One Prize After Another at the BAFTAs

by Nathaniel R

The ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER cast cheers on their auteur winning Best Film

Greetings from blizzard-hit NYC. Over the pond the BAFTA awards were held this weekend. Do they change the Oscar race? Who can say but they do take place right before the Academy votes for their own winners:  February 26 through March 5. During this key voting window we'll also experiene the winners of the newly rechristened "Actor Awards" (SAG ceremony is on March 1). If that weren't enough we'll also see the remainder of the Film Bitch Nominations and Oscar volleys right here which are sure to sway thousands of okay tens of vo --- absolutely no one but they're still fun for us to share! 

One Battle After Another took home six BAFTAs with Frankenstein and Sinners tied for runner up with three each.  After the jump all of the winners and some acceptance speeches, too...

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Oscar Volley: Can anyone beat Frankie in "Best Production Design"?

More Oscar Volleys are upon us. Today, ERIC BLUME and BEN MILLER discuss the Oscar race for Best Production Design...

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER's Florencia Martin and Anthony Carlino are just happy to be nominated. They have non chance of winning.

ERIC:  Hi Ben, let's take a look at our five nominated films for the Best Production Design Oscar:  Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, and Sinners.  Maybe just for funsies, we can go backwards.  What are the two films that you think stand the smallest chance of winning this award?

BEN:  Frankly, there aren't many categories where One Battle After Another stands very little chance, but I think we have finally arrived at one...

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Berlinale: With "Wolfram" Warwick Thornton finally strikes gold

by Elisa Giudici

For a filmmaker long associated with the Australian western, Warwick Thornton has often seemed trapped inside his own obsessions. Film after film has returned to the same harsh landscapes, the same colonial fault lines, the same story of Aboriginal endurance under white domination — sometimes with conviction, often with diminishing returns. With Wolfram, however, something finally coheres. After several disappointments, Thornton delivers his strongest work in years, perhaps decades: a film that feels less like repetition and more like arrival.

The title refers to tungsten, mined with pickaxes, dynamite, and small hands nimble enough to pry metal from rock. Those hands belong to Max and Kid, two Aboriginal kids forced to labor underground for Billy, a white man who oscillates between surrogate father and exploiter...

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Berlinale's would-be scandal "Rosebush Pruning"

by Elisa Giuidici

Incest, murder, and the airless cynicism of extreme wealth: Rosebush Pruning positions itself aggressively as this year’s Berlinale provocation. Very loosely inspired by Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut Fists in the Pocket, Karim Aïnouz’s English-language drama borrows the earlier film’s diseased family structure but transplants it into the sterile rarefaction of contemporary ultra-wealthy excess.

Bellocchio’s earlier Italian classic centered on a wealthy young epileptic plotting to eliminate his blind mother and siblings to “free” his older brother from domestic obligation. Aïnouz retains the architecture of that premise while shifting the social register upward. Here the patriarch is a blind, theatrically transgressive father (Tracy Letts), alternately possessive and imperious, presiding over four adult children (Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Callum Turner, and Lukas Gage) already enriched by their late mother’s estate. Pamela Anderson’s absent matriarch - killed by wolves - haunts the film from its opening frames...

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Drag Race RuCap: "Drag Queens for Change"

The Meek(s) shall inherit the Earth! Myki will get her revenge!!!

NICK TAYLOR: Cláudio, your assertion that the end of last week’s episode snapped the season into place has already bore fruit in the competition. On the one hand, this week’s winner and the eliminated queen feel in some way like RuPaul tipping the scales back from a Rate-A-Queen result she didn’t agree with. On the other, the judge’s choices were very correct, and the queen’s performances in the maxi challenge were almost uniformly strong, with one glaring exception. It’s hard to believe we’re not even halfway through this pack of queens, but the margin for error grows slimmer by the day. 

CLÁUDIO ALVES: I’ve either been blessed with Apollo’s gift or just spent too much time watching Drag Race franchises over the years, sinking into the depths of pattern recognition and reality TV cynicism…

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