Emmy Analysis: Comedy Supporting Categories

By Abe Friedtanzer

Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Ayo Edebiri in FX's The Bear

With only fourteen nominees, the comedy supporting categories still have nearly double the shows represented by the drama supporting categories’ sixteen recognized individuals. Both supporting actor and supporting actress contain two sets of double nominees, but it’s hardly the overwhelming domination that exists on the drama side. There are also five past winners and a handful of fresh faces that make these two races well worth watching...

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What did you see this past week?

by Nathaniel R

Barbenheimer is still reigning in theaters and by quite a lot both movies still gathering impressive per screen averages in their fourth weeks and enviable global grosses too ($1.1 billion and $648 million respectively). The weekend's new wide releases, the dracula picture The Last Voyage of The Demeter and a sci-fi comedy Jules didn't make much of an initial impression with moviegoers. Meanwhile the bisexual drama Passages starring Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski (with a sex scene that will make you believe they were actually f***ing on set) expanded to 41 theaters.

Weekend Box Office Aug 11-13 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended
WIDE (Over 600 Screens)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
BARBIE	PASSAGES
1 ★ BARBIE $33.8 (cum. $526.4) 4,178 screens	1 ★ THEATER CAMP (US, comedy) $274k (cum. $3.1) 410 screens
2  ★ OPPENHEIMER  $18.8 (cum. $264.2) 3761 screens	2 🔺★ PASSAGES (France/Germany, drama) $85k (cum. $172k) 41 screens

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Review: "Love Life" Sings a Tragic Song

by Cláudio Alves

Under the right circumstances, a whisper can sound like a shout, soft caresses like barb-wire across the skin. In Kôji Fukada's cinema, a directorial style full of quiet oddities becomes the perfect context for such paradoxes to thrive ferociously. They never resolve themselves completely either, a sense of mystery prevailing until the end credits roll, whether it's the perversions of Harmonium or A Girl Missing's puzzle box plot. For his latest film, now in limited release, the Japanese auteur let go of those previous projects' violent spirits, redirecting his attention to a premise that sounds like easy-digestible melodrama. But, of course, that's not what Fukada has in store for his audience

Love Life was reportedly inspired by a romantic tune, but its final song rings barren, no rose-colored loveliness muffling the agony hiding between the notes. The sound produced is no crooning chant but a shattering, the glass of fragile joy broken before the first act is over…

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Best Lead Actor - First Round Predictions

by Nathaniel R

Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) and Colman Domingo (Rustin) are both working the classic 'biopic' angle

As with the first round of Best Supporting Actor predictions, we're opting to pretend that the strike will be resolved in time for most of the movies that are scheduled for awards season to continue with their current plans. We use the word "pretend" because it feels increasingly likely that this awards season will be an unprecented combo of fewer than usual releases and zero celebrity campaigning. We hope the studio powers-that-be will wake from their incessant greed and learn to share the wealth with the people without whom they can't make money (actors/writers) but we're not going to hold out breath lest we asphyxiate.

On to Best Actor. This category is often heavy on biographical 'great men' roles and there's little reason to expect this year will be any different. Cillian Murphy, Colman Domingo, Bradley Cooper, Joaquin Phoenix, and Adam Driver will all potentially benefit from that tried and true awards-appeal genre...

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Doc Corner: Claire Simon's 'Our Body'

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

It isn’t too common for subjects in observational documentaries to turn to the camera and say, “I love cinema.” It’s even less common for this to happen as the subject in question lays on a medical table ready to be pulled under by anaesthesia and be operated on. None of the many, many subjects filmed by director and cinematographer Claire Simon in her new film Our Body (Notre corps) seem to mind all that much that a camera is gazed upon them in trying times. Filming through the gynaecological ward of a hospital in her home of France, her subjects often bare their souls as well as their flesh in the pursuit of landing upon something remarkably humane.

This is why I love cinema, and especially documentaries.

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