"Don't call me 'baby'! "

...I'm not your baby."

Great Moments in Screen Bitchery #283
Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface (1983)

Oscar Chart Updates ~ What's Happening to Jackie?

As promised we're updating the Oscar charts more often. With the first avalanche of awardage the ground is shifting, if not quite seismically. It's been a very good week for three things in particular: Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and Isabelle Huppert ... and even a good week for, um, Hacksaw Ridge. And you'll see a new lock or two on a few of the charts.

Awards season giveth and awards season taketh away...

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The Furniture: Design Inspires Van Gogh in Lust for Life

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Kirk Douglas nearly drove himself over the edge while filming Lust for Life, inhabiting the character of Vincent van Gogh with a tenacity akin to the Method. The result was an Oscar nomination, likely the closest he ever came to a win. His emotionally volatile performance lends real weight to the oft-sensationalized biography of history’s most famously mad artist.

But the success of Lust for Life isn’t owed entirely to Douglas. Director Vincente Minnelli was a perfect match for the material, which necessitates a balance between the beauty that Van Gogh saw in the world and the feverish passion that drove him away from it. The Oscar-nominated production design team, led by frequent Minnelli collaborator Cedric Gibbons, offer a rich vision of the French countryside that serves as an essential counterpoint to Douglas’s madness.

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Interview: Kim Jee-woon on South Korean Oscar Submission 'The Age of Shadows'

By Jose Solís.

Kim Jee-woon is certainly no stranger to genre extravaganzas, but in The Age of Shadows (which Tim reviewed here) he takes it to the most sumptuous level yet. The spy thriller set during the Japanese occupation of South Korea centers on the dilemma a double agent (Song Kang-ho) faces when he realizes the resistance fighters he’s trying to capture, might actually be more patriotic than the people he’s working for. With stunningly choreographed action sequences, exquisite period detail and powerhouse performances, the film is the rare historical film that actually feels urgent and exciting. Since it’s South Korea’s Oscar submission I spoke to director Kim Jee-woon about what he discovered about the resistance, working with some of his best known collaborators, and what the Oscar nomination would mean to him.

Special thanks to interpreter: Areum Jeong

Read the interview after the jump.

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"Arrival" Holds Strong While "Jackie" Tip Toes Into Theaters

What did you see this weekend? I caught up with Hacksaw Ridge and Krisha (which keeps winning "new generation" style awards) and went to a Pedro Almodóvar talk all of which we'll try to discuss very soon. Until the box office charts and, behind the scenes at the moment, podcast editing and Oscar chart revamping...

Not much changed at the box office this weekend with very few films opening but it's worth noting that Arrivalis proving to have very shapely legs. i.e. it's not dipping like you're supposed to dip each week and moved UP the chart this weekend indicating very good word of mouth...  

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