International Oscars - Estonia, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea, and Uruguay

by Nathaniel R

After that first round of news, we have more info on the International Oscar race to share. First, we have three more official submissions for the upcoming race: Estonia will submit the documentary Smoke, Sauna, Sisterhood; South Korea has gone very mainstream choosing the earthquake drama Concrete Utopia  (that probably means no nomination given that the Academy generally only pays attention to South Korea when they lean auteur... and even then they don't pay much attention despite South Korea having a very healthy and respected film industry); Finally, Uruguay will submit the comedy Family Album about a father and his teenage son forming a band. 

Even if those three films don't sound right up Oscar's alley, you really never know, do you? It all depends on how the volunteer voters who screen enough of the films to vote respond to their selections. We also now know two more unofficial finalist lists from Germany and Netherlands, both of which have won the category multiple times...

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Best Supporting Actress ~ First Round Predictions

by Nathaniel R

Emily Blunt in "Oppenheimer"

So is it finally Emily Blunt's time? She's been thisclose to an Oscar nomination multiple times with other awards bodies like SAG, the Golden Globes, and BAFTA making room for her repeatedly! Somehow an Oscar nomination has never materialized even when she 1000% deserved it (hello comedic genius from The Devil Wears Prada). With the largest female role in the The Year's Biggest Prestige Drama, Oppenheimer, she may finally make the shortlist. But what if previously nominated Florence Pugh joins her in the event that a lot of movies intended for the fall don't arrive as scheduled? Despite the movies lengthy running time they both don't get as many scenes as we would have liked but that might not matter given the film and the response.

Other questions looming over the Best Supporting Actress Oscar race are after the jump.

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First Round Oscar Predictions Nearly Complete!

by Nathaniel R

Dear reader, I had planned a big article on each Oscar category as we completed this first round. Scratch that. It's best to finally get all the charts up and then dive further week by week, so we have somewhere to start from. Over at the Prediction Index you'll see that every category we guess well ahead of time is up now with more "tier 2" and "other possibilities" business on the individual category charts. Well all charts but International Feature (which we're working on) and both Actress charts. We can't throw the latter up without detailing it; It's not in our natures to give actresses short shrift!

So investigate the early predictions at your leisure. Well, don't wait too long. Things will change very soon. Calendar shifts are normal this time of year but it's likely to be even more volatile this season given the WGA/SAG strike and AMTMP's refusal to pay them anything like what they used to get paid for their work before streaming changed the entertainment landscape. Supporting Actress Chart tomorrow! 

Review: "Madeleine Collins" confirms this is Virginie Efira's Year

by Cláudio Alves

Belgian-born French actress Virginie Efira has been on an upward path since around 2016, when she supported Isabelle Huppert in the Oscar-nominated Elle and dazzled as the titular lawyer in Justine Triet's Victoria. The latter part earned the thespian her first César nomination, followed by citations for Sink or Swim, An Impossible Love, Bye Bye Morons, Benedetta, and, finally, a victory thanks to Revoir Paris. And yet, beyond the Francoshpere, Efira is probably best known for Verhoeven's mad nun and little else. That's going to change fast. After 2023, there's no stopping her rise to international stardom. 

This week, American cinemas welcomed Madeleine Collins, Efira's third release of the year, following career-best work in Other People's Children and Revoir Paris. Just the Two of Us and All to Play For are still awaiting distribution making for a titanic body of recent work. In a just world, this next awards season would see Virginie Efira on critics' ballots everywhere.

For all that Madeleine Collins is the Virginie Efira show, the film begins without her...

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First Round Oscar Predix - Picture / Director

by Nathaniel R

Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in "Maestro" (Netflix)

As noted in Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor, we're pretending as if the strike will be resolved and movies will actually arrive later this year (because if we don't predictions will be nightmarishly impossible). So let's look at Best Picture and Best Director. What might the future hold for us in these two categories? 

EARLY BIRD DIRECTORS 
It's possible that we've already seen 60% of the Best Director list (Greta Gerwig, Chris Nolan, Celine Song) but that would be highly unusual. This isn't 1972 where the two biggest contenders (Cabaret & The Godfather) had already been popular for literally over a year when they dominated Oscar night. The Oscar formulas and awards season release patterns have calcified in the half century since then. The earth still orbits the sun at the same speed as it did decades earlier, but time (at least in pop culture) has sped up considerably; you're an "old" movie much quicker now... 

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