Other women who should have won Best Director

by Cláudio Alves

At this year's Oscar ceremony, Chloé Zhao became only the second woman in Academy history to conquer the Best Director prize. The second one in 93 years. She follows in the steps of Kathryn Bigelow, whose Hurt Locker, like Nomadland, also won the Best Picture trophy. As a longtime proponent of the importance of women directors in film history, I rejoice at this result. However, the victory is bittersweet, a reminder of the chronic lack of recognition for these filmmakers. Many other women have deserved to win the Best Director Oscar across the years…

Click to read more ...

Review: "Stowaway" on Netflix

by Matt St Clair

Shamier Anderson is the titular "Stowaway"

One common trope in space movies is daddy issues. Whether it involves trying to find one’s dad in space or a sad father dealing family issues, as this 2019 Vulture article points out, it's a constant in outer-space movies. That's been especially true of this last decade with First Man, Interstellar, Ad Astra, and Netflix’s very recent space venture The Midnight Sky. But a surprise development! The new space movie Stowaway, from writer/director Joe Penna, is the rare film to abandon that trend altogether. The central quartet have struggles but not one of them is a daddy issue. 

Commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), botanist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim), and medical researcher Zoe Levensen (Anna Kendrick) barely touch on their respective home lives as they make their way to Mars for a two-year space mission...

Click to read more ...

Olympia Dukakis (1931-2021)

by Nathaniel R

Olympia Dukakis as "Anna Madrigal", one of three iconic roles

Olympia Dukakis, the much-loved Oscar winning actress of stage and screen, has died just a month shy of her 90th birthday. The Los Angeles Times has a lovely article which goes in depth into her early career and backstory. On her devotion to theater, which often pulled her away from mainstream success, she's quoted as saying:  

I did not become an actor in order to become famous or rich. I became an actor so I could play the great parts.

I regret that I never had the opportunity to see her on stage. Like the rest of the world, I fell in love with her first via "Rose Castorini" in Moonstruck (1987), a role she initially and surprisingly didn't think too highly of. Nevertheless she aced it, becoming one of the most beloved and famous screen moms of that era -- a screen mom to Cher no less!

But I'm not here to talk about Moonstruck. Have you ever had a actor that reminded you specifically of one exact person in your life? I don't mean an actor who looked like a loved one in some small way, but a star who always brought a real loved one immediately to mind...

Click to read more ...

Streaming Revisit: "Bound" is 25

Please welcome guest contributor Brent Calderwood... 

by Brent Calderwood

I first saw Bound in 2000 at a special screening at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, four years after its initial release. The audience was rapt, cowering in their seats or nervously laughing in all the right places. Back then, my college friends and I were so desperate for LGBTQ content that we’d hold house parties to watch pirated VHS tapes of the original ten-episode British series Queer As Folk, converted from imported PAL-format tapes by a friend of a friend in our school’s AV department. Given the dearth of queer representation, we convinced ourselves that we loved everything we saw no matter what, down to the neutered gay characters serving up puns on Will & Grace. Fast forward to 2021—would Bound live up to my memory and expectations?

I was nervous about how Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s debut would hold up 25 years after it was first released, but as it turns out I didn’t need to worry. The 1996 noir, which just began streaming on Hulu, remains as fresh and edgy as ever...  

Click to read more ...

'in brightest day in blackest night, no link shall escape my sight'

• Screen Daily what can we expect to see at Cannes this year?
• Variety Taika Waititi will be back in front of cameras soon, not just behind them. He'll play the pirate Blackbeard for an HBO comedy series
• Deadline Florence Pugh to star in Sebastian Lelio's next film called The Wonder 
• /Film Cate Blanchett, Cheyenne Jackson, Haley Bennett, Gina Gershon and more signed on for videogame adaptation Borderlands (Blanchett is the lead)

Pixar artist worries, Cronenberg & Viggo reuniting, HBO's Green Lantern and more...

Click to read more ...