The Animated Feature contenders: Regular Show: The Movie

Tim here. Our tour of the films submitted for this year's Best Animated Feature Oscar now takes us to the most obscure American-made film on the list, Regular Show: The Movie. It's a spin-off of an absurdist Cartoon Network series – that is, absurdist even by the standards of Cartoon Network – which was given the tiniest whisper of a theatrical release to ensure the publicity of articles like this one. So, a success!

The film has the freaked-out energy of a kid on a sugar rush, and assembles its plot in roughly as coherent a manner: in the future, talking raccoon Rigby (William Salyers) and talking bluebird Mordecai (director & series creator J.G. Quintel), formerly best friends, are on opposite sides of a galactic war to stop a rift in the space-time continuum for devouring all of existence. The only way to do this is for a mortally wounded Rigby to travel back to the present, where his younger self and younger Mordecai are working a dead-end job as park groundskeepers. And they have go back even further, to high school, where Rigby told a lie that kicked-off the creation of a broken time machine that led to that same rift in space-time. [More...]

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Review: "Sisters"

Remember friends, The Force Awakens isn't the only film arriving today, even though it may be taking the lion's share of your multiplex's screens and dominating the cultural landscape. Limited audiences finally have Cannes favorite and Foreign Language Oscar frontrunner Son of Saul and the masses also have Sisters and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip *shhhh, keep walking*.

Sisters is an interesting choice for counter-programming against the behemoth, but should satisfy its own crowds looking for a steady stream of laughs. The film would face more trouble without the trustworthy chemistry between stars Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, as it strains to set up relationships (and not just of its leads) and conflict in a murky and bumpy first act. Once Poehler and Fey are given the room to shine, the film finally finds its footing and becomes the laugh riot you were hoping for.

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Link Roundup and a "Trumbo" Shout-out on the Hill

David Poland on why certain films overperform or underperform come Oscar time. Much of this is both true and frustrating. Why couldn't Warner Bros see what they had in Creed for example?  
Comics Alliance on the fan campaign to make Iron Fist an Asian hero in the new tv eries. So far Marvel/Netflix has rejected the idea which is just maddening since the origin story is pretty racist in modern context.
The Envelope interviews Julianne Nicholson who was so so good in Black Mass
Word and Film An interview with actress Ileanna Douglas (we've missed her) about her new memoir "I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories From a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies"

The Guardian Peter Bradshaw picks his favorite films in multiple categories
Variety Guy Lodge's top ten list. It won't surprise you to hear that it's a good read. And Joy and Magic Mike XXL are on it keeping things provocative.
Pajiba John Krasinski is on his way to a Chris Pratt like reinvention. Trying to keep up with wife Emily Blunt perhaps?
Variety Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette reprised their famous roles at Jason Reitman's live reading of True Romance. How fun.
The Playlist says Jennifer Lawrence is going to play Robert De Niro's dad in the next David O. Russell film. Now they're just purposefully antagonizing us now, right? 
Awards Daily Spotlight takes the Las Vegas Film Critics prize for Best Picture
Daily Herald Mad Max Fury Road takes Best Picture from the Chicago Film Critics Association 
AV Club Sean Penn to play Andrew Jackson in an HBO miniseries. Sadly it is not a remake of the Broadway musical "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" but we'd rather see that! ...albeit with its original Jackson, Benjamin Walker in the lead role

Off Cinema
Rolling Stone Readers Poll of the 10 best songs of the year: Adele, Madonna, Drake and more 
Boing Boing Matt Haughey is a genius -- he started photoshopping dildos where guns were in photos of GOP candidates and it's both funny and satirically pointed 
The Daily Beast best TV shows of 2015: UnReal, The Knick, Empire and more...

Star Wars ♫  give me more Star Wars...Nothing but Star Wars ♬  don't let them end...
Thrillist unearths a time capsule of photos from the premiere of The Phantom Menace (1999). Dakota Johnson is just a baby!
Pajiba "a serious discussion of which original trilogy Star Wars character is best in bed" Hilarious. The gif game is strong with this one. (I agree with the rankings pretty much but I'd still do Luke.)
Screen Crush on the diversity of casting in The Force Awakens 

Today's Watch
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) honored Kirk Douglas on the floor for his 99th birthday! It's always shocking when someone in Congress does something cool but apparently this Cohen fellow is a good guy with a strong civil rights record so there you go. But mentioning a screening of Trumbo in DC? That movie's reach has been such a surprise this month.

ICYMI we sang the praises of New Zealand actor Dean O'Gorman who plays Kirk Douglas in the movie here. 

Interview: Wim Wenders on Every Thing Will Be Fine, 3D and Guilt

Director Wim WendersThis interview was conducted by guest contributor Amir Ganjavie, during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Every Thing Will Be Fine was released in theatres last week.

Four years after his success with 3D in the dance film Pina, Wim Wenders is using the technology in the realm of fiction filmmaking in Every Thing Will Be Fine. One of the German auteur’s most accessible films, this psychological thriller is about the traumatic experiences of Tomas (James Franco), a writer who is dealing with the consequences of a brutal car accident. The effects of this tragedy on him and on Kate (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who has lost someone close, shape the story of the film. 3D cinematography has rarely been used for such a character-driven story with so few action scenes. Wenders is testing the limits of storytelling possibility with the technology.

AMIR: How was the experience of using 3D for such a character-driven, psychological film?

WIM WENDERS: Trauma is internalized. Something happens externally in your life and from then on it creates this thing in your mind and you have to live with it. It’s impossible to make it un-happen. It’s a pain in your life, there is guilt involved, and other people are involved with whom you have suddenly connected without wanting to, but the trauma is inside. The cinema has hitherto had to invent situations that externalize the trauma to make it visible. With 3D I felt that for the first time we had cameras that could look inside of a person and see into the soul because these cameras are almost like x-rays; they see more accurately and you cannot hide anything from them. You look at a person and you know who that person is. This might surprise a lot of people because the 3D films we have seen so far don’t prove that; actually, they have done the opposite. [More...]

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The 9 Foreign Language Oscar Finalists Are...

Congratulations to the nine films that proceed to the final stage towards an Oscar nomination. Six of these nine films were the top vote-winners from Academy's foreign film committee in Los Angeles (who screened these 80 films) after which the executive committee added three titles to the list (though which titles are which are never revealed to the public). A final committee will now screen these nine films and determine the five nominees to be announced on January 14th. It's an elaborate process that we love to follow each year. Catch up on all our coverage and see the charts! 

THE FINALISTS
Links go to past articles on the films if we've written any 

Viva has been keeping a low profile but those who've seen it have raved.

• Belgium (7 nominations) The Brand New Testament, Jaco Van Dormael
• Colombia (never nominated) Embrace of the Serpent, Ciro Guerra (opens 2/17)
• Denmark (13 noms | 3 wins) A War, Tobias Lindholm (opens in 2016)
• Finland (1 nomination) The Fencer, Klaus Härö, director
• France (36 noms | 9 wins | 3 honorarys)  Mustang, Deniz Gamze Ergüven (now playing)
• Germany (18 noms | 3 wins) Labyrinth of Lies, Giulio Ricciarelli (now playing)
• Hungary (8 noms | 1 win) Son of Saul, László Nemes (opens tomorrow!)
• Ireland (never nominated) Viva, Paddy Breathnach (opens 2/5)
• Jordan (never nominated) Theeb, Naji Abu Nowar (now playing)

Happy Day!
Embrace of the Serpent and Mustang are both sensational pictures that more people need to discover. Go see Mustang quick! Theeb and Labyrinth of Lies are surely leaving theaters soon to so this might be your last week. If Mustang is nominated it will end France's longest drought without a nomination ever. That will be ironic since it's mostly a Turkish film. Though France is the most nominated country of all time, they haven't been honored for the past five years and their last win was 23 years back with the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve epic Indochine (1992).which was popular enough to secure a Best Actress nomination, too. 

Unbeatable?
Hungary's Son of Saul has been the expected frontrunner for months 

Newbies
Four of the nine finalists are from first time feature directors! That'd be Son of Saul, Mustang, Theeb, and Labyrinth of Lies 

Diversity
Only one of the finalists is directed by a woman (Mustang) -- 13 of the 80 films in the running had female directors or co-directors. All of the LGBT films (Thailand, Lithuania, Greece, and The Dominican Republic) were cut but for Ireland's Viva (which is set entirely in Cuba) about a boy who wants to become a drag performer. 

Will Finland get their second nomination ever with THE FENCER?

Fourth Time's The Charm?
Finnish director Klaus Härö has been submitted three previous times for Elina: As If I Wasn't There, Mother of Mine, and Letters to Father Jacob, but this is his first time in the finals. Will he finally be nominated? 

What's missing?
I mourn for The Second Mother, a film I really enjoyed that had a reasonably high profile, decent arthouse box office and strong reviews. Sweden's brilliant A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence would have probably needed a save from the Executive Committee but they didn't come through. I'm more surprised to see Iceland's Rams missing since it had been generating such positive word of mouth and was reportedly accessible, too. The biggest hit in US theaters from the competing films, Austria's Goodnight Mommy was also not selected. The film critics will surely be angriest to see Taiwan's The Assassin denied.

Which films are you rooting for?