Get Ready for a New Oscar Category: Best Casting

by Cláudio Alves

Until today, Animated Feature was the youngest category. SHREK was its first winner .

Though some people say the Oscars already have too many categories, the Academy disagrees. Today, AMPAS announced a new awards category meant to honor casting directors. It won't be an Honorary or Special Achievement Oscar like it happened in the early days of such races as International Film and Visual Effects, but a regular competitive category. We'll see the first nominees for this new prize in two years' time, during the season of the 98th Academy Awards, honoring 2025 releases. One assumes the Board of Governors will use that time to establish specific rules and eligibility requirements…

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"All of Us Strangers" leads the Dorian Award nominations

ALL OF US STRANGERS Searchlight Pictures

You’ve heard us talk about GALECA The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics before as a few of us here at The Film Experience are members. The annual Film awards are known as the "Dorian Awards". The organization probably has too many names / acronyms (the result of name adjustments over the years). But it's always fun to see the results of the voting in a group that is 500ish members wide but still not entirely mainstream homogenous due to the queer factor. The nominations have been announed for the 2023 film year with Andrew Haigh's beautiful and upsetting All of Us Strangers leading the pack with 9 nominations. Its closest rival? Barbie's "rainbow-hued feminist fable" with 7 nods.

The nominees and a few comments are after the jumps...

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FB Awards: Movie Posters of the Year

by Nathaniel R

It's that time again! I'm going to do the Film Bitch Awards a little differently this year and give them each their own article... all 40ish categories. At least that's the plan over the next month but we'll see. First up, movie posters of the year. The state of movie posters in general is dire, many often looking more like an AI generated collage of faces with sizes proportioned by legal contracts and no consideration of visual appeal. But, gripes aside, there are always bright spots. Honorable mentions to this list include the upside down "don't get lost" teaser for Saltburn,  the retro-painted poster  of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Oppenheimer 's literally explosive biography. 

Herewith 12 favourite movie posters of the year in not very particular order...

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Drag Race RuCap: “Girl Groups”

For the next few months, Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves will be following and recapping RuPaul’s Drag Race season sixteen…

Nymphia Wind introduces the latest innovation in Vajazzling.

CLÁUDIO: Welcome to another week of the Plane Jane show, where one of the most forced villains in Drag Race herstory continues to dominate the edit to such a degree it’s impossible to imagine the season without her. I’m almost certain she’ll make it to the finale, if nothing else, because the other candidate for season protagonist was just given the boot. Apologies, dear reader, for my grumpiness. I had high expectations for the episode airing on the franchise’s fifteenth anniversary, but what I got was pure disappointment. Thank heavens for the Banana Buddhah amid it all - vote yellow!

NICK: Plane’s trying so hard, and I’m very annoyed at how well it seems to be working. Frankly, I’m even more baffled at every decision that went into this week’s elimination . . . . 

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Review: Mexico's Oscar Submission "Tótem" Is Finally In Theaters - See It As Soon as Possible

by Nick Taylor

You may have noticed the Oscar nominations were announced last week. I’m not super enthused about this year’s lineups, which has some predictable excellence without giving me any surprises to be psyched about. I’ve spent this week catching up on the International Film category, and for the second year in a row, I’m mostly underwhelmed by Oscar’s choices. But rather than solely ragging on the Academy’s choices, I’m here for celebration and advocacy. Tótem, the second film by writer/director Lila Avilés and Mexico’s Oscar-shortlisted submission, has been slowly rolling out in the US and other countries for the past week, and thank God for that. It’s one of the very best films of 2023 and deserves as big of an audience as it can get. Go watch it...

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