Final Oscar Predictions in all categories!

by Nathaniel R

I'll spend the rest of the weekend completing the annual Film Bitch Awards (the Oscar parallel categories that is) for my own list-making pleasure and for those of you who enjoy them. But first a final round of our favourite kind of punditry - who will be Oscar nominated?. If you're a longtime reader you'll know we find this question infinitely more fascinating than who will win and we've long bemoaned how the internet has turned "who will win?" into a year-long sport when that's not all that fun to talk about in comparison to the complexity and party-combo possibilities of a top 5 in each category. Plus, it's downright rude to be handing out statues all year before all the competitors have been seen! Can you imagine the World Series announcing the final two teams at the beginning of the season, or RuPaul's Drag Race sending 11 queens home on the first episode without watching them lipsynch or seeing even one of their runway lewks? No! It's f***ing rude to ask who will win before January, you know? How can there be a "best" before all the contenders have screened? [/Rant].

Let's hit the final "Who Will Be Nominated?" predictions... 

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Oscar Volley: Picture - Does it really come down to just two spots?

TFE’s Oscar volleys wrap up with Lynn Lee, Eurocheese, and Christopher James making predictions for the Big One (Best Picture). Nathaniel’s final Oscar chart predictions will be up tonight to usher in the weekend.

Lynn Lee: Oscar nomination voting closed Tuesday night but before it did do we agree we were approaching a consensus core group? Taking the precursors into account (minus BAFTA which hasn't yet announced as I type this), eight of the ten spots are close to locked up (in alpha order): Belfast, CODA, Don't Look Up, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, The Power of the Dog and West Side Story. That leaves two nomination spots for maybe a half dozen viable contenders. PGA went with Being the Ricardos and tick, tick...BOOM!, but as Nathaniel’s noted, the Oscar list is rarely an exact copy of the PGA. Could it happen this year? Entirely possible but I suspect at least one of those two is going to drop out and if I had to take a bet, it’s sadly more likely to be BOOM!...

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One For Them, One For Me: Mike White (x 2) in 2017

A new series by Christopher James

Mike White (left) makes himself one of the images of excess and wealth in "Brad's Status," one of four movies he wrote in 2017 (and the only one he also directed).

Do one for them; do one for you. If you can still do projects for yourself, you can keep your soul.
— Martin Scorsese: A Journey

Why not make a lot of movies and make a lot of money?

Mike White’s 2017 was full of many ups and downs. Few people would be able to make four movies in a year and have them all be good. Mike White decided to split the difference, making two personal projects alongside two painfully obvious cash grabs.  White is among the credited writers on The Emoji Movie and Pitch Perfect 3. But that wasn't all. He also wrote and directed the comedy Brad’s Status, a passion project. Finally, he wrote the screenplay for Beatriz at Dinner, directed by Miguel Artera, which serves as a great precursor to his HBO smash hit The White Lotus. Let's look for any common themes or threads for these four scripts that all came out in the same year...

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Nathaniel's Top Ten List (Best of 2021)

by Nathaniel R

Movies are not quite keepsakes anymore with physical media dying. Yet they remain emotional treasures to return to or reflect upon as real as any beloved mementos you could place in a keepsake box. For awards and list obsessives they take on extra-meaning as stand-ins for each calendar year as well. We have to have a gimmick for the top ten lists each year, else the task of putting so much love into words becomes too daunting.  So this year we've chosen memorable objects as a frame with which to remember the year's best. These great films were filled with fawned over items and knick knacks from "purty" paper flowers to restless coffee cups, from razor-sharp seashell bracelets to winning lottery tickets, from horny religious figurines to magical belts.

20 HONORABLE MENTIONS

So that you don't immediately ask "WHERE IS  ____?" here are the 20 films outside of the top 10 list that were loved and/or deeply admired. Plus, in keeping with the chosen theme, the visual object we most closely associate with them... 

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Interview: Martha Plimpton on Her Role in ‘Mass’

By Abe Friedtanzer

We’re back with another spotlight on one of the strongest films of 2021, Mass, which managed to earn exactly one nomination from BAFTA today, for Ann Dowd in the supporting actress category. Nathaniel spoke with Dowd recently and I had the chance to talk to writer-director Fran Kranz, and today we have Martha Plimpton, the fantastic stage and screen actress who plays Gail… 

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