Weekend Awards Wrap-Up: Opening Pandora's Box

by Cláudio Alves

The FFI's treatment of ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT will go down as THE awards season fumble.

The awards season continues to heat up, though we're about to hit a bit of a pause or a slump as the holidays tend to mark a decrease in such activity. As if to make up for that incoming quieting, the outpour of film honors only grew stronger the past week. This included the Pandora International Film Critics, an unofficial initiative spearheaded by the Filmotomy site – they also organize the Femme Filmmakers Festival every year – that gathers writers and film buffs from all over the world. This year, they invited me to be part of the voting body, and I am delighted to share the results, even if I don't necessarily agree with all of them…

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Best Actress Volley: It's On!

Nick, Nathaniel, and Eric engage in a discussion about everybody's favorite Oscar category:  Best Actress. For the record this conversation started the day of the Globes nominations so watch things narrow down as we speak! 

 

Will a surprise SAG nomination rescue any underperformers?

ERIC:  Nick and Nathaniel, I'm really excited about this volley because the Best Actress category is as always stacked, this year featuring at least a dozen ladies who stand a fairly legitimate shot at a nomination at this point.  I thought it might be fun, before we get to the current leading contenders, to take a look at that back half of the possibilities to gauge your thoughts.  Of the actresses that seem slightly less likely to nab a nomination this year...Kate Winslet, Pamela Anderson, Amy Adams, Tilda Swinton, Saoirse Ronan...do you see the winds changing in the weeks to come where any of them could gather enough momentum to move to the front of the pack?

I'm considering Jolie, Madison, Gascon, Moore, Kidman, Erivo, Torres, and Jean-Baptiste more ahead at this point, but comment as you may.

NATHANIEL:  It does feel like quite a crowded, anything-could-happen* year. Take for example one from your column B: Saoirse Ronan and one from your column A: Angelina Jolie...

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Oscar Volley: Best Actor - locked and loaded?

Lynn Lee and Ben Miller discuss the Best Actor race.

Ralph Fiennes in CONCLAVE. Will it *finally* be his time?

LYNN: First, a double disclaimer: 1. I haven’t yet seen some of the likely Oscar contenders this year, including in this category.  2. I’m also generally pretty meh on this year’s contenders (and movies) as a whole, especially compared with last year’s embarrassment of riches.  This also extends to the best actor category, which was overflowing with worthy candidates last year, whereas this year I’m not sure I could even pick a top five I have strong feelings about, at least based on what I've seen so far.  

All that said, my one bright hope for this season is that Ralph Fiennes finally gets his Oscar...

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"Better Man" Leads the AACTA Nominations

by Travis Cragg

Robbie Williams v. Furiosa v. Beloved Aussie Christmas Song v. Demon Possession. That’s the general gist of this year’s Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) film nominations. The satirical musical bio-pic Better Man achieved the most nominations (16), but Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and How To Make Gravy (15 each) and Late Night With The Devil (14) are not that far behind. The nomination total for Better Man is a record breaker, so the fact that three other films are very close to its indicates that the number of films that managed any nominations this year is low. There’s also a more significant artistic precedent that has been set this year amongst the acting nominees which we'll discus.

The list of nominations and comments after the jump…

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Oscar Volley: Best Original Screenplay is the Battle of the Auteurs

In this Oscar Volley, Eric Blume and Cláudio Alves discuss the Best Original Screenplay race…

HARD TRUTHS, Mike Leigh

ERIC BLUME: Hi Cláudio, I put us together on this one because I love arguing with you.  Hope that's okay.  Plus, I am curious to get your takes on some of these films and scripts.

Best Original Screenplay has a lot of strong contenders this year.  What I find particularly interesting is that eight of these feature scripts written by their directors - Seed of the Sacred Fig, A Real Pain, The Substance, September 5, Anora, The Brutalist, All We Imagine as Light, and Hard Truths.  That has to be some kind of record? 

CLÁUDIO ALVES: With the growing connection between the big European film festivals and the awards season, auteur cinema is on the rise as an Oscar gold magnet. And many of those selections favor director-forward productions, often where the folks in the director's chair also penned the script. Indeed, from the octet you mention, only A Real Pain and Hard Truths premiered outside Cannes or Venice. And with Mike Leigh's latest, it wasn't for a lack of trying on his part…

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