"Holy Spider" and other interesting updates to Best International Feature Film

by Nathaniel R

"Holy Spider" will be released in the US, dates TBA

Lots to tell you about today in the Best International Feature Film race. We are just six days away from the deadline for countries to submit their representative film for consideration at the upcoming Oscars but we know one country that won't be submitting and that's Russia since they're boycotting us given which side we fall on in their war on Ukraine.

We generally know most of the list before that deadline due to press releases from all around the world. But not all. There are usually about 90ish entries and we have 70 announced thus far. You might remember that last year the Academy chucked their (very good and transparent) tradition of releasing the full official list of submissions in early October. If they continue that this year we won't have exact counts for awhile which is quite sad since those films need all the attention they can get and they only have a short window to get that since the all but 10 of them will be culled on December 21st when the shortlist is announced. What's more we thrive on statistics and factoids when getting obsessed with this niche window into global cinema and you cant do that without the exact list. ANYWAY, sorry about all the minutae. There are quite a few interesting new submissions / factoids to share with you after the jump...

Click to read more ...

What did you see over the weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Don't Worry Darling opened at #1 which is impressive for two reasons. The first is that the press was of the "what a hot mess" rather than "what a good movie!" variety. The second, as Rob Watson pointed out on twitter, is that this marks the second consecutive weekend where a film directed by a woman starring a woman opened at #1 playing above expectations...

Weekend Box Office  September 23rd-25th 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
DON'T WORRY DARLING	MOONAGE DAYDREAM

Click to read more ...

Palme d'Or Champions: En francais, s'il vous plaît

by Cláudio Alves

Apologies for my absence in the past few weeks, dear readers. Two back-to-back festival makes up a daunting task, when it involves over fifty write-ups. Anyway, eager to jump back into The Film Experience. To ease the way a curious trifle. As I was browsing through Twitter, I came across a curious conundrum in the form of a new French poster for this year's Palme d'Or winner, and the title splashed across its badly Photoshopped self. While Ruben Östlund's latest is called Triangle of Sadness or a direct translation in nearly every territory, those French distributors had another idea. In the land where it won the Croisette's highest honor, the film is known as Sans Filtre…

Click to read more ...

Best Supporting Actress is wide open!

by Nathaniel R

Image © A24

While we can be reasonably certain who the major players are in Best Actress and Best Actor (both charts updated), can we really know about Supporting Actress yet? With Michelle Williams having vacated the Supporting Actress race it feels truly like anyone's Oscar to grab this coming March. But do we really even know who is competing? No, we do not! The shortlist also feels wide open with no locks as of yet. So here is where we are right now and where we might be heading...

Click to read more ...

Best Actress Predictions and that Michelle Williams kerfuffle

by Nathaniel R

As you have undoubtedly heard by now, Michelle Williams has opted for a Lead Actress campaign for Steven Spielberg's memoir film The Fablemans. This shocked both the armchair and professional pundit community a good percentage of whom had already handed her the Best Supporting Actress statue a week ago. This despite it being a full six months until Oscar night (March 12th) with other movies yet to screen when everyone decided to call it.

Some people are angry because they feel the role is clearly supporting but most seem angry because they thought they had it all figured out already. But opinions vary (like they always do) about what constitutes a leading role versus a supporting one. Consider...

Click to read more ...