W Magazine's 2016 Best Performances

Chris here. Have you seen this year's W Magazine "Best Performances" spread yet? Each year the photo collection features Oscar hopefuls and breakouts alike in one massive treat, and this year is as sprawling as ever. Previous years have ranged from the avant garde to the candid, but this year seems to spark inspiration straight from the loins. No seriously, its actually titled "Come Together", winks at gender and self-love, and recalls 90s lesbian chic supermodels on more than one occasion.

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Writers Guild Nominations

Manuel here bringing you the latest guild awards courtesy of the writers in the industry. As with SAG and DGA, what the writers enjoy and choose worthy of a nomination helps those of us intent on predicting the Oscars see what might be in the running not only for the screenplay categories but also what films are gaining steam enough to see the across-the-board support that nets them a Best Picture citation. 

A few caveats, though. Given the Writer's Guild rules, there are a number of high profile screenplays that weren't even in the running for their award and thus their absence should in no way be taken as a slight on their quality or a notch against their potential come Oscar nomination time. As usual, animated fare and foreign language (and foreign-produced) films are the ones least likely to show up here given the eligibility requirements—one must be a member of the WGA in order to be nominated.

Without further ado, find the nominees below with some quick commentary. Scroll further down still if you want to see the TV and New Media categories which were announced back in December.

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Oscar Balloting Begins. What are your top three FYCs?

Tomorrow's the day awards-freaks, January 5th, 2017. Oscar nomination balloting begins. Where the buzz falls now is where the buzz settles. AMPAS branch voters have just 8 days to finalize their ballots (they're due by the 13th). January 14th through 23rd then becomes our awards purgatory and on the 24th when nominations are read we learn who goes to heaven and who is cast out for good, forever doomed to be considered a "snub" to their future fans. Pardon the tortured analogy but the Oscars are our religion!

This past week has been a very strong week for La La Land and Fences with fantastic box office grosses for each as they went wide. The hottest titles from October and November (Manchester, Moonlight, Arrival) can also feel pretty safe about their potential nomination hauls. But there are several titles that are a bit harder to read in terms of possible Oscar love. Those are the titles that expanded too late for a definitive take from the precursors (20th Century Women, Lion, Silence, and Hidden Figures) and their counterparts, the titles that were too "old" (i.e. released before October like Sully, Hell or High Water, Florence Foster Jenkins, Captain Fantastic, Zootopia, Love & Friendship) for precursor season's problematic but blatantly obvious "shiny new toy" syndrome in which everything that's just opened must be prioritized above all else. 

If you had three FYCs and three FYCs to impress on Oscar voters this week, what would they be? 

Throwback FYC: Carrie Fisher, 1977

While the Star Wars franchise didn't become or stay a global phenomenon on the strength of its acting, it did received one Oscar nomination in that arena: Sir Alec Guiness as Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977). Later Sir Ian McKellen would pull off a similar trick for the Lord of the Rings franchise proving that it really helps to be a knighted acclaimed male thespian to get respect for genre films.

But Star Wars's Oscar campaign in 1977 (which resulted in 10 nominations, 6 wins, and a special non-competitive Oscar) did include the then 21 year-old Carrie Fisher. 

It's insane that our beloved Carrie Fisher was never Oscar nominated but that insanity stems not from Star Wars, however iconic Leia is and will continue to be, but from her infinitely quotable and self-deprecatingly delicious screenplay to Postcards from the Edge  (1990). Her significantly reworked adaptation of her own novel put nearly all of the actually Oscar-nominated screenplays that year to shame.

Joan Blondell in Opening Night (1977)We've already revisited the Supporting Actress race of 1977 in our "Smackdown" series* but there wasn't room for the braided bunned Princess that year even if you attempt to rejigger the category. For if you toss out a member of that uneven batch you've got to make room first and foremost for Joan Blondell's win-worthy work as an exasperated writer dealing with a addict of a leading lady in Opening Night. Come to think of it, and now I totally can't stop thinking about it, Carrie herself would surely have related like crazy to both sides of that volatile battle of artistic and destructive wills in the John Cassavettes film.

* yes, the series will return soon.

Online Film Critics Choose "Moonlight"

by Glenn Dunks

Moonlight took 4 prizes from the OFCS

The Online Film Critics Society, of which I am a member, just announced their winners and... I'd love to say they're a great bunch, but I haven't been able to see at least two of the big winners yet. International release dates (I'm back in Australia) always make voting in these sort of awards a tricky prospect when the need to be early is ever-present, but I have no doubt that the OFCS's selection of Moonlight as the best picture of 2016 is worth cheering about.

The organisation with its some 260 members awarded the Barry Jenkins' drama with three additional wins for Best Director, and duel supporting acting prizes for Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris. Casey Affleck and Natalie Portman took the lead actor awards, Arrival and Hell or High Water took screenplay honours, Kubo and the Two Strings was handed a much-deserved animation win, and the Oscar frontrunner La La Land settled for the two technical prizes that the organization gives out for cinematography and editing.

And proving yet again that South Korea made the wrong choice by not selecting Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden for the foreign language Oscar, it was awarded Best Film Not in the English Language alongside its nomination for Best Picture.

What do we think that film's Oscar prospects are like? Hong Kong's The Grandmaster surprised with two nominations several years ago - there's certainly precedence. It just depends on whether Oscar's costume and production design voters are having one of those years where they think more outside of the box or fall in line with general Oscar buzz.

FULL NOMINEES AND WINNERS AFTER THE JUMP...

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