FYC: Simon Rex for Best Actor

by Cláudio Alves

Ever since the project premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Red Rocket's leading man has been praised by critics and spotlighted as a potential Best Actor contender. Perhaps more accurately, Simon Rex has been described as one of those cases where a performance should be in contention even if their chances are null. Indeed, Rex seems to have been forgotten by awards voters as the season progresses, even though reviews still sing his praises. Now that Sean Baker's latest movie is hitting theaters, maybe the actor can get his moment in the sun. While the man's turn as a washed-up porn star could have been nothing more than stunt casting, Rex transcends such pitfalls. His take on one of the year's most loathsome characters is Oscar-worthy…

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"Quo Vadis, Aida?" and "Flee" win big at the European Film Awards

by Nathaniel R

The years bleed together in the world of movie awards. Quo Vadis Aida?, the Bosnian drama, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2020 before receiving an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film that same season. It lost the Oscar to 2020's European Film Awards champ, Denmark's Another Round. Now, a full movie awards season later, it has succeeded its once-vanquisher to also take the top prize at the European Film Awards. What's more two British Oscar winners last year, Promising Young Woman and The Father also picked up key prizes. The only Oscar hopeful this season that arguably got a boost from the European Awards was the animated documentary Flee, which triumphed in both of its categories, Animated Feature & Documentary Feature, a double-whammy it surely hopes to achieve again at the Oscars. You can watch the ceremony here if you're so inclined.

This has no bearing on the Oscars of course, since none of those films are eligible but it is a mild eyebrower raiser that France's Titane, Finland's Compartment No 6, Italy's The Hand of God, and Norway's Worst Person in the World, all of which are award-winning presumed threats to Oscar nominations this season, could beat the year-old Bosnian film in any of their categories. Complete list of winners after the jump...

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Beauty Break: To Rita Moreno on her 90th Birthday

by Nathaniel R

Today marks 90 years since the blessed birth of the legendary EGOT winner Rita Moreno. With Steven Spielberg's West Side Story remake upon us in theaters, the trailblazing Puerto Rican star is back in the spotlight. Not that light hasn't always followed her.... hell, emanated from her. Are we laying it on thick? Who cares, she deserves it!

As faithful readers know, the original West Side Story (1961) is my all time favourite so it was hard not to be skeptical / worried about the remake. Naturally then, the new rendition is taking me a bit of time to process but, in short, though some of the raves are hyperbolic, the movie is mostly a thrill. Of its many pleasures, the one that we most emphatically co-sign was uttered by Rita Moreno herself who said...

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Interview: "Escape from Mogadishu" director on following "Parasite" towards the Oscars

by Nathaniel R

The "Korean Wave" has exploded in the last decade as more and more international audiences eagerly lap up South Korean music, television, and film. The roots of that cultural tidal wave go back to the 1990s and, in film, particularly the early Aughts when a group of young directors took the country by storm with exciting genre films. Some of them like Park Chan Wook and Bong Joon-Ho have gone on to become international superstars but they weren't alone. Ryoo Seung-wan, one of several others to make waves in the Aughts with hits like Die Bad and The Unjust is, in some ways still rising. He recently had the biggest hit of his career and awards nominations at home with the action drama Veteran and, now, a handful of years later, another huge hit and his first Oscar submission. Escape from Mogadishu is a tense action drama and true story. When the Somali Civil War broke out in the 1990s, the North and South Korean embassies were thrust together, against their natural impulses, in a desperate attempt to survive.

We recently had the chance to sit down with Ryoo Seung Wan in Los Angeles as his film was screening for Academy voters. He was in something like a state of joyful disbelief, laughing as he told me "my parents were actually married at a venue called 'The Academy'!". This interview was conducted through a translator and has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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Directors Guild of The Philippines speaks out on their absence in the Oscar race.

Academy members who volunteer for the nominating committees on Best International Feature Film are currently choosing their favourites from the available 93 films. Voting on this first round closes on the 15th but one country that won't be honored this season, no matter how voting goes, is The Philippines. They didn't submit. That's unusual for them. 

The absence of The Philippines from Oscar voting has prompted a hand-wringing statement from the Directors Guild of the Philippines which reads as follows...

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