March. It's a Wrap.

Usually March is our cool-down period after another exhausting but fun awards season. Here at (practically) the end of the first quarter of 2021, we're still three weeks away from Oscar night so we're reviewing each Oscar category still. Our internal calendars are a disaster. How about yours? Here's a quick recap in case you missed any of these... 

A Dozen Highlights of March at TFE
• Minari: A Tale of Two (or more) Grandmas Lynn gets personal for this movie
• The New Actress Hierarchy Frances & Glenn are still rising
• Gay Best Friend: Dolly in Silkwood All roads eventually lead to Cher
• Over & Overs: Amadeus This composer biopic never gets old
• Ten best onscreen pigs because we live for a random list
• Most Confusing Oscar Categories pre-Nominations It was supporting actor not actress that ended up shocking this year. Which other years had confusing results?
• This Had Oscar Buzz Nathaniel guest stars for White Oleander
• The Piano Lesson The August Wilson plays are all getting movies. This is next
• New Oscar Records an annual tradition of course
• The Worst Case of Category Fraud Claudio finds things got egregious this year
• Almost There Anthony Hopkins in The Lion in Winter
• What were the 5 best "Best Picture" vintages? That got you talking

COMING IN APRIL:
SAG, BAFTA, Spirit Awards, and Oscar night are all coming up in April. We'll also have a week-long John Waters retrospective (!) to celebrate his 75th birthday. 

And of course the Supporting Actress Smackdown returns on April 15th with a look at the current Oscar season so get your votes in now on the current list. After that we'll all revisit the year 2000 together. Here's how to vote. 

Gay Best Friend: Jane in "Boys on the Side" (1995)

a series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope 

Incredibly disappointed I only now realized there was a road trip dramedy with Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore.Long live the era of Whoopi Goldberg vehicles (aka the 90s).

Goldberg kick-started the 90s by winning a (well-deserved) Oscar for Ghost and headlining the smash-hit Sister Act. From there, we got a string of movies where Goldberg was the leading lady. Though they varied in quality and weren’t always progressive, it was impressive to see movie after movie built around a black actress. Who else could do Eddie, Bogus, The Associate AND Ghosts of Mississippi all in 1996? We’re going a year earlier for this week’s gay best friend. No, we’re not talking about Theodore Rex (though… should we). Instead, we are talking about the messy dramedy I didn’t know I needed in my life, Boys on the Side.

Unlike in past weeks, our gay best friend (technically) takes center stage. Jane (Goldberg) is a lesbian musician looking to get out of New York and move Los Angeles after a tumultuous breakup...

Click to read more ...

Canadian Screen Awards: Blood Quantum, The Nest, Funny Boys, etc...

by Nathaniel R

The Canadian Screen Awards, formerly known as the Genies (Film) and Geminis (TV), have been around in their current form since 2013. The indigenous zombie film Blood Quantum, currently streaming on Shudder, led the nominations for film with 10 citations but missed both picture and director. In second place, in terms of nomination tally, was Deepa Mehta's gay drama Funny Boy (which you'll remember was disqualified as Canada's submission at the Oscars since almost all of its dialogue was in English). If you watch Funny Boy on Netflix, take note that friend of TFE Arun Welandawe Prematillek, plays the teacher in the classroom scenes. The awards ceremony on May 20th will be a virtual event.

The full motion picture nominee list and where you can see some of the films after the jump [THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH THE WINNERS IN EACH CATEGORY] ...

Click to read more ...

Which of these will '95 born actors will be Oscar-nominated first?

by Nathaniel R

Since it's 26 days until the Oscars we thought we'd look at 26 year-olds... or soon-to-be 26 year olds rather. Only one actor born in 1995 has been nominated to date. That'd be the internet's twink boyfriend Timothée Chalamet. But which other actors of the 1995 vintage will join him in receiving Hollywood's greatest stamp of approval? We've collected six potential suspects after the jump along with a few handful of alternates though it bears noting that the next big star born in '95 could very easily be someone who hasn't even made their first film yet since careers take time to build and Hollywood was forced to take a full year off of discovering new talent in 2020... 

WHICH BORN IN '95 ACTOR WILL BE OSCAR NOMINATED NEXT?
(ALPHA ORDER)

Click to read more ...

Showbiz History: Warren Beatty's habitual Oscar fate, 1954's lame Best Picture lineup, and more...

4 random things that happened on this day, March 30th, in showbiz history

1946 The 3rd annual Golden Globes were held on this day honoring The Lost Weekend, 75 years ago. It was AFTER the Oscars. How bizarre right? But the Globes were more like the NBR at the start announcing winners (no nominees) in advance of a banquet.  

1955 The 27th Academy Awards are held honoring the best of 1954 On the Waterfront leads the nominations and wins an incredible 8 Oscars.  Though the Academy nominates all the wrong movies as its competition so it had an easy time of it. The Best Picture lineup went like so...

Click to read more ...