Producers Guild Awards say 'You can't sit with us!' to the blockbusters

by Nathaniel R

The Producers Guild of America has spoken and even though in past years they've shown a fondness for superheros and blockbusters nominating films like Star Trek, Wonder Woman, and Deadpool, this year they've dashed the Oscar dreams of the 8th Spider-Man movie and the 25th official James Bond movie and selected only Dune to represent big franchise filmmaking. The "surprise" nomination, though it really shouldn't be considered a surprise given that they even nominated Molly's Game, was Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos. Their nominees are as follows...

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Interview: Laura Wandel on working with child actors in Belgium's Oscar finalist 'Playground'

by Nathaniel R

This season's finalist list for the Best International Feature Film Oscar is a mixture of international icons (Farhadi! Sorrentino!), legends in the making (Hamaguchi! Trier!) and rising auteurs (everyone else). Four of the films are even directorial debuts. Imagine being shortlisted for the Oscar on your first movie! That's what's happened to Belgium's Laura Wandel.

The 37 year old filmmaker had been making short films since 2007. After her 2014 short Les corps éstrangers competed at Cannes, it was time to make the leap to features. The result, which was tabled for a time due to pandemic delays, was the moving bullying drama Playground about a brother and sister struggling in school. We were delighted to speak to Wandel shortly after her moving film made the finals...

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Sundance: It's Doubled-Trouble for Karen Gillan in 'Dual'

by Jason Adams

I suppose it's less of a theoretical question now than it was a few decades ago, but what would it mean for us if human cloning becomes a reality? It's a topic science-fiction has wrestled with for ages, but having just spent two years weathering my first global pandemic by basically Netflix-and-chilling it I'm prone to think our grand high sci-fi authors might've overblown our reactions to such epochal events. (I mean... we barely reacted to that news about UFOs, for god's sake.) And so I'm now prone to believe that human cloning would be met with something closer to the meh, shrug, move-on that The Art of Self-Defense director Riley Stearns' crafts with his slyly mundane sci-fi parable Dual, just premiering at Sundance...

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Interview: The Director of 'Lunana' on making the Oscar finals, working with yaks, and meeting Ang Lee

by Nathaniel R

Making movies is never "easy" but some movies achieve the impossible. Pawo Chonyning Dorji's debut feature, the Bhutanese Oscar finalist Lunana A Yak in the Classroom, is one of the latter kind. Its very existence is a miracle, and that's before you even get to the lottery-ticket like good fortune of competing for the Oscar. While Bhutan has a growing local film and television industry, heavily influenced by the films of Bollywood, the pictures are mostly low budget and don't travel outside of the small landlocked country. They definitely don't travel anywhere near the mountainous village where Lunana A Yak in the Classroom takes place, since there is no electricity let alone a movie theater. The charming soulful movie is about a restless young teacher named Ugyen (first time actor Sherab Dorji) who dreams of moving to Australia to pursue a music career. He very reluctantly accepts a final teaching gig to complete his government contract but that assignment is in the most remote part of all Bhutan.

Setting a story there is one thing, filming there without electricity with cast and crew of first timers -- some of whom had never even seen a movie -- is another.  We had the pleasure of talking to the director about his miracle Oscar contender and why he made it and our interview follows after the jump...

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CDG Nominations: 'Gucci' is IN, 'Spencer' is OUT

by Cláudio Alves

My reaction, seeing SPENCER snubbed, yet again.

The Costume Designers Guild announced its nominations for the 2021 movie and TV year. Some trends continue to accentuate, including the industry's lack of passion for Spencer and the resurgence of Nightmare Alley as an awards contender. House of Gucci is also getting a boost, as is Spider-Man: No Way Home, which scores an inexplicable nomination here. Overall, though, this was a good day for the Marvel industrial complex, scoring nods across the board, both for their big screen and small screen fare. As far as victory predictions go, Jenny Beavan's Disney couture for Cruella seems like the obvious choice. 

Come check out the full lineups and additional comments after the jump…

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