Baby Driver(s)

Hailee Steinfeld and Millie Bobby Brown, who is not old enough to drive, pretending to drive. (From Hailee's instagram)

Oscar Shorts Pt 3: The Live Action Nominees

Chris Reviewed the Animated Shorts. Glenn ranked the Documentary Shorts. Now here's Eric with the Live Action nominees to complete the set.

It’s my third year covering the nominees for the Live Action Short Oscar for TFE, and this batch of hopefuls presents the strongest lineup of those years.  Usually there are one or two clunkers, but this year all five films are intelligently made, run the perfect length, and linger beautifully...

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Doc Corner: 'The Most Dangerous Man in America' Goes Where 'The Post' Doesn't

By Glenn Dunks

If The Post gave you a hankering for the truth behind the Pentagon Papers, then the 2010 documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers will prove uncommonly fulfilling. In fact, watching this Academy Award-nominated doc (it lost to The Cove), you would be hard-pressed to believe that it's about the same events as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg movie.

Last week we looked at The Price of Gold and how closedly I, Tonya mimicked it, so it's actually quite amusing to see that this week's Best Picture / Documentary cross-over is the complete opposite. Sure, they overlap here and cross-over there, but The Most Dangerous Man in America goes longer, deeper, wider, and somehow all but completely ignores The Washington Post and the personalities within the 2017 film...

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In Defense of Denzel Washington in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."

By Spencer Coile

Last year’s Best Actor race was highly contentious. Due to an influx of coverage surrounding sexual harassment charges, many people became uncomfortable with Casey Affleck's frontrunner status. This led some Oscar gurus to prognosticate a spoiler victory for Denzel Washington for his Fences  passion project. How close the voting was we'll never know but Washington and Affleck were considered to be neck-and-neck at the end.

Still, Affleck was victorious, leaving many (most notably, Brie Larson) unhappy or furious. While the narrative is not exactly the same for the new Best Actor race, there is one common denominator: Denzel Washington.

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Mike Leigh at 75: On Wallpaper, Topsyturvydom and Empire

"THE FURNITURE," by Daniel Walber, is devoted to Mike Leigh this week for his 75th birthday. (Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.)

Topsy-Turvy is a subtle, even deceptive film. It moves like a light-hearted showbiz comedy, almost a Victorian Waiting for Guffman. Yet there’s much more going on. Why is it so long, for example? What is Mike Leigh trying to express with so many characters? Why "The Mikado"?

These are questions that can be answered by paying close attention to its production design, the Oscar-nominated work of Eve Stewart and Helen Scott. This is a film about London at the peak of the British Empire, a metropolis gobbling up the riches and the bric-a-brac of the entire world. And the chosen entertainment of its people, eager to take in the sights and sounds of their imperial fantasies, were the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan.

The first to appear in Topsy-Turvy is "Princess Ida", a fantastical lampoon of Victorian mores that took place in a sort-of Pre-Raphaelite, Medieval court. 

The version presented here involves a stage flanked by a traffic jam of trees, vine-covered Classical architecture and a great many helmets and snoods...

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