A chaotic awards season continues with the ASC nominations. "Cherry" anyone?

by Nathaniel R

Cherry (2021) surprises with an ASC nomination.

This awards season continues to deliver one surprise after another. But almost all of those surprises have involved recency bias in one way or another. That's an odd problem to encounter this year, if you stop to think on it. Everyone has been locked up at home for an entire year, presumably watching their many screens that whole time with little else to do for entertainment. You'd think this past film year of all film years, guild and Oscar voters would have been watching more movies and not waiting around for their screeners like they usually do. Shouldn't we have had less recency bias problems this year rather than more? 

Here are the nominees from the American Society of Cinematographers and some notes on the Oscar race as well...

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FYC: Kelly Reichardt for Best Director

by Cláudio Alves

Today marks the end of Oscar voting. After the clock strikes 5 PM PST/8 PM EST all the ballots for the 93rd Academy Award nominations will be set in stone, and nothing will change until the results are announced next Monday. As it stands, this also marks the end of these FYC write-ups by the Team Experience. To conclude things, I took for myself the honor of writing the last such piece of the season. It's about my favorite of the Oscar eligible titles, a tale of kindness in an unkind world, of ancient friendships, untraditional masculinities, unhuman economies, and unforgiving histories. First Cow's Kelly Reichardt's magnum opus and the film for which the American cineaste should be conquering her first Oscar nomination…

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FYC Emma.'s Costumes (or lack thereof)

by Elisa Giudici

The Academy Awards love period dramas and historical adaptations, at least in the Best Costume Design category. They love movies in which actors and actresses sport garments from the past so much that it's always unlikely that movies set in the present will be nominated, no matter how great the work is. Contemporary outfits? Not for us! Historically accurate costumes? Oscar worthy! Even in the realm of sci-fi they have an aversion to the contemporary (via the future), fantasy movies which are more likely to recall the past with their medieval vibes, are more likely. 

That said, sometimes period costume design can be really stunning. Such is the case with the latest movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic Emma might gain. The first feature from director Autumn de Wilde is working against an early release, but 2020's lack of gorgeous actors dressed in lavish costumes might help Alexandra Byrne gain her sixth nomination anyway. And she'll deserve it...

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Interview: Sue Kim on "The Speed Cubers" her Oscar finalist

by Nathaniel R

After screening the moving and very engaging doc The Speed Cubers we were shockd to learn that it was a debut Figuring there was a story we sat down with director Sue Kim and as it turns out, we were right. Though she comes across as genuinely humble, twenty years of experience on sets helped her to be fully formed as a filmmaker the first time out of the gate. She'd been producing commrcials for 20 years before directing her first short The Speed Cubers. As the mom of a cuber, she knew the world intimately and knew how she wanted to frame the story. After a pitch to Netflix and the benefit of a few years of archival footage from The Cubicle, to help shape the backstory, "we were able to focus our filming efforts pretty precisely."

Kim and her team shot for six months up leading up the Speed-Cubing World Championships. We were delighted to hear what convinced Sue to try her hand at directing and what it was like to make a movie with no antagonists and two heroes, speed cubing champs Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs...

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Lunchtime Poll: What were the 5 best "Best Picture" vintages?

by Nathaniel R

2003 & 2000. what a typical Oscar vintage looks like in terms of spread of quality.

It's 5 days until Oscar nominations are announced so let's have fun with the classic number 5... AKA the ideal size of an awards category. Most Oscar categories have varied in size at one time or another but for the bulk of the 93 year Oscar history five has been the preferred category size for the Academy. For fun let's name the best Best Picture quintets of all time (so only years 1944-2008 are eligible).

The average Best Picture lineup across many decades looks a lot like 2000 and 2003 pictures above, in that they're composed of the following: 2 perfect classics, 1 movie that's quite good, 1 respectable if unexciting choice, and 1 dud stinking up the room.

In short, it's quite difficult to pick the best vintage overall. Here are five BEST PIC shortlists I personally have a lot of affection for for various reasons...

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