Top 10 Delights from the Gotham Awards

Chris here. If you weren't watching last night's live stream of the IFP's Gotham Awards, you missed a delightful night of more surprise and unfiltered humor than most televised awards ceremonies.

Director & Muse reunited

Everything is still feeling optimistic with the awards season, so the fun moments and surprise winners were as fresh and intriguing as ever for the Gothams!

10 Takeways From the Gothams

• Julianne Moore Gave Todd Haynes A Tribute Award And It Was Everything You Could Imagine: There's no video available yet to share, but what a treat. Moore was effusive in her affection for her frequent collaborator, sharing [safe] anecdotes and praising Haynes's warmth. Haynes's speech was career-spanning, but not longwinded, with the highlight being his praise of producing partner Christine Vachon. Carol went home empty-handed and didn't feature much in the tribute reel but the love in the for the filmmaker was palpable even through the playback feed. Here's hoping the Gotham tribute adds a little more steam to the film's increasing momentum.

• Our New Favorite Besties, Shugs and Fats: Nadia Manzoor and Radhka Vaz's show walked away Breakthrough Series - Short Form and best speech of the night, where they joked about not thanking their families.

• The Juries: Each category had a unique panel deciding the winner, with the members listed out before the prize is awarded. Bel Powley doesn't feel like such a surprising winner if you consider her jury included the likes of Lisa Kudrow and John Waters. Imagining them discussing the film is heaven!

• Paul Dano: His work in Love and Mercy is among my personal favorite sof the year and he was charmingly sincere and understated in his speech. I fear this is as far as he gets with recognition for the film, though the Youth team is out and about, but it was exciting to see him take home a prize after a more than a decade of undervalued work.

• We Don't Hate Anything Yet: The tide of viscious takedowns has not reached us yet and lets keep our fingers crossed that it takes longer this year to get a million thinkpieces on what is bad about a single frontrunner.

• Dirty Jokes About the Queen: While Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel bombed with dirty jokes about Her Royal Highness and Helen Mirren in particular, Mirren showed the boys how it's done with a charmingly naughty anecdote about seeing herself in the role.

• So How About Helen Mirren's Dress??: I joked about its juvenile print, but I unashamedly LOVE it. If we all could have fun like Mirren has fun, the world would be a happier place.

• The Missed Opportunity of a Mya Taylor Acceptance Speech: She won the Breakthrough Actor Award for her work in Tangerine, but director Sean Baker had to accept on her behalf due to her missing her plane. He took the moment to champion trans performers, but it would have been heartening to hear the woman speak for herself.

• Indie TV: While quality television dominating isn't a new topic, it was interesting to note we don't have much discussion or recognition for TV that's independently produced. Let's see if there is more conversation around this as our viewing options continue to grow.

• Awarding the Angelika: The First Gotham Appreciation Award was given to Ellen Cotter of the Angelika Film Center, an independent theatre chain with its flagship in NYC. Theatres themselves play such a part in our relationship to the movies we love, and independent cinema houses especially deserve recognition for nurturing our passions - this prize is swell!

Curio: Sketches of Carol

Alexa here.  Over at Little White Lies everything is coming up Carol, with the current issue of the magazine dedicated to the film. I have been having fun following the entries for their latest creative brief, a competition seeking black and white sketches of the title character. The film is ripe with visual inspiration, so of course many lovely images have been appearing on instagram and tumblr and the like. Too bad the contest is for UK residents only, because the prizes for the winner are a poster signed by Todd Haynes, a framed print of the winning artwork, a copy of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, a copy of the film’s soundtrack and a one-year subscription to the magazine.

Todd Haynes will be selecting the winner. My favorites are after the jump

Click to read more ...

Gotham Winners: Color us "Tangerine"

The most exciting wild card at both the East Coast Gotham Awards and the West Coast Spirit Awards is Sean Baker's raucous and hugely entertaining comedy Tangerine (my favorite film from Sundance this year) about two trans hookers sharing a wild 24 hours in Los Angeles at Christmas time. Though most of the big movie awards prefer studio filmmaking or "prestige" indies, we can all cross our fingers that Tangerine, which is truly independent in spirit and filmmaking, has one mainstream nomination in its future: Best Picture, Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes. It would be richly deserved.

But if that doesn't come to pass at least it was well loved at the Gothams (two awards, bested only by Spotlight) and with Spirit Nominations. Though Carol was shut out, Gotham Awards don't have that many categories to begin with and Todd Haynes was honored so we'll forgive them.

Feature Spotlight
Audience Award Tangerine
Actress Bel Powley in Diary of a Teenage Girl
Actor Paul Dano in Love and Mercy
Documentary The Look of Silence
Screenplay Spotlight written by Tom McCarthy & Josh Singer

Breakthrough Awards
Breakthrough Actor Mya Taylor in Tangerine
Breakthrough Director Jonas Carpigano for Mediterranea
Breakthrough Series - Long Form Mr Robot
Breakthrough Series - Short Form Shugs & Fats

Special Prizes
The First Gotham Appreciation Award Ellen Cotter - Angelika Film Center Theaters
Special Jury Award – Ensemble Spotlight's Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d’Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup
Tributes to: Helen Mirren, Todd Haynes, Robert Redford

Review: The Good Dinosaur

Tim here. The Good Dinosaur is, in the first place, a kids' film: not a film about kids but also somewhat for adults, like Inside Out. Or, indeed, most of what Pixar Animation Studios has produced in its 20 years of making features. In fact, even including the unabashed toy commercials of the Cars franchise, this might be the most unmixed "for the kids" movie out of the 16 films of the Pixar canon. This has translated into a lot of disappointment from a lot of people openly hoping for another film at the Inside Out level of emotional sophistication and narrative creativity, which was really never going to be in the cards; frankly, the movie doesn't seem to have any designs on that kind of sophistication.

Still, it's easy to be too harsh on the movie: simple and direct as The Good Dinosaur certainly is, it's an enormously strong version of its stock narrative.

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Beauty vs Beast: God I Love You

Happy Monday folks, it's Jason from MNPP back from the turkey dead and ready to "Beauty vs Beast" with you all again! Have any of you seen Laurie Metcalf and Bruce Willis doing Stephen King's Misery on Broadway? I have not but as a recently admitted obsessive over Metcalf's work on Getting On - also especially her wild-eyed turn in Scream 2 - I'm curious to see what she does with the role of number one fan Annie Wilkes. (Also please tell me they updated the play and made Annie have a Tumblr account.) The shadow of Kathy Bates' original performance looms large, and speaking of...

Rob Reiner's 1990 film is turning 25 today! The film was a big hit, making over 60 million bucks and earning its leading lady that most rare of rare Oscar wins - one for a horror movie performance. And she certainly earned it, but credit where credit's due: James Caan's performance is always over-shadowed and he's just as good, grounding the film (literally) with every hardworking bead of sweat chugging down his panicked face. The film wouldn't work without him; they play a perfect duet. That said...

PREVIOUSLY We celebrated the holiday last week with all the Christina Ricci Thanksgiving Speechifying you could handle, and y'all went straight for the dark meat - Wednesday Addams, much to her chagrin, is a winner at life! Said denny:

"Ricci's Wednesday Addams may be what turned me into an actressexual. I LOVED her. I think she was my first real actress crush. The Shakespeare scene in the first Addams Family movie was when I well and truly fell. By the time the sequel came out, I was madly in love. It's such a perfect performance. I really hope her show for Amazon as Zelda Fitzgerald gets picked up. I need more Christina Ricci. Lots more."

Mark Your Calendars!

With the Gotham Awards coming tonight, it's time to look at the awards season calendar. Here's a handy prep list. Dates in italics are not official just right around when it happened last year. Dates in bold are nomination dates or televised ceremonies.

Are you ready? Can you ever be?

DECEMBER 2015
 

1st (ish) Oscar's Documentary Finalist List announced
1st National Board of Review Awards
2nd New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) Awards
6th Boston Society of Film Critics (BSFC) Awards
7th Golden Globe nomination ballots due
9th SAG NOMINATIONS
10th GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS
13th Toronto Film Critics Awards
14th BFCA "CRITICS CHOICE" NOMINATIONS
18th (ish) Oscar's Foreign Language Finalist List announced
20th FiLM BiTCH AWARDS begin. That's ours... (I know I know. we'll try to trim the running time this year.)
30th Oscar nomination ballots go out to AMPAS

JANUARY 2016

5th PGA & ADG Nominations
5th NBR Gala
6th ASC Cinematography Nominations
7th SAG nomination ballots due
8th Oscar nomination ballots due
8th BAFTA Nominations
10th GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS (73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards on NBC)
10th Visual Effects Society "Bake-Off" presentation for the Oscar finalists
12th DGA Nominations
13th FiLM BiTCH AWARDS Nominations Wrap-Up
14th OSCAR NOMINATIONS - Rejoice!
17th CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS (Annual BFCA Awards on A&E)
21st  Sundance Film Festival Begins
23rd PGA Gala
29th SAG ballots due
30th SAG AWARDS (22nd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on TNT/TBS)
31st Art Directors Guild Gala

FEBRUARY 2016

6th DGA Gala
12th Oscar ballots out to AMPAS
14th BAFTA AWARDS and American Society of Cinematographer's Gala
17th (ish) 18th Annual Costume Designers Guild Gala
23rd Oscar Ballots due
27th Film Independent Spirit Awards
28th OSCAR NIGHT! (aka Hollywood's High Holy Night aka The 88th Annual Academy Awards)

MARCH & APRIL 2016

It all starts again for a new film year!