Tweetweek: Actors Stanning Other Actors and Glenn Close Tributes

Oh but this one made me giggle! 

I love this "wealthy parents on the verge of divorce making a public appearance at a school function" cosplay. pic.twitter.com/YF5KCpV6WC

— [kie.ran] (@danblackroyd) January 9, 2019

After the jump new and frankly awesome slang from the UK, movie tropes, actors praising other actor's great performances, ABBA songs, quality Glenn Close content, Green Book scandals, and more...

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It's time for final Best Picture predictions!

For the next week we'll be sharing final predictions for each Oscar category. We're starting with the big kahuna, Best Picture because it's the most crucial. It's a domino effect essentially since each year shows us that once voters favor your movie, they just favor it whether or not it's particularly worthy from one category to the next. We'll start with the not so obvious (if you ask me) question:

What would be nominated in a five film year?

Past statistics will tell you that that would be the DGA lineup (BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Roma, A Star is Born, and Vice) because prior to 2010 when the Best Picture category expanded, the DGA lineup was slightly more predictive of Best Picture than of Best Director, as curious as that might seen. But it wasn't infallible, of course. And we don't think those would be the five this year. 

So let's take them in the order of strength after the jump...

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FYC: Thomasin McKenzie in "Leave No Trace" for Best Actress

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

A good number of pundits agree that Thomasin McKenzie has an outside shot at scoring a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance as a teenage girl living on the outskirts of civilization with her father in the critically-acclaimed Leave No Trace. I’d like to posit a different theory – that she may end up as a surprise nominee for Best Actress.

Now, I don’t think this is likely, but I’d be ecstatic if it happened. Nathaniel is very big on calling out category fraud when he sees it, and there’s more than enough of that to go around this year. It’s actually just as puzzling to see McKenzie called a supporting actress as it is to see her costar Ben Foster classified as a supporting actor. They’re both leads, sharing screen time and the focus of the narrative...

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43 Days 'til Oscar

The countdown is progressing. Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences only have 3 more days to turn in their nomination ballots. We're getting worried about a really uninspiring Supporting Actress race made up of mostly leading roles. Voters, there are so many great women that are not leads to choose from, you know? You never ever ever need to cheat and shove leading roles in there. If you love a leading lady you're supposed to vote for her in Best Actress, not Supporting.

Since 43 is the number of the day, our minds are thrown back to the Smackdown of 1943. That was so much fun and yours truly fell so hard for Paulette Godard. Your favourite series will return next month. We begin with the 2018 Smackdown in February (we're just waiting to find out who the nominees are!) and then the new season kicks off with the long delayed 1972 episode. Dates TBA. 

The Art of History and Peter Jackson

Please welcome guest contributor Kate Imy to talk about Peter Jackson's WW I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old which is currently screening in the UK, and has an encore Fathom Event scheduled for US cities on January 21st. 

by Kate Imy

When historians insert themselves into discussions of popular culture it is usually to spoil the fun. I once read a real, straight-faced takedown of Downton Abbey that objected to the horses as ahistorical. Of course, historians can and do bring much-needed context to many discussions of recent films. For example, some have furthered discussions of Dunkirk to bring attention to the presence and involvement of colonial troops throughout World War II. As a film-lover and a historian, I tend to prefer films that throw the pretense of historical accuracy out the window. I’ll take voguing in The Favourite and chanting “We will Rock You” in A Knight’s Tale over a reverential insistence on “accuracy.”

Films that maintain a veneer of historical fact, often distort the truth without admitting that they do so. These often hit the audience over the head with dubious history and overt political messaging (I am thinking of a few recent movies about Kings and Prime Ministers). Some of these will even claim to tell a story “Not in the History Books” (What this usually means is that they don’t bother to read history books). In reality, art and history—when done well—often perform similar goals on different stages. Good art and good history are about finding inspiration and truths about humanity from the past...

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