"The White Lotus" and "Severance" top the HCA TV Awards

by Nathaniel R

Severance won 5 prizes

The Hollywood Critics Association has been making waves in the past couple of years inviting lots of new members (expanding beyond California, albeit with a 25% cap) and getting more press, too. Their TV awards were distributed over two star-studded nights where both celebrities and critics presented.

The most noteworthy thing is that they divvy their awards up much differently than the Emmys, by splitting them in half between "broadcast & cable" and "streaming". They even split hairs further for the top program prizes divvying it up three ways: "broadcast", "cable", and "streaming". In a way, it's a savvy Golden Globe to the Oscars kind of tactic, since they get to honor way more programs and actors by splitting things in half or by thirds. Consider for example that the Hollywood Critics Association did not have Dopesick (streaming) and The White Lotus (cable) in direct competition; they could both win prizes with ease! At the Emmys of course those two shows will go head-to-head. Two of TFE's three California-based contributors were on hand as you can see in the photo after the jump. A complete list of winners follows, too...

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"Goddamned Asura" to represent Taiwan at the Oscars

We have our fourth contestant in the annual Oscar games for international cinema. If you missed the first three those were here.

🇹🇼 GODDAMNED ASURA
Taiwan (3 nominations, 1 win, and 2 additional finalists from 48 submissions)

The film is about a young man who orders a gun online and fires into a crowd on his 18th birthday. The film reportedly has an ambitious structure, shifting from virtual gaming to reality and following six different people who will be affected by the shooting. This film was inspired by a true story in 2014 which has inspired other films before this as well since gun violence is rare in Taiwan...

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Review: The Great Movement

by Cláudio Alves

In 2016, Bolivian director Kiro Russo took his first feature to Locarno, where the Jury for the Golden Peacock presented him with a special Centenary Award for Best Debut Film. Dark Skull was an exercise in modern Neorealism, reinventing that movement from Italian cinema to a Latin American setting and deep-rooted specificity. More in line with the operatic myth of Visconti's La Terra Trema than with De Sica's urban melodramas, the film followed Elder's return to his desolate hometown upon his father's death. With the patriarch fallen, the son takes on his work, going into the mines like those before him. Those shadowy realms become the entrails of a cavernous titan through the gaze of Russo's camera, the industrial work shattered into a nightmare by mad editing, expressionist sound.

Underrated and under-discussed, Dark Skull was a tremendous triumph, and The Great Movement follows in its steps. Only this time, instead of Italian and German influence, Russo seems to be exploring the possibilities of Soviet montage and social realism, retrofitted as a new cinema for a new world…

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"Rule 34" and "Tengo Suenos Electricos" win big at Locarno

by Nathaniel R

the sexually charged "Rule 34" wins Locarno

Our favourite film festival correspondent, Elisa Giudici, couldn't make it to Locarno this year so we are here to just report on the winners! The top prize went to a sexually provocative drama from Brazil called Rule 34 (only the second Brazilian film to ever win Locarno) while a Costa Rican film called Tengo Suenos Electricos won three prizes from the jury.

Will any of the following titles show up as Oscar submissions for International Feature Film? Who can say. A little bit about each winner after the jump...

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"What a thrill"

Today on Marcia Gay Harden's birthday, couldn't help but flashback to that time we accidentally met her at Pride here in NYC in 2018. Behold the photographic evidence above! TV has been usurping most of her time of late but she does have three movies in post including a Fletch reboot starring Jon Hamm.

Two questions
1. Have you seen Marcia's fab funny work on Uncoupled currently on Netflix? 
2. If you could run into one totally random celebrity on the street, who would it be?