Tuesday, February 7, 2023 at 12:00PM The Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Supporting Actor Charts are all updated with 'who should win' polls (vote daily) and trivia. Here's a silly little breakdown of "extra" numbers stuff from the four acting categories including a very "fiery" Zodiac coincidence.
Brendan Fraser in "The Whale"
ACTING NOMINEES BY THE NUMBERS...
Monday, February 6, 2023 at 9:34PM By Ben Miller
It only took eight weeks, but Avatar: The Way of Water is no longer the top film at the box office. M. Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin and the award-winning ladies of 80 for Brady both managed to top James Cameron's sequel, though not with any overwhelming numbers. Both films managed just north of $14 and $12 million, respectively. More than anything else, it's just nice to have some competition and new things to watch in theaters. Studios are releasing less and less these days...
| Weekend Box Office (actuals) Feb 3rd-5th 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = Recommended /  = Oscar Nominated |
|
| WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS) | LIMITED / PLATFORM |
 KNOCK AT THE CABIN |
 PATHAAN |
| 1 🔺 KNOCK AT THE CABIN $14.1 *NEW* 3,646 screens |
1 PATHAAN $2.6 (cum. $14.2) 683 screens |
| 2 🔺 80 FOR BRADY $12.7 *NEW* 3,912 screens |
2 THE WANDERING EARTH II $624k (cum. $4.1) 172 screens |
Saturday, February 4, 2023 at 9:47AM The Best Actress chart is fully updated for your viewing pleasure with details, stats, and trivia. Here's one curio trivia bit. We believe that this is only the second time in history when all five Best Actress nominees are from different countries! (Usually it's some combo of Americans, Brits, and Aussies). All that plus our semi-annual "How'd They Get Nominated?" breakdown. Before anyone takes offense at the guesstimate percentages (it's all in good fun) please note that these are NOT performance critiques. A truth: You can give the most brilliant performance of all time and still be nominated for other reasons entirely. Awards races, Oscar and otherwise, are meritocracies only in the utopian ideal sense; People are people (including, thus, all voting bodies be they fans, high brow critics, or Academy members) and their reasons for voting in any given way are multiple and varied and heavily influenced by all sorts of things. Plus, it's all subjective too!
Adrien Brody & Ana de Armas in "Blonde" (Netflix)
Let's start with Ana de Armas in Blonde for an example. How'd she get nominated?
67% Role. Awards bodies have always loved Marilyn portrayals which have led to Emmy, Oscar, and Tony nods for various actresses across multiple decades (though not wins curiously enough).
20% Performance. Even people who didn't love the movie admired her work in it.
6% Globe nomination / ceremony shout-outs revived interest in a crowded race.
5% Knives Out + No Time To Die = rapidly ascending stardom (Big stars have a built in advantage in popularity contests)
2% Early traction! That September release struck while the iron was hot from Venice festival buzz. Blonde was widely seen (via Netflix) before all but one of the major competitors for the nomination arrived (Michelle Yeoh was the exception).
The other four breakdowns are on the Best Actress page where you can vote daily in the "Who SHOULD win?" poll.
Thursday, February 2, 2023 at 10:00PM By: Christopher James
Four cast members of Everything Everywhere All At Once received their first career Oscar nominations this year.
Every Oscar year brings both big snubs and wonderful new stats. In particular, this year stands out due to the overwhelming crop of first time Oscar nominees in acting. Out of the twenty acting nominees, sixteen of them are celebrating their first time nominees. This doesn’t point to a green crop of actors since many of them are veterans who have been long overlooked, such as Bill Nighy and Jamie Lee Curtis. In fact, the average age of the Best Actress lineup is 46, which would put it in the top ten oldest Best Actress lineups, based on The Film Experience’s work years ago. Having a healthy crop of new nominees is a sign of health for both the Academy and the film world - they aren’t defaulting to people they’ve rewarded before, but are searching elsewhere for new faces or people they’ve overlooked in the past. So how rare is it to have this amount of first time nominees?
Thursday, February 2, 2023 at 6:00PM By Glenn Dunks
History can unfold in a lot of different ways. So too, how filmmakers choose to uncover, reveal and tell it in films for audiences. This week’s selection of films through the alphabet of 2022 titles that were eligible for the 95th Academy Awards (parts one to four available in the archives) show this off to great effect (even if the movies themselves don’t always succeed).
One uses comedy to explain how a man hoodwinked his way through one of the more baffling true crimes (if you can call it that) in modern history. Another takes a brief snippet of archival war footage to unravel a hidden queer love story at a time where such things weren't to be spoken about. Another is more traditional, detailing an incredible story from the annals of cinema history that could very easily have been ignored.
And at least in the first one—we get to see Alan Cumming lip syncing for his life.
Alan Cumming, Doc Corner, Oleg Vidov, Review, documentaries 