September Means We're Not So Far From Heaven

If you've been melting from the heat all summer, the thought of orange foliage and fallen leaves sweeping in the wind feels as welcome and cozy as a smart headscarf and sensible jacket. And now that sweltery August has thankfully come to a close, let's pretend like autumn's official kick-off isn't a couple of weeks away and start celebrating at the stroke of September - shifting weather patterns, ignored.

Without reservation, the first film that comes to mind when I think of fall is Todd Haynes' other magnificent 50s-set melodrama Far From Heaven. Away from the stuffy judgment of suburban social mores, Cathy Whitaker escapes from her plastic shackles and finds that seasons change swifter in nature and far more beautifully than they do around the cul-de-sac. Thankfully, the camera is under the trees with her.

Which movies instantly transport you into the sweater-draped headspace of the autumn months?

Smackdown '84: Glenn Close, Dame Peggy, Lahti, Crouse, and Page

Presenting the Supporting Actress Class of '84. The Academy looked way back in time for this vintage collecting characters from the 1920s through the 1940s: a British senior on an excursion to see "the real" India, a Depression era beautician, the ex-girl of a ballplayer, and a former singer working in a factory during World War II. The sole contemporary character was a chain-smoking furious mother from Greenwich Village...

Glenn Close and Geraldine Page were the regulars... about to lose again!

1984 
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN  

THE NOMINEES: The 1984 Supporting Actress list skewed more mature than usual. Lindsay Crouse, surely buoyed by the love for Best Picture player Places in the Heart, and the promising new star Christine Lahti who was the least familiar face to moviegoers at the time, were the youngest, both in their mid 30s. Glenn Close, on her third consecutive nomination in the category, and Geraldine Page with a surprise seventh nomination from a long and revered acting career, were the "names" of the category... and they were both about to lose again - this time to the stage actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft who had only rarely made films. 

Shut-Outs: There was very little consensus about supporting actresses beyond Ashcroft & Lahti who fought it out for the critics awards...

BAFTA & Globe nominees that failed to make the Oscar cut were many: Melanie Griffith (Body Double), Drew Barrymore (Irreconciliable Differences), Kim Basinger (The Natural), Lesley Ann Warren (The Songwriter), Tuesday Weld (Once Upon a Time in America) and Jaqueline Bissett (Under the Volcano); Other key women that voters could have chosen that year: Sigourney Weaver (Ghostbusters), Elizabeth Berridge (Amadeus), Polly Holliday (Gremlins), Sabine Azéma (who won the NBR for A Sunday in the Country), Holland Taylor (Romancing the Stone), Sharon Stone (Irreconciliable Differences), Dianne Wiest (Falling in Love), Amy Madigan (Places in the Heart) and Lonette McKee (The Cotton Club) 

THIS MONTH'S PANELISTS

Here to talk about the nominees are our panelists: Sheila O'Malley (The Sheila Variations), Noah Tsika (Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Queens College, CUNY and author of "Nollywood Stars"), Joe Reid (Decider.com), Nick Davis (Associate Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northwestern and author of "The Desiring Image") and your host Nathaniel R (The Film Experience).

And now it's time for the main event... 

1984 

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Best Picture Updates: La La Land Up, Birth of Nation Down

It's the final blind read Oscar charts update... after Venice/Telluride/Toronto each year things clear up a lot which is both fun because "the Oscar race has begun" and horrible since it's nice to hold on to multiple impossible dreams. After festival season is over you have to winnow the impossible dreams down since so many of the films have shown their faces and people get to decide how attractive they are and if they want to keep talking and thinking and looking at them for the next five months. 

At the very current moment La La Land is enjoying a deluge of ecstatic responses at Venice which makes us feel good about having predicted it from moment one. At the very current moment, The Birth of a Nation is reminding everyone that being a "frontrunner" a year before the actual ceremony is usually an untenable situation for a variety of similar reasons each time (boredom, hype backlash, "that ol' thing?" annoyance, etcetera) and also for specific unique reasons each time.

In the case of The Birth of a Nation we're dealing with the very unsavory business of a past rape incident. It feels grotesque to view such things through the lens of "what does it mean for Oscar?" which is largely why we've stayed relatively mum on the topic at The Film Experience. Nevertheless we should note that this is not necessarily the end for the movie. History is filled with bad press situations overcome and Hollywood is forgiving when they want to be. There are still four months left until Oscar nominations - plenty of time for more hot takes and backlashes against backlashes and so on. Nate Parker's willingness to talk at length about this is probably a good sign for both his future and the picture's, like this candid must-read interview with Ebony magazine. We can debate about how sincere and/or ignorant he is /was about consent (yes, yes, cultural understanding around sensitive topics does evolve over time but it was never okay to invite your friends to have sex with a passed out woman;  you didn't need modern understandings of "consent" to know this in the 90s) but I think we can all agree that rape culture is a very forgiving place for accomplished men, however awful that sounds. 

On the other hand once voters realize how much diversity there is in front of and behind the camera in 2016's movie offerings (Fences, Loving, A United Kingdom, Queen of Katwe, and Moonlight are all still to come) they might be eager to run far afield of the icky Birth of a Nation situation without worrying about any #OscarsSoWhite fallout because they can run right into the arms of less troubled filmmakers and warmer films. 

It's all so gross. So on to something more fun. Did you know that Alicia Keys, Tori Amos, and Sia all wrote Original Songs for movies this year? They did. See it on the music chart. 

CHART UPDATES Pre Festival Edition
INDEX |  BEST PICTURE | BEST DIRECTOR 
FOREIGN | FOREIGN A-F | FOREIGN F-N | FOREIGN N-Z
SCREENPLAYS | VISUALS | SOUND & MUSIC |  ANIMATION & DOCS
Acting chart updates tomorrow!

Norway's Oscar Search Narrows

The land of the midnight sun has narrowed down its contenders for this year's Oscar race. The three films that will be competing for the honor (to be announced on September 7th) are...

• The King’s Choice (Erik Poppe)
  A WW II drama about German soldiers invading Norway 
• The Pyromaniac (Erik Skjoldbjærg)
  Dramatic thriller about a southern village terrorized - premiering at TIFF
• Welcome to Norway (Rune Denstad Langlo)
  A comedy about a couple opening a home for refugees 

Poppe was submitted once before a dozen years back for Hawaii Oslo  and Oscar loves World War II but my guess is it's going to be Pyromaniac or Welcome to Norway. Skjoldbjaerg's history should help with the former since he had a finalist for submission with Pioneer a few years ago, though Norway opted for a lower profile submission, and he was also the co-writer of the internationally popular Norwegian hit Insomnia (1997) which was remade by Christopher Nolan in the Aughts. Welcome to Norway's topicality might help it take the honor, though. Both films won acting prizes at this week's Norwegian Oscars, "the Amandas" where last year's Oscar submission The Wave took the top prize of Best Norwegian Film.

Norway has been nominated five times (1957's Nine Lives, 1987's Pathfinder, 1996's Other Side of Sunday, 2001's Elling, and 2012's Kon-Tiki) but has yet to win the Oscar gold. 

THE AGE OF SHADOWS just announced as South Korea's choice, upsetting THE HANDMAIDENCurrent Foreign Oscar Predictions
10 Official Submissions Thus Far...

Chart 1 (Afghanistan - Finland) 
Submissions from Australia, Croatia, and Cuba

Chart 2 (France through Morocco) 
Submissions from Georgia & Germany

Chart 3 (Nepal through Vietnam) 
Submissions from Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Switzerland, and Venezuela.

La La Land Razzle Dazzles Venice

Classic musicals from Singing in the Rain to An American in Paris to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg are being invoked to praise La La Land. There are comparisons to golden age stars like Shirley MacLaine, Grace Kelly and Gene Kelly. The Damien Chazelle film, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, has critics at Venice falling in love and believing in the magic of cinema again. La La Land just topped our most anticipated fall film list and it looks like the excited anticipation was proven correct just a day later.

Here is an assortment of what is being said...

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