'The Beasts' wins big at the Goyas

by Nathaniel R

THE BEASTS © Greenwich Entertainment

Spain's annual Goya Awards, now in their 37th year,  were held this weekend in Seville. Rodrigo Soroyen's thriller The Beasts, about a middle aged French couple who move to rural Spain and are greeted with surprising hostility by neighbors won big. It took nine prizes from its 17 nominations. (Greenwich Entertainment has distribution rights in the US but no word yet on when it's coming out.) If the name Rodrigo Soroyen sounds familiar to you, that's because he was an Oscar nominee not too long ago with the live-action short Madres (2018)...

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Is "Elvis" going to win the Makeup and Hair Oscar?

by Nathaniel R

Austin & Elvis. Image via YouTube comparison

The Makeup and Hair Stylist Guild (MUAHS) gives out prizes in multiple categories and this weekend at their ceremony three Oscar-nominated films in the Makeup category emerged as winners: Black Panther Wakanda Forever, The Whale, and Elvis.

 Only one of them can win at the Oscars. So which might it be? The last five Oscar winners  Darkest Hour, Vice, Bombshell, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye only have have one thing in common: they all featured at least one famous actor, sometimes multiple famous actors, remade to look like another famous person via prosthetics. This bodes well for Elvis but it's not over till it's over and it has at least one formidable competitor, probably two. The MUAHS awards ceremony and complete list of winners is after the jump...

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MCU Catch-Up: ‘Ant-Man’ and ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’

By Abe Friedtanzer

I see a lot of movies. Still, I sometimes miss big releases if a) I don’t see the film either at a press screening or right when comes out and b) it’s not an awards contender. With the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s so much to keep up with. At a certain point, there are some entries that I just never get around to seeing. Among the few I was missing up until recently were Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, the lead-ups to the forthcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Thanks to a long flight last week and two Disney+ downloads ahead of time, I’m now caught up with everyone’s favorite shrinking hero…

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Best Director Closet Picks... and Polls!

by Nathaniel R

The Oscar charts are complete for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplays with "who should win" polls on each page. So vote for your favs daily!  Each page also has trivia and factoids and listicles for your entertainment. For the first time in Oscar's 95 year history Director and Original Screenplay are an exact match and each of the directors also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays. We still can't get over that. Not just in 'how did it happen' but also in 'how did it never happen before?'. Do we just have more multi-hyphenates than we used to in Hollywood? (Probably) Or was it just a matter of the unique field of contenders this year? (Also possible)

Speaking of writer/directors. Today, February 10th, is Dan Kwan's 35th birthday and he has a lot to celebrate this year with 3 Oscar nominations for his 3rd feature Everything Everywhere All At Once. Remember his dance moves in "Turn Down For What?"  Speaking of "Daniels"... what did you think of their Criterion Closet visit? 

"Triangle of Sadness" wins big at the Guldbagge Awards

by Nathaniel R

Sweden's Guldbagge Award, designed by Karl Axel Pehrson, looks like something out of a Cronenberg movie and we respect that. It doesn't look much like any other golden film award. It's chased in copper and enameled before the gold enters the picture. The Guidbagges were first handed out in 1964 when the late Ingmar Bergman, still Sweden's most famous auteur, took home Best Film and Best Director for The Silence. Other Swedish classics that have won the top prize include other Bergman masterpieces like Persona, Fanny & Alexander, and Cries and Whispers, arthouse auteur pics like You the Living and Border, Oscar darlings like The Emigrants, Pelle the Conquerer, and My Life as a Dog, and LGBTQ favourites like the teen lesbian drama Show Me Love and gay dance drama And Then We Danced.

This year's big winner was Oscar-nominated satire Triangle of Sadness which took home six prizes... 

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