I link. I die. I link again!

Daily Mail Tim Burton's type is hilariously permanent. Now he's on to Eva Green who fits it like a T
New Yorker The brilliant Emily Nussbaum on sexual consent and PTSD on Jessica Jones and its Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 6 reflections
DGA Chris Nolan interviews Quentin Tarantino about The Hateful Eight which will now enter wide release on January 1st instead of the 8th.
Slate reflects on what the Star Wars franchise is given that it's not "sci-fi"
Variety has a few old FYC and congratulatory ads for Star Wars from the 70s. Good stuff
Vanity Fair today's celebrities all want to be Han Solo

News
The Black List  If you've got some free time you can wade through Hollywood's favorite unproduced scripts. List was just announced today.
Collider Mad Max Fury Road may return to theaters in a black & white version -- Miller's original intention before they opted for super saturated color.
Variety Brad Pitt's satire War Machine wraps shooting in the United Arab Emirates.
Tracking Board Warner Bros is moving forward with a Speedy Gonzalez feature, date TBD. (He was my second favorite of the Looney Tunes as a child, after Pepe Le Pew... but they both have cultural stereotyping issues. How will they walk that line?)
Variety Melissa McCarthy is nearly free of Mike & Molly

List Mania
Slant picks the 25 best films of the year from 45 Years through Chi-Raq and on to Mad Max: Fury Road. But since Carol is way down at #19... What?
Los Angeles Times Brooklyn tops Kenneth Turan's otherwise alphabetical top ten
Indie Wire critics poll for the year with Mad Max & Carol fighting for supremacy. Fassbender & Rampling take the acting prizes
Pajiba celebrates the best 'comfort movies' of the year - not particularly challenging but great watches from your couch in your jammies: Cinderella, The Intern, and more...
AV Club on the best film scenes of the year including Creed's continuous shot boxing match and lots of interesting and unexpected choices -- yay for including "Summer in Ohio" from The Last Five Years

Today's Watch
If you've got a free two hours you can watch all six previous Star Wars movies at once?  It's an art installation. Click on the image if you wish to do this craziness.

305 Films Eligible For Oscar

The Academy has released the list of all titles that are eligible for Best Picture and general Oscar categories this year. (Note: a few of the categories have different rules like docs, animated films, foreign films). The most amusing thing about looking over the list is tallying how many you've never heard of and how many you forgot were actually released. It's also fun to see really odd juxtapositions that come from alpha order... like Tangerine sandwiched between two bro friendly franchises: Taken 3 and Ted 2...

Click to read more ...

Awards Update: "Mad Max" for OFCS / "Youth" for EFA

Michael Caine finally takes a prize for YOUTH. But is it too little too late for Oscar to notice?ICYMI in Awardage
"Previously on The Precursors..."  Gotham, Spirit, OFCS, NBR, NYFCC, LAFCA, BSFC, SAG Noms, SAG Ensemble, Golden Globes, Nominee Reactions, BFCA Noms

The Online Film Critics Society jumped on Furiousa's rig to go on George Miller's wild apocalyptic ride.  Mad Max Fury Road took 4 prizes, the clear winner of their annual honors. Carol won both acting awards for women because that's the world we live in... I could see this happening at Oscar too if they also embrace Rooney Mara's fraudulent "supporting" campaign (sigh). I love both of those performances so I want to be happy about it but... you know... it ain't right. Unless they actually tie for Best Actress. But that's only happened once, so...

Kudos to OFCS for breaking the critical sweep for Amy in documentary -- it seemed strange given the hundreds of documentaries released each year that only one film would win things. They went with The Look of Silence.

More on online critics and the European Film winners after the jump...

Click to read more ...

The BFG Teaser Trailer

Manuel here. While we wait on baited breath to see if the “handsomely shot” Bridge of Spies breaks through with AMPAS next month—they do love themselves some Spielberg, who has helmed three Best Picture nominees in the last ten years, earning directing nods for two of them—Disney already wants us to look ahead at the director’s next release.

The film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG will be the director’s first family-aimed live-action project since 1991’s Hook. We finally got a first look at the film in the teaser below, and as always, Spielberg’s regulars seem to be in top form, from John Williams (perhaps too closely echoing another beloved Brit property he scored recently?), to Janusz Kaminski and Rick Carter. It also sadly marks the final film of screenwriter Melissa Mathison (of E.T. fame) whom we lost just last month.

“... And that is how our story begins.”

We get the tiniest look at recent double SAG Award nominee, Mark Rylance, as the titular character but it wouldn’t be a true teaser without leaving something to the imagination. The film comes out July 1st, 2016; does the teaser show enough promise to think the warm-hearted Spielberg will be a good fit the Dahl's more darker sensibility you think?

Critics Choice Nominations: "Fury Road" Leads and Category Fraud Refuses to Die.

Furiosa is coming to devour your Critics Choice AwardsThough I am a member of the BFCA, the organization behind the Critics Choice Awards, I can't say I'm often too pleased with their choices. Their penchant for attempting to predict the Oscars rather than voting based on earlier reviews continues to be the source of endless frustration. For example: everyone thought the SAG nominations were insane when they were announced but just a week later, the BFCA is repeating them despite lukewarm reviews (at best) for films like Trumbo. And though the reviews for Joy have been anything but great they gave it two major nominations, surely based on a year of Oscar expectations for it. Their difficulty in looking past mainstream pictures even in categories ripe for invasion from indies is also truly unfortunate (Tangerine and What We Do in the Shadows for example have 96% and 97% approval ratings from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and NONE of the BFCA's nominees for Best Comedy come anywhere close to those scores. Hell, Joy is currently at only 56% which is not good. And BFCA members are part of the Tomatometer so what does that tell you?

Unfortunately the members also embraced all the Category Fraud contenders in their studio preferred categories despite the BFCA endorsing a lead vote for Rooney Mara before voting began and somewhat suggesting that maybe Alicia Vikander didn't belong in supporting either. I understand from voting members of the OFCS that this exact situation preceded their vote. It's tough to root out Category Fraud when people have been so conditioned by the studios to believe that anything goes.

The complete list of nominees for film and television (with commentary is after the jump)

Click to read more ...