Abe's Sundance 2019 Wrap

Abe Fried-Tanzer closing out his Sundance coverage for TFE. Thanks, Abe!

Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat in ANIMALS (2019)

The Sundance Film Festival is officially over, closing out a busy week and a half of nonstop movies. I managed to catch 46 titles this year, most of which I enjoyed. Among them were the Grand Jury Prize winners from the U.S. Dramatic Competition, Clemency, and the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, The Souvenir, both of which were written up by Murtada. While I appreciated both of those films, here are my choices for BEST of the fest in various categories... 

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Beauty vs Beast: Lesbian Love Song

Jason Adams from MNPP here -- at the Tribeca Film Fest last year I weirdly reviewed two movies involving Alessandro Nivola and Orthodox Judaism. The first one is called To Dust and Nivola (along with his wife actress Emily Mortimer) produced it -- it stars Son of Saul's Géza Röhrig and Matthew Broderick as an extremely odd couple grappling with the afterlife. Here is my review, and you can watch the trailer over here. To Dust is finally hitting some theaters this weekend, and I highly recommend seeking it out. I really dig it.

The other movie I reviewed at Tribeca 2018 was Sebastian Lelio's Disobedience, which came out last year and which in a just world we'd be celebrating its several Oscar nominations just about now. Hey I did my part -- Disobedience got mentions in both end-of-year polls I have a say in, The Team Experience Awards here on this site as well as the Dorian Awards for the GALECA guild of LGBT critics. But being a great film is its own reward, and Disobedience will be remembered for a very long time as such. Now let's face off its Rachels -- McAdams is Esti, the one who stayed, and Weisz is Ronit, the one who went away...

survey tools

PREVIOUSLY Last week's Can You Ever Forgive Me poll was as close as two friends sweeping up cat turds could be, but Melissa McCarthy got the best of Richard E Grant in the end with 53% of the vote. Said /3rtful:

"Unprepared for how emotionally affected I would be by this movie. I think the casting of McCarthy and those initial cut trailers gave no clue of the emotional wallop this movie carries."

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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