Oscar Ballots Out Today. Three Simple FYCs for Voters.

Let the Oscar balloting begin. The image we use to illustrate is envelopes because they're pretty but they're also analog when even as ancient an institution as Oscar -- he's 88 years old now! -- has gone digital. Academy members can start nominating their favorites TODAY.  I won't barrage AMPAS members with requests other than these three wishes:

1. Please ignore precursors. Surprise us! 
The precursor bodies make terrible mistakes in trying to predict you (SAG & Critics Choice in particular this year are just a mess of lazy "what will the Academy vote for?" impulses rather than a searching for what constitutes great work which should always be the only concern). Two fine movies off the top of our heads that nobody expects you to vote for this year but why the hell shouldn't you? Sicario and Tangerine. People also seem to agree that you won't get behind stories about women but we know you have it in you. The public is enjoying reliving 1977 because of Star Wars: The Force Awakens but remember in 1977 how 80% of your Best Picture lineup was about women? Good times! I mean, why shouldn't you vote for something as gentle, resonant, and well modulated as Brooklyn, for example?

2. FYC: Remember that love stories require two leads. 
Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett are a beautiful team in Carol - so don't separate them in two different categories. Think of the classic screen couples (Gone With the Wind, The Way We Were, Titanic, It Happened One Night, Casablanca, Coming Home, etcetera). In none of those romantic dramas do people pretend one movie star is "supporting" the other movie star. Be reasonable and put an end to greedy campaign strategies that make the very notion of awards seem crassly opportunist when the conversation should be edifying and fun; "Best" is a beautiful word! And love stories are love stories are love stories whether the couple is straight or LGBT. (See also: The Danish Girl)

3. Most ≠ Best
This isn't just about the acting categories but how about a deserved nod here or there that you could never call "Most" but could definitely argue "Best".  Three examples of many: The Production Design of Room (a top notch technical achievement but also emotionally intelligent and a true creative challenge); The Visual Effects of Ex Machina (there's no grand setpieces, sure, but damn if these fx aren't a master class and hugely impressive in comparison to the typical CGI shenanigans of blockbusters like Jurassic World); and the Original Score of Steve Jobs (unusual, contemporary, and creatively retro too).

HAPPY VOTING EVERYONE!

Oscar Race: How Crazy Are Those SAG Awards, Really?

Coco here, ready to talk about the current Oscar race and those crazy SAG awards in particular.

As you already know, the Screen Actors Guild decided to honor the best acting of 2015 in the most bizarre way possible; handing the most nominations to blacklist Hollywood drama Trumbo, and nominating a number of performances whose inclusion range from surprising to outright insane. 

Don't worry, I'm not here to defend SAG's ridiculous choices. I'm here to do what The Film Experience best at: speculate about Oscar nominations. See, the other day I saw someone on Twitter say he'd be surprised if any of this year's SAG categories are repeated 5-for-5 at the Oscars. This comment got me thinking...

Although the amount of correlation between SAG and Oscar has gone down a bit in the last couple years, the math still says that at least one of Oscar's acting categories will look identical to SAG's. The question I'm here to answer is: which one?

Lots of awards spaculation after the jump. 

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You Need Serious Hair!

Kyle back in the house to address a very serious topic: Hair. Caution: Joy hairdo spoilers ahead.

The extent to which certain moments of David O. Russell’s Joy are deliberately soap opera-y is an open question. The movie’s latter scenes, in particular, draw on clichéd images of toughness: pleather jacket, sunglasses, and, of course, newly shorned hair. It seems that nothing says a woman is serious quite like taking matters, i.e., her hair, into her own hands.

I’ll happily debate the merits of having a narrative arc reveal a woman to be a badass—since most already are in my book—but I’d rather hear what some of your favorite DIY hair-cutting scenes are. Here are three of the most dramatic that leap to my mind after the jump...

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"By the Hoary Hosts of Hogarth, it's hard to keep up!"

Lukewarm off the presses! Herewith a collection of very brief thoughts on this, that, and the other things that we haven't had time to comment on but definitely wanted to note. Please to discuss in the comments. 

• By now you've seen Entertainment Weekly's gallery of Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange. The film arrives in 311 days which means most movie blogs have about 622 more articles left to write about it in "anticipation" BLARAARGGGH! How to reverse the equation and get people to write the bulk of their thoughts on movies AFTER seeing them? Even Marvel's Sorcerer Supreme probably can't cast a spell that powerful. I have three things to say about these photos. 1) I still find Cumberbatch's casting weird because his face is so non angular / eyeberowless both of which are complete opposites of traditional depictions of the sorcerer 2) can't anyone ever find a way to represent magic that isn't shapeless CGI color beams. I beg filmmakers to try something new since this is literally the only way it's been done since CGI took over the cinema. 3) Marvel superheroes are always trying to make wing-tip hairdos happen --- see also Wolverine -- but it never translates into the real world trends. 

• Tired of movie awards yet? Too bad. You've still got two months of it to go. The latest critics orgs to throw their hat in the ring is the Austin Film Critics. They chose Mad Max for top hours but Room won the most prizes (3) taking Actress (Brie Larson), Breakthrough (Jacob Tremblay) and Adapted Screenplay (Emma Donoghue)

• Since Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been seen by 25% of the Earth's population already (we're guessing) we're getting the usual raft of what might be in the next film articles (including the silly/wonderful Poe & Finn are gay for each other fanfic wishful thinking) and a flood of info on what could have been... the post-movie release equivalent of the what-might-be speculation articles the internet is a hardcore junkie for. (ANYTHING TO NOT TALK ABOUT ACTUAL AS-THEY-EXIST MOVIES!) But I will say this: according to /Film our heroine Rey's original name in the script was "Kira" and we should all breathe a huge sigh of relief that they changed it. It's already unfortunate enough that Daisy Ridley stole Keira Knightley's face, clenched jaw stress, and speaking voice (do you think she trapped it in a seashell necklace Ursula style?). If she also had a homophonic name it'd be even more disastrous. Is it silly that I'm really worried about what the Daisy Ridley explosion will due to Keira's Knightley's career?  We've grown so fond of Keira over the years and really admire how much she's pushed herself to grow as an actress taking on challenging roles and stage work and so on.

• The internet is having a field day suggesting that Chris Nolan just can't handle his lack of Oscar nominations at this point and will embark on a World War II film next. Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Hardy are the first announced cast members. 

• November and December are punishing insatiable mistresses. There are SO MANY new trailers we haven't even managed to do a DIY Yes No Maybe So on including but not limited to Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Star Trek Beyond, Midnight Special, The Legend of Tarzan, The Nice Guys, Mojave, Storks, Gods of Egypt, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Terminus. Which have you watched and wanted to discuss? I don't even think I said anything about Captain America: Civil War in November and you know how I feel about the good captain. (Hint: pretty much how he feels about Bucky Barnes.) 

new roles for Oscar Isaac

• FINALLY... we're really proud of our web friend Angelica Jade Bastién who's getting a lot of attention for her Atlantic Essay "The Case Against Colorblind Casting" which is a really fascinating read about acceptance versus erasure. It kicks off with the of the moment example of Oscar Isaac, riding high at the moment (and working constantly) on his considerable talent. 

It would be nice to believe that someone as talented as Isaac could have done as well without colorblind casting or an ability to be seen as “ethnically flexible.” Isaac has steadily increased his profile in recent years by bringing intensity and intelligence to vastly different roles...

But his success hasn’t come without compromises. Isaac is open about the choices he’s made in his career including dropping his last name, Hernández. “Starting out as an actor, you immediately worry about being pigeonholed or typecast,” he said to the magazine In. “I don’t want to just go up for the dead body, the gangster, the bandolero, whatever. I don’t want to be defined by someone else’s idea of what an Oscar Hernández should be playing.” His tendency to play characters of different backgrounds extends to his new Star Wars character, whom Isaac has described as “non-ethnic.” Notably, he didn’t say “white” or “racially ambiguous,” instead referring to his character’s absence of ethnicity.

Give it a read! 

Best of '15: Most Memorable Scares. Boo!

Jason from MNPP here for more Year in Review madness.

Truth be told 2015 was not the best year for horror movies. There were some smaller successes but only a couple of classics born, and out of those only one - David Robert Mitchell's It Follows would classify entirely as a genre exercise. But there were plenty of Scary Scenes, whether inside the horror genre or knock knock knocking on the door, and that's what we're here to celebrate.

The following moments aren't necessarily in hard order, save the top few, because What Scares Us is subjective to not just each individual person but to each individual moment that person is experiencing -- I might feel like "No thank you, Bugs" today but tomorrow it might be all like "I said NO THANK YOU, Cannibals!" instead. Fear's a funny thing like that.

Anyway beware spoilers below, as we'll be discussing in a little bit of detail the money-shots of the year in "Boo!"

The 15 Scariest Scenes of 2015
from all sorts of films after the jump... 

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