Would you rather?

Time for another round of our silly hangin' with celebrities game, brought to you via the aspirational pleasures of Instagram.

Would you rather... 

• smell the flowers with Missi Pyle?
• steal a Myrtle Snow painting with Sarah Paulson?
• Read Thelma Adams' new book with the LEOgend?
• enjoy a mud treatment with Michelle Monaghan on the Dead Sea?
• attend a tennis match with Mads Mikkelsen?
• do charity with Liv Tyler & Goldie Hawn?
• dine with Julianne Moore & Kyle Maclachlan?
• see Vox Lux with Carrie Preston & Emily Berg?
• visit an ADR session with Lena Olin?
• have a cup with Henry Golding & Michelle Yeoh?

pictures after the jump to help you decide... 

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The 1932 Oscars, the last November Ceremony

The 5th Academy Awards were held on this day (November 18th) in history, 86 long years ago. I bring this up because it's quite a year in Oscar history full of firsts (and lasts!) and cool trivia. Let's recap, shall we?

Wallace Beery (left) and Fredric March (right) tied for Best Actor

First & Last Times For...

A Best Picture winner with only one nomination!
The soapy and delicious all star ensemble pic Grand Hotel won despite no other nominations, a figure that's often been cited as a dubious achievement but isn't unthinkable with actual context; there were only 7 regular categories a film could be nominated in back then, unlike 17 today (the number of categories currently stands at 24 but the others are for foreign/animated/doc/shorts and, of course, a film cannot be nominated in both screenplay categories). And there were less nominees in the categories, too. This made nomination counts for Best Pictures much smaller (there weren't even supporting categories yet where Grand Hotel surely would have been nominated -- hellooooo one of Joan Crawford's best performances!). Here was how it shook out...

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Interview: Ofir Raul Grazier on his Oscar hopeful "The Cakemaker"

An abridged version of this interview was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Ofir Raul GrazierThe Oscars are coming and with them, renewed attention for some of the year’s most memorable films. One of this past summer’s sleeper hits was The Cakemaker, an LGBT drama that’s just been released on DVD / Blu-Ray. The tiny but prolific distributor Strand Releasing, who have released many gay favorites, have been in business for almost 30 years now and, if you don’t adjust for inflation, The Cakemaker quietly turned into their biggest box office hit ever this summer. The drama about a grieving gay German man who seeks out the widow of his lover (who was unaware of her husband’s affair) earned nearly a million at arthouse box offices across the U.S!

After winning Best Picture at the Ophir Awards in Israel, it became the country's submission for Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film category. We recently caught up with its director Ofir Raul Grazier. Our interview follows, edited for clarity and length.

NATHANIEL: The Cakemaker is your feature debut. Was that terrifying for you or totally natural on set? 

OFIR RAUL GRAIZER: It was a bit scary, of course, because the amount of responsibility is huge. The producers,  the crew, the actors --  I was thinking about all of that more than the film itself. But once the camera was rolling it felt quite natural. I love to do this. This is my passion. I managed to enjoy shooting. Everything between the shots was a nightmare [Laughs]...

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Golden Horse Winners (including "Shadow") and Fashions!

by Nathaniel R

Ang Lee and Andy Lau cheering on the winners

The Golden Horse Awards had a truly spread the wealth kind of year with no film dominating - all five of the Best Film nominees won multiple times. Though it didn't win the most statues, the four hour drama Elephant Sitting Still took Best Picture. Zhang Yimou took Best Director for Shadow (reviewed) and the film won three other technical prizes, leading the win tally. It probably helped that Yimou had his long time former muse, the goddess Gong Li, presiding over the jury but you can excuse those Huppert judging Haneke at Cannes style situations when it comes to the greatest director/muse pairings and Gong Li and Zhang Yimou are certainly on the all-time list. If you're unfamiliar with their work together watch any of their eight collaborations -- I'm most partial to Ju Dou or Raise the Red Lantern personally -- and be floored.

Best Actress Gowns!

The winners, a few gifs, and red carpet fashions are after the jump...

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Can You Ever Retweet Me?

Tweets!

The dog in Widows is named Olivia. The real, credited name of the dog in Game Night is Olivia. Is it... is it the same dog? pic.twitter.com/zU787tQhwG

— kateyrich (@kateyrich) November 16, 2018

 A semi-weekly curated collection of tweets for your seconds-long amusement. After the jump Julianne Moore, Tom Hardy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez memes, Widows, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Gone Girl, Fantastic Beasts 2, Beetlejuice and more...

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