The 2017 Animated Contenders: "The Girl Without Hands"

by Tim Brayton

Last week, we took a look at Loving Vincent, a stunningly gorgeous animated feature taking its aesthetic cues from traditional fine arts; and this week, we're doing the same thing. Though the style in the French The Girl Without Hands is quite a long way from the rich oil portraits of Loving Vincent. Now, the inspiration is (or anyway, appears to be) Chinese ink wash painting, the art of sketching out characters and settings in a few swift, bold brush strokes with strongly-colored ink. The results deserve the same praise: this is, visually, one of the most distinctive, special, and unusual piece of cinema released this year.

This time around, the film has a narrative that can stand up to its style. The Girl Without Hands is a fairly straightforward adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale, about a young woman (voiced by Anaïs Demoustier) whose miller father (Olivier Broche) unwittingly promises her to the Devil (Philippe Laudenbach) in exchange for a river of endless gold...

Click to read more ...

Linkovers

• New York Times "The artists have been rebuked. Now what about their art?"
• Gr8ter Days which years were the worst for celebrity deaths? A morbid obsessive list that's kind of eye opening. I mean 1977... ouch.
• Los Angeles Times Carol Burnett on the 50th anniversary of her classic show
• The Guardian Guy Lodge wonders about the relative sexlessness of Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight before it and whether that timidity is what it takes for an LGBT film to become a big Oscar player?

Much more after the jump including Justice League credits, Daniel Dae Kim, Michael Apted, Aquaman, an honor for Detroit and the first round of PGA nominations...

Click to read more ...

100 Days until Oscar. Let's Talk Oscar's (Future) Centennial...

It's 100 days until Hollywood's High Holy Night but it's zero days until the HFPA, their bastard younger cousin starts voting. Balloting begins today for the 75th annual Golden Globe nominations. But today's magic number is 100.... so never mind about the HFPA. Let's talk about the future when we're all ten years older.

Meryl in old age makeup

Since this season is Oscar's 90th, we're ten years away from Oscar's centennial. Meryl Streep will be 78 years old by then but she seems like the only lock so far for the 2027 Oscar nominations. Tee hee! Out of curiosity how old is 78 for Oscar love? Quite old...

Click to read more ...

Jorge Gives Thanks

by Jorge Molina

2017. What a year it's been, huh? Not only does the world seem to be changing / falling apart at every level, in general, it also has not been a particularly easy year for me on a personal level. I don't want to get too personal (that's for the actress that wins an Oscar for playing me to do in her monologue), but it involved lots of delayed visa paperwork, a forced exile to my hometown in Mexico, and a three-to four week delay in movie release dates.

But, throughout it all, I could always count on entertainment to pick me up and get me going. It was (as it always has been) my medicine, my way to fight back, and my chosen method of escapism. So this year, I am thankful for these little pieces of pop culture that made it all better:

Click to read more ...

Blueprints: "August: Osage County"

Happy Thanksgiving! In these days of family forcefully gathering around for a meal, Jorge takes a look into “August: Osage County” to remind you that your relatives perhaps aren’t so bad after all.

 

Not unlike Thanksgiving itself, Tracy Lett’s August: Osage County is about a broken family that is bound to be around each other as past secrets, tensions and grievances slowly rise up to the surface.

The emotional climax of both the 2008 Tony-winning play and its subsequent 2013 Oscar-nominated adaptation is an almost 20-minute dinner sequence after the funeral that brought them all together. Matriarch Violet Weston (Meryl Streep) asserts her toxic matriarchal power over her family. And slowly but surely, tensions escalate to the point of explosion...

Click to read more ...