Blanchett Coming to Broadway

The Team Experience prayer circle worked! Cate Blanchett will be returning to the New York stage, but finally on Broadway this time.

Her first steps on the Great White Way will be Anton Chekov's The Present, which will also be the first Broadway transfer of the Sydney Theatre Company that Blanchett co-artistic directed with her husband. They had previously brought Hedda Gabler, The Maids, and A Streetcar Named Desire (with Cate as none other than Blanche DuBois) to New York for those lucky enough to snag tickets to their limited engagements. The play, recently adapted by Upton, features themes of regret and unfulfilled desire that should prove meaty for the actress and her costar Richard Roxburgh (Moulin Rouge!).

Another exciting snippet of the production is John Crowley at the helm. He was criminally undervalued for his contributions this Oscar season with Brooklyn and is clearly gifted in stearing actors to rich portrayals. However, he is no stranger to the New York stage, having directed Broadway productions of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman and A Behanding in Spokane.

The Present is expected to open at the end of the year, so be ready to snatch those tickets for this likely sell-out once they become available!

Tim's Toons: A preview of 2016 in animated features

Tim here. Kung Fu Panda 3 opens this weekend, and thus begins one of the most crowded years for animated features in living memory (technically, Norm of the North already kicked things off two weeks ago, but we're all better off consigning that one to the memory hole).

As a public service, I'd like to offer this highly abbreviated guide to some of the animation that will be coming out in the U.S. over the next 11 months. As with every year, there will of course be a healthy number of foreign imports that we can't predict, and hopefully a little indie or two that nobody has heard about yet; best to think of this, maybe, as a handy field guide to clearing your way through the glut of big-ticket studio films about to reign down upon us all.

Lots more Toons after the jump...

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Screenplay Categories: Gender by the Numbers

Manuel here. Much of the conversation following the nominations has deservedly been about the way this year’s nominees function in many ways as a litmus test for the larger pitfalls of the Academy and the industry at large. Take the screenplay categories. As Phyllis Nagy urged us, we should be celebrating the fact that four female screenwriters were nominated for four different films. It sounds like a cause worth celebrating until you realize a total of twenty screenwriters were cited overall. You have to admit, those are appalling (if yes, unsurprising) numbers. Actually, in the past ten years, only 17 out of 156 nominated screenwriters have been women. Three quick stats about this year's categories and how they may show we might be turning a corner.

01 The last time we had two female nominees in the Best Original Screenplay category was in 2011 when Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo earned a nomination for their Bridesmaids script. If you remember that was the first time a female duo had been nominated since Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen were cited for Silkwood back in 1983. 

02 The last time two female nominees came from different films?  2007 when The Savages’s Tamara Jenkins and Lars and the Real Girl’s Nancy Oliver joined eventual winnerDiablo Cody (Juno). That was, coincidentally, the last time a female writer was on stage for a screenplay win. 

03 On the Adapted Screenplay side, we have two female screenwriters coming from two different films (Room and Carol). That’s the first time its happened since 2003 when Shari Springer Berman (co-writer of American Splendor) joined eventual winner Fran Walsh (co-writer of Return of the King) in the nominee roster. And yes, you have to go back to 1995 to find a sole female screenwriter taking the gold (Emma Thompson for Sense and Sensibility), a year that also nominated Anna Pavignano for co-writing Il Postino.

Obviously, by the rule of statistical analysis -- which is foolproof and understands that subjective awards must follow mathematical calculations-- this means we're going to get a female writer up on stage this year, right?

Bets on whether Donoghue (Room), Nagy (Carol), Berloff (Straight Outta Compton) or LeFauve (Inside Out) will get to give a speech on February 28th?

Bye Instant Watch: Terms of Endearment, Tom Cruise, Big Fish...

What's leaving Netflix Instant Watch?

We should probably start covering that. It seems like a boring topic but we jazz up your public service announcements. I'll close my eyes and play with the control bar and wherever I freeze the movie I'll share the image. This weekend is your last chance to watch these films for free for who knows how long. Since there are Oscar titles in the mix, perhaps you can fill some holes in your Oscar lists of Things To See or Rewatch.

Ready? In chronological order of their film year, seven films leaving Netflix on February 1st...

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)

EMMA: I've got some good news. I'm unofficially pregnant. I mean I haven't got the tests back but I'm never late.

AURORA: [Pause] Well... No, I don't understand."

Look how crazy young Jeff Daniels is! Shirley Maclaine is so hilarious and complicated in this movie -- that long pause with cascading rejection of possible responses under frozen 'I don't understand' face. She's going to lose out since she doesn't want to think of herself as a grandmother. A well deserved Best Actress win, with Shirley obviously relieved about it "this show has been as long as my career."

Oscar Note: I know we've asked this before but how long before we get another girlie Best Picture winner it's been FOR-EV-ER. Terms of Endearment was nominated for 11 Oscars (an astounding amount for a contemporary-set film), winning 5. 

six more movies after the jump

THE TERMINATOR (1984) 

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Personal Ballots Cont'd: Best Cinematography & Production Design

We're almost done with the Oscar Correlative categories in the Film Bitch Awards. Then it's on to the silly & fun but still seriously chosen "extra" categories. Here are my choices for the best men behind the camera (always men. sigh) and the men and women designing and decorating those sets and the film's overall visual palette for your eye-candy pleasure. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
The big Oscar question this year is "Can Emmanuel Lubezki" win a third consecutive Oscar for The Revenant. He's dominated the category the past two years with Gravity (2013) and Birdman (2014). It won't be the longest consecutive winning streak ever -- that belongs to Walt Disney who won consistently in short film categories for seemingly ever in the early days of Oscar -- but it will be the single longest streak in modern history if he pulls it off. But the category already has something for the record books: With his 13th nomination Roger Deakins Sicario moves into a tie for 5th place for All Time Most Celebrated Cinematographer. He's now sharing the honor with George J. Folsey (Meet Me in St. Louis) who also never won an Oscar. Everyone higher on the list won the Oscar once or multiple times, all four of them; It's rarified air they're breathing. 

Deakins makes my own personal ballot this year but Lubezki just barely misses (I was more impressed with his work on The New World which also went all natural light on the frontier) because I had to make room for the emotionally expressive and flexible light of Phoenix (courtesy of Hans Fromm) and the jaw-dropping 'how'd they do that?' camerawork on Germany's Victoria. On the latter film the director was so impressed he gave DP Sturla Brandth Grølven billing above his own! 

Oscar Charts (now with trivia & predictions) & Nathaniel's Ballot  

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
We've already discussed the stupendous achievements in this category by Ethan Tobman on Room and Judy Becker on Carol so no need to rehash other than 'what is with Oscar sometimes. How could they ignore them?' Oscar voters have an anything goes choice in this category, though. If they don't just check off Mad Max Fury Road in most of the craft categories it's easy to imagine any of the films as winners, don'cha think?

Finally I wanted to give a shout out briefly to Thomas E Sanders work on Crimson Peak which the Academy also passed on. The movie has a lot of problems -- Guillermo del Toro can't seem to stay out of his own way with so much gilding of every gothic lily -- but Allerdale Hall is wonderfully decayed and oppressively decorative and all around drafty and decadent. And those vats in the basement! 

Oscar Charts (now with trivia & predictions) & Nathaniel's Ballot