FYC: "The Green Knight" for Best Costume Design

by Cláudio Alves

While we're at the dawn of a new year, the 2021 awards season is far from over. Academy Award nominations are still a month away, so there's plenty of time to champion one's cinematic favorites before hope withers away on Oscar morning. To start 2022 off on the right foot, let's investigate our predilect craft category – Best Costume Design. There are plenty of glamorous contenders, but the one I'm most rooting to see nominated chooses a more understated path to greatness. Costume designer Malgosia Turzanska outfitted David Lowery's adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in simple designs rich in visceral textures, colors shining through the shadowy cinematography, ancient symbolism, and more…

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Surprise Podcast! Nick & Nathaniel reunite to talk Campion, Zola, and *much* more

Since several of you have asked over the past couple of years, Nick Davis, who was once a weekly regular on both our podcast and his own site (haha) is fine! We spontaneously jumped on the phone to talk last month and recorded it. Apologies for waiting so long to share but you know how December is. So "Happy New Year!"

94 minutes
00:01 Reunited and it feels so good
01:40 Jane Campion's return with The Power of the Dog
13:35 The brilliance of Rebecca Hall's Passing which Nick has taught in book form for years
23:00 C'mon C'mon 
29:30 Quick feelings on King Richard, Dune, and  Licorice Pizza
40:12 Titane's anger and the atmosphere of The Humans
53:15 We split on The Worst Person in the World 
1:08:00 Quick feelings on tick tick BOOM!, Belfast, Prayers for the Stolen, and The Velvet Underground
1:14:00 Hating on Spencer together. We really dislike it, okay?
1:24:45 Loving on Zola together. Get into it, bitch!
1:31:30 "Deleted Scene" House of Gucci

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify or right here, attached...

Power of the Zola

Through Her Lens: 2016 (The 89th Oscars)

A series by Juan Carlos Ojano. Previous Episodes: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Introduction / Explanation

This year at the Oscars marked a landmark in representation. Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight became the first Best Picture winner to star an all-Black cast and the first that was LGBTQ+-themed. This win was even more remarkable as the film went up against the heavily nominated frontrunner La La Land, a romantic musical. This year also marked an unprecedented amount of racial representation in the acting categories, with seven out of 20 nominees being non-White, two of them winning.

However, this considerable victory in diversity did not extend to gender. In the directing category  all the nominees were male. At the time, not much discourse and coverage was given to gender as the focus on representation was mostly around race, especially after the two-year run of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign...

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2021 is a wrap (sort of). Hello 2022!

HAPPY NEW YEAR LOVELIES!

As longtime readers know our new year literally begins now but figuratively we're still in 2021 until the last Oscar is hadn't out on March 27th, 2022. Then a 'happy new film year' can truly begin. But in case you've been away and our just rejoining us in the thick of precursor season, here are...

10 highlights you might've missed from December
• Steven Spielberg's 10 Best Films the whole team sounded off
• FYC Simon Rex his motormouthed brilliance in Red Rocket 
• Mike Faist Interview How the new West Side Story's "Riff" found the intensity for reinvention
• Discussing the Endings of Passing and Power of the Dog
• Young Adult at 10 Mavis never grows up but her film does
• Which countries have been waiting for Oscar nominations the longest? None of the "top ten" made the finalist list again. When will Oscar notice them?
• Yes No Maybe So The Northman Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgård get their Viking on
• Year in Review List-Mania - we did team lists of Onscreen Chemistry, Entertainers, Best Animals, Movie Posters, and Thirst Traps of 2021
• Spider-Man Best Picture - that weird media push to nominate it 
• Cate Blanchett in Talented Mr Ripley - an episode of your favourite "Almost There"
• West Side Story Oscar Journey x 2 - a handy comparison chart as we move towards Oscar nominations
• Best Supporting Actress -who gets the fifth slot?

Previous wrap-ups if you're just rejoining us...
Oscar 2020 Wrap | May | June | July | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov

COMING IN JANUARY 2022
Nathaniel's top ten list + The Film Bitch Awards, and the Team Experience Awards. Plus lots of interviews for Oscar hopefuls and a conversation with a secret SAG voter. We'll hit new films including A Hero, The 355, Scream, Belle, and The Tragedy of Macbeth. We'll have virtual Sundance Film Festival reviews. And finish up all the Oscar charts (2/3rds done now) in the next two days only to redo them once SAG nominations hit on January 12th. And if they ever reschedule those Honorary Oscars (meant for this month), we'll launch those half written weeklong celebrations of Liv Ullmann and Samuel L Jackson.

Oscar Charts: Best Actor & Best Actress

by Nathaniel R

Stewart and Cumberbatch have hogged the lion's share of critics awards. Will gold statues follow?

Both lead acting charts have been updated so take a look at BEST ACTOR and BEST ACTRESS. Both categories are giving off the vibes of being set in stone already before SAG has even announced their nominations so we'll soon see if that's an illusion or the truth. I've made one big adjustment in Best Actor, having Leonardo DiCaprio in Don't Look Up vault over rising but minor critical darling Nicolas Cage in Pig and knocking out Peter Dinklage in Cyrano. Cage maybe could have happened had critics really rallied but they were too busy praising Benedict Cumberbatch to really take a Pig stand. As for Dinklage, though the role is an awards magnet,  MGM/UA just didn't seem to know what to do with that film even though it's a) easy to market b) well liked by most people who see it... and kept pushing back its release. Better to have just saved it for 2022 at this point we think. And for Best Actress, there are no major changes, just a bit of order shuffling. I'm sticking with the five women who keep getting cited everywhere. Yes, there is a lot of PERFORMANCE and PASSION happening in the second tier of Best Actress hopefuls but it's getting harder and harder to see a path for any of them, even previous Oscar darlings like Penelope Cruz (Parallel Mothers) and buzzy newcomers like Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza). Unless SAG honors one of them, it's this five until Oscar night. 

Revised Oscar Charts

• Director
• Lead Actress
• Lead Actor
• Supporting Actress
• Supporting Actor
• Cinematography
• Production Design
• Film Editing
• Visual Effects
• Makeup and Hairstyling
• International Feature Film
• Animated Feature
• Documentary Feature