Ten Reasons to Watch 'Support the Girls'

by Ilich Mejía

We interrupt your final Oscar Prediction anxiety and Nathaniel's own awards ballot for a very important public service announcement. Here are ten reasons you must watch Andrew Bujalski's feel-good-wait-nevermind-good-movies-are-complicated Support the Girls on Hulu right away.

Centered around a group of female employees working at a small breastaurant, Girls is unfairly only skirting around the awards conversation so you owe it this much. (We don't make the rules!) The movie gives us a gallery of portraits of too-real day-to-day troubles. 

TEN REASONS YOU MUST WATCH "SUPPORT THE GIRLS"

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Film Bitch Awards: Makeup, Visual FX, and Film Editing

Though the Academy's makeup and hair voters regularly mystify with their finalist lists, barring one entry for 2018 they chose extremely well. Which is to say my own ballot closely mirrors Oscars this year in that craft. I was prepared to be indignant, for example, at the exclusion of Sweden's unforgettable whatsit Border but didn't have to be. Mary Queen of Scots sounded like a lazy pick from a distance but once the movie arrived the makeup and hair work was exceptional... even fresh. Fat suits normally aggravate but I was unhappy to leave the biopic Stan & Ollie, a worthy Oscar finalist, out --  it has to settle for finalist at the Film Bitch Awards.

We only wish Oscar's board of governors would wise up and allow five nominations in this category as they do with all other categories. It's appalling to make makeup and hair the bastard child of the industry since every live-action film requires hair and makeup work. Original Song, Visual Effects, and Animated Features all get five nominees and there's far less to choose from in those regards! You've heard this rant before so we'll move on. Click to see the honors for Makeup, Visual Effects, and Film Editing honoring 15 different films (this was not intentional but no film repeats between those three categories).

The Film Bitch Awards begin: Score, Song, and Sound

Illustration © Tom Ralston. See more of his work here.Yes, we're finally starting! Since Oscar nominations are next week, we have to get through the parallel categories quickly, before we can dive into the crazier stuff (which we always have fun doing). First up the five sound categories. A reminder that we have two score categories since there are so many movies each year that rely as much on their soundtracks as their instrumental scores, or use a great deal of pre-existing material within their score. 

On the sound pages you'll find honors for You Were Never Really Here, Annihilation, Mary Poppins Returns, First Man, Roma, A Star is Born and more so have a look, won't you? 

Blueprints: "Mary Poppins Returns"

This week, Jorge explores how a movie reintroduces iconic characters to a new generation.

When a new Mary Poppins movie was greenlit, many sighed a sigh of relief when it was announced that it wouldn’t be a remake of the 1964 classic, but rather a sequel. This new story would bring Mary Poppins back to the Banks children, who are adults now, and would look after their own kids now. Perhaps she would straighten the mess in their lives once again. 

The writers of this continuation faced the challenge of not only finding a new take inside the rest of author P.L. Travers’ series, but also reintroducing a character that has become a staple of cinema. A character who, because of the 60-year gap between movies, would be a completely different person. It turns out their answer was to treat it as if Mary Poppins had never left at all…

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Have a question for the podcast?

Sunday morning Murtada and Nathaniel will be recording a podcast. For this Sunday's podcast we'd like to have a whole episode of reader questions, so ask away in the comments and we'll pick several to answer!