Oscar Chart Updates - All Acting Categories

by Nathaniel R

I'm just back from the Middleburg Film Festival, which we'll tell you more about soon, so I've mostly caught up with the Oscar hopefuls that have screened to date. The only true mysteries for us Oscar pundits now, other than how precursors will react, is the films that haven't screened very much or at all: West Side Story, Nightmare Alley, Licorice Pizza, Being The Ricardos, House of Gucci, and Don't Look Up. So let the revised punditry commence. The links go to the charts...

Click to read more ...

Horror Costuming: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

by Cláudio Alves

Jonathan Demme's horror masterpiece, the only film in the genre to win the Best Picture Oscar, has been written about ad nauseam since its release. And yet, some elements of The Silence of the Lambs remain under-discussed. It would seem impossible, but such is the richness of this feature. Take its design, iconic but understated enough to be taken for granted. The costumes are especially deserving of attention, going way beyond Lecter's mask and Buffalo Bill's world of human skin suits. They were designed by Colleen Atwood, a future favorite of the Academy, and represent an oft-forgotten part of her artistry - the ability to ground grotesquerie in reality and use clothing to define the relationships between people…

Click to read more ...

NewFest Interview: Colby Minifie on ‘Homebody’

We're covering a few titles from the 2021 edition of NewFest, the New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival.

 

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Body swap comedies aren't all that rare, but it's not common that they manage to delve into complex subjects like gender identity. That is very fortunately the case with Homebody, an entertaining 75-minute adventure that finds nine-year-old Johnny (Tre Ryder), who is already in the process of questioning their gender, transplanted into the body of babysitter Melanie (Colby Minifie). We got to chat with the delightful and enthusiastic Minifie about what drew her to this project, the fun experience of making it, and even got some details on what's ahead for her character on The Boys!  Watch the full conversation below...

Homebody is screening virtually as part of NewFest through October 26th, with an in-person screening in Prospect Park this Tuesday.

"It was the Boogeyman"

by Cláudio Alves

The release of Halloween Kills marks the twelfth feature in the franchise that originated with John Carpenter's classic slasher. It's been 43 years since it all started, but the story of Michael Myers keeps on engaging audiences. Unfortunately, four separate timelines have twisted it out of shape, making the monster into a druidic nightmare, a manifestation of murderous fate that chases after its own bloodline, a human psychopath, an inhuman abstraction. As for Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, she went from the ultimate final girl to a scream queen offed off-screen to a traumatized woman and a violent avenger. Honestly, it's been a wild ride, and most of those sequels are misbegotten atrocities that deserve no attention. However, none of those sorry movies or their divergences from Carpenter's essential vision have retroactively worsened the first picture…

Click to read more ...

Highlights from Middleburg's "Coffee & Contenders"

by Nathaniel R

Clayton Davis, Jazz Tangcay and I created this annual panel at Middleburg together (I named it!) and now we're a regular event early in the morning at the beginning of each fest.  The new venue, outside in a tent, is a big improvement over our initially cozy but cramped space while the crowd is the (wonderful) same. Here are highlights from the public discussion this morning as well as the private discussions before and after the event (it all blurs together at film festivals which are so social)...

Click to read more ...