Sundance: Keira Knightley has "Official Secrets"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

As if there wasn’t enough going on in today’s American and international politics, events that happened a decade and a half ago seem to be coming into focus again. The start of the Iraq war and its implications were covered in the Best Picture nominee Vice and are the subject of two new films premiering at Sundance. Murtada just shared his thoughts on The Report, which focuses on the investigation into torture practices used by the United States. Official Secrets takes place across the pond, following the fallout of one British intelligence translator’s decision to leak an NSA memo detailing plans to blackmail United Nations security council members into voting to go to war in Iraq...

Click to read more ...

Oscar Trivia: How often do three films dominate the acting categories?

Bradley & Gaga at the beginning of their run for "A Star is Born"by Nathaniel R

With the 20 acting nominations this year coming from only 11 films this year we got to wondering how frequently that happens. The Favourite, Vice, and A Star is Born all received 3 acting nods each. Green Book and Roma received doubles, though of course doubles happen frequently. But how often do three acting noms from three separate films happen in a single year? And is this anything like a record? This was somewhat tough to investigate but investigate we did.

MOST NOMINATIONS EVER FOR ACTING FROM A SINGLE FILM

Before we get to individual years which had a small pool of films dominating the acting prizes, let's look at the films that hold the record for nominations:  It's an nine-way tie for the record with the following films receiving 5 acting nominations each...

Click to read more ...

Sundance: Great acting in "Clemency," an education in "The Report"

Murtada Elfadl reporting from Sundance

Should we react to movies based on content or artistic merit? I struggled with two movies at Sundance this week which had incendiary, important content and tackled either a crucial part of history or provided necessary social commentary. Artistically, however, I found both Clemency and The Report lacking...

Click to read more ...

Sundance: Zac Efron is "Extremely Wicked..."

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

Everyone knows the name Ted Bundy, but I’m not sure that everyone knows as much as they think they do about him. I certainly didn’t going into Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Sundance premiere from director Joe Berlinger, an Oscar nominee back in 2011 for the documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. The key curiousity here is the casting of Zac Efron, onetime star of High School Musical, as the notorious killer...

Click to read more ...

Team Experience Awards 2018: Our Favourites

by staff

We couldn't let the Oscar season go without our team of writers giving you our 7th annual Team Experience Awards (Nathaniel doesn't vote on these but his Film Bitch Awards will resume in a couple of days). We've given ourselves some time to catch up to 2018's offerings and as a result we have some fun surprises in store for our ballot! This year our Best Film goes to Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite, one of the six prizes we've given it of thirteen total nominations. Next behind is Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk with nine mentions, and then the love is spread pretty wide elsewhere with Roma, Hereditary, BlacKkKlansman, and Can You Ever Forgive Me? doing well among nominations.

Best Picture

1. The Favourite
2. If Beale Street Could Talk
   
3. Roma
   
4. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
5. Hereditary
   
6. BlacKkKlansman
   
7. Widows
   
8. Annihilation
   
9. First Man
   
10. We the Animals

Click to read more ...