Blueprints: "mother!"

With the announcement of the Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations this week, we are officially in the awards race. So from now until Oscars, Jorge will be examining 2017’s most talked-about movies and their screenplays. First, he shows up uninvited at a party...

mother! is a fever dream. The stream-of-consciousness journey of a woman that just wants people to get the hell out of her space. It’s a biblical allegory, a metaphor for the destruction of the environment, a hallucination of the protagonist. It’s all of these, and it is none.

Watching the movie is a trip (take that word for whatever meaning). It’s more visceral than narrative. Trying to find a traditional, cohesive plot in it is useless, and it’s better to experience it through gut reactions of the vignettes presented. But how does the screenplay look? Exactly as you would imagine...

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Into the Link-Verse

• Dim the House Lights a conversation about those Sondheim auditions in Lady Bird
• /Film why is Big Little Lies still competing as "Limited Series" when it has a second season order. The controversy is starting to bubble up
• Cartoon Brew I didn't even know that there was ANOTHER new awards show but come to think of it there's always another new one, isn't there? We now have the European Animation Awards and they gave their top prize to Loving Vincent. This is not to be confused with the European Film Awards which also gave Loving Vincent Best Animated Feature
• Cartoon Brew on the key points of that giant Disney/Fox deal. It's scary people. Now basically only 4 American-owned entertainment companies have control over America’s cultural identity. 

• Forbes on the teaser for Into the Spider-Verse with Miles Morales finally making it to screen...
• Indie Wire talks to the great actress Lesley Manville about Phantom Thread and Hollywood for women over 40
• The Wrap ack. I totally forgot to link to this last week. In an unprecedented move The Academy added 'Standards of Conduct' to membership details after the explosion of sexual misconduct news this past month
• Coming Soon the first poster and teaser for New Mutants
• Out January 25th is when RuPaul's Drag Race returns
• Vogue Philip Seymour Hoffman's partner Mimi pens an essay with Adam Green about living with an addict and the actor's final sad year.

List-Mania
• EW a timeline of Nicole Kidman's most iconic 2017 moments
• After Ellen a list of the best lesbian or bi movies of the year
• GQ Top ten books of the year and each author chosen gets to recommend a book, too. Fun angle! Do you have a library card? You might need one after this.
• Variety Owen Gleiberman and Peter DeBruge's top ten lists
• EW best and worst tv shows of the year
• Out most iconic looks of 2017. It's heavy on music video ladies for some reason but there's some fun surprises like "Allison Janney with a parrot on her shoulder" from I, Tonya
• CBC an A-Z guide to the year in queer: God's Own Country, Melina Matsoukas, and much more
• THR top ten movies of the year from Todd McCarthy and staff. Call Me By Your Name all over the place.

The Power of Reese Compels You in "Home Again"

Home Again is out on DVD and Blu-Ray. Here's Spencer Coile... 

Home Again is not a particularly good movie. The film debut of Nancy Meyers' daughter, Hallie Meyers-Shyer, follows Reese Witherspoon as she deals with motherhood, a recent separation... and the three young filmmakers she agrees to let stay with her for an extended period of time. Standard fare, right? And it is, despite that third curve. The writing is a little too on-the-nose, characters do not feel fully fleshed out, and the editing implies serious cuts were made. Still, though, it is hard not to be won over due heavily to Witherspoon herself... 

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Does Woody Harrelson spell trouble for Willem Dafoe?

by Nathaniel R

A police chief and a hotel manager, both overwhelmed and sympathetic and arguably the moral center of their movies.

It's been a long time since we had a double-nomination situation in Best Supporting Actor. The last time it happened was 26 years ago when Ben Kingsley and Harvey Keitel were nominated together for Bugsy (1991) - a curious event since Keitel was so much stronger in another Oscar nominated classic from that year. Given the rise of Woody Harrelson with that Screen Actor's Guild nomination and the overall assumed strength of Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri in the Best Picture race, it could well happen again. His co-star Sam Rockwell, already felt locked and loaded for the same movie in a (somewhat) larger part. 

But does this spell trouble for Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project? Consensus was beginning to form that Dafoe, who became famous in the mid 80s and has worked ever since, would easily walk away with the Oscar this year...

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Are Three Multiple-Win Actors Competing for the 5th Spot in "Best Actor"?

by Nathaniel R

They were 35, 37, and 32 when they won their first Osars

This Best Actor race has not been shaping up as we suspected two months ago when few imagined that fresher faces like 21 year old Timothée Chalamet, 28 year old first time leading man Daniel Kaluuya and 39 yr old but reads younger fringe dweller James Franco would be looking more secure for Best Actor spots than three of Oscar's all time favorite legendary leading men: Denzel Washington (2 wins), Tom Hanks (2 wins), and Daniel Day Lewis (3 wins). But that's what it feels like today after the SAG nominations have capped off a busy busy couple of weeks worth of pre-Oscar honors. 

But can it really be true that there's only one spot to claim between these three titans of Oscar hearts? Or are we reading the tea leaves wrong? Are voters ready to move on to fresher blood (two twentysomething in one Best Actor category would be quite something since that category far prefers mileage on a man) or will two or even three of the legends make it, tossing out one of the rising stars? What's your take on the situation? Though people have been calling Best Actor "weak" for months (perhaps for the lack of frontrunners... with Gary Oldman less of an inevitable winner than he at first seemed) it seems awfully competitive at the last minute.

UPDATED BEST ACTOR CHART