A Memorial for "In Memorium"

One last piece on an individual moment from Oscar night?

by Baby Clyde

They couldn’t have started off the In Memoriam segment of the 96th Annual Academy Awards, in a more sober fashion. Recently assassinated Russian opposition leader and subject of last year's Best Documentary winner Alexei Navalny appears on screen, speaking directly to the audience. It’s a bold, surprising opener, somewhat at odds with the slick, professional and ever so slightly dull show that made up the rest of the runtime. This grim reminder of a world outside the Hollywood bubble gives absolutely no indication of the calamitous 4 minutes we're about to endure...

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SXSW Review: "Audrey"

By Abe Friedtanzer

Siblings have surely wished for a brief frustrated moment when they were young that they were only children, and parents might have also momentarily considered whether their lives would be easier if they hadn’t had a child. But those thoughts shouldn’t linger much, and if they do, it’s probably not a good thing to say out loud. Audrey tells an entertaining story of three people who find that things are a lot breezier when one member of their family is in a coma and no longer actively complicating their lives…

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Trivia Collection for the 96th Academy Awards

Here's what we came up with as the dust settles from Oscar night. Let us know in the comments if there's any other interesting trivia bits you noticed from this season. 

PICTURE / DIRECTOR

• Oppenheimer is the third consecutive movie to be released before fall film festival season to win the Best Picture Oscar (after Coda and Everything Everywhere All At Once)... so perhaps distributors can learn to start trusting that movies can be released at any time and still factor into awards season? It's also the first movie to go straight to theaters (no festivals) to win Best Picture in ages (well, since The Departed in 2006)

• Three female-directed films Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, and Past Lives were nominated in Best Picture which is an all time record...

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SXSW Review: "Hunting Daze"

By Abe Friedtanzer

What could possibly go wrong when a woman stuck in an unfamiliar place decides to join up with five guys on a hunting trip? Some hazing, seemingly good fun, and then a less pleasant turn of events, as portrayed in Hunting Daze, an interesting specimen screening in the Midnighters section at SXSW that goes from strangely serene to quite unsettling over the course of its brief seventy-nine minutes…

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SXSW Review: ‘Roleplay’

By Abe Friedtanzer

The notion of consent is something that should have always defined all relationships, yet it’s only come to prominence as an expected condition of any romantic or sexual interaction in recent years. Revisiting traumatic interactions can be very triggering, but doing so in a safe and supportive space can prove therapeutic. The documentary Roleplay looks at the fascinating process being implemented to open eyes to the reality of sexual assault on campus through an experimental theater program...

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