The Film Bitch Awards begin: Score, Song, and Sound

Illustration © Tom Ralston. See more of his work here.Yes, we're finally starting! Since Oscar nominations are next week, we have to get through the parallel categories quickly, before we can dive into the crazier stuff (which we always have fun doing). First up the five sound categories. A reminder that we have two score categories since there are so many movies each year that rely as much on their soundtracks as their instrumental scores, or use a great deal of pre-existing material within their score. 

On the sound pages you'll find honors for You Were Never Really Here, Annihilation, Mary Poppins Returns, First Man, Roma, A Star is Born and more so have a look, won't you? 

Blueprints: "Mary Poppins Returns"

This week, Jorge explores how a movie reintroduces iconic characters to a new generation.

When a new Mary Poppins movie was greenlit, many sighed a sigh of relief when it was announced that it wouldn’t be a remake of the 1964 classic, but rather a sequel. This new story would bring Mary Poppins back to the Banks children, who are adults now, and would look after their own kids now. Perhaps she would straighten the mess in their lives once again. 

The writers of this continuation faced the challenge of not only finding a new take inside the rest of author P.L. Travers’ series, but also reintroducing a character that has become a staple of cinema. A character who, because of the 60-year gap between movies, would be a completely different person. It turns out their answer was to treat it as if Mary Poppins had never left at all…

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Have a question for the podcast?

Sunday morning Murtada and Nathaniel will be recording a podcast. For this Sunday's podcast we'd like to have a whole episode of reader questions, so ask away in the comments and we'll pick several to answer! 

Review: "Glass"

by Chris Feil

M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass is a film that has been a long time coming, clamored for in some circles ever since Unbreakable’s mystery box unleashed a superhero origin story unlike any other. Two years ago, Split arrived after hopes had diminished and reignited interest by announcing itself as belonging to the same story in a quintessentially Shyamalanian twist. Here we come full circle with Bruce Willis’ train crash-surviving vigilante David Dunn and the nemesis that birthed him, Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Pierce, AKA Mr. Glass.

Trouble is: Shyamalan is now a vastly different filmmaker today than when this saga began. What was once enigmatic and fuss free about the director’s approach to superheroes has given way to tedium and the mundane. Perhaps the spark is gone because these kinds of stories have gone from a fascination to foundational in the near twenty years since David boarded that fateful train. But no - that pop cultural shift is where Shyamalan fully distracts himself here, spinning the story’s tires into a lot of leaden world-building and thesis-making.

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Final Predictions: Best Actor & Best Actress

Other than the shorts, which we'll get to this weekend, we're all finished with our final Oscar predictions. Though we're at the top two most discussed categories, I regret to inform that this will surely be anti-climactic since I'm sticking with previous predictions in both cases. But here's why...

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