DGA: The Spikes (Jonze & Lee), Bradley Cooper's Loss, and the Gowns (yes, the gowns)

by Nathaniel R

The big news coming out of the weekend's DGA ceremony was not Alfonso Cuarón's second win from the Director's Guild (he previously took the DGA for Gravity and had won nearly every award of note for Roma, making a repeat a foregone deal). Instead it was Bradley Cooper's surprise loss for First Time Feature A Star is Born and Spike Lee's speeches, which inevitably have a way of shaking up a room because Spike Lee always says what he has to say, unapologetically. The best element of the non-televised DGA ceremony is that they make a big deal of the nominees and not just the winner, giving all 5 top nominees a moment at the mic and a presentation of their nomination in medal form...

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Comment Party Fun: What will Meryl Streep's Oscar ballot look like?

We're just 20 days away from Hollywood's High Holy Night and voting on who will win the Oscars begins in just 8 days. Since 20 is the number for the day we're thinking of Meryl, the only actor in history to have amassed 20+ acting nominations (she's at 21 and the number will presumably climb) and we're wondering who she'll be voting for. Care to make a conjecture in the comments? We know from her speeches at awards shows that she really does watch, value, and think about work by other actors (even shouting out high quality non-nominees which is pretty rare as awards season behavior goes - remember when she praised Adepero Oduye's stunning debut in the little seen LGBT drama Pariah?).

Let's get silly in the comments and make presumptious guesses. Oh come on, you know you want to! I'll make a guess on Best Actor and Best Actress after the jump to get you started...

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"Awards season is trying to kill me," a paranoid confession.

by Nathaniel R

You guys. WHAT is happening? Not to sound paranoid but award season is trying to kill me. Day after day things worsen. Am I inside a Black Mirror episode through the use of some technology I wasn't even aware of? Or have I fallen through a rabbit hole to an alternate dimension where all obsessions curdle in on themselves to become one's worst fears? Are you also experiencing this nightmare with me? Please tell me it's not all in my own head.

The film year started out so well...

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What did you see this weekend?

Superbowl weekend was rough for the movies with lower than usual grosses all around. Was it the polar vortex? Who dared venture out of their homes?!

Weekend Box Office Estimates February 1st-3rd (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count /  ★= Recommended
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
Miss Bala	Free Solo
1 Glass $9.5 (cum. $88.6) Review	1🔺 They Shall Not Grow Old $2.4  (cum. $10.7) Review ★
2 The Upside  $8.8 (cum. $75.5)	2🔺 Free Solo $1.3 (cum. $14.9) Review, Biggest Doc Hits ★
3 🔺 Miss Bala $6.7 *NEW*	3🔺 Ek Ladki Ko Dekha...  $600k *NEW*
4 Aquaman  $4.7 (cum. $323.5) Review, Podcast	4🔺 Cold War  $564k (cum. $2.1) Review, Biggest Foreign Hits ★
5 Into the Spider-Verse  $4.4 (cum. $175.2)  Review, Annie Award Winner ★	5🔺 Destroyer $234k (cum. $1.2)  Review ★

Miss Bala had a rough opening weekend, unable to unseat three week old Glass and four week old The Upside to claim the top spot. Two notes on Oscar boosts: Green Book is now finally on its way to becoming the hit everyone originally assumed it would be when they saw it at festivals, having roared back to life last week and holding super well this week (it's at #6 for the past two weeks -- the highest its ever climbed on the charts after almost three months in theaters indicating that word of mouth has finally caught up with it. In specialty theaters Free Solo and Cold War have also done a superb job capitalizing on their Oscar nods. Free Solo  was all but finished with its run a few weeks ago but is suddenly reenergized, this weekend becoming the second highest doc grosser of 2018 by topping RBG. Meanwhile Cold War has been cruising up the foreign film charts and is now the 8th biggest subtitled hit of 2018, just now defeating last year's Oscar champ A Fantastic Woman.

It's their 21st movie!

by Nathaniel R

(yes we'll get to the DGA awards in a minute. until then...)

Both Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) and Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) are nominated this year for their 21st feature film roles. So let's play a game.

With 21 days until the Oscars, we selected 21 screencaps  of 21 very randomly selected favourite actors of TFE from their 21st films. Guess what the movie is in the comments (please only 1 movie guess per comment to give multiple readers a chance to guess.). They won't all be as easy as #1 after the jump...

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