third) but you could fill up a whole supporting actor category with the men in Moonlight. No really. Here they are...

The Men of "Moonlight"
Mahershala Ali as Juan	Alex R Hibble as "Little"	Ashton Sanders as Chiron	Andre Holland as Kevin	Trevante Rhodes as "Black"

With apologies to Jharrel Jerome who plays Kevin as a teenager and is also really good (but we have to stick to five because them is the rules)

Whatever Happened To...

...photos of stars discussing their scripts together?

Supporting Actress: Nicole Kidman's Fourth Nomination?

Here's to the thought of Nicole Kidman back in an Oscar lineup - CHEERS!

Lion and Queen of Katwe were runner ups to La La Land for Toronto's People Choice prize and people were loving on Nicole Kidman and Lupita Nyong'o as warm mothers in those films. With a strange absence of contenders to this point (especially given the comparatively abundant Leading Actress wars) they both move way up the chart. Also shifting on the chart: Felicity Jones, Nina Arianda, Greta Gerwig x 2, Live by Night ladies, and a few drop-offs now that the films have been seen.

In category-fraud-loving Hollywood we have to assume that one of the leading ladies (Best Actress chart is not yet updated) will demote herself to secure a nomination in a weaker field. Viola Davis is a possibility in Fences  -- in the first Broadway run her Fences character was considered "featured" (Tony Award code for "supporting) and in the revival (the one Viola nabbed the Tony for) the same character in the exact same play was considered "lead". But we'll leave her in Best Actress for now because the plethora of her supporting roles aside, we all know Viola Davis is a Leading Lady down to the marrow and it shows in her supersized talent.

See the updated chart. Thoughts? 

Doc Corner: Nick Cave and The Beatles Show Mixed Musical Results

Thankfully for us, Nick Cave is not a musician who is easily distilled into a formula blueprint. He isn’t an artist who is easy to pigeonhole and that means anybody who attempts to make a film about him is forced to think outside of the box. Consider 20,000 Days on Earth in which Cave celebrated his 20,000^th day of living by driving around with friends like Kylie Minogue and Ray Winstone. That film, partly fictionalized, was only two years ago so if it feels somewhat excessive to have another Nick Cave documentary so soon then the circumstances around Cave’s life since then mean a lot has changed since his 20,000^th day on Earth that has dramatically altered him.

One More Time with Feeling is directed by Cave’s friend Andrew Dominik who Cave had worked with on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Like that film, this is another wholly singular film, the pairing of the two proving to bear the most unique of fruits. Initial sequences suggest that this is going to be a slog of a documentary, the pairing of famous director not known for documentary filmmaking and a famous subject who many filmmakers might just feel the need to point a camera at and shoot and feel as if their work is done.

That is blessedly not the case.

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Sony Classics Brings Us Eleanor Coppola's "Paris..."

One of the films we've been hearing positive word of mouth out of the glut of TIFF is Eleanor Coppola's Paris Can Wait. Eleanor famously documented her husband Francis Ford Coppola's literal hell shooting Apocalypse Now with Hearts of Darkness, and followed with more behind the scenes documentaries after. Paris is her first narrative film and Sony Pictures Classics just picked it up for distribution. At 80 years old, this first feature from the director will be something to celebrate!

If not TIFF Oscar bait, the film sounds like a lighthearted, mouth watering trip across France: Diane Lane stars as a dispassionately married woman who takes a French road trip with a business associate of her husband to reinvigorate her life. Alec Baldwin and Arnaud Viard are her costars, but we hear the cuisine brings the real romance. Food porn and Diane Lane in Europe sounds like exactly the thing we'll need to cleanse our Oscar palette come spring!

While we, ahem, Wait, what's your favorite food porn or European trip on film?